Guild Wars 2

Vayne.8563:

But there’s also a percentage of the player base, a significant percentage that had left the game because it was too easy and some of those people have come back because they find the HoT zones more fun than the core zones.

How many? Who? Can you support this “significant percentage”? I’ve not seen a single post here of someone saying they left because the game was too easy. If it is a significant amount, we should see it. Where are you getting this data? Can you share it with the rest of us?

Vayne.8563:

You’re also pulling numbers out of thin air. I think it’s very unlikely that only the top 10% of players have benefited from Heart of Thorns. As an example, Fractals were made far far easier than then used to be, and the top 10% is complaining about that.

I think it’s closer to the bottom 10 or 15% feel disenfranchised, because they are the bottom 10-15% and any reasaonble degree of difficulty makes them feel the game is no longer for them. That doesn’t mean more than half the player base isn’t good enough to play HoT or doesn’t enjoy it.

Have your own opinions by all means, but stop trying to quote percentages. And if you’re going to agree with quotes, and quote them, you should probably make sure they don’t have factual errors.

It only weakens your argument.

You just criticized him for posting unsubstantiated percentages and then immediately did the same thing yourself. And then you make a conclusion based on your made up numbers. How can we believe your arguments, if you won’t follow the same rules that you hold others too?

Vayne.8563:

There are probably 100 posts on this forum people by people don’t like the expansion. There’s probably 20 posts by people who do. I can list people who say they don’t like the expansion over and over in every thread.

Where are you getting this from? Just looking at this thread, I’m not seeing what you are saying here. Do you have any data to support this?

Here it comes. Now it’s “almost impossible.” :lol: What’s next? It’s not possible at all?

There’s a perfectly good chance to win. The strategies that work against necros have not changed. They are not going to balance the game around you alone.

I suggest you look carefully at the builds that necros used before the patch and what is actually available to them afterward. You’ll find that your concerns are unwarranted.

It seems that people just want easy victories against necromancers: “the sense that its difficult to defeat them with classes that relies on boons.”

Despite necros only getting a minor adjustment that actually doesn’t change their builds or gameplay significantly, they’ve now become the new bunker mesmers or dragon hunters. What people consider OP on these forums doesn’t make any sense.

LastLetter.7938:

The patch changed them in the sense that its difficult to defeat them with classes that relies on boons, such as ele/rev/maybe guard because of the large amount of boon corrupt they now have. Resistance now has no counterplay value at all anymore. Also, seeing the way that the meta is going, you cant rely on teammates to cure condis for you since tempest is all but taboo in pvp due to reapers themselves, so youll need to bring high cleanse on yourself. For this patch, id say if you want to beat a reaper you should probably going reaper yourself.

Because they got 1-2 new boon removal? Sorry to tell you, necros were carrying a lot of boon removal well before the patch. And then there were a lot of complaints about too many boons.

You fight necros the same way you always fight them. The patch did not change them that much.

Oslaf Beinir.5842:

I can finally let go of spite and not feel guilty

I thought so too, but Signets of Suffering + scepter or MH dagger give you all the boon corruption you need. I haven’t been able to justify changing it.

Agemnon.4608:

Usually the thief does a lot like decapping and roaming but somehow gets blamed for losing even though those very people would run and die 3v1 or 3v2 at mid.

I think this is a part of it. Thieves tend to go far and run around. Leaving their team -1. When their team wipes, they rage thinking that they were playing fine and the rest of the team sucks. Even if they win far, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should have gone there.

Decapping and roaming give bad players an inflated perception of their performance in a game.

aktharr.2389:

i’m sorry if i offend anybody here but i’m just gonna get down to the point. PVP is now majorly broken and nothing i do can fix it. alot of people (including myself) that have not bought the expansion now cant even play a match with getting majorly destroyed. rangers range on the staff is too long and now they can tank like guardians. guardians can now tank and kill from a distance. you have mesmers who can kill anybody in 2 seconds (as if they weren’t op enough).
now some people are gonna be saying “haha noob just buy the expansion”, BUT some of us like PVP and don’t want to pay $30 or more just to balance the gameplay. anet, i like how you do things, but you need to nerf whatever your giving these players HARD, because you have broken the entire PVP system

Mesmers can’t kill anyone in 2 seconds. Shatter is not that strong, and the popular bunker build is even weaker. While there might be point that HoT is needed to be competitive, I don’t think that is the problem you are having.

I had a team with 2 thieves and neither would switch. So I brought my thief. We won!

Ferocity will never turn a losing fight around. Yet, that is when I see most people going for it. It actually puts you even further behind in that situation.

Plus, it destroys rotations. I’ve done 100+ point comebacks on Temple from the enemy teams getting complacent and taking ferocity while my team caps the points and the other bonuses. It’s amazing how much ferocity can hurt a team. And yet, some people just can’t stay away from it.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

The best thing with GW2 and some MMO’s nowdays is that you can take a break and then play it again when you have gotten bored with the latest hype. I expect a drop in players in GW2 when B&S is released, but few weeks later the ammount of players in the game will reach it’s “status quo”.

Me on the other hand will hold GW2 dear and will still be playing it the most. By the way, did you know that I play more than one game?

I feel the same way. I might check it out, but I’ll likely still stay with GW2.

The problem is some people believe that they are helping the team doing it.

Some players will never understand how bad it is. Today, we actually had someone calling it when it was up and telling people to get it. He gave up tranquility for it.

Yup. Worse here too.

I hope that shatter mesmer makes a comeback. Personally, I enjoy that style of play more than bunker. But really, I just hope mesmers remain competitive.

Samnang.1879:

My only wish is that they make slight changes to those meta from time to time… like I don’t know. Have random events that give exclusive items or something.

Living Story season 1 was all about this. It was a really good time to play. But it’s understandable that they don’t want to spend so many resources on one-time content like that again.

Still we do have some seasonal events and the occasional random one.

The Trahearne ending, like the Scarlet ending, is what happens when you give into to fan service. You’ll make some people happy, but you’re ultimately sacrificing your art and integrity.

Vayne.8563:

It’s not the mechanics, it’s the writing as well. My my comments were people complained about the personal story. And they did. Endlessly,. They complained about the way cut scenes were done. They complained about the story being anticlimatic because you never really fought Zhaitan, and they complained that instance was too long. It took too much time.

You specifically cited the Arah mission and the only change Anet made to it was the game mechanics. The story did not change. This is the example you choose to make your point. Anet did not change the Arah story because of complaints.

As for people complaining. Someone will complain about everything eventually. However, we see many people complaining about the same things in the HoT story. I never saw the levels of complaints for the PS that you are claiming.

The point is we’ve seen complaints for years about the personal story and when HoT came out, many people said the delivery mechanism was a major improvement.

Some people did say it was a major improvement (this was literally all they said, “an improvement”). But a lot said that it wasn’t very good and cited many strong examples.

Now I don’t have the time to sit and edit and go through all the writing to critique every segment for you but the writing itself was fine. Complaints that we don’t learn everything people want to know only matter if you don’t know enough. In my opinion, in most cases we know enough.

In your opinion, yes. But for many other players, this is not enough. And the writing is not fine. Caithe, being central to LS2, is entirely sidelined the rest of the HoT. There is no closure to her story. Brahm…got a haircut. Rytlock was unbelievably enigmatic. Trahearne and Faolain were nothing more than plot devices. These are just some of the problems with the characters. The story didn’t make sense, going so quickly from a crushing defeat to a full assault against a dragon. Zhaitan actually looked more powerful that Mordremoth because it took a whole army to weaken him. Mordremoth was beaten by a ragtag bunch of adventures who fell in kitten and the remnants of the Pact he supposedly devastated.

Then there’s the meandering plot. For such a short story, you’d think it would have some direction and focus. Frog village was pointless. Rata Novus felt like a LS one-shot, not a part of a consistent narrative and did not contribute to the story in any significant way. There were far more efficient ways to handle that tiny bit of information. The egg, Anet was just checking the box, because us chasing it in LS2 was…pointless for HoT. The point is that there is very little good writing in the HoT story. If you strip out all of the side stuff that adds nothing the main story of HoT (the fight against mordremoth), you’re basically left with the first two and last two missions.

And don’t get me started on the bread crumbs mission. If there’s any great example of filler, it’s that.

As much as you claim people hated the original PS, there is some decent writing there. And from Fort Trinity to Arah (pretty much the same length as HoT), the story has direction and focus.

A lot of the complaints were about not continuing the Malyck story or not knowing Caithe’s specific motivations. We know it was her wild hunt. That is a motivation We also know wild hunts don’t give you all the info, so we can assume that she knew she had to get the egg somewhere safely, without knowing every particular.

No, complaints about Malyck and Caithe are just one of many. And Caithe didn’t even get the egg to safety. The PC did the trials. The PC did it.

The writing of the story is greatly affected by the needs of the game. The game designers wrote 16 chapters of things to do.

You can’t stuff more into those things than the game itself requires. You can do that in a novel but you can’t do that in a game.

Of course not. Anet sacrificed a lot of story for gameplay. No one here is disagreeing with that. That’s why the story is no good. Could there be a good story and good gameplay? Of course, they did it for the PS, but that didn’t happen here.

Vayne.8563:

I wasn’t talking about the personal story being made solo. I was talking about people complaining about the personal story, of which Arah story mode was a part. It’s like we’re not even talking the same language. At no time did I refer to the Arah Story being made soloable.

There are complaints about the length of the mission, there were complaints about the Zhaitan fight.

Whatever you’re trying to say that I said has nothing to do with what I’m saying.

This is where I’m getting confused. What does the mechanics of the Zhaitan fight have to do with the writing of the personal story?

Vayne.8563:

What are you talking about. Arah story mode was the final step of the personal story before the epilogue. I have no idea what you’re on about.[/quote]

We have been discussing the GW2 personal story. I thought you were talking about the change to make Arah story mode solo’able. That was done because few people were running the dungeon story modes at that time and Anet wanted to make it easier for people to view the final mission in the story. It did not change the story at all.

Or are you making the claim that the Arah story mode was not present with release? If so, that’s another incorrect statement.

vesica tempestas.1563:

lol lets play a game, lets see how long the thread can go before some misery gut pops in with a negative or passive aggressive comment

I’d say by the third post in this thread.

What I really like about GW2 is how fluid the game play is. Moving, jumping, and skills all run smoothly, which really creates a pleasurable experience throughout the game.

morrolan.9608:

Mortifer.2946:

Xillllix.3485:

Aidenwolf.5964:

At the moment I wouldn’t consider it at all, and I will never pre purchase from them again. The fact they even mention another xpac at this point makes me ill.

Yeah I know, my first thought was “well aren’t you gonna finish hoT first?” I mean they haven’t even released 25% of the new legendaries, WvW is a mess, only 1 Stronghold map released… Not even gonna mention raids…

Creating expansion takes years. They started working on HoT right after the main game release.

No they didn’t. They clearly thought they were going to be able to survive on living story style updates. That revenue obviously died so they had to do an xpac which they probably began working on around 18 months ago.

I recall them stating several times before LS2 that they weren’t planning an expansion. I believe the expansion decision occurred around the end of LS1. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t working on content that became part of the expansion. It also doesn’t mean that the revenue dried up. They may have just figured that it was more profitable to make an expansion and choose that route.

Vayne.8563:

When you make a claim you need to back it up. I’m not making claims I’m countering them. There are FAR more complaints about the personal story than there are about the HoT story. If you don’t believe it, goggle guild wars 2 personal story or PS and look.

No, no, no, no. That’s not how it works. Countering claims doesn’t mean you don’t have to support your own statements. You are saying that there are far more complaints for the Tyria PS. I don’t believe you because I’ve been here since beta and haven’t seen the number of complaints about the personal story that you claim. If you can back it up, please do so. Otherwise, don’t make such claims because you are not giving out accurate information.

They hated Trahearen.

Yes, a lot did. And I agree that they had a valid point. But that’s just one thing.

They added Arah story mode. Look it up.

They added Arah story mode to improve gameplay experience. It didn’t change the story at all. That’s twice you’ve trying to use that to support your claims.

GW1 used to have capture points in random and team arenas. Arenanet eventually removed them because they were so unpopular.

Vayne.8563:

You need examples about people complaining about the original story? You’ve never seen any complaints about it? I’m sure you can find your own complaints.

To be fair, you are the one making the claims about other people’s complaints about the original story. The burden is on you to provide them. While I do remember there were some (very few) complaints, I don’t recall them being the same as you do, and I don’t believe that there were as many as there are for HoT.

The original story seemed to go on forever. Anet even tried to shorten it but people who liked the story insisted it get restored. They tried to shorten it because people don’t play the original PS. For a lot of people is it too long. It seems to go on forever and a lot of it is just filler missions. The original PS is some of the least compelling content in the game in my opinion.

This is wrong and is why you need to support your statements. Anet changed the story because they changed how you level and get rewards from the story. It was not significantly shorter at any time. At that time, I recall the only complaints were that the story was out of order and missing sections that caused it to not make sense. People want logical consistency to their stories. People want their stories to make sense. If they are not logically consistent, then it needs to be explained. This is basic writing.

Complaints were varied, not just in the length of the final mission but its anticlimactic nature. Or the fact that once you hit level 60, no matter how many alts you have you’re basically doing the same stuff over and over again.

Actually, the only complaints I remember were that the final mission was anti-climatic, which is more of a complaint about how that mission was designed and not the story. In fact, the story from Fort Trinity up to the final mission was not bad. You got to see how the dragon was being weakened. You got to see how the Pact pushed forward into Orr. You can nitpick here and there on it, but the fundamental story was strong.
HoT’s story was objectively nonsense. You go from seeing the pact struggle to recover from Mordremoth’s assault to being able to mount an attack on the dragon itself within a few days (or less). Characters behave inconsistently and unbelievably. It’s not well explained and doesn’t make sense. This is bad storytelling no matter how you look at it. Yes, the only thing the HoT story has going for it is that it is short, if you want that.

There have been many complaints about the short story but the biggest thing you’ll notice is how many people don’t do it at all. That should tell you something. It really is a long drawn out process unless you love story.

You seem to be confusing complaints about the story being too short with what a short story is. People aren’t complaining that HoT is a short story (it is not), they are complaining that the story is too short. This is a very different argument. Also, about what you are saying about these “many people.” If you are talking about professional writers, of which some of us are, you are wrong. No one would write a short story like HoT and expect it to get published. It is not focused and contains a lot of extraneous material that distracts from the primary plot/theme (which is non-existent also, tbh). HoT is better described as a chapter in a much longer story. But again, the type of story it is not the problem with it. Nor is it what people are complaining about.

As for your comments about fiction, unfortunately that was my profession. You really don’t want to explain everything in most short stories these days, for a reason. They would no longer be short stories. You can’t explorer every avenue in a shorter work and HOT IS a shorter work.

Sigh. A good short story doesn’t leave so many loose ends to begin with. It doesn’t spend significant time in frog villages, egg trials, and empty cities, when its primary story is about a war with a dragon. HoT is not a short story!

The HoT story accomplished what it was supposed to accomplish. We absolutely 100% do not have to know everything about Caithe’s reasons, because she’s not there as a main character, she’s there to drive events forward. We may see in the future more of her motivation, but I think obvious that just like Trahearne knew he had to heal Orr, she knew she had to get the egg to the jungle. No one asks why or how Trahearne knows that, we just know it’s his wild hunt. We know it. We don’t have to question it.

Semantically, we don’t need to know much of anything. We don’t need to know why Mordremoth is attacking or captured our allies. We certainly didn’t need to know that Rata Novus knew that dragons had a weakness. However, while we don’t need to know, some things make for a weaker story when we don’t know. Good writers recognize what should be explained further and what shouldn’t. HoT is not good writing. LS2 was HoT’s prelude and it focused heavily on Caithe. HoT pretty much gave us the conclusion to that story arc. But it didn’t. It feels like a major part of the story of LS2 and HoT is left untold. These weren’t setup like mysteries to be solved (a crutch Anet leans far to heavy on), but like they were simply forgotten.

You’re questioning it because you want to find flaw.

Um, you can’t tell us what someone else’s motivations are. You can tell us what your motivations are, but I think we can all see them clearly.

The Heart of Thorns story was made to be shorter, because the first story was too long for a lot of people. Personal source is people I’ve talked to, which is annecdotal. A more important source would be how many people never do it on a second character, which Anet would know and I don’t.

What you are saying is that you have no evidence to back up your claims. You constantly request others to back up their claims and have even said that is why you post so frequently in complaint threads. If you really want people to make claims with verifiable evidence, I recommend setting the example yourself.

I’m sorry, but the HoT story is not good at all. There may be parts of it that are good, but overall it is a disappointing experience. Recommending HoT for the story would be a disservice to potential players.

What’s the point? Jumping puzzles are trivialized in guild halls because of gliding.

Who cares about jumping puzzles? The rewards are insignificant. Killing any monsters along the way gives better rewards. Only a few jumping puzzles are actually difficult and those won’t be affected that much by gliding.

WvW needed gliding. Not in any of the current maps. Don’t know what they were thinking with that. But they should have designed the new WvW maps with gliding in mind.

Obtena.7952:

Read between the lines, I think it means they can’t afford to give us what we think of as LS anymore; we will probably see expansions bigger than a whole LS, smaller than a whole HoT. I think their expansions might also (IMO should also) target very specific aspects of the game; PVE, PVP, WvW.

Yup, the LS that the white knights were saying made the ridiculous price of HoT worth it is not going to happen.

Valkyriez.6578:

DaShi.1368:

My criticism of the game is sound. Your criticism of me is uncalled for. Again, I don’t care if you like it. Your feelings about the game doesn’t make it better for anyone else and no one asked for them.

I’m not criticizing you at all. I’m criticizing your post. Why not suggest some changes you would like to see so that it becomes constructive.

You said I hate the game. Unless my post said that directly, you are criticizing me.

And I’m free to point out what I think is wrong with the game. If you can’t handle that it doesn’t have solutions (which isn’t my job), then that’s you problem. Maybe you should stick to playing the game you like so much rather than attacking people you don’t agree with.

My criticism of the game is sound. Your criticism of me is uncalled for. Again, I don’t care if you like it. Your feelings about the game doesn’t make it better for anyone else and no one asked for them.

I nearly did a spit-take in laughter when I saw they were planning another expansion.

It’s not about hating it. Not sure where you got that from, and you should be careful what you say about people. It’s about bad design. Frankly, I don’t care if you like it. I didn’t ask.

Anet has forgotten the basic rules of game design. Don’t punish players for the designer’s mistakes. Leagues as implemented in season 1 has done that. And season 2 will be no different.

Ha ha ha! Anet remains as tone deaf as ever. Leagues as implemented are not fun. No one wants to wait a long time for a terrible match and have their progress set back for it too. They know that it is not their fault. It is yours. Your matchmaking will never be perfect (and will likely never even be near good). And punishing players for your mistakes is just bad game design.

Give up on leagues like this or your players will give up on you.

cupcakesandcatnomz.3924:

Fractals are still broken like many other things, don’t expect it to be fixed anytime soon.

Really? I stopped playing after HoT because it was so bad. I thought they had fixed it and was planning to start playing it again regularly.

Actually, I stand corrected on your first point.

On your second, I said that I believe that you are. Dissembling my words isn’t going to change my opinion. Supporting your statements with facts and evidence and not anecdotes that can’t be verified will. I’d also believe that if you didn’t care what I believe, you wouldn’t post about it so much.

It’s not just you.

Anet is on vacation and investigations take time. There will likely be bans for actual (and some mistaken) bots, but it’s not going to happen for a bit.

Vayne.8563:

But yeah I’m happy to be a guy who stands up to people who I feel are using hyperbole, which doesn’t help anyone, or making false claims, or even stating their opinion as if it’s some kind of fact.

Being a white knight, on the whole, isn’t really such a bad thing.

I’m sorry, but this has to be said. You use a lot hyperbole too. Plus, most of your arguments are based on unverifiable anecdotes. You don’t stand up to hyperbole or false claims, you bully people who have different experiences with the game than you do. The way you talk to people doesn’t help them with their problems, it actually makes it worse. Just leave them alone, unless you have some constructive help. No one wants to be bullied when they are frustrated with the game, no matter how unreasonable you think their frustration is.

PsychoHD.1695:

I mean, thanks for telling me what I already knew I guess lol

It’s a big problem here. At least they are being polite about completely dismissing your issue and telling you to be quiet.

Sarika.3756:

Support just told me they were unaware of this and to have the affected guildies submit support tickets with screen shots of the message. Let’s make this a thing…

Thank you for doing something about it!

Don’t listen to those telling us to be quiet when we see something wrong.

No, MMR + leagues is a gift to pro-teams. It’s designed specifically so that they can farm other players. Esports!

lol. Anet doesn’t even know how its own game works. How can they test it?

How do you lower your MMR? I’ve been losing a lot of matches but still have the highest mmr in my teams and 5 to 10 minute wait times.

The balance patch won’t fix Anet. They have no interest in making this game actually fun. Not really sure what they want from the game. It’s not eSports and it’s certainly not fun.

Focus fire on the bunker. That’s what everyone else is doing. Just find the tankiest opponent and don’t stop attacking them. No matter what.

Your experience may not be the same as others. Given what is posted here, you appear to be an outlier.

Nothing is worth this amount of frustration.