Guild Wars 2

This is pretty dodgy, I have to say. Everyone was under the impression that ALL central hub services would be relocated for free. Paywalling it has really not impressed me.

I hope everyone who is similarly not impressed is not complaining about it while buying a ticket. Vote with your wallets, people. If it sells, ethics will be kittened.

Dra Keln.2015:

ITT: People acting like scarlet is the first video game villain to have plot breaking unlimited source of resources.

If Kralkatorik stopped sending the Shatterer to fight us every 3 hours, and just kept the new ones in reserve for a week, he would have 56 dragons, which I’m pretty sure could wreck most of ascalon. Same for Jormag and the Claw. The population of bandits and pirates in the human territory would be enough to completely overflow any city by sheer volume.

Are they plot holes. Sort of. Are they bad writing? No. They’re handwaves done because it makes for better gameplay. Reduce it to the degree that makes sense for you, and call that lore. Is scarlet still a little over the top? Yeah, but not nearly as bad as you people are making her out to be

You’re still confusing game mechanics for writing.

We get multiple shatterers because they are a core boss and they need to repeat themselves so that everyone can play = game mechanic. Without having the shatterer and other similar world bosses recur, not everybody could have a go at them nor could they be part of the cyclical event system.

Scarlet has lots of resources because reasons = bad writing. There are plenty of other ways in which the living world story could have been written that did not require her to be able to pull unreasonable resources out of her behind, even after her alliances have collapsed. I mean, the players destroying key resources could have been part of the plot, maybe forcing her hand in a desperate move . . .

But nope. She’s Scarlet and perfect, therefore it’s all according to plan XP but the alliances still work for her even after we smash them so the impact we’ve had on any of her plans has been zero, unreasonably so.

Also, I hate the “But other villains are just as badly written” excuse. Other bad writing does not justify more bad writing.

Actual RL places, nations, ethnicities, civilisations etc. aren’t copyrightable entities, nor does it apply to ideas, and you’d be hard pressed to copyright a fairly generic assembly of words such as ‘master of whispers’. Copyright only applies to tangible created works.

Greyhound.2058:

What does ‘range Warden 3’ mean? Perhaps not everyone speaks MMO-speak.

I think this is a much bigger factor than people realise. Unless you really immerse yourself in a lot of MMO culture/chat inside and outside the game, potentially across multiple games, too, you won’t get a lot of the slang that is used. Even outside of the slang, assume you turn up to the Marionette with no prior knowledge of the event. You don’t know its structure, you don’t know the enemies involved, you don’t know what is going to happen.

How much sense is ‘range warden 3’ going to make to you without the context you’ll only get by having a go and probably making some mistakes along the way? What does a warden look like? When does it appear? How do I know it’s the third one? Why do I need to range it?

I have a friend who logs on for an hour or two a week. They don’t read the forums, they just hop on and play. At any event like this, I have to translate the MMO-speak for her. At the better and most successful runs of events like this, map chat explains rather than dishing out context-sensitive orders wrapped up in MMO-speak.

Remember

Try FireAlpaca. It’s freeware, and my favourite program for quick sketches and painting. If you haven’t done any digital art before, it’s probably more than enough to get you started. I’m assuming a minimum of drawing skill though . . . digital art software doesn’t do work for you or anything. Art fundamentals still apply.

It bewilders me how many people complaining act as though Anet cave into every loud forum demand. There is massive precedent for them sticking to their guns even in the face of massive community uproar if they believe they’ve done the right thing (see ascended, scarlet etc.), so it’s frankly obvious that the reason they backtracked this time is because they actually agreed with the protests.

Making just one race-exclusive armour set available to all races for cheap via gems is the start of a slippery slope it would be unwise to venture onto. It’s quite clear from their response that they didn’t intend for the flamekissed light armour to look so much like the Tier 3 human cultural. It devalues some of the limited prestige armour in-game for gold, defeats the object of culture-specific armour, and I wouldn’t want to be the one in charge of adapting some of the other race-specific armours for humanoid use, for instance.

They made a mistake. It’s on them, not the people who rightfully complained. And to fix it, they’re refunding gems based apparently on the amount of personal inconvenience caused, AND letting people keep the revised skins, by the look of it.

It sucks that people got attached to the old skin and got burned by it, it really does, and I sympathise, but the people crying fraud and bait and switch really need to take a step back and review this objectively. The light flamekissed armour was not handled the same way as the other two sets in the armour series, and it has now been made consistent with them. This is how it should have been released.

Anet are fixing their mistake and compensating those affected by it. Personally I’d much rather see a company admit mistakes and correct them than keep charging blindly ahead no matter the damage it does. I wish they’d handled other problems with the game in a similar fashion and “listened to the QQers”.

iFruit.6190:

Hello! Expanding on the topic of this thread I would like to ask someone from the devs’ lore designers team to comment why the Sylvari race is generally presented as homosexual!

I astutely believe that every person’s bedroom business is their own, and one should not, in anyway, be humiliated or offended for the fact of having an unconventional orientation. On the other hand, I never understood the necessity to share these very private matters with the whole wide world! What is the motivation behind (goal to) this?

Now I really like the game, the stories, etc. I’d like to explore all charachters, races and storylines but I can’t! I can’t play a Sylvari because most general story arcs imply that characters around me lift each other’s togas! I can’t watch dialogues in Twilight Arbor! I am scared of Trahearne and skip all his dialogue speeches, and for all i know his next Wild Hunt could be after my poor giant Norn’s buttocks!

So is there really any need to put these topics up in a game? Should hetero- or kitten – or dendra- or any other sexual relations influence anyone’s gaming experience, and impede a person’s capability to experience content?

Thank you for answering these rhetorical questions!

That’s funny. I don’t remember any bedroom activity in the sylvari personal story and I’ve played through most of the arcs as they’re my favourite race. I’m curious: could you not play human because of Logan’s “implied” relationship with Jenna? Did you avoid Flame and Frost because Braham is Eir’s son, which “implies” that she had a heterosexual partner at some point? Or do relationships only count as belonging in private when they’re “unconventional”?

What actually happens in the sylvari arcs is this: sylvari are actually pansexual (which means gender is irrelevant to them), so there are some relationships between males and females. There are some between male/male partners. There are some between two females. There are some referenced relationships between sylvari and their deceased partners. None of these, at any point, throw bedroom activity in your face, unless that is the connection you personally make when you think of a romantic relationship.

Character interactions and relationships, whether platonic, romantic, positive, negative, between different genders or different species, do not belong ‘in private’ – they are the storytelling force that makes any invented world, no matter how technically interesting, compelling. They add the human element that makes us care about the people in a world, which is incredibly important if you want us to also care about the enemies threatening them.

I really love them, so it’s a shame they’re locked behind paid RNG, which I refuse to spend money on. Guess I’ll have to wait and hope they trickle through to the TP at a reasonable price, or wait a hundred years for enough tickets :P I think I have 2 scraps right now from lucky free keys.

I think the change is pretty good, all things considered. Of course it was going to be a reskin – the other flamekissed sets were as well. And hey, any more mileage for one of the few revealing light armour sets for male characters gets my vote :P Although I’d prefer new sets to be made to that effect.

I get the feeling Rox will earn her warband membership, decide Braham is a lot more fun (or be wooed by his puppy dog eyes), and go off on adventures with him instead, turning Rytlock down at the last minute. Classic ‘the grass isn’t always greener on the other side’ character arc, potentially!

EDIT: I don’t think an interracial pairing is on the cards, no matter what the fans say xD Platonic relationships can be just as fun, and male/female characters don’t get them that often since romance tends to pop up by default in those dynamics.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Eir, Logan, Braham. Three of the 10 “iconic” NPCs are/were/want to be in a heterosexual relationship.

Caithe, Kasmeer, Marjory. Three of the 10 “iconic” NPCs are/were/want to be in a homosexual relationship.

No indication on whether Zojja, Rytlock, or Rox have, had, or are even interested in relationships (be it one-nighters or something more permanent). Taimi is just a child so, no relationship there but likely to have a crush sooner or later (I wouldn’t use her idolizing of Scarlet, or her teasing with Braham as an indication, personally – not yet at least).

So it seems pretty even across the board for homo/hetero/unknown in orientation when it comes to the iconic figures.

I remember reading a study which was about the viewer perception of the numbers of women in groups, though I can’t find it now which is really irritating me. Anyways, what it came down to was that people tended to overestimate how much of a particular population were women the more there visibly were of them. In situations where you most expect to see men, you don’t pay attention to their gender because they are meeting those subconscious expectations. Throw in a few women, however, and they stand out overwhelmingly because they aren’t the norm.

I think a similar thing is happening here. People aren’t used to seeing homosexual relationships being given the time of day, so when they are, they stand out. They stand out especially in the games industry where hetero is usually the way to go, and the only time you usually see a canon non-hetero relationship is as a custom player choice. It is super, super rare for this stuff to be written casually into the main storyline of a AAA game. So people see one definite plus another potential homosexual relationship in-game, and they pretty much overreact because they’re so standout that suddenly they seem to be focal points when . . . they’re not.

For example, people often home in on the male/male couple you can help in the first sylvari story arc, and conveniently don’t mention the male/female couple whose story you help shape or the female grieving for her male lover if you make different starter choices. All the run of the mill hetero relationships fly under the radar because they’re common and expected. People almost discount them entirely.

Even if Kasmeer and Marjory become a couple, it’s player perception turning that into a big deal more so than the writing or writers’ intent.

Soooo glad you put this on your soundcloud. I love it <3

Have to say I was originally a bit worried when Jeremy Soule stepped away from GW2, but I’ve been consistently impressed with the in-house musicians at Anet throughout the Living World and holiday releases. The marionette battle music beats my previous favourite (Sanctum Sprint music). You guys are doing some amazing work and I love it. Don’t stop!

MithranArkanere.8957:

More like “with lesbian relationships they squee, with a gay one they screech”.

The cry for more homosexual relationships in pretty much everything is so strong that even in media without them, the fans will find one, probably many :P The shipping urge overcomes all.

In a lot of cases where the fans will be saying “It’s so obvious!”, it usually isn’t except to tumblr frequenters maybe, or people hypersensitive to purported “agendas”. Minus fan speculation and talk outside of the game and based purely on presentation in-game, I don’t honestly feel it’s as super obvious as everyone makes out – especially if you have any experience with very close, affectionate friendship.

If it is heading that way, I certainly don’t have a problem with it and I’m all for encouraging diversity in storytelling. I’ve seen people saying it’s been confirmed by devs but haven’t actually seen a source on that? At the end of the day, people saying it’s irrelevant to the plot probably wouldn’t kick up a fuss if Jory was a dude, because straight romance is shoehorned into a hell of a lot of things that would be better off without it, but few complain because it’s so common and expected. Put a straight relationship in a story and it’s traditional. Put a non-straight relationship in and it’s “political”, as though homosexuality is nothing more than the latest debate in the house of parliament instead of day to day life for swathes of the population.

The supporting characters are the only things in the whole Scarlet debacle that I can bring myself to care about, so to see a lot of character and character relationship development going on as an anchor to it all appeals to me a lot more than cardboard cutout supervillains doing their best team rocket impression every couple of weeks.

Basically, keep doing your thing with Jory and Kasmeer, Anet! They’re charming, whatever the nature of their relationship is or will be.

I get the feeling RSI was dropped in kind of jokingly, but as someone suffering from joint hypermobility syndrome made ten times worse by repetitive activity, I support this as well as propose:

• Camera movement that can be controlled by toggling rather than holding down the mouse button (e.g. click once, start moving camera. Click again, stop moving camera)
• A ‘show objects’ option checkbox like the ‘show player names’ etc. checkboxes, highlighting harvesting nodes and other environment objects.

Having to holding keys down for prolonged periods of time does my fingers in as easily a repetitive clicking, sometimes more so. Additional options like auto-run make my life a hell of a lot easier already but there’s still room for improvement when it comes to making GW2 more accessible.

Speaking of which, colour-blind options are a long time coming.

I really do love the marionette fight and I love it being open-world, casually-organised (just turn up and jump in!).

That said, some work on networking and server mechanics to make it more convenient to participate would be very much appreciated. Overflow and everything about it is a royal pain that prompts lots of waiting around to have fun in order to save yourself a space on the main server, difficulty organising players in the right numbers, and difficulty playing with the people you want to play with. Disconnects that result in being booted from the server you were in and/or loss of credit/achievements are equally frustrating. If these issues were made less problematic, open world raid events would be massively successful in this game.

As I understand it, after 25 years of sylvari being produced, the gap between new generations has shortened so much that and there are so many of them that it’s much less important to identify exactly which they’re from. When the early generations were born, it was a big deal and wasn’t happening every day (nor even every year, I think), so they get special recognition.

Zerker doesn’t need to be nerfed. The gameplay needs to become more demanding and diverse, and roles other than DPS need to be buffed.

Why use a fine tooth comb when you can use a sledgehammer though I guess.

DarksunG.9537:

No story needs to be diverse for any reason other than to be a good story. When something is shoehorned in it stands out. GW1 story was better & it didn’t care if it were diverse or not. It seems more like these are added so people can fantasize.

Homosexual relationships are part of everyday life. They are not ‘fantasies’. Having two in a video game compared to 99.9% of straight binary-gender relationships in games, movies, on TV, in books, is not overkill. That you feel it is just goes to show uncommon it is for homosexuality to get any representation in video games.

For a game that ’didn’t care’ about diversity, GW1 didn’t do half so badly. It had plenty of solid female characters and dared to set a campaign in a nation full of non-white people. Did that not count just because you didn’t notice? Diversity isn’t ‘shoe-horned’ in. Good stories simply show diverse experiences, especially when they span an entire world.

Rym.1469:

I mean more balance with sex (stop with throwing feminism and homosexual things into everything)

I stopped reading here.

Even if the rest of your post is legit, not sure why you think that has anything to do with characters and themes that are based in sexual equality and diverse representation.

I hated the original sylvari models – a lot of people did, and even Anet weren’t happy with it, and that’s why they were remodelled. Kristen’s redesign blew me the hell away. Visually and conceptually I think they’re the most interesting race in the game, and one of the more original, unique fantasy species I’ve seen for a good long while.

Soooo safe to say I completely disagree with your opinion I suppose :P

The strength of having the Suggestions forum separate was that it encouraged a certain formality to it. Most of the suggestions that pop up in general forums are one liners, whereas if you took the time to post in the Suggestions forum, typically your thread was carefully structured and well thought out.

Can’t deny I’m very annoyed to see it archived.

The male characters get a much better selection of physiques (scrawny to buff) and diverse faces than the female characters do, IMO. I’ve seen some great-looking male humans, made one myself to fulfill one of my loves (happens to be androgynous long-haired dudes), but I do think there’s a certain awkwardness about their models that always knocks points off sex appeal. It doesn’t help that no real effort goes into making their armour diverse (and their underwear is hilarious). If you’re playing a light-armour class, you’d better kitten well hope you find long coats/robes sexy because your options for anything else, including revealing attire, are exceptionally limited versus the female options.

I think one of the issues is that, according to marketing stereotype, there’s a certain cookie-cutter look for female characters that is considered the standard for attractiveness, whereas the field of sex appeal is much more openly diverse for male characters and there’s a lot more range for diversity in what’s ‘attractive’ to straight women. I don’t believe it’s true that men only like a certain type of woman, but that’s often the presentation we get when it comes to female customisation limitations. I’d love more options for both sexes, but I still think that female humans are the ones that drew the short straw on customisation options overall. No buff builds, very samey-samey faces.

Ooooh my god xD

Something to consider from the perspective of someone who loves cosmetic progression: okay, you’ve got your awesome looking cosmetic items. Now how about showing them off? Unfortunately, there are some annoying limitations in doing so in game. Generally when people are into cosmetic progression, they like to be able to show off their character or simply see their character doing awesome stuff in this outfit they’ve worked so hard to put together. Some consideration should probably go into the following:

• First Person Camera - I still don’t get why this isn’t in the game, but adding it in would improve players’ abilities to create machinimas, videos, group shots and other visual showmanship.

• Improve camera positioning - it’s actually kind of hard to take a decent front-on screenshot of yourself in this game, since the camera position tends to force you to look down or up at yourself.

• HD screenshot option - this was in beta. Why not in release?

• More emotes! - GW1 had a plethora of emotes. By comparison, GW2 has hardly any. This removes half the fun from screenshots and video making. Help us give our characters more . . . character! Emotes for everybody <3

• View character outside of the game - with the avatar up at the top of the forum there before you log in, I think it might have actually been intended to pull characters through to a website. It would be cool to be able to link to your character and show off your look/set-up outside of the game.

• View character . . . inside the game? One of the things I loved most about the Hall of Monuments was having my favourite armour sets on display, ON my character. That was a great narcissistic touch <3

All of this probably seems pretty trivial, but it’s all quality of life stuff that enhances the utility/appeal of cosmetics and might help players engage more with their cosmetic progression.

Rue.2049:

Whipped out her new iPhone to take a photo of the golem!

Haha xD Nice catch.

I remember Kristen mentioning once that her design (silhouette at least) was a bit inspired by the Nefertiti bust. I thought that was cool

Seneca Crane beard, anyone? xD

Kojiden.8405:

For the “if you don’t like it don’t do it” crowd, you seem to forgot that these achievements are only available for the event and are gone forever. This means that achievement completionists are forced to pay the gold. Like someone else stated, it would have been much more appropriate to instead get the achievement from donating something else, like maybe the Wintersday weapon skins as toys. Something to keep in the theme without it making it just seem like a money grab.

I’m also against the tri-color key achievement because there’s no way to get the key pieces without having to purchase them.

The key pieces still drop from mobs in Kessex Hills. Although I will admit, it was very frustrating as I used more than 5 keys in the last LW event.

Achievement completionists are always somewhat committing themselves to doing things they may or may not like if they want to get EVERYTHING. That’s the nature of the beast. So long as the meta is accessible, ArenaNet aren’t forcing anyone to do anything.

GoddessOfTheWinds.2937:

I would prefer if every armor could be worn be either gender. I mean, I would love it if male characters could wear female skins. There, you would have the perfect maxim. Every gender would become equal.

When you equip a skin, you choose “female” or “male” and voila.

I’d be totally for this and have really enjoyed games/websites where “cross-dressing” is fully enabled, but thinking realistically, I think there are still too many entrenched stigmas for it to get pushed through to a triple-A game – not just in the players, but on the game development side in marketing, publishers etc. It’s a real shame as it’s a great blue sky ideal to aim for and would easily solve all of these problems.

Relair.1843:

Yeah I really don’t see what your complaint is, there is a plethora of great looking light armor. Tribal looking, evil looking, arch-mage looking, priest looking, and any other archetype of wizard you could possibly want. I can’t really think of a look they don’t have covered with a bit of creative swapping.

From a design perspective, there is a real lack of variety in male scholar armour. A lot of the silhouettes are effectively the same as what you get in your starter armour. Medium armour has similar problems.

It’s times like this that I really love the dye system.

The presents are the only really tough bit in this JP, and that’s because they seem so crazy-random. It can be hard to find an opportunity, but try to wait until you’re the only person making an attempt. I found that if you wait for a mass wipe at that point and the presents don’t take too long to come back, you can get a chance to make a break for it then.

A lot of it just seems to be luck though.

HiddenNick.7206:

Gibson.4036:

Khisanth.2948:

VOLKON.1290:

I think we’re putting too much thought into “vertical” progression. It should be clear that hardly anyone (a vast minority) wants a continual power creep to be added to the game. So, for the sake of simplicity, let’s say that ascended gear is it. That is max “power”. If that can be agreed upon then the whole topic of vertical itself comes screeching to a halt and we automatically shift to the horizontal line of thinking… now that we know and have resolved ourselves to the idea that ascended is it, how accessible do we make ascended?

Are we? It was pretty clear that hardly anyone wants continual power creep a year ago as well yet here we are with the ascended gear. The strongest statement I’ve seen for not having more in the future is “I certainly hope not”, that is a very weak statement without any sort of commitment. I find the lack of conviction to be very disturbing.

Agreed. We have no guarantees. Even if Ascended is the final tier, which we haven’t been given an unequivocal statement about, we’ve also been told that ArenaNet is committed to continual, gradual vertical progression.

There are plenty of avenues for this without implementing a new tier of gear. We don’t yet have ascended equivalent runes, sigils, infusions or consumables. All of these things can gradually be implemented over the next year, and all with as steep of an acquisition curve as Ascended armor and weapons.

In addition, the last statement we have from ArenaNet is that they expect there to eventually be a level-cap increase, though we have no time-frame hinted at. That means we could have level 90 Ascended gear to chase.

Going on ArenaNet’s most recent statements surrounding this area, we can (without 100% confidence) expect not to see a gear above Ascended, but also expect that vertical progression will continue for the foreseeable future.

Statements that Ascended is the final tier of gear do not mean that vertical progression has ended.

Statements in this thread that they want to concentrate on horizontal progression do not mean that vertical progression has ended.

Anyone who thinks that the release of ascended armor has put an end to VP is either not paying attention, or really wants to believe it in spite of the evidence we currently have.

You are talking like Vertical Progression is the next bad thing after meteor shower! And why is it so bad? Why do you think that Horizontal Progression is vastly superior to it? You’re not playing an ordinary game. You’re playing an MMO game. And that’s the kind game of game that grows vertically and endlessly (or to the moment when people stops playing it) whether you like or not. And characters should grow with it.

I’m not sure why you seem to think horizontal progression results in no character growth.

Regardless, I’m not playing just any MMO game. I’m playing an MMO that promised a vertical stat progression cap and horizontal progression and rewards. Cosmetics, new traits, new skills, new weapons, new ways to use those skills, new character-based areas to grow such as housing – all of this was on the cards. But I’m sure we’ll come onto that once the discussion moves on.

HiddenNick.7206:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Everyone gets bored of playing the same style eventually, and having vastly more skills, traits and item effects help to stave this. Vertical progression doesn’t do that.

Yes it does! Imagine that you get 20 more character levels. Then you not only get your stats increased. You also get new trait level! So that you can choose up to 4 traits in each line. You also get more trait points. That enables more build variety and flexibility! All those things are Vertical Progression.

Or they could lock that stuff behind additional challenge-based content – for example, getting your final 30 attribute points in GW1 required completion of some additional quests, not grinding of additional levels.

EDIT: Almost forgot that changing your secondary profession was handled similarly in GW1 Prophecies – a quest to unlock it.

Belenwyn.8674:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

Here is the next evolution of the original Vertical Progression proposal based on a summary of our discussions:

Regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method.

A review of current RNG metrics.

The ability to change gear stats (Note there is still a lot of discussion about whether people want this or not)

The ability to build up to Ascended Gear through drops rather than just relying on RNG.

Ascended Gear mats dropping more equally across the game, for example WvW.

No more new Gear tiers that make the existing tiers obsolete.

Additional ways to earn Ascended Gear at accelerated for Alts.

Note this is the formulation of a proposal for discussion. Once the proposal is finalized it will be discussed internally. However there will be no promise of actions or schedule.

Chris

Bump. We are close to being able to move onto the ‘focused’ Horizontal Progression part of this conversation.

Does anyone have anymore comments on the proposal above based on our discussions?

Chris

Regarding the ability to change gear stats I have the impression it is more a debate about “how” than about “whether”. Some people prefer a more temporary one some prefer a more permanent one.

Another variation of opinion is that some people think it should be a standard function, and others think it should be restricted to prestige gear like ascended and legendary.

Personally, I’m in the former camp. But yeah, it’s less that people don’t want to see this implemented, and more a matter of how.

Dinks.2478:

Faowri.4159:

Palador.2170:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

As for crafting your first set of ascended gear we want this to take a bit of time before you get to our horizontal progression systems.

Stop.

Right there. See that?

That’s making people gear up before they get to the fun stuff. That’s exactly what that is.

Throw that out, it’s terrible. Rethink.

Yes.

Can Anet please acknowledge that this type of thinking is the opposite of what was promised at release? If it’s at least formally acknowledged, I can recognise that I’m no longer part of the audience being catered to for GW2, and measure my expectations accordingly.

Anet has already acknowledged this. They have already stated that the manifesto was not a promise and that we shouldn’t take the word of any of the devs as promises. I’m not sure what type of company is so out of the loop that they expect that we shouldn’t expect the words and promises of the company themselves to count as insights into what is to come. But I have basically decided to not believe anything any developer posts or says because it is usually a lie or it is something we won’t see for another 5 years because Anet refuses to share timelines or any reasonable amount of information at all.

I’m not talking about the manifesto. I’m talking about explicit gear/skill system design philosophies like this one, where “everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base.”

I respect that agile development means the details often change, but changes to the above would be a core change to game vision. There is still time to rectify this, but not if the devs are still insistent that we need to sink a lot of time before we get to that equal power base. I bought the game based on that premise. I choose not to buy competitor games because they do not have that premise. At this point, I’m a customer wanting to know how viable it is to continue to invest time and money in a game if the core game philosophies are going to be increasingly abandoned and I am not really a part of the intended audience anymore.

Threads like this suggest they are still open to making big changes to correct these problems, but comments like Izzy’s suggest the problematic design tenets are still very much embedded in the studio’s thinking. So I’m one confused customer at this point.

Palador.2170:

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

As for crafting your first set of ascended gear we want this to take a bit of time before you get to our horizontal progression systems.

Stop.

Right there. See that?

That’s making people gear up before they get to the fun stuff. That’s exactly what that is.

Throw that out, it’s terrible. Rethink.

Yes.

Can Anet please acknowledge that this type of thinking is the opposite of what was promised at release? If it’s at least formally acknowledged, I can recognise that I’m no longer part of the audience being catered to for GW2, and measure my expectations accordingly.

No.

I even wish they’d just go ahead and make all WPs in LA cost nothing, considering so many people just use the PvP shortcut to get there for free anyway. Why beat around the bush?

Truthbearer.9708:

I apoligize in advance if this post sounds a bit hostile, but some things I red in your post made me slightly angry.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

- Time gates help players with less time (If I can only play an hour a day, my time is more rewarded.)

Not sure where you’re getting this idea from. I’m one of those players and when I come home late during weekdays, I don’t want to spend my limited time on some kind of shopping list every single day. I’d rather do something fun like events, WvW or PvP, than waste my time on boring timegates.
However, the days I do have a lot more hours to play, I can’t catch up. Why? Because these timegates that are supposed to “help” me, are actually stopping me from progressing .

Yeah, this is my perspective on this ‘pro’. Time-gating for somebody who can only log in a couple of times a week = they can only craft whatever-material a couple of times a week, and that’s if they choose to spend their limited time on the time-gated content. Of course, they don’t “have to”, but as Izzy says, not doing so slows them down, puts them behind the curve, and is the opposite of equalising the progression of casual and hardcore players who continue to log in most days and play enough hours per session that doing a little time-gated content does not prevent them from progressing in other areas.

What would help make the time gating less painful is that for each day you don’t log in within a certain time frame (let’s say a week), you accrue credit for a particular time-gated component. Let’s say you didn’t log in from Mon-Fri, and the first day you log in that week is Saturday. Based on the time-gating, you can now craft 6 of those components to account for your missed time. I’d accept credit not accruing forever – perhaps it resets each week.

But part of accepting that casual players have limited time is accepting that they generally have less flexible time, too. It may be that they play 5-10 hours a week, and they play it all in one day. Time-gating thus harms them a lot, compared to people who can play an hour or 2 a day. If time-gating is genuinely about equalising instead of artificially slowing people down, this needs to be a consideration for game basics like BiS gear.

Coldtart.4785:

My earlier proposal which I will give the short version of here was for exotic gear to be able to be upgraded with customisation slots that allow for selecting a different skin, stat type and/or rune/sigil and the item becoming ‘ascended’ once it reaches a certain quantity of customisations, allowing it to then be used as a legendary precursor.

This setup would remove post-game vertical progression in favour of horizontal build variety without invalidating the effort people have put into obtaining existing ascended items, while also making ascended into a true bridge between exotic and legendary rather than competition for mats as it currently is.

I love this idea! It would make the gear upgrade process much less destructive and much more growth-oriented.

Malediktus.9250:

Changing stats should stay legendary exclusive. Otherwise there is no reason to go for legendary if you dont like the skin.

Legendaries were originally supposed to be cosmetic prestige options, and lots of players sought them as a long-term goal even before stat-switching became possible on them. I don’t see this as a valid argument for blocking a major convenience service for build diversity and experimentation for all players.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Is it fair to say that regarding Ascended Gear we would like to see more ways to earn it and in terms of drop rates, a higher percentage chance of acquiring them through this method?

Chris

RNG is a terrible, terrible way to acquire basic BiS gear, so unless the drop rates were dramatically improved, this still wouldn’t appease many players.

The quickest win that I can see would be to add a merchant who can change the stat combination on your gear, like the trait retrainers. If you need a gemstore version of this, have an instant-one usable anywhere, but this should ultimately be a core game mechanic, not a gemstore convenience service.

This would help everybody, no matter what level of gear they’re currently sitting at, and it would remove the pressure of choosing the ‘right’ gear set for that one build you’re going to lock yourself into because you can’t afford more than one set.

I’m always a bit put off by the ‘Verbal Abuse’ tag altogether. Like in your situation, the players weren’t (at least not straight away) verbally abusing you, but their language and their discussion was a clear breach of the ToS.

It would be nice to even be able to add a couple of lines of description, too.

There’s not a lot of diversity in male scholar armour. Lots of long coat-type looks. Female light armour gets more variety but it tends to be of the ‘suddenly, half of the fabric vanishes!’ kind. Whatever floats your boat really!

I like the female human voice actor though. I think she suits a mesmer well.

John.5732:

I have a question. Why are there no quests for ascended, precursors, and legendaries?

The personal story consists of Trahearne questing with you to earn a legendary greatsword. This bears repeating. Trehearne quests to earn a legendary greatsword. Why can’t that be us?

I think mechanics like the Black Moa Chick quest would be awesome for acquiring BiS or rarer equipment, or even components of that equipment. The BMC quest in GW1 was basically the following:

• A journal dropped from an NPC you fought if you beat her. The journal contained information about her journey to obtain the elusive black moa.
• By following the clues in the journal, you too could obtain a black moa egg and hatch it into a rare minipet.
• The activities you had to perform weren’t simply go here and collect X or hand in Y to NPC Z, but typically more involved than that. For example:
  • You had to actually find a standard moa egg first and then do special things to it in order to hatch a black moa chick from it – like visit a particular waterfall out in the world to harden it.
  • You had to build an incubator kit with materials from the open world, from collector NPCs and other various means.
  • Some of the materials were ‘fragile’, which meant you couldn’t trade or bank them or they would be ruined.
  • Some parts of the quest had you visiting isolated parts of the world, and others meant you had to go into particular combat zones and fight specific bosses (e.g. you had to get hit by a specific boss in the elite area Sorrow’s Furnace to actually hatch the moa chick).

It was a really diverse quest that would be the perfect kind of content for obtaining rare components/gear.

I thought the whole reason Ascended was introduced was because it was too easy to get exotics e.g. via the trading post? Although easier/more accessible/varied ways of acquiring Ascended are pretty much a necessity at this point, I think I’d be more irritated than anything if Ascended gear became tradable because it would just be a whole lot of extra effort to get us back where we started in the first year of release, into a situation that was honestly fine to begin with, but that someone in the powers that be of GW2 decided was bad for the game.

We have a tonne of barely-utilised currencies that you get for playing the game your way – karma being the main one for PvE at least. Why not make use of it?

Alienmuppet.1942:

The main thing that annoyed me about him was, almost every time we went into a dangerous situation he’d say “this won’t end well”. That’s not what you want to hear when you’re all keyed up to kick bottom!

I see this complained about a lot, and I don’t know if I’m alone in this, but before I really read any of the Trahearne dislike on the forums, I never interpreted it as “oh no we’re gonna lose”. In my mind it was one of two things: either a battle threat (“This won’t end well (FOR YOU)”), or a general melancholy “We’re going to have to kill you now, and this makes me sad” remark.

Xar.1387:

Yuri.5810:

The main question you should ask yourselves (and then tell us the answer) is : what kind of customers do i want to appeal to? Because you can’t keep a foot in both camps (casuals and hardcore).

Yeah, it looks, like so many people think that its impossible to create a game for casuals, and hardcore players too. And I think people who’s talking about it are just wrong. Yes, its possible to make a MMORPG, where u can put content for casuals, hardcores, pvp, and pve players. And even if ArenaNet dont do it, then other companies will. Its simple.
Check this post.

I don’t think it’s a question of casual vs hardcore, although it does somewhat depend on your definition of the terms. Some people define it as easy (casual) vs difficult (hardcore), but the game can have easy content and it can have hard content – that isn’t the problem, or wouldn’t be, if players could easily achieve a statistical level playing field and content difficulty was matched by skill instead of gear level.

It works if you define casual as ‘limited time to play’ vs hardcore as ‘lots of time to play’. The problem is time investment, and gating character progression behind significant time investment and repetitive activity. Hardcore players are willing and able to do it, but casual players won’t, or very often can’t.

BriarRose.5639:

The way this game is set up is rediculous:
1. You charge us to go to a WP, which is just stupid.
2. You charge us to list our stuff on the TP, another stupid idea.
3. Whenever we do find a way to make money you guys nerf it by stopping it or way lowering the drops we get.
4. Donate to Winterdays to get part of the achievements, is outragous.

This is suppose to be a game that is fun and you doing all the above is not making it fun. Why are you guys constantly looking for ways to take the money we spend hours trying to get? Where does the money really go? into thin air as the NPC’s are not real people, WP, TP and Winterdays Donation do nothing but STEAL FROM US.
We spend grinding hours of trying make money or get items which is getting to the point of NOT FUN. NOT FUN GET IT????

It’s a gold sink. If gold isn’t removed from the economy, the result is inflation, where currency rapidly becomes worth less over time. Implementing trivial gold sinks in unobtrusive places is fairly standard practice for most healthy online fake currency economies. You’d have a lot more to complain about if inflation became a significant problem.

As for the Wintersday achievement, just do a couple of extra dailies instead if you don’t want to drop the silver/gold. No biggie.