Guild Wars 2

Sizer.3987:

I know right? I went to queensdale and killed moas for an hour and i didnt even have every mastery unlocked! Dont these devs know what “play how you want” means!!!

Don’t build strawmen, please.

Really they should have grandfathered in some core mastery levels for veteran players. I mean if you have a lot of characters who have all done world completion, and their entire personal story, you’re at a disadvantage vs a newer player who has not done any of the content yet, for one since you’d be just repeating stuff you’ve already done, it’s just plain not as fun as it is for a new player who hasn’t done the content yet. Secondly, you have less sources of fresh xp available to you for your core masteries as all those POI’s, hero points, vistas, hearts, and waypoints you’ve already discovered and all the story quests you’ve already done? That’s xp you could have gotten towards your mastery, but you don’t get it. so you can only do repeatable events and dungeons/fractals or grinding mobs.

But at the very least we should be able to earn mastery xp with world vs world and festivals.

I’ve read that the festivals are SUPPOSED to give mastery xp, but due to a bug they are not, and anet won’t fix the festival so that it DOES give xp UNTIL NEXT HALLOWEEN.

What this all basically strikes me as feeling like.. it’s like they raised the level cap without adding new content to level in (again talking core masteries not Maguuma), and worse, reducing xp on content already had available.

Behellagh.1468:

So progression through the map is interlocked with masteries. We had something like that before, but it was called levels. But since we don’t have levels this makes a bit of sense.

Same with not having enough HP to insta max a specialization. Unlocking skills and traits while we were leveling and so now since we don’t level, we still have to work for them.

So, dead whoop.

This is not Maguuma masteries. I’m okay with Maguuma masteries because that is NEW CONTENT I can play through.

I don’t like CORE MASTERIES because it is OLD content I have already done to death.

Jeez, I thought I found a way to do this effectively.. using a character that hasn’t completed the personal story.. did a personal story step in Orr cause I remembered those used to give a lot of xp..

26k xp.

Seems they’ve just up and decided the best way to do things is outright soul sucking grind.

PopeUrban.2578:

Devildoc.6721:

Yeah but doing events we’ve done hundreds or thousands of times before already just isn’t fun.

Well, I mean, that’s part and parcel for the genre unfortunately. in a perfect world game developers could put out content faster than we could eat it up, but in reality that’s just not possible, so at some point you’re gonna be repeating stuff

That has nothing to do with it, this isn’t new content that we just run out of this is content they KNEW we’d already done to death.

Yeah but doing events we’ve done hundreds or thousands of times before already just isn’t fun.

At least the maguuma masteries are in new content.

So after 9 months of no new content and just rerunning the same stale content, you’d expect to just be able to do the new content and progress your character right?

No. Not if you want to progress core masteries. You need to run that stale content even more, and more, and over, and over and over and over (20 dungeon runs to be able to spend 1 mastery point).. in a game that has a core “no grind” philosophy.

At first I thought.. well, I’ll do the Mad King’s Labyrinth, at least that only comes around once a year so it’s not TOO stale

None of the xp counted towards my core mastery.

So I went into WvW, thinking, well, there’s a new borderland at least, that could be fun. I took some towers, camps, sentries, you know, I should have gotten about 10% of the way towards being able to spend a mastery point….

But none of that xp counted towards my core mastery either.

You can’t use tomes or scrolls of xp, and so far the only ways I have seen that actually add xp towards your core masteries are open world events in stale zones we’ve been doing for months if not years, dungeons (60k/1.2 million, so that’s 20 runs to spend a point, and if they’re like Maguuma masteries (which at least that content is new and there’s story stuff to progress it faster) that 1.2 million doubles every tier), and um.. fractals maybe (haven’t tried that yet)

Can we at least have WvW and holiday events count towards these core masteries? Can we at least play our way if we really have to grind?

Chest trains happen because keys are what you can buy with badges after you’re done with the collections, you get all these keys… and… never enough shovels. So people pool shovels and chest trains happen.

If you got shovels all the time but next to no keys, this wouldn’t happen.

Warhorn needs a second blast finisher. Focus has 2, Dagger has 2, warhorn has 1.

The only mobs that anyone thought were problematic in prior betas were the snipers and smokescales. Snipers have not just been nerfed they just got removed. What needed to happen with snipers is to have a cooldown on their sniping skill so that if you interrupted it it was meaningful (they’d just do the snipe skill again until you were out of interrupts or were dead)

So uh.. I thought we were going to be able to pick the other route on the story step this time, and not save the dragon minions

The squishiest class SHOULD put out the most damage. It should be a high risk, high reward

If it does the same damage, it should also have the same survivability.

Ice Storm now does half the damage per impact as lava font. For anything but a really large hitbox single target (so not affected by target number reductions and the like), it’s just not worth it.

Shatterer, Claw of Jormag, Tequatl, Fire Elemental, MKII Golem, Wurms, that’s basically it.

Everything else you’re basically much better off just using lava font, and even on those targets.. it might not be worth using your utility slot for because it won’t be THAT much more damage.

Problem with conjures is as you said, you sacrifice having 20 skills for 5, and on most the conjures, it’s 4 damage skills and 1 control or defensive skill (LH stands out as it’s autoattack has a blind, it has a knockback and it has static field so 3 control skills and decently high damage on its autoattack)

If none of the damage skills are higher than your main weapon setup’s damage skills, why have the conjure? The 1 control skill? Why not just yank that 1 control skill from the set of 5 skills and turn it into a utility skill by itself? Why not remove ice bow and make deep freeze a utility skill by itself and just save a few button presses?

Just make deep freeze, fortify (if you want to give it a gw1 name just name it stone sheath since that skill would no longer exist either), thunderclap (might as well remove the other 2 skills from the chain and just make it a targetted aoe blind/blast finisher), and fiery whirl as utility skills and make a new elite skill from the ground up, and remove all conjures.

If you’re going to use conjures as temporary weapons, with both charges and a time limit, and give them mostly damage skills, those damage skills need to do more damage than your normal weapon skills, because you are sacrificing versatility of your normal weapon skills including swapping to other attunements, for a temporary boost in damage from the conjured weapon.

If they do the same damage or less damage than normal weapon skills then the entire conjure is not worth having and you should just remove the conjure and put the control skill as its own utility skill.

The only way to make it potentially useful otherwise is to make them work like engineer kits that can be toggled off and on at will no cooldown no charges, so that you are not SACRIFICING use of your normal weapon skills and attunements if you want to actually use that 1 minute cooldown for something.

Yes, because removing skills as viable options on your skillbar means you play with more skills. We have an entire class of skills that is all next to worthless, only lightning hammer stands out and only for scepter builds (and hey if the scepter buffs were good enough (they’re not, but if they were!) lightning hammer wouldn’t be used either). FGS is only used because there’s nothing else even remotely good for that skill slot. Even Irenio and Grouch admit Tornado is trash but they just leave it as trash.

So now, everyone will just have cantrips, because now we definitely need those cantrips for vigor.

Also kind of funny how you talk about “needing skill” when linecasting required skill to pull off. There’s a reason people only used it for gimmicky videos to show off that they could do it. the positioning and timing required made it impractical for normal use.

That was “skill”.

Same kind of people complain about animation cancelling in TESO, yeah, it increases people’s dps and is kind of a glitch but at the same time, it raises the skill cap of the game because low skill level people can’t effectively animation cancel.

You’re in luck! They fixed linecasting AND nerfed icebow.

So now it really will never be used.

Yojimaru.4980:

Devildoc.6721:

Kicker.8203:

Icebow was kind of broken for PvE (not in PvP) but now none of the conjure weapons are viable except FGS. They seriously need a heavy rework. The Ice Bow was supposed to be a healing conjured weapon. Why don’t u add tons of healing to it? The Axe, Hammer and Shield are still not used anywhere.

FGS is only used for mobility too, the damage on it is garbage.

Hammer was still useful last I remember because it’s still a blast finisher, used on scepter eles who were might stacking for the group.

Hammer is used more to mitigate Scepter ele’s abysmal sustained DPS due to their burst rotation having a long cooldown and their autos being absolutely terrible. The blast finisher is nice, but certainly not the main reason for taking Lightning Hammer. And yes, FGS is only used for mobility now. After Anet gutted it, it became nothing more than a utilitarian option when our only other choices were a transform that is quite useless after Anet nerfed it too (and it was only niche before said nerf) and a summon that is questionable. (I only use it for the tank it provides with an earth elemental)

Well yeah, lightning hammer is used for the damage mostly but yeah, it’s dual purpose to me, especially if you have a staff ele also in the group so you’re blasting their lava fonts.

What I was really meaning is that lightning hammer is still pretty useful. FGS is “useful” but it’s embarrassing that it’s an “elite” skill that is basically used to get 2 standard warrior greatsword skills to move around, without warrior greatsword damage.

Then of course nobody uses earth shield or lava axe because they’re low powered and don’t really have a niche to work in, and icebow will be joining them.

It’s also embarrassing that FGS is only useful because the other options for its designated slot are even more worthless.

DT not being ground targetted was my major complaint about scepter but there are others yes, like it being half a condition weapon half a dd weapon and not optimal for either.

Kicker.8203:

Icebow was kind of broken for PvE (not in PvP) but now none of the conjure weapons are viable except FGS. They seriously need a heavy rework. The Ice Bow was supposed to be a healing conjured weapon. Why don’t u add tons of healing to it? The Axe, Hammer and Shield are still not used anywhere.

FGS is only used for mobility too, the damage on it is garbage.

Hammer was still useful last I remember because it’s still a blast finisher, used on scepter eles who were might stacking for the group.

So basically Icebow is reduced to 38% of its original damage. This is close to Sbooning. (it may remove the skill completely from play).

Zenith.7301:

I’m surprised they didn’t do that 3 target cap for meteor shower as well.

Look at your meteor shower tooltip right now.

It’s already 3 targets per meteor cap.

I still have queen’s gauntlet tickets, a favor of the festival that needs 1600 festival tokens so I can get a mini panda (and now that the zephyrite ship is destroyed the chance of me actually getting those tokens is well, pretty much zilch right?), and then my favorite, an infinite continue coin, a relic from content we haven’t seen in 2 years, but anet won’t refund the gems I spent on it.

Do people really think the increased drop rates are going to make up for it? Not that I keyfarm a lot anymore (not since they changed it to have a level requirement) so it won’t really impact me, but people thinking that they’ll get more keys from just doing regular content are out of their gourds. They could double, triple, even raise the chance by 500% and it won’t even be noticeable because the chance is so small.

StrangerDanger.3496:

Wouldn’t the fact that a lot of people choose not to go the new specialization be a sign of a complete success with the system?

Did anyone want the new specializations to be guaranteed “must have” for each class?

I’m sure down the road someone will create a really useful meta for each of the “bad specializations” and they’ll be more popular…but I don’t thin anet wanted the new specializations to trump the old class system, just add another layer of variety if you want it…..and that’s how it should be.

I’m more worried about the very popular “omg awesome” specializations for certain classes more so than the “this sucks” specializations….as being too good means no one will play anything but it when on that class, and that to me is a failure of the specialization system…more so than DH (though the lore/flavor of DH sucks its nothing guardian) being not so great looking thus far…because only some will be DH and there will still be lots of guardians out there…

You make it too powerful and awesome and it just becomes a linear “we didn’t extend level cap but now you need to farm mastery to upgrade your class from average to awesome to compete”

Sort of, but you want people to be excited for the elite specs and at least see them as a good option. A few of the elite specs (DH, Tempest are the usual suspects) many people just don’t see them as worth it at all. Others like berserker and reaper are such direct upgrades that virtually nobody who has the option available will pass it up.

Something like Chronomancer is actually a good balance because it focuses on a new playstyle rather than a direct upgrade. There are Mesmers that will go Chrono and mesmers who won’t go Chrono for various reasons. Nobody really feels pressured to go Chrono or feel left in the dust, but people are excited to play Chrono because it enables new playstyles.

MiniEquine.6014:

The Tempest is getting a lot of flak and rightly so, but in terms of WvW? The Tempest actually looks pretty good for front-lining. Throw some soldier armor on with Runes of the Soldier (5-ally AoE condi-cleanse on shout), full shout build, and X/Warhorn (taking the 5-ally AoE stunbreak trait) and you have something interesting.

It usually means, of course, you lose your staff, which is what most Elementalists run in WvW, but it is a new way to play and could make for a good commander.

The problem with tempest is that overcharges are channeled and do low damage compared to other skills, warhorn means you have to use the lackluster scepter or dagger (terrible for wvw, which is very aoe heavy), so basically you have the shouts and the aura interactions in the trait line to work with.

Depends on the class:

Mesmer: Yes I’m going Chronomancer, it’s fun. The new playstyle options make it worthwhile, even if I find shield to be only half decent (tides of time is good, the other skill is lame)
Necromancer: Reaper makes necromancer actually worth playing. Default Necro is not.
Ele: No. While some of the interactions with auras are cool, Tempest just isn’t at all worth it and warhorn is garbage and needs an overhaul to be even remotely worth using. It doesn’t help that for PVE and WvW, Scepter and Dagger are underwhelming as main hand weapons. The overcharges do less damage for more risk than well, just going through a normal staff rotation
Warrior: Absolutely. Berserker is a direct upgrade over default warrior and the new burst skills are fun to use and berserking is fun and the new rage skills are fun and gosh, even headbutt is fun. I love that Daredevil and Berserker have elites that are more in line with GW1 elites with their shorter cooldowns and being more of a cornerstone of your build, rather than league of legends ultimates that inspire most GW2 elite skills. Even torch was actually surprisingly good. at first I thought “oh, lame, a 2 skill offhand” but.. a mobile fire field is amazing.
Guardian: On the fence. it felt a little underwhelming to play but I did like some of the virtue changes and the jesus beam trap that gives vuln.
Revenant: Absolutely. The Glint mechanics are great. I always felt Revenant was an incomplete class until we got Shiro, and Glint. Now it’s a great class.
Thief: On the fence. I love the elite skill and utilities, but the dodges feel janky (delay) and staff skillset doesn’t do anything for me except staff 2 makes me run THROUGH a mob I’m attacking which is dumb.

The last 2 we haven’t seen in action yet.

My biggest issue with smokescales is that if they start their shadowstep channel from inside the smoke field they destroy you and are evading at the same time. Nothing you can do against them. If you’re trying to bait them to leave the smokefield they’ll shadowstep instead.

Ohoni.6057:

1) The obvious one, cheesing some bosses. New tactics for all bosses for record clear time is mass CC, push to cliff, and spartan kick. 15 minute boss fight? 15 second boss fight.

True, but yeah it would be nice if normal enemies could be kicked off cliffs, while important boss mobs were immune to the sorts of CCs that could knock them over.

I have to admit one of the only really fun parts of SWTOR’s combat was that you COULD kill things by force pushing them over cliffs… though sometimes it bugged out the mobs (which is why they don’t let us do it here, if the fall doesn’t kill them the mob gets stuck trying to get back to you)

VaLee.5102:

Think of masteries like achievement chests, you will get them eventually, just play the game as normal.
No need to have them all fast, else after 1 month you will be bored with no goal and be all “qq nothing to do , this expansion sux!”.

not at all comparable, and there will be raids to do. Not everyone sits there drooling at the keyboard and unable to figure out what to do next once the yellow bar stops moving.

Orpheal.8263:

people seem to forget, how many extreme ways exist in this game to increase significantly your Exp gains …

You seem to forget that kills offer literally the lowest exp amount that you can possibly get in game. Ressing a dead NPC gives more xp than killing a mob that just respawned, mining a mithril node gives more xp, discovering a new recipe in crafting, finding a POI, viewing a vista, all of these give more xp than killing mobs.

So sure, you can get bonus xp, but it is on the lowest source of xp in the game.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Y’all should’ve been there during the vanilla beta. People had the exact same complaints about the basic mobs in Queensdale and other starter areas. It’s likely the unfamiliarity that’s the big kicker. Once people are more familiar with these new mobs, people will get through them just fine. Part of the idea behind these mobs is that being a berserker should be scary. Early launch Orr was a scary place for everyone, even in soldiers, but people eventually got used to it. Now granted, mobs in general were weakened, and Orr was hit twice, so nothing is nearly as scary as they were at launch.

One thing I do agree with is the lack of boons, conditions, or other mechanics. Players can take advantage of those mechanics in pvp and wvw, but the lack of them completely changes pve. Having mobs that can act just a little more like players would benefit pve a ton.

I was around in vanilla beta and what I can say is that before BWE1, mobs were similar to how they are now, maybe even slightly easier (though they could cause conditions in starter zones unlike post NPE mobs), the complaint was that the game was too easy so for BWE1 anet cranked up mob damage and health substantially. Then the complaints came in that everything was hitting too hard and really it kind of was. Normal mobs were 2-3 shotting you with normal melee attacks. “Just dodge” right, well, there’d be 4-6 of them at a time, so dodging all of that usually doesn’t pan out. They ended up tuning the mobs downward some so that it’s more like 5-6 shots before you go down rather than 2-3.

I watch smokescales drop people who are unable to do anything about their channeled attack while they whiff away (even though they’re not standing in the smoke field, the smokescale did its shadowstep FROM the smoke field so it’s still evading) all the time.

They’re kind of a bs mob.

Like I said. dodging channeled attacks doesn’t really work as it only dodges about half of the attack if you’re lucky.

Personally I don’t like grinding an xp bar out to be able to spend the mastery points. I find getting the mastery points to be fun but a boring slog to actually be able to spend them. Repeating events ad nauseum to grind out that yellow bar is the most boring part of the expansion. Maybe it’ll be better when we have the full maps to work with but for now it’s a chore doing the same 2 event chains 5x over to fill the bar.

Mordrem Snipers on anything that doesn’t have reflects aren’t fun to fight at all. You’d think interrupting them would be a good way to handle them but they have almost no cooldown on their sniping skill. It’s really annoying, and then their channeled arrow volley, dodging doesn’t avoid all of the arrows because of the channeled nature of the attack.

Smokescales are also just plain not fun to fight because they will camp in their smoke that makes them evade everything and then do their channeled shadowstepping attack which is again, not something you can just dodge because you’ll only dodge part of it.

These 2 mobs suck the fun right out of adventuring in the jungle. They make Teragriffs enjoyable to fight in comparison.

I read it, I was commenting on your edit at the end where you talk about new tiers of gear and upgrading gear.

Everyone focusing on “oh it gets better/harder later” needs to realize just how badly the NPE damaged the early levels of the game. Had the game been like the NPE when I first started doing beta events, I probably would have asked anet for a refund after the first day of launch when it could no longer be excused as being “in beta”. First impressions are important, too many people think it’s excusable to have a really boring early game and too many devs actually believe it’s excusable too. The early part of the game needs to HOOK you, it needs to impress. People aren’t going to GET to level 35 if playing those first 34 levels is boring.

my first impressions in GW2 betas the first boss instantly downed you, so you had to fight to survive and other players were ressing you, it was a key introduction to how the gameplay worked that boss fights were dangerous and you couldn’t just face tank them, some of them could down you in one shot, and that anyone could help you back up even in combat. I started doing events, and since I’d picked a Charr one of the first events I did involved a champion flame legion shaman. There were dozens of people trying to fight him and he was wiping us all out. There was challenges in the game even right out the door. You didn’t have to wait until max level to be challenged, you were challenged at level 6.

That’s why I even got to level 80, why I didn’t refund the game, and why I kept playing.

The NPE is trash.

Giving higher stats on gear would be totally not Guild Wars’ style. If you want gear treadmills you’ll need to find another game.

Really what’s killing motivation to do content is that instead of releasing new armor skins and weapon skins that we can earn via fractals and dungeons, most of the new stuff is in the gem store.

That makes the only reason to run dungeons be for gold to convert to gems to buy gemstore cosmetics.

Anet made the silly decision to let PVP’ers get PVE dungeon skins as rewards (while having exclusive PVP skins that PVE’ers can’t get without doing PVP), which also removes incentive to run dungeons, as people can get skins through PVP reward tracks.

Should have never happened. PVE dungeon skins should be exclusive to that dungeon. PVP should have its own skins.

RoffleMyWaffles.1295:

Hey everyone. I’m a new player. Before I begin my rant, let me precede by telling you the kind of games I play frequently: DoTA2, Battlefield 3 & 4, Starcraft II, Dragon Age: Origins. For single player games I play on a harder difficulty because I like challenge, and as for the others, I play PvP because I like in-depth mechanics, strategy, and a good challenge.

On to GW2. I picked this game up because my friends raved about it, and after reading the stunning reviews, I went ahead and took the plunge and bought the game. I played World of Warcraft a long time ago and thought that was a decently challenging game. But right now I have a level 9 sylvari and all I can say is this game is INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY EASY and BORING!

I am “completely” floored by how easy it is to “kill stuff”. I don’t even need to use 2, 3, or 4, all I do is walk up to stuff (that is my level or higher) and kill in 6 or less hits with auto-attack. Am I missing something here? I haven’t bought anything from the stores. Does the game get harder as you go along? Does the PvE get any better than this? My experience feels way different than everyone else, and I’m wondering if I’m doing it wrong. What exactly makes this game so great to stand out amongst the other MMO’s on the market? Maybe it isn’t for me, but judging by the reviews there’s got to be some hidden substance.

Thanks for the help.

It’s the “new player experience” they ruined the early game because they thought people were quitting over the game being “too hard” or “too confusing”. Basically Arenanet thought its players were not smart enough to figure out the game. Thanks for the vote of confidence, Arenanet!

the whisper means only 1 person can potentially be harassed every 30s. Map chat would mean a gold spam in map chat every 30s.

BR’s incoming, prepare for the HUE’s, gib moni, and i report u

Biohazard.7523:

If Player A is on Player B’s friends list, but Player B isn’t on Player A’s friends list, how does that interaction work out?

That interaction should not be in place. Change the system. If player A didnt accept friend request Player B wont be on his friend list.

Problem solved.
Now it would be cool to fix restrictions on chat and mail. So people can exchange things and talk.

The follower list isn’t necessarily a bad thing by itself. Sometimes you might follow a GW2 player who you know does streams and you’d like to know when they’re online and maybe streaming on twitch from inside the game, or people follow dulfy because of her site and I know I’ve whispered dulfy about something on the site either to ask a question or something about something on her site before, also a lot of people follow devs that they see in game.

You can’t expect these people who probably have hundreds if not thousands of followers on their followers list to make each and every one a friend, but it is nice to know when those people are on from your end at least if you want to send them a question or hey, maybe a compliment about something they did.

Branden Gee.2150:

So, essentially what you are asking for is a way to have options like “Receive Whispers”:

• From All
• From Friends and Guild Members
• From Friends
• None

This seems like a reasonable feature request.
If Player A is on Player B’s friends list, but Player B isn’t on Player A’s friends list, how does that interaction work out?

Would this also extend out to things like mail?

(Please note this does not mean that this will happen, won’t happen, is planned to happen, and or not planned to happen)

Simple if they’re not actually on the friends list (IE they are a follower on one list) then they’re not counted as a friend when it comes to whispers. If they were actually both friends of each other they’d both be on each other’s friends list.

Ranael.6423:

Uriel.6310:

Im not sure how to feel about this F2P business… the first thing that comes to mind is League of Legends.

Dont get me wrong, its a great game.. but their community of players has to be the worst I have ever seen in online gaming.. Its straight toxic and they have not figured out a way to fix it.

Now Arenanet would like to go the same route? Lol.. man SPVP will be the new grounds for trolls especially with the introduction of leagues. If this goes through we can kiss our good little community goodbye.

I’m sure that this is not what you mean but I don’t see why there should be a correlation between how nice is a community and the amount of money people spent. Such thought could then be derived to say that CE buyers are nicer within the community while the 10 € players are some toxic newbies…. again not saying you said that but just that this would be an easy way to take.

More specifically for League, my experience was the higher rank you were the less toxic people were, even if all players were still F2P. On the other hand I played some PvP game on GW2 were some players were at least as toxic… so no correlation again.
I think the comunity is what the players and the game make it to be. This game and the previous one always had nice people playing for the fun, taking time to dress their barbie, exploring landscape, organising crazy events… there is no reason why more players arriving would end that.

It’s not how much money they spend.. it’s that they’re willing to pay money for the game in the first place meaning they’re actually interested in playing the game and are motivated to be a part of the game and its community rather than just being obnoxious because who cares if you get banned on a F2P account with no money spent on it.

Even a $10 barrier deters the lion’s share of trolls and internet hobos.

CandyHearts.6025:

Is it too much to say “in b4 gib moni plez” ?

Roses are Red
Violets are Blue
Gib moni pls
or I report u
HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE

Sylum.1806:

Devildoc.6721:

mrstealth.6701:

Devildoc.6721:

Once the F2P floodgates open you will see the quality of players from those countries who can’t even afford to pay $10. They don’t speak English, they’re extremely rude players that harass people because they feel their country should ‘take over’ the server.

As much as I’d like to just dismiss claims like this as stereotyping…I can’t. Because I’ve seen it happen in other games. It’s, of course, not all of the players from these countries. But there can be a large number of them, as well as English-speakers that are just as disruptive.

I don’t recall seeing a lot of that in Tera when I played for a while earlier this year. Though, chats were still rather bad at times(worse than anything I’ve seen in GW2). So it does seem that phenomenon can be one that doesn’t last. But it certainly does happen to at least some games that make a F2P move.

It was really bad when TERA first went F2P. I picked up the game for $10 the week before it went F2P just to check it out, that first week, it wasn’t all that bad. But THE DAY it went F2P it became flooded with BR’s, flooding chat, harassing anyone speaking in a language other than Portuguese, sending you whispers about how this was “their server now” and you’d find gangs of people with brazilian flags as their guild logo running around kill stealing from anyone NOT using a Brazilian flag guild or with .Br in their name, or all flagging and gang pk’ing people (until level capped non BR’s came by and slaughtered them all (and then they got harassed in tells)). It was a terrible community and made me uninstall. I recently reinstalled and am playing again on a different server and it’s not quite as bad so you might be right about it not being a lasting deterioration of community.

But I for one dread that first month or so of F2P players.

As someone who played only Free-to-play MMOs before GW2, and as someone who works for a Free-to-play MMO developer/publisher, I can safely say:

1. Putting an entry barrier to an MMO such as an upfront payment before one can play the game, does not eliminate jerks from the game. Some of them can still afford it.

2. Jerks transcend nationality. They come from everywhere.

3. Putting an entry barrier to an MMO greatly reduces the number of jerks and nasty behavior. Exactly why, I’m not sure. Most jerks are cheapskates? Most jerks are just broke? I don’t know. But with my very small sample size of experiencing 1 non-F2P MMO (GW2) vs. all the other MMOs I’ve played, I can confidently say, the GW2 community is the most civilized, helpful, cerebral, and least self-entitled I’ve ever come across.

Which is why I’m still playing this game since launch.

But I can see great value in the F2P demographic. They just need to be channeled to the game in a right (smart?) way. Only way I can see them being a beneficial presence instead of a disruptive one, is limiting them purely to Heart of the Mists, with no access to Map Chat, Whisper Chat, Mail, and Trading Post.

That way, GW2 gets the potential esports competitive population it needs, and keeps the jerks away from the paying crowd and where they need to coordinate and socialize the most.

Well my experience comes from subscription games that never go F2P/B2P (WoW, though there are all kinds there just because it’s the biggest population period it’s a very mixed community, some good, some bad), subscription games that went F2P (LotRO, SWTOR, TERA, AoC) where the community flooded with obnoxious players the very day it went F2P and especially ones that don’t speak English, a game that was subscription that went B2P (ESO) which did NOT get flooded with obnoxious players after it changed business model, it got a bump in active players but they’ve been the same quality as those who were playing when subbed. Sure there’s some jerks but chat is still in English and the jerks are the exception to the rule rather than the norm, and then GW1 and GW2 which (as of right now) have been B2P from the start and have had communities of good quality players who are invested into the game, jerks are the exception not the norm.

I mean it’s no peer reviewed study, but from my experience the initial paywall does filter out most of the undesirable players…. and keeps chat in English on NA servers.

mrstealth.6701:

Devildoc.6721:

Once the F2P floodgates open you will see the quality of players from those countries who can’t even afford to pay $10. They don’t speak English, they’re extremely rude players that harass people because they feel their country should ‘take over’ the server.

As much as I’d like to just dismiss claims like this as stereotyping…I can’t. Because I’ve seen it happen in other games. It’s, of course, not all of the players from these countries. But there can be a large number of them, as well as English-speakers that are just as disruptive.

I don’t recall seeing a lot of that in Tera when I played for a while earlier this year. Though, chats were still rather bad at times(worse than anything I’ve seen in GW2). So it does seem that phenomenon can be one that doesn’t last. But it certainly does happen to at least some games that make a F2P move.

It was really bad when TERA first went F2P. I picked up the game for $10 the week before it went F2P just to check it out, that first week, it wasn’t all that bad. But THE DAY it went F2P it became flooded with BR’s, flooding chat, harassing anyone speaking in a language other than Portuguese, sending you whispers about how this was “their server now” and you’d find gangs of people with brazilian flags as their guild logo running around kill stealing from anyone NOT using a Brazilian flag guild or with .Br in their name, or all flagging and gang pk’ing people (until level capped non BR’s came by and slaughtered them all (and then they got harassed in tells)). It was a terrible community and made me uninstall. I recently reinstalled and am playing again on a different server and it’s not quite as bad so you might be right about it not being a lasting deterioration of community.

But I for one dread that first month or so of F2P players.

shadow.6174:

Devildoc.6721:

shadow.6174:

Devildoc.6721:

The price tag is the reason why channels aren’t a mess of Cyrillic and Portuguese though.

Huh? What’s your point?

In subscription games and B2P games the only Brazilians and Russians who play are those who can afford to, and are generally better behaved and speak English.

Once the F2P floodgates open you will see the quality of players from those countries who can’t even afford to pay $10. They don’t speak English, they’re extremely rude players that harass people because they feel their country should ‘take over’ the server.

When LotRO closed its Russian server and they migrated to a North American server they announced they were taking over the server and started harassing people and kill stealing and flooding world chat with Cyrillic and the only times they ever spoke English was to insult the US.

same thing happened in TERA the DAY it went F2P.

Meanwhile TESO went B2P and chat in that game is still English.

F2P opens the doors for the worst grade of players. if they can’t even afford $10, they will never invest in the game and will therefore have 0 motivation to behave.

Thankfully there’s no kill stealing in GW2, so hopefully the F2P accounts will have extreme chat restrictions, only able to whisper those who whisper them first, not able to use map chat. That’ll at least mitigate the worst consequences of taking in the hobos of the internet.

Well, I tend to agree and after that I even feel ashamed to tell I’m brazilian, hence my question. But yes, I know the bad name that some players from my country have caused us to get and I see your point. Honestly, I play GW2 in an European server and at times I feel glad to not see those type of ppl from my country around there, hehe :P Also, rest assured I’m not like those and I don’t even support that type of behavior either.

Yeah, I don’t mean to judge the entire country, just .. the caliber of people who tend to flock to F2P MMO’s from them.. those who can pay into a game, I’ve had in guilds with me and we’ve gotten along fine. I got a Russian in my guild in GW2 and he’s a pretty chill dude. I suppose it’s just broke people in general that tend to be really bad to have in MMO’s because they have no investment in the game and have no qualms about misbehaving since they’ll just create another free account.

It’s just more noticeable when those players are speaking a different language to boot.

shadow.6174:

Devildoc.6721:

The price tag is the reason why channels aren’t a mess of Cyrillic and Portuguese though.

Huh? What’s your point?

In subscription games and B2P games the only Brazilians and Russians who play are those who can afford to, and are generally better behaved and speak English.

Once the F2P floodgates open you will see the quality of players from those countries who can’t even afford to pay $10. They don’t speak English, they’re extremely rude players that harass people because they feel their country should ‘take over’ the server.

When LotRO closed its Russian server and they migrated to a North American server they announced they were taking over the server and started harassing people and kill stealing and flooding world chat with Cyrillic and the only times they ever spoke English was to insult the US.

same thing happened in TERA the DAY it went F2P.

Meanwhile TESO went B2P and chat in that game is still English.

F2P opens the doors for the worst grade of players. if they can’t even afford $10, they will never invest in the game and will therefore have 0 motivation to behave.

Thankfully there’s no kill stealing in GW2, so hopefully the F2P accounts will have extreme chat restrictions, only able to whisper those who whisper them first, not able to use map chat. That’ll at least mitigate the worst consequences of taking in the hobos of the internet.

Orangensaft.7139:

that sucks :/

especially since they wrote:
“Previously purchased boosters will still work. "

and you even invested MORE money to convert them to the enchanted reward boosters… and now you lost them

i never converted any Karma boosters myself
because they needed TWO Karma boosters for ONE enchanted reward one…
would have been kind of stupid to delete 50% of my karma boosters… xD
so it was a bit stupid of you too in the first place to convert the karma boosters :P

still not fair from anet to remove the option to chose Karma Boosters now

Same here. I never converted Karma boosters because of that stupid 2:1 ratio.

Agent Noun.7350:

gavyne.6847:

Games breed toxic communities. A lot of the games you see with toxic communities aren’t due to those games being F2P, but because of certain aspects of the games where they pit players against each other. WoW for an example, for the longest time subscription game, had damage meters. On raids & dungeons if you didn’t do top tier damage or top tier heals, you were laughed at and harassed. That’s just one example where toxic communities were bred from what the game allowed rather than whether a game is F2P or not.

And if people don’t think there are toxic segments of the GW2 community, you need to either open your eyes more or play different game modes. There’s plenty of that to go around in GW2.

Also note that the way GW2 is designed, players are not playing against each other for loot in PvE. This alleviates a lot of the issues that creates a toxic environment. You see this in other MMO’s. GW2’s PvE is designed so everybody’s rewarded for participation. If you didn’t get something, you get angry at the game rather than at other players.

I think F2P will work fine in GW2. You’ll get bad apples for sure, but overall with this game 3 years old, they deserve props for wanting to grow the game rather than let it sit stale and dwindle in player population. You simply can’t rely on vet playerbase forever, people leave. F2P is a good way to bring new blood into the game.

This is what I was trying to argue above but you did it better.

Basically, listen to this post. If GW2 does have an especially great community, I guarantee the game’s price tag is not the reason for it.

The price tag is the reason why channels aren’t a mess of Cyrillic and Portuguese though.