Guild Wars 2

Chris Whiteside.6102:

So with all of this in mind it would be cool to carry on discussing around this area in much the same form as Nike has. Specifically brainstorming on top of the foundation of known systems and functionality. I do also want to point out that someone mentioned (sorry i forget who) the ability to potentially build forts etc and then gain new events, goals and rewards from them by protecting and nurturing your land. Wouldn’t that be awesome!?

Chris

In the notion of events and failure. I tend to find that events have a way to high need to really get completed to get rewarded or for them to even count in your achievements. You need this many completed events for this, and that many completed events for that. I think this is the biggest problem in GW2 right now, why not make fun, rewarding and cool content that doesn’t reward beating something but rather rewards how much you participated? Failing also doesn’t mean huge repair bills, but it can be an npc that dies or an objective that is lost. Now however, all you care about is the completion of an event. You don’t care about the story around it, you care about the reward.

For example, if you would make an event, where you have to escort a crazy azura into an enemy base to steal their plans (all the other asura’s say she’s stupid but she’s a know it all), but you got to keep her above 25% health or she gets scared and runs. If this event rewarded you for participation (aka gold silver and bronze + chests and loot) the same as it did for suceeding, rewarding you for the number of attacks the asura survives, and making PARTICIPATING and not completing count for a meta achievement (against the …) for a living story part. Then you have the possibility to make an event as hard as you can make it, or even make it impossible to complete (aka eventually she gets jumped by to many mobs) and you can even implement this into a chain where she goes back to the other asura and they trigger an event where she has learned her lesson and they come up with a better plan. The idea here is not to succeed the event but to try and get as far as possible for example (of course you’d need to make it worth defending the asura) You can even put a flee the base event in there wich is different on how far you got with the first one. Or put in events where you have a completion state, but reward for participating, and make is so hard you expect them to fail, and then let players and coördinated groups just supprise the hell out of you.

This all is impossible due to the compulsive need to be succesfull in everything that is done, and this is so far from reality it gets boring and the story gets lackluster.
The best video game story’s i’ve seen have not only shown failure, but have at some point even made the player feel he’s responsible for the failure, and want to bounce back. I know it’s a hard balance, but rewarding failure states are the biggest thing missing atm imo.

Btw that tides of decay thing, try it with smth else then TEQ and i’m all for it, but don’t destroy the best encounter ingame atm :p do it with the shatterer, he’s been a kitten for far to long

playandchill.3908:

- Trolls can kill one champion not in the good order and break train for minutes.

This is what’s wrong with champion trains, you assume people killing a champ are trolling, while 2-5 players questing together in an area can kill a champ just because they encounter it, and get rage from the entire train. Champion killing is as much the right of the players that just encounter it as it is for the train. Get over yourself.

5. Open world is important, zergs are not.
This is a difficult excersize, open world content is important, but it shouldn’t get zergy the way it is. At least you shouldn’t be forced to zerg. If i want to hop into an overflow with my guild i should get the option (in any map tbh) this doesn’t mean we don’t want others around, but zergs destroy what it means to play together. The system is in place (overflows work like a charm) but it’s not being used. For example last night in kessex i got into an overflow cause the main server was full, not many people in that overflow so i got about 10 guildies in there, and we had allot more fun then we would have had on the main server. Selecting an overflow should be a main feature, and i know there are a few problems with getting this in, but it’s worth it to improve gameplay and mostly improve guildplay imo. Especially in open world stuff like the last release.

6. The MMO in MMORPG
I’m keeping this short, an MMORPG should give you the option to play solo or in group for most things but should NEVER force you to play solo. This was a mistake last patch and with the wintersday stuff (where you couldn’t enter a team game as a team) and shouldn’t be repeated.

7. Risk vs Reward
Rewards are handed out like candy, if you are gonna tie certain rewards to achievements plz make them none grindy and challenging.

8. Keep on going.
Despite all this, i respect and admire what you guys are trying to do, so keep it up.

3. The returning player problem, permanent vs non permanent.
Ok so in this part i speak out of my own experience, i missed so much stuff due to school, and i’m probally gonna miss much more, i simply don’t have the time in my life atm to complete everything. But i also was absent entirely from the game from the aetherblade pirate update till now. I basicly have no idea what’s going on. There is nothing to fill me in, no living story log, no movies i can watch to get me up to date to what happened, nothing. I’m just trying to figure out what happened by asking guildies and trying to read up online. But this isn’t ok. I feel there needs to be a way for players to watch if not replay what happened. Now i understand this isn’t something you can do easely, but it’s important for players who missed stuff (and with 2 week updates you will miss stuff). This hasn’t got to be related to any rewards whatsoever but we need some kind of connection to get back into the story. In the 4 months i was away, tequatl was changed, and a new dungeon path was added. At least that’s what it looks like to me. I understand that living world focusses on telling a story but there’s way to much non-permanent stuff going on atm. This is one of the reasons i am excited about the kessex hills storyline even while it’s a zergfest atm. It will change the world. Permanent changes or new content is good. Taking something away doesn’t make it exclusive or special, it makes it less viewed. I found it interesting that in the latest developper stream someone said they wanted living story to feel like a television series. May i put to your attention that tv series get the most views in reruns and dvd sales, or being ordered of things like netflix. You cannot make a game with a feeling like a tv series (wich is a Anet quote) and then say “well you missed it, to bad for you” when people missed an episode. This is not ok as a whole. I don’t know how but this is a problem with your current style of releases and it needs to be adressed.

4. To skin or not to skin.
Lastly, i would like to talk about something that’s very connected to the living story, as with each update, new skins seem to be released and i feel like you are shooting your own foot here. There needs to be a decent skin system, it’s really a hard requirement. The whole transmutation/skins doesn’t work. We need some sort of wardrobe system. Where SKIN is unrelated from STAT. You could still make this work like for example for adding a skin to this system you use transmutation stones, but then you can swap freely between them. It’s really stupid so many skins are lost cause you transmute other “newer” stuff over it, or you’d have to buy a new item for that skin, for example with backpacks, if you have an ascended backpack this is impossible and you are facing tough decisions. I don’t even care if every change requires a transmutation stone (wich would be expensive but ok) but right now you have to decide if you want to loose your previous stuff wich i don’t find to be ok. Especially with ascended armors comming up, i don’t want to loose the skin of that ascended armor since it’s not to bad of a skin, but i also bought tier 3 human armor to use it, not to be in my bank forever. Skins/stats should not be attached to one another and i’m hoping one day a system comes into place wich doens’t use them both.

Hey Arenanet,
First of all thx for doing this. It’s wonderfull you ask the opinion of the community and even more so you are prepared to read trough all this to improve your game.So bear with me here. This is gonna be quite the post but i’m passionate about this game and i only want the best for it. So let’s kick it off.

1. Content Vs Noncontent.
Ok the first point i would like to bring to your attention, is that living world at this time has to much noncontent. I don’t mean to be rude in any way but the way your system works atm is that you release a new update every 2 weeks and while some of them are awesome and good(tequatl, new dungeon), most of the updates can be described as achievement hunts. I don’t have a problem with achievements in general, but if 20 minutes into a new update, you start looking at your achievement list, then there is a problem. Content that is being released should keep the player busy before they want to check all the achievements out. But for example with the last update, tower of nightmares, once you realise this is gonna be a map zerg fest, you can’t help it, cause you don’t want to be in there longer then needed. And that’s the problem, i have a feeling some of the content is being done just for achievements, and that’s not ok. Achievements should be optional and not the main type of content. But be honest, what other reason is there to go to kessex hills atm, it’s overcrowded, it doesn’t offer any decent rewards (in fact far less then other “zerg zones”) and it’s simply not really fun to play imo. Same with Blood and Madness, where you even gate content behind achievements… I’m an achievement hunter by heart so i do busy myself completing every single thing, but that doesn’t excuse achievements from becoming content, they shouldn’t be, and main rewards shouldn’t be attatched to them either. Making achievements this important just takes away from the general story you guys are trying to deliver. It disconnects you from the content. And making daily achievements required for completing the meta ones is just rediculous. This brings me to the next problem.

2.Time-Gating
This is one of the things that irritates me the most in GW2, the time gate. So what do i mean?For example stuff like the daily requirement for meta achievements (wich you’re making content so i’m considering it content). The laurel system (wich isn’t living world i know) and many other things in the game. Blood and madness was a perfect example of this. The blood prince instance just locked behind a wall of achievements wich you can’t complete in a day. I don’t get this fear of people completing content super fast, why should you care tbh, if they want to, let them. The only thing that time gate created, is for people who don’t have allot of time around haloween (it’s a busy time irl, also for me) to not be able to complete content cause they need to do daily’s for it. I do get the mad king only shows at haloween to do his game, wich is ok, but the meta (again if considered content, wich you do since you lock other content behind it) should be obtainable without daily’s.

buy rng boxes, in 1 billion i should at least get 1 skin right, right?

In all seriousness, if i had 1 billion i wouldn’t invest a penny in Arenanet or NC soft, it’s to late for that.

6 months, and make some decent content, i don’t care if it’s all delayed “until it’s ready” just make expansions and not lousy updates that are time-gated…

1)Almost nothing to do while playing with friends, wich is the biggest failure you can make as an mmo.
2)Non-permanent non-content
3)RNG (gemstore RNG should be criminal)

CryxTryx.9208:

There is nothing that is skill gated in GW2 yet.

This couldn’t be more true, it’s sad…

We capture the bad guy (that’s all living story you need from the dungeon)

There’s a big difference between challenging and just tedious long with no room for errors and randomness in the jump pads/gears.

Clock tower was challenging, this is just real easy, with added randomness to make it seem less easy.

Coming from someone that farmed the clocktower and wintersday puzzles and had loads of fun there, i was bored before i even got to the top, i did complete it for the sake of doing it but i’m never doing this one again. Huge disappointment.

Seriously why does everyone feel entitled to do this.
It’s not an important part of the story (kill some asura, kill some aetherblades, capture the leader, hurray) the event can be participated in other ways, it’s not even a hard dungeon. If anything, this is the first dungeon actually fun to do with your guild. I understand some people want to play mmo’s solo and you have every right to, but also understand that for some people mmo’s are all about group play an playing together. And while the solo guys have been treated like kings (aka every other living story thing ever) us dungeon runners have been ignored and abandonned, and now that they do one thing for us you cry and say you don’t have any content? (while they did add solo stuff)

Welcome to our world!

This is the first dungeon that even gets near challenging group content. (wich is a big part of mmo’s, as a fact, doesn’t matter if you like it or not) We’ve been abandonned for months and now it’s our time to have a bit of fun. (altough this dungeon gets facerollable real fast, thank god for the achievements on avoiding lasers and aoe) The only thing that sucks is that this is temporary. There is no good reason to make it that way, i don’t care that the lore doesn’t match, we defeated zaithen a dozen times and nobody cares either. This content should stay in the game, as the molten dungeon should have stayed in. If this game keeps removing the best content it offers, i’m gonna be moving on to a game where content is available when i choose to do it.

A movie doesn’t force me to watch it within a certain time, i can watch a television series or program whenever i want these days, it is STUPID that i can’t do the same for a game without missing a few episodes. The world does not feel living, it’s been the same kitten thing since launch except the southsun area, and instead of letting it grow with more content, you remove what you add, how the hell does that mean living?

The dredge and flame legion are still there, but somehow they parted ways and now have become seperate again? That’s stupid. When the dredge and flame legion team up, a living world would replace all dredge and flame legion mobs everywhere by molten mobs and go on from that. Doesn’t matter they get pushed back, they still have this technology, they don’t just loose that and become normal again…

Stick to the mmo formula and ADD do not take things away you add to a game, it doesn’t have any benefits AT ALL.

It baffles me that people are so concerned about themselves they don’t even realise this is the first patch in ages that even includes decent dungeon content, so as you now have slightly less to do, imagine how it is for people who prefer dungeon content in mmo’s and play mmo’s for dungeons, they have been left without content far longer then you solo people have been.

About the same us dungeon runners had to do for a long time. Sit and weep while no content is added for us. Welcome to our world.

And then again that’s not entirely true cause you can still look for dragon bash holograms (they have 50% chance to spawn aetherblades for the achievement now) or chase the hidden pirate caches in the jp.

I think i’m moving in here.
http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/3575/d9f7.jpg
close to the city and yet peacefull and empty ^^

Bright.9160:

marnick.4305:

Fox.3469:

Because the cashshop RNG feeds of the social downfall caused by the economic crisis and just exploits those who can’t resist it. It’s worse then gambling. (i made a long post about this a few months ago, stacked with social and economic expert opinions, it was removed for being a “conspiracy theory”.)

If boxes in a cashop in an MMO cause the downfall of society and economic crisis … that’s textbook conspiracy nonsense. Your"experts" are probably experts for hire or other scam artists. As such your thread was rightfully removed.

Feeding off =/= causing. Read that part again.

Indeed, and it’s not just conspiracy theory, the tactics NC-Soft is using are actually forbidden in my country cause they fall under the false advertisement and gambling law (as it is stated that any object that is sold for real money must have the exact thing you pay for, or an accurate possibility of the chances, even our lotery has those chances(in very small letters) on them.) If i wasn’t a student i’d take em to court.

Scrambles.2604:

If everyone has everything then nobody’s special. Especially in an MMO that focuses so heavily on aesthetics. This game’s reward for your rng luck/real money spend is letting you become a unique, little snowflake, lol.

corrected that for you

Oh boy… not this again

glad you found something you liked, i said before GW2 launched i was gonna do the same with weapon skins. Then the first account bound rng limited time skins came in to play and i was devestated… (by then i already had almost all greatsword skins and several other weapon skins)

agreed, you know i wanna mention fractals, just cause it’s so sad.
Fractals lvl 1-10 was cool, the bosses started to get new attackes, mobs got different skills and so on, it increased in difficulty. And then lvl 10-20 agony was a big part, but before you even reached 20 it was obvious, higher lvl= more dmg + health, no renewing mechanics. There was so much pontential in fractals, but it’s just wasted cause adding a boss mechanic every few levels seems to be to hard.

Vayne.8563:

…

Please if you have any respect as GW1 player you admit that EotN sucked.

I’m talking about UW, FoW, DoA, SF, Urgoz, The Deep, several missions on hard mode. Those were harder then the Eotn jokes called dungeons. Not saying that it wasn’t doable with heroes and henchies, but at least it was beneficial to do together. In GW2 atm, almost nothing is.

Vayne.8563:

Just the idea that people talk about trash mobs is half the problem. They come from other games, and everything that isn’t a boss is meaningless. Is a trash mob.

Well this isn’t other games. I played Guild Wars 1 for five years and I don’t remember hearing the term trash mob at all. This is something from other games. The bosses don’t give the best loot in the world anyway. People just want fast loot and don’t care about anything else. And if that’s why you’re running dungeons…you’ll never be running dungeons with me.

I’m sure that doesn’t bother you, but get off the trash mob concept. It’s a different game.

I’m a gw1 player, you are talking out of your …
In gw1 mobs were actually exciting and had mechanics behind them, in GW2 they don’t. Don’t disgrace the group experience in GW1 (wich was one of the best in any game so far) with comparing it to grouping in GW2 (wich tried to introduce these bosses/trash mechanics and failed hard)

The difference is that in GW1 everything was made for groups but possible to be done solo with hench and heroes. In gw2 everything is made for soloing and group content is just bad, time-wasting, boring, uninspired content. GW1, altough instanced, was far more of an MMO in the sense of the word then GW2 atm. Cause it actually cared about guilds and groups of people (and alliances, something we need back). GW2 just want you to grind solo content for achievements. Time and money gate all the rewards, skill has nothing to do with it.

beren.6048:

Fox.3469:

with all do respect, dungeons do not last hours… arah does, maybe crucible, but the rest is 30-45 mins, hell AC can even be ran completely (all 3 paths) within the hour. The reason that it’s boring is that out of these 30-45 mins 5mins are bossfights and even the bossfight mechanics suck. Trash just has way to much health and can’t even be pulled together without resetting half the dungeon.

Many dungeon I tried took hours to complete (expect COF p1). I ll admit, I haven’t done any of them again, so guess you could do faster. But hey, he should play and see how he experiences it. About the boss fights, I just say agree.

The big time difference is learning to handle (and avoid) the immortal trash.
Atm the only decent dungeon was molten facility, but hey let’s remove that cause we’re STUPID

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Fox.3469:

that’s not RNG, that’s just bullkitten.

RNG is bullkitten, it’s not a fair system and I don’t know how this could be seen as a good system.

RNG can be a good and exciting system, if and only if the times you don’t get something dramaticly increased your chances in getting an item, where eventually there is a cap (like after 2000 chests even the worst luck person in the world can get it)

ATM skins are being LUCK/gated, if you are unlucky, you can’t get em at all, and that’s the bad thing.

to be frank, if this game doesn’t step it up in it’s group content by the time the new mmo’kitten (TESO and especially wildstar, a game that oozes group content in every aspect of it’s design) GW2 will loose a major chuck of it’s player base

Players play mmo’s to do stuff together… period

with all do respect, dungeons do not last hours… arah does, maybe crucible, but the rest is 30-45 mins, hell AC can even be ran completely (all 3 paths) within the hour. The reason that it’s boring is that out of these 30-45 mins 5mins are bossfights and even the bossfight mechanics suck. Trash just has way to much health and can’t even be pulled together without resetting half the dungeon.

2500 opened, 12 risen knights (goodbye minipet market) and the rest just crap, no tickets

first of all we just need more group content, so we got at least something to do…

Or at least give the guild missions some value to do more then once a week. Especially the challenge and puzzle.

Izaya.2906:

From 250 non-gemstore coffers:

Oh man, this…

I opened 2500 non-gemstore coffers, like 10 times what you did, got about 12 holo knights, and crap, not 1 ticket. I don’t mind RNG, but when i open 10 times more coffers and don’t get 1 of what you get 3, that’s not RNG, that’s just bullkitten.

1. Dungeon bosses are easier then wow HC bosses, dungeon trash take twice as long if not longer then in wow, dungeons are about as easy (but more boring) then hc’s dungeons in wow

2. Zones are running empty, and yes it does matter, LFG may be good for dungeons, but pve group events, in the world, are doomed.

3. This is true, however the game doesn’t really create many exciting goals to replace that.

4. There is no pay to win, but skins are the endgame reward you are going for and due to the cash shop already 30% of the skins won’t be available ever again and you missed them.

5. It is a game with great potential that failed to deliver and will ultimately fail imo.

Think of GW2 of a single player game, do everything once and then just leave, the content updates and endgame rewards aren’t worth it.

I was foolish enough to think we were gonna race the moa’s ourselves before this launched…

Then make it so that guilds can only be on one side of the fence, i don’t care if i can’t play against them, at least then i can play with em… Toypocalyps was even PVE and they still didn’t allow it… There is no good reason.

I’m a collector, i just want to say i’m sad certain skins and items won’t be in my collections. If there was some way in the game i’d go for all of them, all the molten skins, all the SAB skins all the dragon bash skins, but as it is now over half the skins that are in the game or will be added will be unreachable in a few months if they aren’t already :/

Sad collector is sad
It kind of kills my motivation to go for anything at all.

Vayne.8563:

Taking temples is hard and requires in some cases coordination. WvW certainly requires coordination. Some guild missions require coordination.

That’s as much as most games give you. Most games give you raids that you beat one at a time, because you’ve outleveled them by the time you get to the next one.

I’m not sure what else you’re after.

We are pve focussed, we’ve tried WvW but it’s not our thing. (and i did say pve group content) Temples don’t require coördination at all, don’t be rediculous (even the hardest ones can be 3-manned) and nothing but the guild challenge does either (and then sometimes even the guild challenge is super easy if you get a certain one)

What i’m after, at this point i’d be happy with just more content, add a few dungeons, or at least leave the ones that are added in the game, keep the promise of adding fractals, and remove the restriction that you can’t play with friends in minigames…

Erasculio.2914:

Fox.3469:

I don’t get how you expect an mmo to run without decent group content

GW2 has a lot (and for the records, it’s “a lot”, not “allot”) of content you can do with a group.

It, thankfully, has little content that demands you to play with a group.

This is how the game should be. You can play almost everything with other people, if you want to and if you have people who want to play with you. Unlike in other MMOs, though, if you don’t have people who want to play with you, you are not going to be able to force them to play with you due to some weak mechanic.

I’m not surprised that, in a system in which players only have to get together with those they want to be together, some players are left alone and thus complaining about a lack of group content. It does amaze me how those “lonely” players don’t understand exactly whose fault it is that no one plays with them.

Just to be clear, i’m in a guild with loads of people and WE have run out of things to do together. We want to play together, but we can’t. The dungeons are boring and seem to be handling the tactic of “let’s give mobs more health and damage”, there is nothing coördination is needed for, but we did them all multiple times anyway and ran out of enthousiasm to do them (with everyone sitting on way to many dungeon tokens) The only engaging content added was the molten dungeon, and it’s been removed again.
This is an mmo and group content is a big part of mmo’s. You say you are glad content doesn’t require groups, but look at the other side, we are getting loads of content that requires solo play (if done optimal). I don’t play mmo’s for solo play.

You make a poor comment about having noone to play with, well that’s not my problem, problem is that we have 5-15 people online most of the times who are willing to play together and we wonder, mmm what can we do. The new update just added way more solo content to the point we found nothing better to do then bet against eachother in moa racing and see who won…

-Dragon holograms: don’t scale, run around with your guild all autoattacking the spot where mobs spawn and people still miss them…

-Dragon ball: group content you can’t join as a group isn’t group content… and this isn’t the first time this happened… crab toss, toypocalips…

-Almost no tradeable items so you can at least share rewards. (except the I-drop-over-9000-times miniature that ruins the market atm)

I’m not saying playing with others should be required for everything, but when we get on in the evening we’d like some stuff to do together. Molten facility should never have been removed (i don’t care what the lore sais) and we need more things like that, optional, not in the main story but stuff where groups can have fun.

So ehm this is an mmo right? Just checking…

Since the first Southsun cove update with the addition of fractals, there has been no real added pve group content outside of guild missions, wich are hard to get for allot of players (and where the only decent thing so far is the challenge…) and a 2 week temporary dungeon that was actually good. (don’t consider the southsun boss fight, we 3-manned that with pugs)
Even the minigames pvp-based where you can’t group up with your own guild WICH IS STUPID.

I don’t get how you expect an mmo to run without decent group content. Are there any plans for the future? Cause tbh doing single player tasks is not why i play mmo’s…
(tasks cause you shouldn’t call something an achievement if it isn’t…
New fractals were promised but never added, dungeon that gets added is removed, seriously plz tell me what i’m supposed to do with a guild ready for action, and action just not being ready for us… We, along with many other guilds, need something to do together, it’s why we play these types of games, and if the game can’t provide our guild with such content, we move on… Mmo’s are about playing together, and yet in the last few months being together on teamspeak but doing different things is about as close at it gets usually…

0/2500 coffers here

Jemmi.6058:

Cloud.7613:

Of course they are, is it right? No. But a lot of gaming companies will do it.

Sure it is right. That is how marketing works. You sell it in a way to breed desire. This works on both poor people and non-poor people alike.

IMO the issue is not with ANet. It is with one of or a combination of any of the following:

1. your upbringing. If you have no self control over this sort of thing, your parents did not do a great job of teaching you to budget.

2. Credit cards. We live in a society full of debt and everyone is getting more and more in debt. Why pay now when you can pay later? Oh but I can buy it now and earn the money later! etc

3. Lack of education – which may relate to poorer education to poorer people – resulting in the inability to critically think about the outcome.

These are very important factors i agree, but both 1 and 3 are a cycle from generation to generation, it’s hard to break out of that and marketing tactics like these don’t help.

To be clear, i’m a GW2 and A-Net supporter, the reason i made this post is because I believe that this is a problem.
I also realise that these marketing techniques affect everyone. Altough not everyone is as vulnerable.

Most of all i ask myself why this is needed?
Why can the molten mining pick and others be in for a few weeks only, why do these weapons require real money RNG.
What’s wrong with a store where things come in, go on sale after a while and then find a lower price to stagnate then the new stuff?

gfox.6501:

huh? if anything, the RNG in the cash shop targets those who have money to burn.

Poor people gamble for that small chance that they’d win and pull them out of poverty. Gambling for items in some video game cash shop, with no real world monetary value, won’t ‘pull you out of poverty’, and is just a complete waste of money, money that a poor gambler would rather spend on some lottery ticket.

This is by fact incorrect, research has proven that RNG makes the item special, directly playing into the feeling of “maybe i’ll get lucky”, and the restraint to stop with this often disappears with the lower class. It’s not so much about gambling rather then having something special to them, and that’s the danger, they don’t see it as gambling. Putting a few as drops in the game even enforces this feeling more.

You often see how people in said demographic have a nice car or nice clothes while living in total misery at home, it’s the act they want to keep up, and that’s focussed on having something special. This feeling translates into games aswell.

What i notice about reactions so far is that few people don’t seem to realise how difficult it is to break out a cycle of poverty. What doesn’t matter to you may be what keeps someone else alive, many people cling to games for this, just cause they need something to hang on to, and praying on those people is wrong and immoral.

darkace.8925:

Fox.3469:

Facepunch.5710:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I read your post and the message I’m getting from you is that individuals who are low income earners have no self control and ANet is exploiting their lack of control to make money. And you are against it. Is that right?

I’m saying that these tactics are targetting vunerable people, getting out of poverty is hard enough without having these tactics around in the general market, and a game that applies these strategies is imo just wrong.

If someone wants out of poverty they’re not going to achieve that end if they lack the basic self-control to refrain from purchasing lottery tickets whose only payouts are virtual cosmetic items. Blaming ArenaNet for this fact is just silly.

I don’t agree. I think it is unfair and immoral for a company to specificly target these specific people.

Cloud.7613:

Of course they are, is it right? No. But a lot of gaming companies will do it.

I agree that allot of companies are doing simular stuff, but at least in western games ive never seen RNG tactics like this, concerning real money, and that imo is more then anything else exploiting the said demographic.

Permadeath does not belong in a game where people can get killed by others doing stupid things.

Facepunch.5710:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I read your post and the message I’m getting from you is that individuals who are low income earners have no self control and ANet is exploiting their lack of control to make money. And you are against it. Is that right?

I’m saying that these tactics are targetting vunerable people, getting out of poverty is hard enough without having these tactics around in the general market, and a game that applies these strategies is imo just wrong.

-Kormir’s version of the Margonite
-Undead free from Zaithen’s will.
-An elemental race, like the djinns

Hey,

There’s something i got to get off my chest.
First about me, i’ve worked with vulnerable families of our society in my education, and i believe i got a certain experience with the topic of poverty and games.

The living story strategy and especially RNG money-items is something i feel is directly targetting the lower demographics of our society. Legendairy’s on the trading post, molten weapons, now the new flesh-like weapons, limited time only “get it now” items, it all points to a certain type of player.

When we look at the poor demographic, a buy once mmo is especially attractive, since the time you get for your money is much more then other games. Actually mmo’s in general attract this demographic because these people often look for a way to compensate feeling bad about themselves, having toon with nice stuff on it is like a way to get away from the real world. It resembles the habit you see with these families having a nice car, to sort of show to the world that they are something. Working with these people starts with making them realise they can’t have everything, and teaching them to learn value and to deal with modern day marketing.

And it’s this modern day marketing, wich clearly is a problem, that GW2 is not trying to squeeze people with. Limited time, get it now or you’ll never get it… Seriously do i need to go on? Molten weapons could only be gotten in the last patch, there was time pressure mixed with gambling, all coupled to a system with credit-card. The target audience is definitely the people that value their ingame look above all, and these people often are the demographic i mentioned earlier.

Now don’t get me wrong, i’m not saying if you bough something on the gemstore you are part of this demographic, but i’m saying these people are extremely week to these kind of marketing techniques, and while young uneployed people are rising, the number of players with debts and cash problems rises. These people often justify the purchases with “but if i don’t buy it now i can never have it”.

Another thing that plays right into this, is the fact that legendairy’s are on the trading post, for us it may not matter, but it takes away the feeling of legendairy’s being unique and special, while making them just available for nothing for people with lots of cash. This is percieved unfair by many, and especially to those who don’t have the cash to do this (cause in their mind they believe everyone else does it).

The main point i’m trying to make, there is a system now that exploits people by forcing them to buy things in a certain time period. (and i get why, cause if someone loved molten weapons, but loves the new weapons more, you get twice the income)
While most of use may not mind this at all or just don’t care (maybe cause it’s been proven before that people who make more money often care less about these kinds of little “must have” things.), there are people who are no doubt already in debt, who feel compelled and almost forced to purchase all these little things. It’s not right to exploit the ones who already have a hard time in our society with cheap tricks and marketing!

Now you are probally wondering what is the right system to sell these things in, and how something could be made where Arenanet still makes the money they need while having a store that doesn’t exploit the weak. I’d say look at the steam system. (but instead of games imagine it with items) It’s far from perfect i will admit, but most of the problems are caused by the fact that different companies have to work together to put things on steam. Arenanet managing a steam like store would be way more logical.
Buy an item when it first comes out-> pay the full price, no limited time items. After a period, put it in a sale, price it down, put it in an item bundle, and so on… This takes the purchase-now pressure away, and will make people think about “if i wait a while i may get it cheaper”. And most of all, drop the RNG when talking about real money items. I know RNG makes it all that more special, but it’s this “special” that is so kitten dangerous to the poor demographic.

I’m sorry i had to put it this way but as someone who has personally seen what these kind of tactics in any market can do to families, i really hope this isn’t the way GW2 is going. Games should be fun and engaging, not praying on those who can’t resist these urges. And right now GW2 is doing this, it is the only reason why this type of limited sales excist imo, is to force people to buy it now, or never be able to.

Entertainment praying on those who need it the most, that’s just scary to me.

Fox

add Fox Is Legend if you are in the EU, i’ll portal you up, i have a mesmer i don’t play with at the top. Feel free to tip ^^

weird i play warrior, greatsword, rifle, mace shield all have constant evades and misses

Is extremely hard for melee, and even hard when ranged, evade, miss miss evade, something is seriously wrong here, therefor i only get drops from half or less, when a garanteed shell should be in it according to the update notes.

Erasculio.2914:

My advice is: play through the tutorial, and then go explore the world. Do all the interesting dynamic events you find, admire the beautifully crafted world, listen to all the ambient dialogues, dig through all the lore you can find; do that from the starting areas all the way to right before you enter Orr. Ignore hearts, the personal story, dungeons, and definitely ignore the “lesser” aspects of the game (trading, crafting, item acquisition, etc). Once you have explored everything other than Orr, leave the game and never look back.

And yet that alone wich you propose now gives you 4 times the value of hours a normal AAA title does. Even if that is the only good thing it hasn’t failed.

And btw i’ve read the entire thing, it isn’t very easy to read, bad writing imho srry.

Engineers can have 5 different weapons at 1 time while still having 4 skills available outside of that (wich could be considdered utility), even if you don’t play with kits you still get 8 utility skills instead of 4. Seriously suck it up. (i have a 80 engineer btw)