Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

Flissy.4093:

Just an FYI, the money you spend in buying gems doesn’t necessarily go to GW2. NCSoft will be using at least some of it to fund other games they publish.

If you don’t like content, don’t buy gems. They need to produce better content rather than “run around spam F and zerg” and “Scarlet” before they deserve the support.

And how do you suggest they develop “better content” without money?

The same way also all non-MMO games do. You invest, release, get more money then you invested, use part of your profit for the expansion (non-mmo’s that would be the next title) and make money on that expansion. Take part of that profit again to develop the next expansion and so on.

By buying gems you mainly support the bad stuff.
Have a read here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-focus-on-micro-transactions/first#post3324571

Support by buying expansions (when they release them) not gems. Buying gems results in the opposite of a better game imho.

They should not have made a list of achievements and just gave the whole server a reward based on the server rank.

The achievements meant people where doing stuff to get the achievements, not because it was the best they should do.

But it looks like achievements are the solution for everything in gw2.

lordkrall.7241:

Devata.6589:

Maybe but not likely.

The fact that GW1 is so difference does not really mean the model would not work. Look at the many non-mmo games that also do require longtime server support. They work also with such a model. If GW2 would be really one big open world (What it isn’t, but I still hope it will become) it would for sure give some extra challenges but nothing that isn’t solvable.

Still it does not take away that the current model does effect the game and sadly not only in a good way.

Why is it not likely though?
The difference between GW1 and GW2 when it comes to costs are MASSIVE, and it would most likely never work with the same model as GW1.

In what way to the current model effect the game?
I have yet to see a single situation in the game where I have somehow felt pushed towards the gemstore or anything like that.

You act like if GW1 was some cheap side project by some guy in a basement. That also was a big project for it’s time. The battlefield games or GTA (most expensive gamer ever and really a massive RPG game) have massive cost. And they also have to run servers for multiple years, keeping the game bug-free so they know people will also buy the next expansion or in those cases the next version of the game. (proving that such expansion-based payment model also work for big projects)

The idea that that is so different for a MMO or GW2 specifically is not true. They both need to maintain servers and fix bugs.

In the OP I give multiple examples of how the current model effects the game. So I won’t repeat that.
I did not say anything about being pushed towards the gem-store (thats most likely totally depended on what elements of the game you are most interested in) I talked about how it effects the game itself.

I wanted to make a suggestion to remove name-tags in GW2 months ago but the problem then is seeing easily who is the enemy and it was just when they implemented it so that you can always see the enemy or at least his name tag. Removing the name-tag would undo that again.

However it might be better to then make it at maximum the with of your (visible) body and it would also help if it’s easier to see your own tag-name.

If there would be a good alternative way to totally remove the name (maybe just showing a dot) would be even better.

The problem now is that people try to hide behind a building or tree what should be a totally good tactic but the problem is that there name is sticking out so everybody can see them. Hiding in the grass won’t work for the same reason and biggest problem from it is that you can;t really see your own tag the enemy sees. So you know know if it’s sticking out the side of a building.

Nebilim.5127:

ITT:Thieves are the only class with stealth

PU mesmers can keep stealth 60% uptime, their phantasm doesn’t disrupt stealth, they kitten out conds out of the kitten and perma protec/regen while in stealth, tons of blinks and teleports.

So where is the counter?Kill the clones? Oh he makes more just by dodging…

Oow yeah I forgot about the mesmers. Just leveling one so don’t know the details (differences with thief’s) about invisibility yet.

Maybe somebody who is experienced with a mesmer and with a thief can explain the difference in stealth abilities.

I was mostly referring to the few skills some other profession might have to give invisibility or usable items like the fountain in the WvW JP and so on.

I also find it funny that do many thiefs always say that not being able to kill a thief has to do with the skills of those players lacking.

However I see thiefs come into zergs to get a hit on somebody, then I see multiple people trying to attack that thief but I see the thief in many occasions getting way. So that means all those people trying to kill the thief are lacking skills while all those thief’s are very skilled.

It’s not like I don’t see thief’s die but everybody knows these encounters happen a lot and thief’s can keep people busy very long. If it’s simply so that you only cant (just as easily as another profession) kill a thief because of lack of skills then thief’s should die much more in those fights because in a 1 vs 5 fight is simply more likely that one of those 5 people is more skilled then the thief.

Or should I make up of those comments thats skilled players will always go for a thief? Then it would make sense.

Facepunch.5710:

LordByron.8369:

Dealing with stealth is an oxymoron.

All you can do is “guess”……by definition

I disagree. Being good at pvp means making predictions about what your opponent is about to do and being ready to counter. If you are a skilled player, you’ll take note of the weapons your thief opponent is using and when they pop stealth, you should be able to predict whether they’re going in for a backstab or just trying to clear a condi/heal up/escape. Reacting appropriately is not guessing for everyone, maybe it is for you, though.

So what if it’s an escape to then come back (seconds) later for another back-stab. Pretty much the standard tactic of a thief. How do you as a skilled player know where is escapes to? And then how are you gonna kill him and so preventing him coming back for another back-stab? Or how do you know at what exact moment he will be coming back? Using a attack to soon (what the thief might be waiting on) means it gets in cool-down so thats when the thief will attack most likely ‘escaping’ again before it’s out of cool-down.

Sirendor.1394:

As someone who has played 6 classes on level 80 in WvW and all 8 in SPvP, thieves are extremely easy to counter. They rely on a high initial burst, deny that burst, and they have 2 choices:
- run away
- stealth and retry

A lot of classes can deny burst:
- Ele: invulnerability through mist form and potentially an arcane shield. Besides that auras (protection), some CC, dodges
- Mesmer: has stealth itself, can easily disrupt the thief and can use clones to confuse and kill it (cause it has low hp)
- Warrior: you all know he’s invincible :P
- Engineer has a ton of blocks: shield #5 & tool kit #4, not even mentioning the Elixir.
- Ranger: one of the classes I’m not adept in: should be able to keep a thief off with pet’s “Sick ’em” and a few other defensive mechanics on weapons/traps.
- Guardian can keep off most thieves due to their armour rate anyways. (a few days ago 3 thieves bursted me the same time, used a blind, healed when they could hit and finally popped a ward. Watch them bump into it cause thieves don’t have stability… xD).
- Last class is necro: huge health pool, huge damage evasion, sustained condi dmg.

I’d think everyone who dies from a thief has a l2p issue.

How can you deny that if you can’t see the thief and so don’t know they are going to attack you?

There is a reason why in most games and even in GW2 (if you are not a thief) you always lose invisibility when in combat or when you get hit or when you want to attack.

Don’t forget being invisible means you can get away in a full circle (360 degrees) and every second that circle becomes bigger. Then also being able to move very fast only increases that.

One semi-usefull skills as a longbow ranger against a thief is ‘Rapid fire’ because it keeps shooting when a thief go’s into combat and so you can also see where he is going. Many thiefs complain about that but they forget that if they go invisible just before you hit the skill (what happens a lot) you lose that skill for the whole time it fires and you get it’s cool-down. The only other sort of useful skill then is Barrage but also that it only useful when you know where he is and it takes him about 1 sec to get out of the AOE even if he is in it. And that is if you don’t get downed (depending on your build) right away. But there is the problem. If you have a glass cannon build you have a bigger change at killing him (if you know where he is, so luck is part of it) but you also have a bigger change of getting downed to easy.

Also none of the attacks that require a target work on thief’s when they are invisible so in a fact they are invulnerably (invincible) for those attacks. I once made a thread about that but only got some negative reactions about it.

Not to mention that most classes can’t do anything against a thief when they are downed. The thief go’s invisible so is invulnerably / invincible for attacks that require a target and multiple professions only have downed attacks that require a target.

So stealth is not invincible but it is invincible against multiple skills. The skills that require a target, plus gives the huge advantage to get somewhere very fast without the other person having any idea where you are and going (so not being able to really counter it). Guessing where he is is pure luck with a area where the thief can go that increases every second.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Maybe, the model that ‘worked so good’ for GW1, was working because GW1 was a much smaller game, and a different kind of game. Maybe, having used that model before, ArenaNet has information (that we do not) indicating that model would not work so well with GW2. Maybe, as a compromise, they included the ‘gold-to-gem’ transaction method as a way to ‘marry’ the two. Maybe, they have a long-term plan we know nothing about. Maybe, as experienced game developers, they know more about the whole subject than we do.

Maybe, ….just maybe.

Maybe but not likely.

The fact that GW1 is so difference does not really mean the model would not work. Look at the many non-mmo games that also do require longtime server support. They work also with such a model. If GW2 would be really one big open world (What it isn’t, but I still hope it will become) it would for sure give some extra challenges but nothing that isn’t solvable.

Still it does not take away that the current model does effect the game and sadly not only in a good way.

TheDaiBish.9735:

~

I want to keep it short because it’s to much focused on the examples. Remember the topic is about being different for the sake of it. Not ‘there should be raids’ or something.

However you take the time to comment so I also want to give you an answer.

Difference with open world raid is that those 10% can mess thinks up for the rest if they do not fulfill there role properly.

If perfect teamwork isn’t needed or strict roles are not needed thats indeed not true but thats then maybe also the difference of what you can put in an instance and what you can put in the open world. In an instance you can put extremely hard stuff that does require perfect teamwork and roles.

So it’s in fact different content and because of that the one can not simply replace the other in every perspective.

Having those open world raids is indeed great but because it can’t replace the instanced one in all perspectives you might want to put in both. Even if you then have an ‘older’ mechanic in your game.

Splitting the player-base is also done with overflows. So I don’t see that as a very good argument.

They did change the instance raids to open world raids. They did not take the raid idea out. Same for crafting and with dungeons they might simply had no idea how to make that really different.

The positives I did mention before. Just a small list of pro’s here.
Quest lines that send you all over the world.
You get to know the many NPC’s in the world and there story.
You get more of a bound with an area because you learn the NPC’s.
There can be specific unique rewards for specific quest / quest lines.
You really complete it (for you character) in stead of having something (events) that keeps repeating. So it creates more of a feeling of accomplishment.

Well maybe it’s because of the encounters. I don’t think thats the reason or maybe it’s partly the reason. Maybe the support / control and DPS are not enough of a difference to always be felt. So that you really need the encounters to be based on it.

swilkers.5938:

For a year I have been trying to find a good reason that these are even still in existence. I have yet to find any reason at all that our drops are in bags. Small, tiny, hard to see and easy to miss bags. Why not true auto loot?

In WvW thats mainly because you can kill an enemy while being inside of a castle, keep or tower. In that way you can then still get your items without being forced to jump into an enemy zerg to get it.

And of cource you can kill people that are inside a castle or keep or tower. If you however never get in that you would also not be able to get the loot. Now you do.

nightwulf.1986:

~

Moreover, these design choices such as putting a barber in the game for hairstyles, I can assure you, serve multiple purposes (technical, creative, and financial) as do similar choices to do the opposite in cash shop games. For any game company, it’s highly unlikely your only motivation for a design choice such as implementing an in game barber is ONLY to make a game better. Your responsibilities are more likely to be to make the game better (a nebulous but multifacted goal) AND encourage player retention, improve sales, etc. When thinking about game design, you have to think in 3-dimensions. For a sub game, the end goal is to encourage you to continue paying a subscription if the company believes that they can survive off of that. That means stretching out your end game goals, creating maps that you travel over long distances in real time (mount optional), creating gear treadmills, time gating content (also exists in sub models but more pointedly), etc. Again, the aforementioned are not par the course for sub models but are design examples that have been implemented in other games to give players a reason to keep logging on. Still, what I hear people remembering the most in contrast to cash shop models is that they are only asked to pay the monthly fee and then go about their remaining time in the game without the company asking for more until the next deadline. The cash shop model is quite in your face about asking for purchases while the sub model, typically, is more subtle in what it asks of you as a consumer but always has that clock running down on your access and everything else that comes with it.

I hope no one sees this as admonishing either model really. As others have said, business have to make money somehow. This is just a call to try to keep perspective when positioning one transaction model as inherently better than the other. For some people, a cash shop model let’s them play the way they want (pit falls and all) and for sub models, the same holds true. GW2 has actually made some improvements over typical mmo cash shop models that I appreciate and is certainly not over the top in my opinion. They are making more and more quality of life changes for players but in a game as experimental as GW2, they are also toying with the business model surrounding it. I’m all for suggestions on improving their business model, maybe soften the blow of the cash shop perhaps, but I get antsy when people try to graft suggestions you would give a typical mmo onto GW2.

Let me start by saying that my topic does not in any way try to promote a sub-based model. I even put in the original post that they have proven not to work anymore. If anything I am promoting a model where there is a focus on generating income from expansions but even that is not the main goal, thats more a alternative solution.

What I am pointing at are simply some to me very obvious design decisions that I (and many other players) do not like and are very obviously based on the fact that they use the micro-transactions as main source of income.

I notice that you talk about how a sub-model also makes decisions about how to keep people playing but thats the case for all of the models.

I am just pointing out the specific examples and yes while there can be multiple reasons for not putting in a barber and we are not at the table where ArenaNet makes those decisions you can still reasonably come to the conclusion that it’s mainly because this way they can make money with it.

They need to make money and if you get your money from a cash-shop but put a barber in the game where you can cut your hair for 15 silver there is no way you will get any money on those hair-styles and they need to make money.

With a sub-model you would indeed get the money and the goal for putting them is would then indeed mainly be keep people playing the game. Do you put that sort of stuff is regular (once a year / year and a half) expansions they also make you that money.
I don’t think a sub-based model works (so would go for the expansion model) but in both these examples the hair-styles are really inside the game and so improve the game while in the micro-transaction model they are in a cash-shop and so are much less improving the game itself.

Same for the mini’s and many other decisions.

So a model does effect the game in some way. I am just pointing out here that I think a big part of the ‘problems’ or dislikes people have about GW2 are directly or indirectly related to design decision based around this micro-transaction model.

Because of that it might be an idea to rethink that and maybe have a look at the model that worked so good for GW1.

TheDaiBish.9735:

Devata.6589:

True but a company can still build a very innovative new car while not giving up the four wheels and the engine in the front. If you have a good reason to put the engine in the back then that’s fine, if you simply want to put it somewhere else because most cars have it in the front that’s not good. While yes you can say “we are very different, we have the engine on the roof!”.

I meant to address this one first, but run out of words.

You have the pre-conception that they did this simply to be different, thus anything they try to do differently, in your eyes, will be done for this sole reason, despite there potentially being other reasons for it.

For example, getting rid of the Trinity.

They got rid of dedicated healers, according to them, to help take the fun aspects of a support character while ditching the unfun bits. Obviously, this is subjective, but since this was done during the design stage, they probably looked at what they found to be fun and unfun.

We examined what it was about the healer archetypes that people really enjoyed, and we took a look at what it was about those archetypes that made the game less enjoyable. Then we created professions to appeal to those types of players.

Support players want to be able to say, “Remember that one time when I saved you from certain death?” They want to stand in the line of fire and block attacks. They want to surround their allies with a swirling dome of air that keeps enemy projectiles from passing through it. It’s not about clicking on a health bar and watching it go up, it’s about being there for your friends when they need you.

Source

I also heard something about not requiring a dedicated healer was something people in GW1 brought up. However, whether this is true or not, I don’t know.

All in all, I don’t think that every design choice is made simply to be different. There’s underlying reasons as to why them choices are made as well, and why they may not be as polished as some of the mechanics in other games, them mechanics have been polished over time. Given time, polish and the most important, love, who knows? The current combat system might be just as well received as the Trinity.

For some thinks there surely have multiple reasons but for many I really have the idea they simply want to do it different. And because of that will they sometimes don’t see (or want to see) that there solution is not better or is at least not able to fully replace what it’s suppose to replace.

If you watch interviews they also always mention how if they introduce something it needs to be not like other MMO’s but in a ‘GW2 way’. Sadly that statement brings more fear to many then joy. Fear of it not giving everything it should give or it does give in other MMO’s.

That fear simply comes from thinks people have seen already in the game. As an example I remember the interview with Collin that was streamed where they were talking about raids (thats why it’s one of my examples) and that he said they were working on them but it had to be in a GW2 way. The reactions on that statement where less of joy and more of fear for getting a lesser system.

Coldtart.4785:

The thing about mmo’s is that they have very long lifespans. If you aren’t trying to make your game different from the established games then you’re just trying to get people to pay again for the same game they already have. To use your car analogy it’s as though we have 2 cars with the same wheels, the same engine, the same number of doors and seats, the same cargo space and the same fuel tank. If one of those cars comes out a year before the other the second car will not have any success. It would be technically just as good as the first car but everyone that wants a car with those specifications has already bought the first one. Car 2 could even have slight improvements in performance over car 1 but it wouldn’t make a difference, there’s no point trying to steal an existing customer base from a competitor. If instead car 2 has a different engine, fuel tank, cargo space, etc to car 1 it would be able to claim it’s own segment of the market instead by targeting different people to those that already have car 1.

To be more specific to GW2 it’s clear that what Anet is targeting are those people that like the base mmorpg playstyle, but don’t like the specifics of existing games in the genre. As one of those people I can tell you my opinion of raids is that you may as well be playing DDR on your keyboard, that the only difference in holy trinity roles is what bar you’re looking at while playing DDR and that standard quests could be replaced with greater exp gains from kills and I wouldn’t notice the difference. These opinions are obviously not the only reasons anyone that plays GW2 over other mmos would state but I can also say that it’s almost certain that if I didn’t hold those opinions I would be playing a different game.

TL;DR if it wasn’t different to the games we already have we would just keep playing those.

No because I don’t say they should not do thinks different or innovate, they simply should not do thinks different for the sake of doing it different because then you also do it different when you do not have a good solution to replace whatever you remove.

Yes include events. Thats great but if they can´t fully replace traditional quest don´t remove traditional quest so you can see “see we are different”.

TheDaiBish.9735:

~

“However, the majority of the player-base doesn’t want that type of content in the open world.”
Isen’t that always the problem. And even if it isn’t the majority, even if it is 10%. If you make hard content that required teamwork of 100% of the people and 10% does not to what they should you fail.

Put it in a raid and only the player-base that is interested will go in (as part of a guild) and so needs to work together.

Open world raids are nice but they don’t work if you want hard content that requires perfect teamwork. Maybe thats because of the player-base but that does not make it less true.

“By that logic, ANet wouldn’t have included dungeons / crafting / levels ect either, since they’re also in other MMO’s.”
Maybe they where not able to come up with a other system for dungeons?
They did try to create a whole new crafting system and they planned on not having levels but eventually where forced to do so because it totally did not work.

That gives a little hope that they are sometimes willing to change a decision.

“In a sense, we do have traditional quests:
Personal Story
Hearts
“
They can’t really be compared to the traditional quest (where also not designed to do so) and have also none of the positives of the traditional quest with the exception that the PS indeed sends you all over the world. But thats really it.

“Except they didn’t. They removed the Holy Trinity and added: “
Well to me it looks a lot like they did. Yeah they did talk about the ‘new’ trinity but I don’t see it and I don’t think just changing the dungeons will change that.

“Between these two examples, what do you think is a better example of teamwork?
All fighting, teammate A goes down, teammate B switches weapon and uses a KB and Immobilise, while Team C and D rally teammate A.
OR
All fighting, Healer / Tank goes down, fight automatically fails.`
I do indeed think that giving everybody the ability to ress was a good idea. It´s not that I dislike everything that is new.

Facepunch.5710:

Devata.6589:

See the new fractal and the reactions on it.

Doesn’t this make my point for me? The negative reactions to the story surrounding the new fractal have been focused on the fact that ANet once again fell back to ‘Scarlet did it.’

Partly. For the people that focus on the story yes but for the people that don’t care about the story so much no. They also don’t like much of the living story content and then it’s not related to the story itself but to the content. Just changing the story would not help for them.

Alukah.2063:

If they relied only on box sales and expansions to maintain this game, this would have shut down long time ago, expansions simply do not generate the same money as a purely cosmetic gem store, and each of them have a different impact in the game.

What’s so wrong about developing something different? If you want to play a typical MMO you have plenty of games out there you can try, people are not supposed to enjoy every game style.

gem-store focus is another thread but GW1 did generate the money that way and many games generate the money like that. Battlefield also needs to have servers running for many many players. They generate there money mainly with the game sale. The idea that it would not be possible is simply not true.

“What’s so wrong about developing something different?” Nothing as long as you don’t do thinks different just because it is different because that does not always make it better. I can make a car with no wheels. Thats different but it’s not better (if it’s not a flying car)

Trying to do things different is not the problem but it becomes the problem when you don’t just try to innovate anymore but you are simply wanting to change tings for the sake of being different and I think thats what we see with many thinks in GW2.

caiomacos.1694:

About the trinity, I will just quote another previous post of mine:

First of all, the removal of the dps-tank-healer trinity didnt leave the game with no roles. The devs themselves have always talked about how they focus the game on a new trinity damage-control-support. The only reason why this is just not noticeable (outside of sPvP and, at certain situations, WvW) is because general PvE content in this game is just too easy and dont explore different combat mechanics. “Hard” enemies on GW2 are basically one-hit kill mobs with unlimited HP pool. Thats why most people just go full zerk dps everything, since the only way to survive to those would be to block or dodge the hits anyway.

And the reason they decided to remove the tank-dps-healer trinity was not to do something different just for the sake of being different, but to avoid limitations to playstyle based on the character profession. For example, if we look at GW1, despite their attempt to give each profession at least 2 different possible roles, in the end each one of them was limited to very specific roles and playstyles on PvE end-content. If you were a warrior, you would have to be the tank. Assassin? Perma, right? No? Sorry, bro, no room for you on the party. Basically, each profession ended up having very limited gameplay options despite having all those hundreds of skills available to choose from. If you didnt ping the right build for your profession, you wouldnt even get in a party to do FoW, UW, DoA, or whatever.

Maybe they did try to make new roles but in reality you don’t feel much of it and to me also this seems like they just wanted to do it different.

2/2

Of course they don’t say ‘we did it different because that itself was the goal’. However the first alina starts with pointing out that all those other mmo’s have those ‘flawed’ traditional quest. Showing how GW2 is different. While the events have there own flaws so why not put in both? Because they can then not anymore say they don;t have those old ‘flawed’ quest?

Also the way they describe it you can’t really take serious. “From here, you get a massive wall of text hardly anyone reads.“ only sometimes true.. so then make the text shorter?

“ that describes a horrible or totally mundane thing going on in the world that you need to help with.“. Horrible? Really? All quest? And all mudane? I have seen some very nice quest. Yes these sort of quest exist but but then don’t make those, only make the good ones?

Now if you decide to make you game just different, not implementing quest then you can talk about how bad quest are in those other games. And turning back is also kinda hard after making such a statement. There is you reason to be different for the sake of it and the reason for the stubbornness.

“Traditional quest systems rely on these blocks of quest text to tell you what is happening in the world; this is just an outdated form of storytelling. “ well some thinks you can’t put in an event. An event is something that is happening. A quest can also be “please search my son, he did not come back after going to fish”. Thats something a events can’t really do so those text quest give the option for much more variety.

It’s not for nothing that his example is based on a event where you are being attacked. Something that is the case of maybe 75%? of the events while wit traditional quest it’s maybe 1%. Simply because there are more options.

“A single player decision can cascade across a zone, changing the direction of a chain of events until they dramatically alter the content played by players in a map. “ nice on paper but you never really notice that in the game.

“Where previous systems reset and start again and really don’t change the world, dynamic events chain and cascade across a zone and leave persistent effects in the game world after the event has ended.“ for a few minutes and then it starts all over again making you feel like you did it for nothing. With traditional quest you at least complete it. However here he seems to be pointing towards rifts in Rift and yeah compared to that these events are an improvement.

“In traditional MMOs, when a quest is completed it has no real effect on the game world.“ true but it has a effect on your character. He completed that quest, you know a little more about the place and the NPC and the NPC will now also know you and react different on you.

“You receive your reward and then move on“ And that reward can be a very specific and unique reward based on that quest.

“ The world appears no better or worse for your actions. In GW2, the outcome of every event will directly affect the game world around you. “ it will a little bid for a while. This indeed a positive about events.

I can go on for a while but what it comes down to is that it’s not so black and white. Traditional quest have there advantages and events have.

Then put them in both.

But now they really just want to be able to tell how different (and better) they are then other games. So it has to be different for the sake of it being different. At least now they can flame about how bad traditional quest are.

So I am not saying traditional quest are better. I am also not saying events are better. I say they both have there pro’s but seemingly because GW2 wants to do thinks different they only put in the events. And so losing the good stuff from the quest. But at least hey can now say they do it different.

1/2

I disaggre with some of the things you listed, especially quests and trinity.
~

Once again I want to appoint that the thread is not about the specific examples. It’s about the ‘problem behind it’.

I also don’t say I prefer the traditional quest over the events. They both have there positives and negatives.
As an example events don’t give you a story behind a NPC and so giving you less binding with a place and NPC. They also don’t send you all over the world in a quest-line and do not really give an option to unlock specific rewards and you can’t really complete (they keep returning) them making them feel less like if you make a change. On the other hands, traditional quest do not show an real event / attack and are very static. So they both have positive and negatives sites.

It’s not true that the hearts are the quest. The hearts where put in to basically to show people where they had to be. When testing in Alpha they had no hearts because quest where supposed to be the new quest. It then turned out that did not work because people had no idea where to go. In stead of then putting ALSO traditional quest in they came up with the hearts. The way the hearts do look like quest is with the very boring gather quest but they don’t look in any way like the more interesting quest lines.

I will read it and comment on it however they are mainly bashing traditional quest so by reacting on it it almost seems like if I am indeed saying traditional quest are better. Thats not what I want to say, I want to say the have there benefits so don’t act like they are totally flowed and events are great so you don’t put them in. They beside to do it different and now they can complain about those other mmo’s while not doing it directly.

>

In my previous comment https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Too-Much-Temporary-Content-Can-Only-Harm-GW2/page/12#post2979627 on this thread I was defending Anet for seemingly going in a better direction with the (then) last patches.

Sadly after that they turned back to the same temporary stuff. Halloween did not allow you to do last year events and the toxic stuff is also once a gain a temporary achievement and rewards grind where the content itself also seems to be temporary.

That is to bad. I hope they will still go back to a better living story and really focusing on expansions to generate income.

Sad thing is that where months ago most people that had some issues with the game said “this game still has potential” while at this moment most people say “this game had so much attentional”. Many people simply don’t believe anymore that Anet is going to make the needed changes.

Nice to see that some people (Lillium.6481) that are critical about the games state do still have confident in a change.

@cesmode.4257
“To arenanets credit, they have acknowledged this and will strive toward less temporary content, or so they say.”
True but they said that months ago and for a while it looked like they indeed where making that change but at this moment we are back where we where. Maybe even worse because the list of temporary achievements seems to be only growing.

@Facepunch.5710
I don’t think that is true. Many people who do not follow the story also don’t like the living story content. So making it go about the lore would not change that much. And the people who do follow it might even be disappointed about the way it gets thrown in the game. See the new fractal and the reactions on it.

Just for the record. Is the contest already over then?

Anyway, they where warned about it in this topic: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-Great-MMO-Migration/page/5#post3292096

At least this may show them that it might be wise to listen more often to the feedback in stead of closing the topic.

azizul.8469:

ANET should look at how Turbine encourage people to purchase their cash shop currency, by introducing more bonus (currency) for more cash shop currency purchased…

e.g .:

800gems —-— get bonus extra 10% gems —> 880 gems
1600gems --—- get bonus extra 15% gems —>1840gems
3200gems --—- get bonus extra 20% gems —->3840gems
etc
etc….

If they would do that in combination with a less focus on the cash-shop that might be a good way but that by itself would imo not solve the problem. As long as the main source of income is cash-shop they will need to make decisions based on that.

And don’t get me wrong, when you decide that you generate your main income from the cash-shop I totally understand that you will have to make design decision based on that. It’s just that those decisions effect the game in (imho) a negative way so I would much rather have them using expansions as main source of income so they are not forced to make that sort of design decision as described in my post.

@all Thanks to everybody to take the time to leave your comment. Much appreciated.

TheDaiBish.9735:

From a business perspective, you don’t be different for the sake of being different. You be different to carve yourself a section of the industry. After all, it makes no sense to chase after the ones who are into the traditional MMO types (WoW, for example), when these traditional MMO’s have had years to polish their games, build their content and build their player-bases to the point where these players are invested.

~

I don’t want to go to much into the specific examples because thats all I used them for.. examples. My point is the underlaying ‘problem’, I will however try to answer you with the examples hopefully to clear those thinks a little.

“From a business perspective, you don’t be different for the sake of being different. You be different to carve yourself a section of the industry.“ True but a company can still build a very innovative new car while not giving up the four feels and the engine in the frond. If you have a good reason to put the engine in the back then thats fine, if you simply want to put it somewhere else because most cars have it in the frond thats not good. While yes you can say “we are very different, we have the engine on the roof!”.

About the raids. I don’t mind open world combat and Tequatl was indeed a good example how you can make roles (when there is a lack of roles) but one of the problems was then people who did not know what they where doing jumped on a turret. Would it be a real raid (instance) that would have not been a problem. However indeed it’s very nice to also have open world raids. Thats a part of the good innovation but one does not exclude the other and those roles you can give in a raid (by turrets or by giving professions more specific roles) are better for the normal raids (because they can be better organized) then open world raids.

So why exclude the ‘more traditional’ version. To me it looks like the main reason is.. It’s what also other mmo’s have. And that by itself does not seem a good reason for me.

About the quest. I do not dislike the events. Not at all but like you say yourself they do also have there negatives so then why not put in both. What the one misses the other gives and the other way around. You say yourself that would be fine but once again to me it seems like they don’t want to put in traditional quest because they are not different?

Lastly the holy trinity example. I think more specific roles would be great. Getting something new in stead of tank / healer and DPS is fine. No complains there but it seems like they just removed the holy trinity and thats it. Why not put in 2 more roles making it the holy pentagon. Yes if you have very specific roles it means that if somebody dies it’s immediate a problem but is that not also exactly the season why many people find combat a little dull in GW2? Because it does not really matter so much.

Giving everybody the ability to ress people is also not bad but once again to me it seems to me like the motivation was to much “it has to be different”. If they purely looked at how to improve then I think they could make some awesome changes not having the holy trinity but if you just want it do be different then you might not end up with the best result.

Roles being put up on you by a dungeon can indeed help but then you are still easy replaceable (as profession) so a combination of more specific roles and dungeon tactics would work just fine.

Mike.5091:

~

No matter how quests are implemented most often they’ll be boring if they take too long to accomplish. Mainly also due to lack of variety. I like not having to search for the NPCs though and the various ways of finishing most quests. I never really read the NPC clickthroughs anyway. So for my “playstyle” it’s much nicer.

3. That’s an often discussed point and I agree with you that some parts of the game need a stronger focuse and a slight more developing time. Nowadays everything has to be fast .. games, movies, cars. Seems to be a modern way of life which actually isn’t enjoyable. Just leads to burn-outs.

1 and 3 I will keep to the other threads about it to keep it on topic here. About one I will say I did not see P2P as the solution. But if you want to talk more about that please see the other topic.

About 2:
It’s not so much that I prefer traditional MMO’s. Maybe I should have given some examples of the thinks I like to much. I did say some worked out very well some did not. but for example the whole movement, dodging, jumping is great. The jumping puzzle are a great addition of colors (maybe not unique for GW but unique compared to other MMO’s) is also great and there are more great thinks that GW2 has because they wanted to innovate.

Even the dynamic events are great. All I am saying about that is that they by them-self can not replace everything a more traditional quest can do (in this example). A quest-line thats sends you all over the world, let you talk with NPC’s, get a bound with them, getting a feeling of completion and a specific reward and so on. That is stuff the dynamic events can’t do.

So then why not implement both? Or improve the traditional quest. It now has the feeling of them implementing something new what is nice (yet does not manage to completely replace the traditional quest) but then just don’t wanting to also have the traditional quest as well (for those thinks that the events can’t give) just because it would be to traditional. That is a bad reason imo.

Mounts is also just an example. They did say they would like mounts but it had to be in a ‘GW2 way.’ Likely combat mounts. But why this must to have it (only) in a ‘GW2 way’. Thats more the problem I am mentioning to. If it has to be differed just to be differed that will not always results in the best solution.

Those thinks have proven themselves for many years.

If it would be. ‘Ok we want mounts / quest / raids (just examples!) and so on, but we want to see if we can innovate it or if we are able to add also a new type of those in’ thats fine. But if you just want it to be different because thats some goal you set then you are sometimes throwing away thinks that work very well.

As long as you don’t force people to do thinks in one way then it’s no shame to have elements in the game that many other games also have. You have enough thinks to set you apart but don’t throw a winning horse.

This video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NedWPHZCcik&feature=c4-overview&list=UUJTE1U_RsWh9Nl2hMZxMu5w also puts it very well but because of it’s title (takes away from the subject) I did not want to add it. Might add it to the OP anyway because I think people focus to much on my examples in stead of what I am trying to say with different for the sake of different.

Page 2/2

Last example, making bosses harder by increasing the HP in stead of improving the AI.

Something that almost always comes with the quick-and-dirty method is that fixing bugs or changing things will be much harder. That might partly explains why many bugs take so long to solve and when solving you suddenly see some new strange bugs come in.

An example of this mechanism can be shown using SAB. When SAB was released one of the developers (don’t have a link) told something about the development. One of the things was that they had to use a lot of ‘tricks’ to make it work. For example when falling you get into combat (bad design imo) and so slow down. If designed very good you should easily be able to turn this of. However apparently it’s really embedded deep in the code because when they made SAB they could not turn it off in stead they had to implement a speed-boost to you when you got into combat from falling. (People noticed that.)

However now imagine that at some point Anet does indeed decides to change that in the core. Then they forget about SAB and suddenly there is a new bug in SAB where you speed up after a fall. It’s this sort of problems you will see later.

Many of the bugs or ‘strange’ behavior might be related to this.

Why for example is it still not possible to clear an area but do the mobs keep spawning way to fast? Something thats almost everywhere in the game and should be an easy fix. Or is this also not as an easy fix as it should be? (I don’t know)

Some for enemies getting out of combat in the middle of a fight and not getting back in combat when hitting them but first running back to there spawn-place.

Even the fact that mini’s are always standing in one place when you are not moving might be related to the quick-and-dirty development.

It also concerns many elements that make the world feel less free and more controlling. Making a system more dynamic, free and open is harder then closing everything off because the last results in less unexpected behaviour you also have to deal with. The way you tame pets is an example of this (not dynamic meaning you might also tame beast the developers did not planned on you taming but also less free) just as invisible walls obviously. I am sure more people somehow did feel this games seem less free then some other mmo’s.

Page 1/2

I have been active in these forums for a while helping to give feedback on items that I think are lacking. However after some time you keep repeating yourself in many threads on the symptoms of some underlaying problems.

Anet recently ask for feedback so I will give my feedback in this way and hope they will try to look at this with an open mind.
Even if it turns out they will do nothing with this advise I am happy knowing I did participate in these forums doing my duty reporting what in my eyes where the problems.

So in order to stop (or at least lower) participating in all those threads I decided to make 3 threads that all have one of the underlaying problems I think are the reason for all the problems we see in the game.

These problems result into many things (like gold-grind and so on) but in the end mainly boils down to frustrating (like making people rage) and boring game-play.

For me most problems seem to come from the following 3 underlaying problems:

1 A focus on micro-transaction / cash shop / gem-store to generate the main income in stead of for example focusing on regular expansions as a main source for income.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-focus-on-micro-transactions/first#post3316908

2 Wanting to do thinks different as other MMO’s simply for the sake of doing it different and even being stubborn about it, having a sort of tunnel vision towards the current sometimes flawed solution in stead of also looking at proven working solutions.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Problem-of-being-different-for-the-sake-of-it/first#post3316917

3 A so called quick-and-dirty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick-and-dirty) way of doing (developing) things.

This thread will be about the quick-and-dirty way of doing things. It’s useful to read the term on wiki to get an idea of what I am talking about but basically it’s going for the easy solution in favor of the harder but better solution.

Let me also state that quick-and-dirty is not always perse bad. The name sounds very negative but in reality every developer uses it one in a while. The problem is when a quick-and-dirty is not being improved later or and when it becomes the way of doing things.

There are many aspects in the game where this way of working is really noticeable.

Think about invisible walls. Personally I hate them. It’s like developers cheating. Same for non-existing objects (so objects without collision-detection). They are in many ways game breaking and simply annoying when you try to jump somewhere but it’s not possible because there is an invisible wall in the way or the item you jump on is not really there making you fall to your death.

They also take you right out of the immersion of the game. However when you as game-designer want to close of an area they is the harder way, make sure nobody can get there by making the ground higher of putting a fence in the way and so on, and there is a easy way. Just throw in an invisible wall and be done with it.

Another example can be the instanced based maps. Once again, it takes away a lot from the game. No walking into a new zone, something that tents to really stick to your memory. No a loading screen and then being thrown in a new instance. Suddenly you party members get’s black in the party screen and it simply does make the world not feel like a really big open world. Because it isn’t.
Now some people say.. well I love the fact that you don’t need to get into a que before getting into a game but that they have overflows and you need instanced maps for that.

That is however not true. It would be more complicated (for example, you should know in what ‘overflow’ you are from the surrounding maps).. so the instanced map is the easy solution. But even with one big open world you can have overflows depending on the map.

page 2/2

A big problem related to this however seems to be how stubborn they seem about it. I have seem many threads that talked about the holy trinity being closed with really just an excuse to close them.

Like if you make sure people don’t talk about it it go’s away (NK way of thinking?). Also the whole raid thing, they almost don’t want to seem to be willing to talk about it.. oow yes we will get raids but in a GW2 way. Still not sure if thats still coming or if it was the Tequatl revamp.

No word about how the events really did exactly the contrary of what they in-visioned. Having content that makes no difference at all when you do it. (the manifesto was taking about how traditional quest would do that while the dynamic events would really mean you would make a difference).

And the grind for achievements with the living story also seems to keep on going. Also after many many complains.

There is nothing wrong with trying to innovate, there is nothing wrong with being different. That can all positive. But when you become different just for the sake of it and not willing to see that some things do not work an sometimes the original way did work better then it becomes a problem.

So don’t stop trying to be fresh and innovative but don’t be different just so you can say you are and also have the courage to agree some of those new idea’s might have failed and then change them even if that means changing them back to ‘the traditional way’. There is no shame in failing with a concept, there is in ignoring that fail because of a sort of broken pride.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

So better embrace it instead of trying to ignore it!

Slightly related links:
(
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/The-Great-MMO-Migration
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/After-more-than-a-year-of-GW2
)

This video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NedWPHZCcik&feature=c4-overview&list=UUJTE1U_RsWh9Nl2hMZxMu5w also tries to make partly the same point.

Might be interesting to watch.

Edit: Another nice little example are names for things. While most RPG games name the game-classes classes GW / GW2 names it profession. Companions are mini’s and a ranger is that an archer? No it’s the class uhhm profession with a pet. In most mmo’s they at least refer to the animal in the name. Hunter, beast-master or something like that. Item colors are mixed up (but there at least it made sense so that might not fit in the ‘for the sake of it’).
Usually there really is no good reason to mix up those names, it only generates confusion so this also really smells like ‘different for the sake of being different’.

Page 1/2

I have been active in these forums for a while helping to give feedback on items that I think are lacking. However after some time you keep repeating yourself in many threads on the symptoms of some underlaying problems.

Anet recently ask for feedback so I will give my feedback in this way and hope they will try to look at this with an open mind.
Even if it turns out they will do nothing with this advise I am happy knowing I did participate in these forums doing my duty reporting what in my eyes where the problems.

So in order to stop (or at least lower) participating in all those threads I decided to make 3 threads that all have one of the underlaying problems I think are the reason for all the problems we see in the game.

These problems result into many things (like gold-grind and so on) but in the end mainly boils down to frustrating (like making people rage) and boring game-play.

For me most problems seem to come from the following 3 underlaying problems:

1. A focus on micro-transaction / cash shop / gem-store to generate the main income in stead of for example focusing on regular expansions as a main source for income.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-focus-on-micro-transactions/first#post3316908

2. Wanting to do thinks different as other MMO’s simply for the sake of doing it different and even being stubborn about it, having a sort of tunnel vision towards the current sometimes flawed solution in stead of also looking at proven working solutions.

3. A so called quick-and-dirty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick-and-dirty) way of doing (developing) things.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Problem-of-the-so-called-quick-and-dirty-way/first#post3316929

This thread will be about wanting to be different seemingly for the sake of being different.

It seems to be one of those problems that can also result in many of the bad thinks we have seen. For sure it also resulted in some very good new fresh idea’s but there really seems to be a hate against everything that is not different.

Some examples and how it worked out:

Many people would like raids but there are no raids. Why? Because other MMO’s have that option? Or we get the GW2 raid version.. the world bosses. Well thats nice but does not replace what traditional raids gave. A big group really working together

Also have a look at quest. We get these dynamic events that are supposed to to replace traditional quest. Apparently even back in alpha they found out that did not work so they implemented the harts but also that is something people don’t seem to like very much.

Why this hate towards the more traditional quest? Of course those can be mixed with the innovative and nice new type of quest being dynamic events.

The absence of traditional quest and the events have some problems. The events seem useless because they keep repeating. With traditional quest you at least completed it, and they don’t really bind you to the world. With traditional quest you get to learn the npcs, know what they are doing there and so on. It all helped you to bind to the world.

However it seems like they do not want to have those traditional quest simply because they are, well, traditional quest and it need to be different. Even if that does not work out so well.

Another example is the holy trinity. I think there are many ways you can get rid of the holy trinity and have a new way of doing things but many people do think the combat is a little dull in GW2. Reason likely is the fact that you have no real role. You are just a number (in the DPS sum). So holy trinity or not, having a specific role is needed for getting the feeling of importance and getting more interesting combat. However that is to ‘normal’ and it has to be different or they simply stopped at removing the holy trinity not properly replacing it with something else. Resulting in a combat system that many people dislike.

There are a more examples. Mounts versus way-points for example. Mounts would add a whole new addition to the game. Getting them in the game would open a whole new part of end-game (if they are not just getting dropped in the gem-store but that’s more related to the micro-transaction focus https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/A-focus-on-micro-transactions/first#post3316908) and way-points really make the world smaller.

Innovation can also be done by adding in open world housing or things like that but just changing everything for the sake of it might not always result in a better product.

I can go on with a few more examples but I won’t. I guess people get the point and hopefully Anet will as well.

Page 3/3

Somebody else once put up this list talking about the same and I mostly agree:
That focus results in:

1.Speed of updates is prioritized over quality in order to get more items in the gem store
2.In-game rewards are of lower quality and are often the same item slot over and over to promote buying higher quality items in the gem store.
3. Expansions are ignored because low quality fast paced updates with no meaningful content provide the same income for a fraction of the work.
4. End-game rewards are generally grindy and shallow since they want you to get the gem store equivalent instead of earning it through skill/time.
5. RNG rules supreme because people always spend more on gambling than they do on one time purchases.

Now this whole focus on micro-transactions does work in the short run and maybe one of the problems is that many people are only looking to make money in the short run. But a MMO should be much more of a long term investment.

It works in the short run only (especially the way Anet was doing it with the living story, luckily eventually they made the same conclusion) because people get burned out much faster. In many threads months ago people have warned about this already and by now (when creating this thread) I think you can see some of the results. Incomes are dropping. If they only had listen back then. Now (when updating this thread) Anet did make a change seeing themselves how temporary content was bad for the game. However the underlying problem is still there.

We are now at a point where I am not even sure if an expansion would still work (some have left and will not come back). We might have passed that point, but maybe if they come with a really really big expansion that does not only add a new area a new race and the other normal stuff you expect in an expansion but also makes many other big changes to the core (think about making it really one big world in stead of instances, adding mounts, making chairs sittable, adding raids, promising to fix many of the issues like mobs that run back, putting a barber in the world (and the other gem-related stuff that should be in game (mini’s and so on)) and fixing guild tools (All problems I mentioned before in the 3 threads) and promising to start focusing on expansions again. Maybe that then they have a chance that an expansion will be able to turn the tight but honestly I don’t see them doing it any time soon, eventually Ncsoft will lose interest (so there will not even be the money for an expansion) and the game will keep degrading if they would go on this way to long (I think +3 years after release). I do hope they make the change else I would not create this thread but I am afraid they might not.

If they however are willing to try and turn the tide they really have to do that now (within a year we should hear about the upcoming expansion). It’s already 5 past 12.

(Some related links:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Becoming-P2W
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Why-do-people-stop-playing-GW2
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Guild-System-Improvements/page/4#post1629902

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/15/guild-wars-2-to-avoid-retail-mmo-expansion-model/
http://www.videogamer.com/news/guild_wars_2_expansions_a_sure_thing_says_arenanet_2.html
)
Added: May 2014:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NcSoft-earnings-1Q-14/page/3#post4029793
Some calculations based in a chart that shows income generated by GW2 and GW1.

The chart itself: https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/151443/1q14_NCSoft.jpg

It shows how the expansion-sales can keep a nice strait source of income.

Added: November 2014
A nice video I came across and perfectly fits in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS4VRbsjZrQ

Page 2/3

Like the gold there are many other examples. Take the mini’s. How fun isn’t. it in MMO’s (well for some people, including me btw) to go into the world, do quest, dungeons or even farm some mobs in order to get all those cool looking mini’s as special rewards for that specific content. It’s very good for the game in many ways. It sends you out into the world, it gives you goals and so on.

However this whole type of end-game (because in a way that’s what it is) does not really exist in GW2. Almost all mini’s (Tequatl is one of the few exceptions) are now only available in the gems-store and trading post. (trading post means gold and like I said, gold being very important is also good for the gem-store.. well in theory). There have also been multiple available in the living stories grinding achievements but overall the way to get mini’s is from the gem-store and trading post, not in the open world. For many the whole fun behind collection the mini’s is gone and so in fact making the game at that specific point a lesser game. (same for skins and most forms of horizontal progression)

I can understand that some people prefer to just buy the mini’s but that would even be able when they where items that dropped in the world behind specific content because people will be putting them on the AH anyway but now the only way to really get them is grinding for gold or buying gems. That simply takes away a big part of the fun and so can be seen as a direct influence of a micro-transaction based focus decision.

Another would be the hairstyles. GW2 got some new hairstyles later in the game. Now lets assume I am the developer of a game and I decide we gonna put in new hairstyles and my only motivation is making the game better. How would I do that?
Simply, I put a barber in the game where people can cut there hair for a reasonable price. I would say about 15 silver. Everybody can then change there hairstyle when they like once again adding something really nice to the game-world. It also would fit the lore. It would be really nice.
However a company needs to make money so it also has to look at other elements so if I would need to generate income with an expansion I might wait by adding those styles until the expansion or only adding in a few and adding much more with the upcoming the expansions. Current extra hairstyles would then be some sort of teaser.

But what if my main source of income would be micro-transactions? Well then I will put them effectually outside of the game in a cash-shop. Because that’s then the only way I can get money from them. It does not really add something to the world or the game but it’s then just a nice option where people once again can grind for using gold or to buy gems. GW2 at this moment focusing on micro-transactions did exactly that. So once again an example how that focus result in a decision that at lease did not improved the game while the same content could benefit the game much more when implemented in another way.

Other examples can be bugs. Many bugs have lesser priority because fixing a bug does not result directly in selling more gems.
Missing features (like guild tools) will have no priority because adding them will not directly increase gem-sales and why make chairs sittable? You can’t really ask people to pay gems for unlocking that option so those sorts of additions and fixes will have a much lower priority.

Any patch (see the living story) eventually is based around the question”how do we get people to buy more gems” and in a many ways the living story S1 usually was not more of an excuse to do exactly that. Temporary content (what so many people complained about and so by definition is bad for the game. Luckily they did see that themselves) gives also a reason to put temporary items in the gem-store what results in a sense or urgency for people to buy that item. And no time to grind the required gold. Even with season two it’s still a temporary theme that allows for temporary available items in the cash-shop.

That does not mean the whole gem-store is per-se evil. Having a gem-store as a side-income and just selling some items like extra character slots, race-changer and a name changer while keeping a decent gold to gem rate is not problem. It’s the focus that results in bad decisions that is the problem and so the game gets to suffer.

Page 1/3

I have been active in these forums for a while helping to give feedback on items that I think are lacking. However after some time you keep repeating yourself in many threads on the symptoms of some underlaying problems.

Anet recently ask for feedback so I will give my feedback in this way and hope they will try to look at this with an open mind.
Even if it turns out they will do nothing with this advise I am happy knowing I did participate in these forums doing my duty reporting what in my eyes where the problems.

So in order to stop (or at least lower) participating in all those threads I decided to make 3 threads that all have one of the underlaying problems I think are the reason for all the problems we see in the game.

These problems result into many things (like gold-grind and so on) but in the end mainly boils down to frustrating (like making people rage) and boring game-play.

For me most problems seem to come from the following 3 underlaying problems:

1. A focus on micro-transaction / cash shop / gem-store to generate the main income in stead of for example focusing on regular expansions as a main source for income.

2. Wanting to do thinks different as other MMO’s simply for the sake of doing it different and even being stubborn about it, having a sort of tunnel vision towards the current sometimes flawed solution in stead of also looking at proven working solutions.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Problem-of-being-different-for-the-sake-of-it/first#post3316917

3. A so called quick-and-dirty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick-and-dirty) way of doing (developing) things.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Problem-of-the-so-called-quick-and-dirty-way/first#post3316929

This thread will be about the focus on micro-transactions.

In my opinion the focus on micro-transactions is one of the main issues that result in many of the ‘bad’ decisions in GW2. Many of them being made after the release, some before.

Let me start by saying that I am not against a company making money. I am perfectly fine with that, they may get extremely rich with it. However there are multiple ways to Rome.

Sub-based is one and those games tent to be able to give a very good quality game but partly because of the cost and because of the timer that is placed above every player is (and I agree) not very popular anymore. With not popular anymore I refer to the fact that about all MMO’s that have been released in the last 9 years (after WoW) that started as sub-based had to convert to F2P models or simply went off-line or failed.

Then there is the micro-transaction based income. Infamous because of it’s option to become very P2W but no matter if it’s P2W or not it always effect the game in some way. The problem there is that a company that needs to generate money with micro-transaction has always as main question when designing new stuff “how do we get people to buy stuff from the cash-shop” in stead of “how do we make the best game”.

And then there is the option to generate income with a focus on generating income from the game itself and expansions. This is something GW1 was very known for and likely one of the reasons it became such a big player in the game-world. The question there is “how do we get people to buy expansions”.

Personally I think that last option is the best and yes it would also work for an open world MMO like GW2. There are some problems with it because you can not ask new players to buy all expansions 3 expansions down the road but there are easy solutions for that (requiring only the last 2 expansions for example).

That being said (and I did because I know from the other threads where I was active that this sort of questions where being raised) I really want to go in to how the gem-store focus seems to influence GW2 in a bad way.

One of the problems in the game that for some people make many content very dull is the gold driven nature of GW2. Gold is everything.
It’s very hard so not impossible to really farm for a specific item you need, a better solution is always grinding for gold and then buying what you need with gold.

A reason for this ‘gold is almost everything’ nature of GW2 can of course be the fact that you are able to transfer gems to gold. As a company you want people to buy the gems and if gold is such a high motivator and you can buy gold there is good reason to make sure gold is everything.

The fact that they also put gold into sPvP to me was also not a big surprise. How do we get the sPvP people to also be more interested in the gem-store? Use gold in stead of glory and there you go.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Devata.6589:

rjnemer.7816:

Using fractal relics and pristine relics to buy ascended armor pieces would be cool. You know, since its the ONLY place in gw2 where ascended is REQUIRED.

But then it’s yet another currency grind to get your items. It’s already all currency grind, mainly gold but always currency.

Just give the option to really go for specific items. Some can drop from quest (well if they would have quest in this game) some from a dungeon, some from a mob, some from a boss and so on. In that way you can work towards your item in a more fun way in stead of farming for a currency to get it.

Didn’t we recently hear something about how prisitine relics would be used? Something about converting them to a number of regular relics or some such? So they could be used just like normal relics? Think it was in a recent twitch stream.

And in the recent pvp news post, they said they were going to be doing away with glory (long term) and gold would become the standard currency across both pvp and pve. (Not sure how I feel about that one really…)

Maybe they are feeling they are juggling too many currencies too?

Maybe but even if they only have one currency it can still be all currency driven. Just with that one currency. The reason they want to get gold into sPvP is imho purely so the gem-store gets more involved in sPvP. Nearly all decisions Anet is making seem to be influenced by the gem-store. At least now there is yet another reason for people to buy gems to convert to gold is probably what they are thinking.

I would just like to see more options to really work towards an item without a currency in between. Just by completing a quest or indeed a specific rng drop from a dungeon / boss or mob.
It keep thinks more interesting.

Many MMO’s at least give you multiple options and I never went for the currency / gold farm option. Here it’s basically the only options you have.

rjnemer.7816:

Devata.6589:

rjnemer.7816:

Using fractal relics and pristine relics to buy ascended armor pieces would be cool. You know, since its the ONLY place in gw2 where ascended is REQUIRED.

But then it’s yet another currency grind to get your items. It’s already all currency grind, mainly gold but always currency.

Just give the option to really go for specific items. Some can drop from quest (well if they would have quest in this game) some from a dungeon, some from a mob, some from a boss and so on. In that way you can work towards your item in a more fun way in stead of farming for a currency to get it.

I already have thousands of relics and almost a hundred pristine’s with NOTHING to spend them on. I also do not find doing fractals grindy. I find them fun.

Besides, if you were to put it in dungeons that would require a TON of tokens (which goes against what you just said) and if you put it in drop tables then its all RNG. No one likes rng.

Also, you cant “work towards” anything if its all rng based. When you say “work towards” its going to be a grind to an extent. It just depends on if you enjoy that content or not.

Exotic Armor = Dungeon Tokens + Crafting + Rng Drops
Ascended armor = Relics + Crafting + Rng Drops

It only makes sense.

The one does not exclude the other. They can introduce many differed ascended armor and one you might be able to then buy with relics while others might come as a drop from a dungeon.

Obviously I am not talking about tokens as indeed that go’s against what I am saying. I am indeed talking about it more of a rng way. Rng can be bad and it can be good. The chest from the trading post is something people really dislike. That is the bad sort of RNG but rng drops.. well if you dislike that then you should dislike any mmo as thats how most of them work. But that would indeed be an option I do like. And then there is the option for quest where it’s not RNG but a guaranteed quest.

If you know an item drops from a dungeon or a mob with x drop-rate you can very much work towards it. You simply know you should get it within about x kills / runs and you can be lucky getting it sooner or unlucky getting it later. It however would be farm-able. If it’s like 1/10.000 then it’s not something you can work towards anymore.

The tokens are in a way similar.. you know (just as with the RNG) oke I need to do this 10 times or 100 times and then I can buy the item. The big difference is that you just see the token (yet another currency) go up slowly what is very boring. While with the rng option every run there is an option for it to drop, so every run is exiting. Or every kill if one type of mob would drop it.

So rng can be fun if done correctly, so using % that are reachable and also making it something you can indeed ‘farm’. So if it would be a dungeon don’t allow just one run per day and if a type of mob can drop something make sure there are area’s with many of them so you can run around there farming them.

It’s gets exiting because every time the next kill or the next run you are able to get the item you would like to have to much.

Currency driven is way more boring, just seeing the currency number get up little by little to eventually being able to buy it. That does not mean some similar items (maybe only a differed skin, but same stats) should not be available with a currency but at this moment everything is currency driven and that is boring.

rjnemer.7816:

Using fractal relics and pristine relics to buy ascended armor pieces would be cool. You know, since its the ONLY place in gw2 where ascended is REQUIRED.

But then it’s yet another currency grind to get your items. It’s already all currency grind, mainly gold but always currency.

Just give the option to really go for specific items. Some can drop from quest (well if they would have quest in this game) some from a dungeon, some from a mob, some from a boss and so on. In that way you can work towards your item in a more fun way in stead of farming for a currency to get it.

The daily achievements where pretty good at release. Sure the fact that you have more of an option now is better but the rewards (laurels) made it very very very bad.

It does not do what it was supposed to do (give people something simply for playing) but made it yet another grind in this game for the unique time-gated currency.

I hope there will be very viable ways to go for ascended armor without having to use the boring crafting.

The boxes for weapons are nice but not nice enough because it’s to random. You can’t really work towards a drop. It’s to random.

cesmode.4257:

Zelyhn.8069:

I have never been so afraid before.

I sort of second this. I can only assume that the materials required for a single piece of ascended gear will be similar to a weapon and that scares the hell out of me because its so much. Let me take that back…to craft the individual pieces isnt so bad. But getting your crafting to 500 is the hardest part. Its rediculous.

What if you don’t like crafting in GW2? My highest craft level in GW2 is like level 150 or something. I simply don’t like the GW2 crafting while in some other MMO’s crafting was the main thing for me.

Then again, that where always fun-crafts where you where always working towards the next fun item. The armor and weapon crafting only leveled with that (because you usually required some of that for the fun-craft) but was never my main goal. In GW2 there are no fun crafts there are only the armor and weapon crafts. So it might not have to do with the way of crafting. Aldo I do miss the option to do quest or dungeons or kill mobs for that one cool recipe, one of the thinks that made crafting so fun in other MMO’s. Maybe that if Anet would introduce fun-crafts I would also enjoy it in GW2 but nevertheless the way it stands now I don’t like crafting and this ascended stuff seems to be something you can almost only get with crafting. What is very bad imho.

Noobkaka.5067:

Not fun or enjoyable for me anymore.
The art is great, the graphics are ok, the optimization for most system specs is terrible (AMD cpus suffer), the combat is meh, the dungeons were cool in the start – but as with all dungeons once you done it a couple of times it becomes uninteresting, the wvwvw used to be cool even though it lagged but now with more experience it’s just really a zerg fest, PVP hasn’t seen change in a verry long time and it’s kinda stale.

All of this is negative and positive. But it just feels like Guild wars 2 is missing something, something that in my memory other mmos werent missing, it just feels like guild wars 2 is really missing something important, something engageing, something to keep up the interest in the game.

Yes I have taken breaks from gw2, and come back, but each time it only took a day or two before I lost interest and got that boring feeling about the game.

What is it that guild wars 2 is missing?
When I first read about living story I thought immeditly that we were finally going to unlock some new areas in the game, like maybe invade the northern part of the crystal dessert! Or explore the drylands west of the maguna jungles, or even north of queensdale!
But no – Living story is pretty much just a continous quest (which is fine, if it wasnt for…) with bad writing/story.

The main villain(s) of guild wars 2 is the dragons right? I get that anet wanted to build suspenssion to a grand finale of the scarlet story (boring character btw) with something to do with some dragon(s) but it just feels meh right now.

Like I wrote, it just feels like something is missing in guild wars 2…

Edit: not sure if this is the right subforum for this thread. but I think it belongs in the general discussion.

edit2: On second thought, maybe what’s missing is a meaningfull, rewarding and engaging progression towards something, not a skin or item, but a story.

I think that one of the thinks that you also might be missing i goals to work towards. The living story introduces a grind of achievements but in PvE the only goal to work towards is really the legendary weapon and that requires such a big grind that it’s not really a goal to work towards but a very big grind for gold.

In most MMO’s there are goals to work towards that might be hard but always in sight. Think of a mini’s that drops from a dungeon or a mob (there is as far as I know 1 of that in GW2, the rest are all gem-store / AH items), or a recipe that you can get from a quest-line or dungeon or mob so you can make that next cool item in your craft. In GW2 the crafting has not much to offer except for level 400 or 500 so no next thing to work towards and recipe’s are not really available as a specific drop from a specific place. Same for skins, armor or even the pet-system for rangers (in MMO’s with a dynamic tame system (most famous would be WoW) going for special pets is a goal for many people).

However GW2 seems to have nothing of this. Buy what you want with gold (gold grind) or get it with boring time-gated content (ascended) or it’s so much work that you can’t really work towards is but it also becomes a very big gold grind (legendary).

This obviously has a lot to do with Anet wanting to make money with gems in stead of expansions like they did in GW1.

Something else it also might miss is the homesickness feeling. You know, when you have played an MMO and there are those places where you want to go back to. A sort of homesickness feeling towards those places.

Some games are very good at creating that (WoW for one but also L2 and Chronicles of Spellborn) other are not so good in it. How they do it is hard to say. Many places in GW2 look great but personally I never have had the homesickness feeling to a place in GW2.

I think one of the reasons might be the instanced maps. If I think of those places in other MMO’s walking from one zone into another and then discovering that new zone is a great feeling. I will take WoW as examples because most people have played that. You walked in the ‘ugly’ Felwood and then went into some cave to eventually get out of the cave in a wonderful icy landscape Winterspring. That moment helps you to bind to a place. In GW2 there is a loading screen and then there is a next map. That just does not help so much for that feeling. In addition there are the traditional quest that get you bounded to a specific place and let you learn the NPC’s there. In GW2 there is no connection with the NPC’s and events feel useless because they keep repeating.

Lighter.5631:

Ecole.2349:

Somehow you’ve confused buying skins.. for winning ? I…can’t even begin to comprehend how you arrived at that conclusion. Unless these skins have some hidden “I win” button that lets you win at everything you do. If “winning” for you is how your character looks, maybe go play some ragnarok online or maple story.

i used to play maplestory, and i say this game is p2w too. just in a different concept instead of stats. i think you are the one whos confused about “winning”

Woow I loved your comment and comparison with maplestory.

Thats an example of how it should not be because maplestory is a form of cosmetic P2W you say? And who is responsible for those decisions? Luckily we have somebody who will make much better decisions for GW2.. oow wait:

Have a read: http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/Meleagar/112012/24237_NCSoft-Sold-Arenanet-and-GW2-Out-For-Nexon-Investment

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Devata.6589:

Haha I predicted your “no it’s not P2W because you can transfer gold to gems” a few post ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Becoming-P2W/page/3#post3301582

Funny.

Of course, getting them with money is much easier then farming the gold so it is not really true and those keys have a extremely low drop change.

Money gives you a clear advantage with those items because you don’t have to farm ages for it to get it. Many F2P P2W games have the option to get similar items in-game. The difference is how hard it is to get them ingame against how easy it is with money. Same is here.

Anyway, I think some people (like you) will defend almost anything so it does not really mater and P2W or nog, the influence the gem-store focus has on the game was bad, is bad and will stay bad as long as the that focus remains.

And you will argue simply for the sake of arguing… I knew this simply when you opted to post in the thread.

Those that play hours upon hours a day tend to have quite a bit of gold, which if they so choose, they can convert to purchase the boosters. Where as people that play fewer hours, but have “lives,” have less in game gold and potentially have more actual cash which they can use instead.

Technically both of those scenarios have a clear advantage over someone that can’t play for hours, yet does not have significant disposable income.

This still does not make the game pay to win. Not even close. Because the person in each of those scenarios can still do everything in the pve setting. Without paying a dime, if they so choose. Sure, boosters might make it faster, but that is a convenience, nothing more.

Pay to win gives paying players a clear advantage, not some piddly imagined advantage. P2W would be having a gear tier above ascended and only having it available via real money (no gold to gems conversions allowed) Not being able to obtain BiS items unless you pay real money for them. Being able to purchase addition stat options or slots in the pvp setting, giving you a distinct advantage over non paying pvpers. These are p2w things…. having a 5% dmg reduction boost for an hour, in pve because even in exotics you can’t survive isn’t an advantage, it’s sad.

Now, that said, do they sometimes seemingly push the cash store too forcefully? Sure. I won’t deny that sometimes the emphasis on the gemstore is a bit much. I’ve said that several time before in other threads. However, having an emphasis on the gem store does not make a game “pay to win.” Just means they have a focus on selling you stuff….

And you will argue simply for the sake of arguing… I knew this simply when you opted to post in the thread.

So that means you are also here simply to argue simply for the sake of arguing? As you came to this thread.

No I go to specific threads. Mainly those related to the living story ot te gem-store.

If I would argue simply for the sake of arguing I could go to every thread.

“Technically both of those scenarios have a clear advantage over someone that can’t play for hours, yet does not have significant disposable income.
This still does not make the game pay to win.”

You just turned almost all games known for being P2W into non P2W games because most of the games known as P2W have some ingame way to get the BiS items (usually with a very long grind). So what are we then arguing about? P2W? Whats that. Almost no games (according to your definition) are P2W.

Still it stays funny that I predicted your comment in my apparently argue just to argue comment.

Oow and just for the record. While I do understand OP’s points and I agree with what he is trying to say (what is not.. this game is a real P2W game) thats not my personal problem with the gem-store. My problem with it is that Anet is focusing on selling gems and the game content is influenced (in my opinion in a bad way) because of that focus. I discussed multiple examples in a previous post. I would prefer them focusing on expansions to generate incomes. That influences the game in another way and in my opinion most likely in a better way.

Whitey.6185:

Yes, about 5 times the amount of a year of WoW time.

Last time I checked my paypal, I had spent over 700$ in gems, and have since bought at least another 6000 gems.

And you are even proud of it. I feel for you.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

MrRuin.9740:

Noone can gain any stat advantage over anyone else via the gemstore. End of story.
Noone buying fashion, skins, backpacks, overly flashy mining picks, fancy finishers or anything from the gemstore has any advantage over you.

Play an actual P2W game and then argue using the term here.

Not actually true:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Strength_Booster
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Booster
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Speed_Booster

You can most certainly use the gemstore to gain a 10% armor boost, a 5% damage boost and a 15% run speed boost over other players who don’t use the gem store.

Pay money -> get boosters -> go to WvW -> beat players without boosters -> win

P2W, no semantics needed, just money and crushing your opponents. sPvP does remain free of P2W however.

Many would argue that PvE doesn’t matter. After all, what are you ‘winning’? I won’t get into that specific argument, since it’s all really a matter of opinion for that one.

Boosters, while yes you can purchase them with real money…. you can also purchase them via in-game gold too. Just convert gold to gems and tada, you can buy all the same stuff.

Additionally you can get those boosters as drops in the game…map completion, daily completion, monthly completion, personal story completion, random drops can all contain both black lion chests and black lion keys which contain those boosters. (A common drop from them, so you’re pretty much guaranteed one if you open a chest)

It’s not like they are limited to the cash shop, and they are not locked behind real money purchases thus limiting who can access them. They are readily obtainable for the general playerbase if they so choose.

Using WvW is not a very good example. A skilled, unboosted played, will wipe the floor with a boosted less skilled player pretty much every time. Even in an even match up of skill, the person with the boosts is not guaranteed the win. There is so much more to it than just doing more damage.

Haha I predicted your “no it’s not P2W because you can transfer gold to gems” a few post ago: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Becoming-P2W/page/3#post3301582

Funny.

Of course, getting them with money is much easier then farming the gold so it is not really true and those keys have a extremely low drop change.

Money gives you a clear advantage with those items because you don’t have to farm ages for it to get it. Many F2P P2W games have the option to get similar items in-game. The difference is how hard it is to get them ingame against how easy it is with money. Same is here.

Anyway, I think some people (like you) will defend almost anything so it does not really mater and P2W or nog, the influence the gem-store focus has on the game was bad, is bad and will stay bad as long as the that focus remains.

Oow yeah and that a skilled player is still able to win that is also in all the P2W games. If you have far superior armor or weapons but keep missing the person in lesser armor he can beat you. However the question is, what s the outcome when you put 2 just as skilled persons or maybe slightly differed skilled persons against each other.

You know, you don’t have to defend Anet for everything. It’s perfectly fine to also disagree even as a fan. You can say.. “well those 3 boosters are indeed bad but except for those..”. Blind love is always a bad adviser.

As a true fan you should even point out the mistakes. Else the product you love so much end up being a very very bad product. If I was from a rival company I would not send somebody to point out all the mistakes, I would send somebody to tell how everything was great and to dismiss all bad decisions made by the developer.

MrRuin.9740:

Lafiel.9372:

Retsuko.2035:

angelpaladin.7921:

With the game revolving around cosmetics and not armor its self adding these items to the Gem store in such large quantity’s essential makes the game P2W. This is almost the equivalent of a standard MMO adding top tier armor that can only be obtained thought differentiate content to there in game store.

fail logic is fail.

I got my main character a combination of armor skin that i currently like the most. A WvW coat bought with badges, beginners legs and CM dungeon boots bought with tokens. Is this expensive? no.

But according to your logic, i won the game by getting the best i could get for my tastes and it didnt cost me anything.

What the OP was trying to say is, since gw2 is revolved around cosmetic items as end game and end game items are pretty much bought with real money (given the gold to gem conversion rate) it is essentially P2W from a cosmetic perspective. Did that help you understand what he was trying to say more?

To further add, the very existence of gem to gold conversion makes this game P2W if y ou look at it from a cosmetic perspective.

You guys are arguing semantics just to be able to use the term P2W. There is nothing to argue. P2W means you pay money to win. Its a self-explanatory term. You pay money for an advantage over other people. Noone can gain any stat advantage over anyone else via the gemstore. End of story.
Noone buying fashion, skins, backpacks, overly flashy mining picks, fancy finishers or anything from the gemstore has any advantage over you. Prettiness is not a competition in this game. There is no ranking for it, there is no advantage to being prettier. The term pay to win does not apply. Play an actual P2W game and then argue using the term here.

Whatever you guys are saying about a prettiness factor being a ‘win scenario’ needs some new term applied to it. Because you’re paying to be pretty, not to win.

They don’t use semantics just to be able to use the term P2W. They try to explains / talk about something that has no defined name yet. However while not it being P2W it has some similarities so thats why they are referring to that.

azizul.8469:

lol..

Pay-to-Win fashion contest, yes….

Pay-to-Win skill-wise, certainly not….

P2W is never skill-wise. You can’t pay for skills. You mean stats-wise.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Devata.6589:

Eventually it will be.. but you can transfer gold to gems so you can get everything anyway.

But to me thats not even the point. The main question to me is, do the micro-transactions influence the game in a negative way?

The answer for me clearly is yes (and thats simply because it’s the way Anet makes the money so nearly every patch has as goal selling more gems in stead of improving the game) so P2W or not, at this point the gem-store is bad for the game.

With that the idea that you help the game with buying gems is also flawed. Buying gems helps to get the game in a worse shape.

Not sure how you come to your conclusions here. Microtransactions are 1) optional and 2) mainly cosmetic. So when you claim the Gem Store affects the game in a negative way, please explain how. The game updates content regardless if you buy Gems or not. Anet fixes bugs for everyone, not just people who buy Gems. And content themed Gem Store goods that are promoted with updates are still optional. Marjory’s dagger looked awesome, but I’m not forced to buy them.

I know of people who spent not a single penny on Gems. They converted in game Gold for in game Gems. Did that make them better players? Nope. Did it make them happy to have new cosmetic items? Sure. Don’t see the negative here.

As for people like me to buy Gems with RL currency. Did that make me a better player? Nope. Did it make me happy? Sure. Again, where are the negatives?

There are many types of players in this game. And among those players are people who have disposable income. If they choose to support Anet through microtransactions, that only helps everyone, since in reality, the game company is a business. And businesses exist to make money.

It has nothing to do with the fact if the gem-items make the person a better player or whatever. It’s simply how it effects the decisions made when developing the game / patches.

I did explain that before in this threas. Have a look at this post, hope that will clear up for you what I am talking about:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Becoming-P2W/first#post3267525

And ZudetGambeous.9573 also gives some nice examples:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/GW2-Becoming-P2W/page/3#post3302424

“If they choose to support Anet through microtransactions, that only helps everyone, since in reality, the game company is a business. And businesses exist to make money.”

I totally agree they need to make money.

There are however multiple ways of making money and focusing on selling expansions is one of them. Thats what they did in GW1 (and is still very feasible for GW2) and thats for me the preferred option as it does not effect the game in the negative way it does now.

But no paying them this way does not help everyone because it’s more reason for Anet to keep focusing on the micro-transactions and so it keeps influencing the game in a negative way. So it’s not helping it’s doing the opposite. Making the game worse.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Devata.6589:

Eventually it will be.. but you can transfer gold to gems so you can get everything anyway.

But to me thats not even the point. The main question to me is, do the micro-transactions influence the game in a negative way?

The answer for me clearly is yes (and thats simply because it’s the way Anet makes the money so nearly every patch has as goal selling more gems in stead of improving the game) so P2W or not, at this point the gem-store is bad for the game.

With that the idea that you help the game with buying gems is also flawed. Buying gems helps to get the game in a worse shape.

I agree. The game is suffering because new content is designed with the gem store as the focus, not the game. In games with a monthly sub you have artificial time gates such as once a week raiding to keep people around, but the quality of the content is high since it is what keeps people playing. With the gem store we see the in-game content suffering in a different way.

1.Speed of updates is prioritized over quality in order to get more items in the gem store
2.In-game rewards are of lower quality and are often the same item slot over and over to promote buying higher quality items in the gem store.
3. Expansions are ignored because low quality fast paced updates with no meaningful content provide the same income for a fraction of the work.
4. End-game rewards are generally grindy and shallow since they want you to get the gem store equivalent instead of earning it through skill/time.
5. RNG rules supreme because people always spend more on gambling than they do on one time purchases.

Now that i’ve seen both models I will certainly promote a monthly fee over this style of game.

Well I am also not a big fan of subscription based because there is always a timer over your head and you can’t just log in to have a look if you did not pay a sub-fee. But looking at the quality it is indeed better as the micro-transaction based games.

However there is a third alternative and that a is a true B2P model where the company released regular expansions (once every year / year and a half) an focuses on the sale of those expansion to generate there main income.

That is what GW1 use to do and they had a big name with that model as one of the main reasons. The mean reason I was interested in GW2 was exactly that reason and Anets good name. However now they turned to the micro-transaction model like almost all (F2P) mmo’s have these days what is very bad for the game. If I would be interested in that there would be many other games I could play.

However my favorite model is still a real B2P model where the company focuses of expansions to generate income. Best of to two worlds.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It doesn’t matter what Anet puts in the gem store, it will never be P2W because as soon as the game crosses the line with P2W the people will need to justify why it isn’t P2W so that they can feel ok with themselves for buying it.

Before this game launched people pretty much agreed it would be P2W if there was no way to aquire gem store armors through in game means

Once it was obvious that wasn’t the case, P2W was then redefined as cosmetics only are ok but any non cosmetic would be P2W.

Once “convenience” items were introduced the goal post for P2W was moved again. Now both cosmetic and convenience items are ok but stat advantages are still a no-no.

Once you point out that in the gem store you can get boosters to give a 5-10% stat advantage over other players who don’t purchase them (in WvW and PvE) the goal post is moved yet again since you need to gamble with real money to get them and can’t purchase them directly (I don’t follow the logic at all here, but that’s what they say). Now cosmetic, convenience and rng stat boosts are ok, but stats on gear are not ok.

I suspect in another 3 months they will introduce ascended armor into the gem store. At that point the bar for P2W will be moved to be “it’s ok to have the top tier gear in the gem store as long as it isn’t better than the top gear”

The process will just continue and you will never get people to admit that the game has been P2W for a long time because that means they are buying the things they claim to despise so they will justify themselves until the ends of the earth if they need to.

Eventually it will be.. but you can transfer gold to gems so you can get everything anyway.

But to me thats not even the point. The main question to me is, do the micro-transactions influence the game in a negative way?

The answer for me clearly is yes (and thats simply because it’s the way Anet makes the money so nearly every patch has as goal selling more gems in stead of improving the game) so P2W or not, at this point the gem-store is bad for the game.

With that the idea that you help the game with buying gems is also flawed. Buying gems helps to get the game in a worse shape.

I my opinion Anets focus on micro transactions only make the game worse so buying gems helps to make the game worse so no I will never ever spend a cent on gems. I had hoped Anet would focus on expansions to generate income (like they did with GW1) that would have made the game so much better.

However exactly this thread does already exist. So please merge it instead of having exactly the same thread multiple times.

Here it is: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Paid-more-for-gems-than-a-sub-fee-this-year/page/4#post2971603