Guild Wars 2

bhagwad.4281:

I’m like a donkey. I need a carrot in front of me to make me do anything.

Aren’t human beings superior to donkeys? I think Liadri was made for human beings, so…

Bovinity.8610:

Always thought that hard work and perseverance will pay off. But not now…

Not to be a jerk, but the idea that “Time Spent” somehow equals – or should be a substitute for – aptitude is an annoyingly common thought process both in gaming and in real life.

I couldn’t agree more. The opening post feels like someone saying, “By playing 18 hours per day every day I can get every reward in this game even if I’m a very bad player, but now I can’t get this miniature unless I’m a skilled player, that’s not fair!”.

This kind of thing is exactly what Guild Wars 2 needs. Finally, we get “skill > time spent” content and rewards. I wish Legendaries were like that, so they would be less of a sign of “who has less of a life outside GW2” and more a sign of “who’s skilled at GW2”.

I haven’t beaten Liadri, I think I won’t even get to her – Chompers kills my guardian before I can kill it. But it doesn’t bother me – I know it’s content that rewards skill, and more skilled players than me can get it, so it’s fine. Having reached where I have reached is enough for me.

Vayne.8563:

You have no evidence of most people believing anything.

Then I guess you can’t say…

Vayne.8563:

Most people are playing the game and having fun.

…Since you have no evidence of most people doing anything.

Essence Snow.3194:

I don’t like players farming, thus they effect me?

They do, but more indirectly than that.

We have farmers directly influencing people in Queensdale, for example, but that’s the exception rather than the rule. We have the entire negative economic impact of farmers, although they are never going to admit how they make the economy worse for everyone else.

However, the real issue is in how they change the direction of the game. ArenaNet has likely realized that more players want to farm than to play in Dynamic Events. What is the company going to do, then? Put events in the sidelines, and add more and more ways to farm. For those who wanted other kinds of content, instead of farming, this makes the game worse (than what it could have been).

Redfeather.6401:

Erasculio, I think you meant CORPG like GW1. A small typing oversight. XD
But we have to admit that GW1 had farmers too. Lots of solo farm builds in that game.

P.S. I haven’t seen your name in ages. Not since my gwonline/guru days. :O

Lies!!!!!!!

Thanks, I fixed it. I post here a lot, actually, but you haven’t been missing much :-P

Celtus.8456:

Farmers take the fun out of Mmorpgs

Farmers are pretty much all the players of MMORPGs. If you are not one, you are a small minority that borders on insignificance.

GW2 would have been a better game if ArenaNet had claimed it wasn’t a MMORPG, rather something else (maybe a CORPG, like GW1). Alas, now it’s too late. Instead of players, ArenaNet got farmers. They can’t remove farmers without angering most of their playerbase.

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

And you know, if other people felt I was wrong, you can bet your bottom dollar there’d be a flood of people disagreeing with me. So far, it’s pretty much you.

You can count most the posters in this thread as part of that flood, not just him.

Yep. I think most people have realized that Vayne’s two points are wrong:

1. In the Manifesto, ArenaNet was talking about all grind, not just level grind. We have proved that already.

2. GW2 is rather grindy now. This one is easy to prove as well.

With those points having been stated and not replied to with convincing evidence, all that is left is repeating the same points over and over. Which is, too, rather grindy.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

So.. this area is exclusive to people who are willing to pay 300 gems every 2 weeks? While LA has the same content for free!? I.. just.. WHAT?

Why?

Because if ArenaNet offered a new area with some unique functionality exclusively through the Gem Store, people would complain until they became blue.

It’s better that ArenaNet sells more of what we have through the Gem Store, than for them to lock content behind real money payments.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

My work firewall prevents me from watching the videos, so I relied on the trust of a total stranger from telling me the contents!

The video in question is old… IGN has the bad habit of using old videos of a game to illustrate articles about it. That’s easy to see in how the video you quoted mentioned the Bazaar of the Four Winds as an incoming update.

Gunnox.5910:

Tl:DR I think that giving all events some sort of reward in the same manner of champion rewards would massively increase the interest and fun of doing all events players find rather than ignoring them.

I don’t think that would really work.

If you increased the reward for events, people would just flock to where they can find the best “reward:time spent ratio” and ignore everything else. We are not seeing that right now because the Champion update is new, so people aren’t exactly sure of what’s the best place to farm them. But once that’s found, people will farm Champions there and ignore the other areas of the game.

I think Dynamic Events weren’t made for players who are focused on rewards above everything else. I think they were made for players who are focused on fun above rewards, with the goal of providing fun content as a player adventures through Tyria.

Unfortunatelly, those players appear to be the minority, so events are either farmed (see Queensdale) or ignored.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Sorry, but this deserves it’s own thread. So it’s been said that there’s “probability of a new race or profession is high and so are the currently unreachable lands of the original Guild Wars”.

Uh… Collin mentioned on Reddit today:

You won’t be seeing a new region this year. This is however an example of living world content as discussed in the blog post in July that has a wider affect on the world, and more permanent impact as well.

So no “currently unreachable lands of the original Guild Wars” this year. Where did you read that? Feels like second to third hand information.

Colin mentioned on Reddit:

You won’t be seeing a new region this year. This is however an example of living world content as discussed in the blog post in July that has a wider affect on the world, and more permanent impact as well.

Dat mining suggests interesting things.

I think condition damage scales more or less like Power – as in, an increase in X points of condition damage will increase the damage of conditions by Y%, just like an increase in X points of Power would increase direct damage by Y%. In that aspect, I think the issue of condition damage is more a matter of design than just a matter of scalling.

silvermember.8941:

This is also why they are not working on an expansion I think. Given how their original plan of making a fun game with DE to do did not work out, they are still trying to find their bearings for things that WILL work out in the real world. Which is why the rewards currently suck because they thought people played MMORPG for the fun and not for the loot.

To the masses that play an MMORPG content is loot. Content is nothing more than a vehicle to get more loot, which is why I other parts of the world (Crystal desert and Elona) when from being a sure thing at release to uncertain status. No point making content when players ONLY seem to want rewards and the content will go unused. Open world content is simply exist for leveling. Ultimately, loot is all that matter to the majority of MMORPG players, sadly.

Hah, I never agree with you, but I have just made a new topic to say basically the same thing. I think the dynamic events have failed, because most players don’t care about that kind of content; they just want loot.

So, ArenaNet has told us that it appears players aren’t that interested in dynamic events, and ArenaNet has not been that interested in giving us events in the last updates either. What else do we know?

People used to farm the dynamic events in Orr a lot. ArenaNet has mentioned how a lot of people used to farm Fractals.The Southsun second update was basically a farming update, considering the huge Magic Find there, and there were a lot of people farming there. We know a lot of people used to farm CoF1. Now, the Crown Pavillion is pretty much the opposite of the open world – a closed space with static enemies that respawn quickly, with a few bosses here and there. Yet there are zergs farming there the entire day, powered by more Magic Find buffs.

That’s what we know.

Now, I’ll guess. I think ArenaNet has the numbers to realize that the great majority of players don’t care about fun or interesting Dynamic Events. I think ArenaNet has realized that the great majority of players wants to farm. And I think ArenaNet has realized that there is no point in all the work required for building interesting and fun Dynamic Events, when it’s much easier to just build more farming grounds, which are more popular than the events anyway.

In fact, I think this is one of the reason why ArenaNet has given up on expansions. People would expect that an expansion would bring us more areas like the ones we had at release – with Vistas, PoIs, and with lots and lots of events. But ArenaNet knows building those would basically a waste of time, so why bother with expansions?

I think ArenaNet’s main mistake was in making Guild Wars 2 a MMORPG. The players they got are MMORPG players – who want to farm, not to have fun. All that talk about having interesting and unique dynamic events that would change the world? ArenaNet has likely given up by now. That’s not what their players want, so why bother?

We have a small dynamic events chain in Wayfarer Foothills that tells a story: a Norn arrives at his home hurt from a fight against the nearby Grawls (who, as mentioned in another event, have been turned by Jormag). He crashes on the bed, while his wife takes care of him. His son, meanwhile, figures out that the Grawl will follow his father and attack his home, so he goes collect armor scraps to make soldier snow men and so trick the Grawl into thinking that there’s an army protecting the kid’s house. The Grawl almost fall for it, but a shaman realizes the truth and uses Jormag’s power to animate the statues into hostile ice elementals. After we take care of them, the Grawls flee, the kid’s father awakens, and congratulates his son for being bledded both by Raven and by Wolf.

There’s another event in the same map about a Norn bothered by the Grawl attacks. This is a small chain with multiple steps and a short story: the Norn decides to build a statue of himself, knowing that the Grawl would begin worshipping it and thus worshipp the Norn, leaving them alone. We have first to help the Norn in finding a good place for his statue, then help him collect enough ice (by killing ice elementals), and then protect him as he builds his statue. As a result, the Grawl cave gains a new Norn statue and the Grawl in the area become friendly, even making a new merchant available.

In Queensdale, we have an event about bandits trying to poison Shaemoor’s water supply. If the event succeeds, things remains the same. If the event fails, though, the villagers all the way back to the exit from Divinity’s Reach will begin looking sick, they will complain about the water being poisoned, and the pumping station itself will be filled with new ooze enemies that we have to kill in order to purify the water.

Those are a few examples of, IMO, the best of what Dynamic Events may offer: they tell a small story, they have some impact on the world, they have consequences if they fail, and they are unique.

I think ArenaNet regrets having those events. I think they regret the entire Dynamic Events system.

Making the good, interesting and fun events is difficult. They have to create a story that can be told within the confines of what an event can offer, they need voice actors for the characters (since all the dialogue for events is voiced), they need to think of fun gameplay elements to match the story, they need to think of how would the event scale if more players joined, they need to think how the world would change if the event succeeds, how the world would change if the event fails, how players could fix whatever happened, and a nice closure to the story told through the event.

Meanwhile, do players care about those things at all? We know a lot of players would do the Dynamic Events in Orr, despite how most of those are very bland (minimal impact on the world, they never tell a story, and so on; the only exceptions are the Temple meta events and the attack on Arah). We know players actually flocked to Orr mostly because they wanted to farm, not because of the quality of the events there.

What else do we know? We know this:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

We are listening. Not only to what you’re saying but also to what you’re not. The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare. Granted, Halloween may have stolen the show. But those events are still in the game today. I’ve seen very little reaction to them, however, positive or negative.

We know ArenaNet has tools to see how many players are playing a given piece of content. We also know that the Living Story has introduced very few unique Dynamic Events:

• The second Southsun update had basically “kill this guy” events (the Instigator ones, that were repeated twice within the same area), with no backstory (who were those guys? What happened to them?), no fail condition, and no impact on the world. The “capture the camps” events were sligthly better, but the Karka Queen event is just a fight against a big Karka Champion.

• Bash the Dragon had no events.

• The Aetherblade update had no events.

• The Zephyr Sanctum had just the “kill random veteran” events.

• Cutthroat Politics had no events.

• The Queen’s update has basically the “protect dignataries until they reach the baloons” events, that are repeated through most of the world, and the fights against legendary enemies in the Pavillion, that can hardly be called events at all.

SpeedFiend.4521:

Why does a (completely intended) part of the game need to be nerfed just because of what you want?

Actually, not having this kind of thing was stated to be one of the reasons behind the level downscalling system – so high level characters wouldn’t be able to go to low level zones and stomp through events so easily that those of the proper level would be unable to participate.

Looks like the system failed.

Vayne.8563:

Again, the manifesto was talking about grinding to level. That’s it. That’s what grinding used to mean. It didn’t mean grinding for gear or tickets.

Vayne.8563:

They’re not talking about gear at all. That’s a reward based mentality that Anet has never shared.

For those just tunning in, proof that Vayne is wrong: in the Guild Wars 2 Design Manifesto, the blog entry made to clarify the Manifesto video, ArenaNet mentions: “Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward”. Thus, the Manifesto wasn’t talking about grinding for levels (which is easy to see, it doesn’t mention levels anywhere), rather about grinding for fun rewards (hence the “fun stuff”); and Vayne’s comment about ArenaNet not talking about rewards is rather obviously wrong, considering the ArenaNet quote is specifically about rewards (and grinding for them).

I’m attaching to this post a screenshot I took earlier today, in a fight against Kuraii, with the option to reduce particle effects in combat.

You can barely see anything. My character is invisible. The bosses’ animations are not visible among all that light. Red circles are only visible from range.

Now, other than the visibility concerns, we have the fights themselves. They are mostly zergs, allowing people to just auto-attack and, if they are attacking from range, take a few steps to the side every once in a while. Even with the “anti-zerg” mechanics in the Crown Pavilion, players can still zerg the Legendary enemies there easily. Many of the big fights in dynamic events barely require the players to move at all – see the Shatterer, for example.

I don’t think this is due to the lack of a holy trinity. I think this is due to how large scale combat simply doesn’t work in Guild Wars 2. The game has been balanced around sPvP, with even the UI favoring a small group of players fighting against another small group of players. Add more than that, and the particle effects severely hurt visibility even after the update that would theorically have solved this issue. Take the context of an open world, and we have bosses impossible to balance – how to make a boss that would be challenging to 8 players and properly scale it to be challenging against 40 players, while keeping the same mechanics?

I believe proper large scale combat with an unknown large number of players against a single PvE enemy with buffed stats is not viable. I don’t believe ArenaNet can actually balance such thing while keeping it both challenging and fun. IMO, they should change the dynamic events that currently rely on said model so they would force players to split and do different objectives simultaneously, instead of making bosses we can hardly see.

mtpelion.4562:

Sometimes a mechanical clockwork robot in a video game is just a mechanical clockwork robot in a video game.

I agree.

IMO, I don’t see the robots as being naked. They are not made of flesh; they don’t have anything to hide. If they did have clothes just for the sake of covering some body parts, it would have been nonsensical – it would be claiming they really were women, not machines.

Fiontar.4695:

I don’t know what the truth of it is. Is it that the Live team tramples on the soul of the game out of ignorance? Or, is it resentment that the game rejected the established MMO design tropes and paradigm that drives those now at the helm to undo the hard fought gains of those who were able to think outside the box? Are there people at the top who still care for and defend the game’s core principles, or have they gone elsewhere or just given up on constantly fighting their unenlightened co-workers?

I couldn’t agree more with what Fiontar and the others have said. I applaud them for building such a calm and reasonable discussion about this subject, and I’m happy to see more people who share the same opinion I have – that the greatness of Guild Wars 2 lies on interesting and complex dynamic events in the open world, not on dungeons or in farming grounds.

There’s one thing that worries, me, though. We know ArenaNet can track players, and that they can measure – and see, even – how many players gather in a given map or in a given activity. This means they know how many people do dynamic events, how many people farm, how many people do Fractals, and so on.

What if we, as in those asking for better Dynamic Events, are the minority?

What if the great majority of GW2 players only wants to farm content like the bottom of the Crown Pavilion? What if the great majority doesn’t care about interesting dynamic events, about a rich storyline, or about relatable characters, but would rather farm for more gold and more shinies?

Guild Wars 2 was meant to be a revolution, as far as MMORPGs were concerned. The game wasn’t all that – it was a nice evolution in some aspects, true. But what if the GW2 players, in their majority, aren’t those who bought the game because they wanted something unique, rather those who bought the game because it was the next big MMORPG to be released, without caring about dynamic content at all?

We don’t know what most players do inside the game. ArenaNet does. And if they have learned that what the great majority of people do is farm mindless content over and over… Would it really be reasonable of us to ask them to bother with very elaborate content like new dynamic events chains that would have significant impact on an entire zone? When it would be much easier and much simpler for ArenaNet to just make the farming grounds that their players enjoy so much?

I honestly do not know. It’s possible that all the concerns above are an absurd, that it’s only a minority farming, and that Guild Wars 2 is filled with players who crave interesting and dynamic MMORPG content. But what if the GW2 community is really dominated by farmers and grinders, who don’t anything more than places to farm and shinies to grind for?

infantrydiv.1620:

Ah ok, that makes sense.

Does anyone actually agree with the condition cap/ think it’s a good thing?

It’s great!

…In sPvP.

I think one of the reasons why the condition cap has not been changed is due to how it would require technical changes to a single aspect of the game. sPvP players are already complaining that conditions are too strong as they are right now; increasing the condition cap there would be a very bad move. Increasing the condition cap in WvW also wouldn’t be a good idea, considering the zergs there would literally melt people with conditions in a second.

We have, then, a situation in which ArenaNet would need to make a somewhat difficult technical change due to PvE only, and nothing else. While I’m sure they are working on it, I think it’s comprehensible that it has not been their priority.

I have all HoM skins unlocked. And it honestly wouldn’t bother me if those skins, or something similar, were available to all players. Let people get the skins they like, you would know you got those skins earlier by playing through the original Guild Wars.

About the Fellblade, I actually enjoy the GW1 effect more than the GW2 one. In the original game, the sword didn’t make smoke; it had a very nice pattern in its blade that made it look like shadows were moving over the sword’s surface. The GW2 variant looks rather less interesting (it’s just a smoke effect), and IMO the purple variant is also a missed opportunity. The first time I saw a screenshot, I thought the purple symbols would move through the weapon’s blade, like the text at the banners in the Holdings of Chokhin.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The very first living world team actually did the thing some of you have called for. Some 40 or so permanent events were added around the game in our very first content update. They were met with little interest or fanfare.

Just for the records, I still have no idea which events those were. With a game as big as GW2, just saying “we have added 40 new events somewhere in the game!” isn’t really going to make people say, “OMG those events are so cool!”. Part of the idea behind dynamic events is that often we see events that weren’t active the last time we were in a given area. So, after that update months ago, if I went to a zone and found an event I didn’t remember, I had no way of knowing if it was a new event, or if it was an old event that I simply hadn’t happened to see yet.

I think what many of us are complaining about is the lack of interesting and complex events in the areas highlighted by the Living World updates. The second Southsun update had very poor events – they didn’t really have a story beyond “we’re under attack!”, they didn’t really add any interesting mechanic to the game, and repeating the instigator events twice in the same map wasn’t exactly nice. The Aetherblade update had no events at all. The Zephyr Sanctum update, as cool as it was due to the whole exploration aspect, had no interesting event – just the same idea, “fight Veteran Enemy X”, over and over through the map.

Now, we basically got the “Kill the Champions” events in the Crown Pavilion, and those honestly feel more like an attempt to create farming content than fun content. Who are those enemies? What’s the story behind them? Why can’t they win and fork the event chain so we have to do something other than gang up on a single powerful enemy?

The “older” maps could use more events, sure. I miss interesting events in Orr, and the event density in many of the maps could increase so the current events cycle less often and we have more interesting things to do (for example, one day when exploring the south and west sections of Mount Maelstrom, I found very few events). But this is the kind of thing that wouldn’t be obvious to players, unless ArenaNet specifically pointed it out (“We will make significant changes to Orr, modifying the maps and introducing entire new enemy kinds and dynamic events” – then people would notice). I understand it’s not the kind of thing ArenaNet would do lightly.

The temporary content doesn’t bother me. The slow pace of the main story bothers me a bit (we’re almost one year in it and it’s still introducing the characters; were this a TV series, it would have very, very slow pacing), but it’s ok. Having updates focusing on specific areas at a time is ok, too. But I wish those updates focused more on interesting dynamic events, instead of in achievements or dungeons or farming.

While I don’t think this update is perfect, I would like to thank ArenaNet for finally making an update without any kind of RNG boxes. We have a full new weapon set introduced in this update, with absolutely no need to buy anything on the Gem Store to get the skin, no need to gamble, and with very very little RNG to acquire them in game.

ArenaNet is likely losing a lot of money by not making more skins available only through some kind of RNG box system, as the ones seen on previous update. While I don’t really enjoy the look of the Sovereign weapons, the fact we don’t have to use real money to gamble for them is great.

I agree with those above saying that this kind of fight simply isn’t going to be well designed. I think the combat system in the game doesn’t really allow for a good fight between a massive number of players and a single enemy (without being incredibly creative, and so far ArenaNet isn’t being good at it); we can’t even see what’s happening properly when you get close to the boss… And just attacking from range usually does the job, considering that even if a few dies it’s just the minority of a zerg.

IMO, ArenaNet should give up on this model, and try to think of something new. Maybe using multiple enemies that act as part of a team instead of a single powerful enemy, or an encounter in which players have to split in groups to do multiple tasks at the same time in order to defeat a foe.

I’m ambivalent about the update. There’s a lot of potential, but there’s a lot of bad, too.

The Queen’s Gauntlet, for example. I think it’s great that ArenaNet is playing with combat design in the game. One of the main flaws of PvE is the way it works when fighting against bosses, most of which consist on dodging the ocasional big one hit kill attack while dealing damage to a huge HP sponge. It’s great that ArenaNet is trying to find ways to make encounters more interesting and more unique.

In other hand, guess what is the very first fight we face? One in which we have to dodge the ocasional one hit kill attack… Underwhelming to see the same old, same old as the very first fight. Some of the enemies in there rely too much on stuns and knock downs, with are the cheaper effect among everything the GW2 combat system could have used.

And then there are all the small design flaws. Making it “somewhat” in the open world so people could watch is a hassle – I have absolutely no interest in having people watching me fight, and the way it has been set makes it impossible to predict when is an interesting fight going to happen, in case I wanted to watch someone else (I don’t, for the records). Having to wait in a queu is far worse than having the fights in instanced content, considering how little would be lost with that. And there’s the issue of the camera within the dome – the walls actually hurt visibility and prevent us from looking around the fiel properly. Had this been designed into instanced content using open arena-like environments, this issue wouldn’t be there at all.

The inside of the Crown Pavilion has been a disappointment. It feels a lot like the Southsun update, in that it’s just farming grounds. No interesting event, just people randomly running around trying to farm enemies while under a huge Magic Find buff. The boss battles against the three champions are a huge mess. I honestly believe GW2s combat system doesn’t work well in huge fights like that. Even with the changes to particle effects, I can’t see what’s happening in melee range of those bosses, other than there are a lot of players there; but playing from range is safe, and other than moving away from the ocasional red circle, it’s basically a matter of spamming attacks. If the Queen’s Gauntlet is trying to show us interesting fights, the champion bosses below it show the same old, same old. Isn’t a boss there meant to reflect projectiles or something?

Although, the environmental effects can be interesting. I barely noticed the reduction in endurance regeneration, since most of the time there isn’t even the need to dodge. The effect with the hawks is very amusing, and is a nice way to make people actually care about what exactly their AoEs are hitting, even if it relies too much on dodge (again). And speaking about “again”, the saboteurs spamming knock down bombs are very annoying – again, relying on chained knock downs is a rather poor and simplistic mechanic.

The opening ceremony was interesting, from a lore point of view, and I’m happy that (for once) the dialogue changed based on what our characters had done. But it was a bit underwhelming – I would have expected Queen Jennah to make a speach to the masses, not to stand in the middle of a mostly empty circle. We have very few characters with likeable personalities; Logan definitely doesn’t fit that role, and Rox and Braham aren’t that interesting either, considering how shallow their personalities are. It was great to watch the queen fighting, but c’mon, she should have been more impressive, and used trickery instead of just trying to fight – she’s powerful enough to deceive even an entire army, deceiving a few pirates should have been easy, at least to keep her and Anise hidden while we went to help Rox. And, for the records, when I was told to defend the Charr, no enemy spawned; I didn’t have anything to defend her from.

Despite all that, though, the opening ceremony was still better than the instances for most of the previous Living Story updates, with the exception of the Marjorie content in the Dead End bar.

My biggest disappointment is with the lack of good Dynamic Events. I think that’s Guild Wars 2’s most unique and most promising feature, but they have been poorly implemented in every single update. The events here are as bad as the ones in the Southsun update, just farming spawns with no story and with mindless repetition. Where are the nice event chains that actually tell a story, like the little boy trying to defend his family from the Dredge? Why are the events just “defeat this big champion” over and over, or “run from place X to Y” repeating endlessly?

Xenon.4537:

This statement is a prime example of how useless manifesto threads are. There is no good example of a manifesto discussion, because they are always the same. There’s #TeamManifesto and #TeamAnetLied and neither one of them give two kittens what the other has to say.

Again, that doesn’t really matter. The issue isn’t whether the Manifesto has been shown to be false or not – it has, but I have no idea why Vayne has taken such a keen interest on this.

The more important issue is of why. And if it has been worth it.

Vayne has a much more interesting argument, in which he claims (paraphrasing him a bit) that it’s a pity there is grind in the game, but ArenaNet’s choices were either to add grind or to see their game fail. Using the original Guild Wars as an example of a successful MMORPG without grind can be counter argumented by mentioning how today’s MMORPG landscape is very different from what it was 6 years ago, and how even the GW:EN expansion had a lot of grind.

That, IMO, is a much more nuanced discussion, in which there isn’t really a “right” or a “wrong”. Would GW2 have been as successful as it is if it had been a MMORPG completely without grind, similar to what the original Guild Wars was? Does the fact the “grind” wasn’t for more powerful gear make the current grind acceptable? But, if we assume the gate grind is bad, isn’t doing that grind the same as doing the gear grind, so both would be bad?

I’m not sure if grind isn’t simply accepted for the sake of complacency. Like your comment here:

Xenon.4537:

Ok, yes it was a tool to create hype, you’re absolutely right about that, but backhanding it by saying it’s dishonest is just silly. Point me to any advertizement that is 100% honest.

You are saying that the Manifesto was not honest, when you claim it was an advertizement and that no such thing is 100% honest – ergo, you are claiming the Manifesto is dishonest. But you are willing to accept that since it’s how all advertizements are, even if it’s a bad thing.

Isn’t it more or less the same with grind? I’m not sure people enjoy it, and it’s undeniable that GW2 has grind, but people accept it, often with the reason that no MMORPG is 100% grind free.

Pawstruck.9708:

Do people really think we’re all just making it up? That the people who take “we don’t want you to grind” as being true for this game are just fanboys or work for Arenanet? Is that a joke? Really? If so, I’ll just leave these forums and not come back, because at this point language and conversation are dead. Conversely, it needs to be acknowledged that the people who feel lied-to or cheated have a valid perspective in some ways and make some good points.

I have the feeling that most people (other than Vayne) realize that the game we got isn’t exactly what the Manifesto offered. In your topic, for example, didn’t you mention how ArenaNet had adapted their game to the idea that there are players who are seeking grind, and mentioned you grind a bit yourself?

This topic is a bad example of the discussions about the Manifesto, since it’s mostly Vayne pretending he’s right while ignoring the evidence proving otherwise. But I think the real conflict isn’t whether the Manifesto was right or wrong, rather if the Manifesto should have been right or not – if a GW2 without grind would have been better than what we currently have. Those who seek the grind are happy with it being a part of GW2, so they don’t really care about the Manifesto. Those who wish GW2 had no grind are obviously unhappy with the way the game is, and so they care about how the Manifesto is not true.

Vayne.8563:

So maybe they’re not using grind in the sense you are super imposing over it, but they’re using grind in the more traditional meaning of killing mobs to level (a quote I’ve also posted before but you continue to ignore).

Vayne, you never post links to ArenaNet quotes (unlike myself). The definition of grind you claim to be the “traditional” one has never been mentioned by ArenaNet. In fact, when they talk about grinding for rewards, they made it clear they are not using the definition of grind you claim they would be using.

You can’t reply to the ArenaNet quote about grinding for rewards because that single statement destroys all the dozens of posts you have made about the Manifesto. It’s clear that ArenaNet claimed the game would not have grind, and later changed their minds, while still using the Manifesto as a marketing tool. In other words, they lied.

Pawstruck.9708:

Grinding is not defined as something that you personally find un-fun.

To me, a grind is repeating the same task over and over because I have to in order to progress.

(…)

Dungeons can be grinded for tokens for sets of armor/weapons

Do you notice the contradiction in your own post? If grinding is doing repetitive content you need to do in order to progress, why did you say dungeons could be grinded for tokens, if tokens are not needed to progress in anything?

Vayne.8563:

Erasculio.2914:

Open world dueling is an horrible idea that I hope never gets implemented in the game.

And we already have topics about this.

Holy crap. I agree with you! lol

We actually agree in a lot of things; I don’t bother to post in all those topics asking GW2 to be more like classic MMORPGs because you already say what I would have said.

But it’s more fun to argue than to quote and say “I agree”, so… :-P

Vayne.8563:

Now, Anet, they put something like the Shadow Behemoth in a starter zone. Why? To give you the fun stuff right away. And that really is what they’re talking about. How do I know.

Because Colin said so in interviews about the manifesto after that.

See, that’s how you prove to us that you are wrong.

First, let me point the irony in your earlier statement:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve said that English is English and the English is clear. There’s no mention of the word gear at all. None. Zero. There’s no mention of vertical progress at all. None. Zero.

Let’s see, how many mentions does the Manifesto have of starting zones? None. Zero. How many times does it mention the Shadow Behemoth? None. Zero.

Ergo, your argument was wrong. The fact the Manifesto does not directly mention the word “gear” or “vertical progress” is irrelevant – it also does not directly mention what you think it’s talking about.

Second, let’s look at your second statement. You claim you know what Colin was talking about since it was mentioned in interviews after the Manifesto was created. However, when asked to provide links to those interviews, you fail to do so.

Meanwhile, what did ArenaNet say together with the Manifesto? I’m sure you remember this link. Unlike your own link, it’s from the ArenaNet blog, and not a bunch of forumers talking about what they thought they had understood. And unlike your claims that “grind to get the fun stuff” would specifically be talking about activities, it mentions…

ArenaNet

Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward.

…And guess what are rewards in GW2? Hint: it’s not fighting against the Shadow Behemoth.

In fact, in the link above (which, again, unlike anything you have provided, is actually ArenaNet itself talking about the Manifesto), the only other mention to the concept of grind is…

ArenaNet

Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill

…So, considering we have both mentions of a “grinding treadmill” and “grinding for a future fun reward”, it’s rather obvious that the concept of grind is being used to talk about things that are rewards and that could be a treadmill. Have you ever heard of the concept of gear treadmill? Or about the idea that gear is a reward?

Now, have you ever heard of a Shadow Behemoth treadmill? No? I wonder why.

In less words, your interpretation of the Manifesto is wrong.

And even ignoring all of that, even if I didn’t have all those links, and even if you actually did have anything at all from ArenaNet… It’s easy to show how you are wrong. You claim that the Manifesto is talking about grind to level up and reach “end game” content, that is usually locked behind some kind of progression gate in other MMOPRGs; and that said grind would be bad, but gear grind would be perfectly fine.

And that’s wrong.

The Manifesto says, “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun”. What do people do to grind levels, in other MMOs? They kill the same monsters over and over, repetitively and mindlessly (“I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again” – sounds familiar?). What do people do to grind gear, in other MMOs, and in GW2? You can go watch it in the Crown Pavilion right now, but let me describe it for you: they kill the same monsters over and over, repetitively and mindlessly (“I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again”).

Now, and this is obvious, if grinding enemies to level up (and reach the fun content) is something no one enjoys and no one finds fun… Doing the exact same thing, grinding enemies in the same way, but to get gear (and thus reach the fun rewards) is not something people would enjoy, or something people would find fun.

Ergo, in two different ways, the Manifesto shows how you are wrong. The clarification from ArenaNet shows you are wrong. And what do you have in your defense…? An old forum topic? Riiiiiight.

No more excuses, Vayne. The Manifesto is a lie. It’s time you accept it.

Ylarra.8652:

This is a picky point, but it is WAY too big, in my opinion. We don’t need huge pictures. Since we carry it with us all the time, I honestly think it would be better served as a tab below the bags on the inventory pane. This would also make it easier to check while doing other tasks.

You can see it from the inventory. Just hover over the bottom of the inventory and you will see a window showing everything in our wallet, but with small icons.

Open world dueling is an horrible idea that I hope never gets implemented in the game.

And we already have topics about this.

Vayne.8563:

What is mentioned? The grind to get to fun things. That’s what’s mentioned. You can associate any definition you want to anything.

And what do you think those “fun things” are?

Looking at the forum rules, there wasn’t anything forbidding us from discussing things found in the .dat file. Since this kind of thing is often discussed in the Living World subforums…

The Guild Wars 2 .dat file often is updated with incoming changes and features far earlier than those changes are actually implemented in the game. This has led people with enough technical expertise to mine the .dat file, searching for information on future updates.

Now, not all information there is reliable. Often something is never implemented, or the description doesn’t really match what the feature really is, or the process of mining the file simply got bad information.

In other words, caveat lector.

The latest dat mining can be seen here. What stands out are the changes to the transmutation system, allowing players to do many different things with their items. My favourite is this one:

Customize your Stats!
Change the stats combination once on a particular piece of equipment. Item will become soulbound. Combination choices are limited by item type, level, and rarity.

Now, we don’t know what exactly that is. It may simply be the feature that will allow people to change the stats of Legendaries. Or, it may be a new consumable sold in the Gem Store allowing people to switch stats of their items around.

IMO, this is a great idea. Considering the focus on making items time consuming to acquire (see Ascended gear), having the flexibility of being able to change builds without having to waste the existing gear is great. Even if it’s something sold in the Gem Store, it would be better than having nothing like that at all.

Dante.1508:

but i’m very careful what i pre order now, and i do not give videos like the manifesto video any credence anymore, as they are mostly lies and twisted words to make companies money obviously

Indeed.

Vayne.8563:

Somehow, I don’t see that as an issue here, since double posting isn’t against forum rules on this forum and I don’t subscribe to your definition of polite.

It’s your choice, considering how it has been mentioned a few times in this topic alone how making multiple posts like that hurts your credibility.

Beast Sos.1457:

Many times long after that Meanifesto quote, which im not going to look for atm since i dont know the exact sources

The link is in my signature.

Beast Sos.1457:

Anet stated that they added ways for players who like to grind and show off their effort

Yep, they did. Their Manifesto was eventually shown to be a lie, when ArenaNet got afraid that players of classic MMOs wouldn’t play GW2 if it didn’t reward grind.

It still doesn’t change ArenaNet’s statement about grind – how even they know it’s not fun. “Effort”, “dedication” and etc are just ways to say someone has a lot of free time and is willing to waste it without even having fun, but it’s not something that deserves a reward (quite the opposite). The rewards in the game should be for skill, not for time spent.

Cicatrix.6149:

The loots bags are actually pretty good. Where is everyone?

Inside the arena in Divinity’s Reach.

I did, too. I thought it would be only on the first time logging with a given character, due to the wallet, but it’s still there.

Vayne.8563:

And other stuff that was said during discussions after the manifesto support this as well.

Not really.

We already linked the written Manifesto, which mentions how your (completely out of thin air) interpretation of the word “grind” is wrong.

You are ignoring the blog entries from ArenaNet, while claiming as “evidence” a forum topic, which even you claim to be circunstancial. You cannot provide this “other stuff” that ArenaNet would have said. We can. It shows you are wrong. You are ignoring it because it doesn’t suit you.

The amazing thing is that you expected people wouldn’t call you on it.

Beast Sos.1457:

u r not forced to buy these skins to play the game on the lvl of ppl who have much more time on their hands. Getting these nice skins in gw2 is for the hardcore

Your definition of “hardcore” doesn’t deserve to get nice skins.

As you mentioned, the grind currently in GW2 rewards time spent. It doesn’t reward skill. It’s the worse kind of grind found in MMORPGs, made to keep people playing pay-to-play MMOs for a long time.

But GW2 is not a pay to play MMO. And, if you actually take a look at the Manifesto (see my signature), ArenaNet itself states why that’s a bad design: “We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun”. If grinding isn’t fun, it should not be rewarded.

cesmode.4257:

In most GW2 boss fights, its every man for themselves, dodge for yourself, heal yourself and revive the ocassional downer. Chaotic and self serving until someone goes down.

When fighting Kholer, though, a Guardian applying area Stability can prevent the entire party from having to dodge in order to avoid the boss’ pull. In the Underground Facility Fractal boss, you need to coordinate your party to have pullers and someone pressing the levers, plus having someone to interrupt the heals, and a mesmer with Feedback really helps. Even the CoF1 speed run requires some coordination between players.

The issue, IMO, isn’t that GW2 lacks the Trinity – that’s not needed. The issue is that a lot of the PvE design in the game is poor.

Gabby.3205:

lordkrall.7241:

Oh I know how they could do it technically. But do we really think people would like the idea of them spending months on making new versions of already existing maps rather than working on new maps?

You are right, I can’t speak for everybody. I know I would LOVE it, but that’s just me. It is just that if feels so weird that we helped cleaning Orr, but nothing changed.

I agree, I would love it as well. Let’s be honest, Orr sucks. ArenaNet should completely rework those 3 maps anyway. The restoration of Orr gives them an excuse to do so, while keeping the original as an “underflow” server for those who haven’t done the personal storyline. Not only this would be a real prize for finishing the storyline – 3 more high level maps! – but it would also allow Orr to keep changing with the Living World.

And as far as people being angry for ArenaNet improving old maps… Didn’t even WoW do that, by the time Cataclysm was released?

IndigoSundown.5419:

1. In a lot of fights, the occasion to need skills 2-5 may not come up. This means the player is moving around (hopefully to be to the side or behind the target so as to proc bleeds) with the auto-attack on — and that’s it.

I agree. But I think that’s poor PvE design, not an issue with the combat system. If the AI were smart enough to heal itself once in a while, skill 2 would be useful more often. If the AI actually required a ranged attacker to kitte, skills 3 and 4 would be more useful. If the AI actually had attacks worth interrupting instead of dodging, skill 5 would be useful.

In PvP, the combat system works well. It’s the bad PvE design that prevents gameplay from being as good as it could be.

Galtrix.7369:

I feel like using the 20 skills I had in World of Warcraft was a better combat system than GW2’s combat

Didn’t you claim that WoW had better armor designs than GW2?

And that WoW has a better reward system than GW2?

I think there’s a pattern there somewhere.

Advent Leader.1083:

Nitpick on Era: the new ranger SB has all damage normalized between the attacks – ergo SB3 and SB5 have equal damage as the auto.

I was looking at the wiki… I’m not surprised that the wiki is wrong. Still, auto-attack can inflict bleeding, unlike skills 3 and 5.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ah, but is that really the case? Failure is relative. Sure, they failed to reach subscriber numbers like WoW had in its heyday. So what? While that might be a disappointment, it is not failure.

The reason why those games went free to play isn’t because they failed to get 12 million subscribers; it’s because they failed. EA stated that The Old Republic was a disappointment, in one of their quarterly reports, as the profits from the game were “not good enough”. Square Enix went in details about how much of a failure FF XIV was (and they even stated how another such failure would break them). Not to mention all the MMOs that not only tried to went Free to Play, but eventually closed and led the studio that was publishing them to bankrupt (The Chronicles of Spellborn, Fury, and so on; even the studio behind Amalur had a MMORPG as one of the reasons behind its messy fall).

Big companies continue making MMORPGs because they believe they, and only they, are special – everyone else has had a lot of issues, but the “It won’t ever happen to me!” mentality appears to be stronger. Well, they are wrong. The lesson Titan gives us, considering how Blizzard has moved a lot of its staff to other projects, is that even the mother of WoW is realizing how MMORPGs aren’t the best investiment they could have right now.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

t3 and t4 is impossible to be completed normally, at least for me.

And why do you think that’s a bad thing?

A lot of people have been asking for challenging content. This is a nice way to add challenging content, giving a reward that you can actually get somewhere else as well (the Achievement Points).

Unless you think you need to have every single AP in the game (in which case, OCD much?), having different degrees of challenge for different players is a good thing.

TwoBit.5903:

Skill use is less tactical because of instant casting, instant canceling, balance through cooldowns and most importantly of all the lack of resource management.

I disagree. I think balance around cooldowns allows for interesting skills in which the goal is not to use a skill as often as you have energy, or as soon as the cooldown allows it, but rather when the moment is right. Missing the right opportunity is a waste of resources.

For example, take a look at the ranger shortbow skills:

• Skill 1 is actually the main source of damage there. Everything else is situational utility.

• Skill 2 shoots arrows that poison foes. The damage of the poison itself is relatively small, so just spamming it is bad. But poison has the unique property of reducing all heals a character receive… So proper utilization of skill 2 is right before an enemy is going to heal itself. Using it before or after that is wasting this skill’s most important resource.

• Skill 3 is a dodge that doesn’t require endurance, and it also gives swifness. Using it as an attack is a waste – it does less damage than the auto attack. Which means, the goal of this skill is using it when the time is right – when you want to save endurance but you need a dodge. Using it at any other moment is a waste of resources.

• Skill 4 is a cripple, with the pet inflicting bleeding. DPS-wise, considering the cooldown, this skill does less damage than the auto-attack. But the goal of this skill isn’t to do damage, it’s to provide utility by crippling the enemy. If used in a context in which cripple is worthless, it would prevent the player from using the skill in a moment, few seconds later, in which crippling an enemy would actually be useful.

• Skill 5 is an interrupt. Again, it does less damage than auto-attack, so just spamming it blindly actually does less DPS than just auto-attacking. But the main advantage of the skill is interruptin an enemy’s important ability; if used in the wrong time, the skill could be unavailable when it would actually be interesting to interrupt the foe.

In other words, all those skills have no energy cost, but all of them only show their full potential when they are used at the right moment. The resource management there is not using the skills in the wrong time, so they are available when the time is right to use them.

Nornil.7026:

They clearly did that with the Zenith and Radiant skins.

Uh… Did you honestly believe the reason why the Gem Store purchases are soubound and can only be used once is because ArenaNet didn’t have the technical ability to do otherwise?

Of course ArenaNet could do that. Of course they could, if they wanted, make a system similar to the costume system in the original Guild Wars – you pay once, and then you have as many copies of the skin you want, available to all characters in your account.

They don’t do that because they don’t want to. They are assuming that the way the current skins work would give them a higher profit, by requiring people to buy the same skins multiple times for different characters, or to buy transmutation crystals in order to change which armor players have attached the skins too.

This is one more victim to the monetization of GW2, just like the account-bound dyes and the RNG weapon skins.