Guild Wars 2

Rhotsbin.8579:

Pushing 200 pages of largely legitimate complaints about this decision, and not a word to address it. Fires spreading to fansites. During beta there were devs jumping all over the tiniest QQ about personal story dialog that didn’t jive right with a handful of players that saw/disliked it.

What. Thekitten. Happened. To Anet.

I’m seriously starting to wonder if every dev speaking in the MMOifesto has quit/been fired and NC$oft is running the show.

I doubt they’ve been fired, though it is odd that they haven’t come forward to speak to us honestly. We don’t need sugar coated PR at this point, we need answers and we need them as swiftly as possible.

I’m very willing to give Arena Net the benefit of the doubt, since I know how ruthless and cruel the world of business can be. I suspect many of the developers have their hands tied, especially since these sort of sweeping changes just reek of investor meddling.

Anyone who doesn’t believe that GW2 is in trouble is a little naive at this point. There’s been a lot of controversial changes in the last patch and a lot of backlash from the gaming press and players themselves.

It’s pretty disappointing. What happened to the supposed lack of a grind? Yes, the rewards are mostly cosmetic – though as a collector is it quite frankly getting irritating to see a lot of items gated behind gold, token and gem grinds.

Arena Net should take a leaf out of WoW’s book when it comes to event rewards – perhaps offering them as a reward for a jumping puzzle or something similar that takes skill rather than grinding to achieve.

kKagari.6804:

None of the 23 friends I started the game with plays this game anymore. Went out for a beer with them on last night and it was the butt of all jokes too lol.

I started the game with three close friends. One doesn’t have the time to devote to the game due to work and has subsequently quit due to not wanting a gear grind beyond that which already exists. The other grew bored a month or so ago and went back to WoW to try out MoP. A shame, really.

fled.4691:

Still in utter disbelief at zero communication from these Anet. Really someone needs to resign and do-over the entire community PR mandate and staff.

I’m a little confused by it. They were incredibly active during the marketing and beta phase.

Arena Net need to speak out against elitism, not let it fester and grow into a widespread issue. Otherwise the community will become stagnant and spiteful.

Kyosji.8961:

I don’t use twitter….It is not an official medium to inform the community on.

This. The official website should be updated first and foremost, especially since it is incredibly pretentious to expect people to invest in social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook that have some questionable business and privacy practices.

Booning.5476:

I am waiting for the first dev to jump ship and spill their guts all over the Internet. They must be watching each other like hawks

This kind of mess is not something you want on your cv and the quicker you get out and blame everyone else the better – so what’s the betting early next week or later?

Tick tock

Unlikely to happen. Even if a developer does depart Arena Net, they’ll be legally bound by NDA’s that often persist for a good few years.

Still no official response? Disappointing, especially since a number of threads in the warrior forum have been treated to official responses. This is a potentially game-breaking issue that will negatively affect those of us with a build that involves a greatsword. Why should we be expected to grin and bear it during a very limited one time event?

I’m rapidly tiring of this game, partially due to the recent broken promises and largely due to the lack of support and swift responses when it comes to bugs.

It’s a ridiculous change. What I want I know is whether this is an intended change or whether it is a bug. If it’s the former, then it must have deliberately been left off of the patch notes. If it’s the latter? I expect a bug fix ASAP before the weekend event begins.

I really, really hope that this is a bug and will be resolved swiftly. My damage whilst using the ability is down by approximately 2k, and I’m not even built as a glass cannon.

We’re sorely in need of some solid, sustainable AoE to compensate for being unable to do much damage to anything standing on a wall.

A contract works both ways. If we breach the rules, we’re banned or warned. If Arena Net back down on their word and breach the trust of their fans through false advertising, they will fall foul of the law in certain countries. In addition, broken promises and cases of ‘selling out’ hold many short and long term consequences.

I do wonder if is this is less a problem with Arena Net and more to do with pressure forced onto the company by investors? I’d like to think a lot of Arena Net employees truly care about their fans and game, as displayed with the original Guild Wars.

This has obviously been planned for a while, so why hasn’t it been mentioned in any of the recent interviews? I’m sorry, but dropping the news of sweeping game changes a few days before a patch launches just isn’t acceptable in my eyes. Communication is important and we need to know exactly what is on the table for the immediate future.

As a personal plea, I would urge the moderators to think twice about wielding aggressive moderation tactics in a thread such as this. Tensions are high, though I’m not seeing much to warrant the deletion of many of the posts that are vanishing. I’d also like to point out that someone being blunt in their posts doesn’t necessarily mean they warrant an infraction and/or ban. Not every coats their words in sugar, so please respect that.

Well, I’ve just had a post infracted for daring to mention that the developers have gone back on their promise. That’s not an accusation, it’s a fact. Though I suppose our concerns regarding the breach of promises outlined in the manifesto and marketing surrounding this game are just going to be brushed aside and/or silenced.

Fiasco.3501:

No screw you. Yes, ANet please make this new change and spice thing up. Thank you.

…it doesn’t spice anything up. If you want a gear grind, there’s countless other MMO’s available for that. Why does the MMO that promises to be different have to end up becoming WoW with better graphics? >_>

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Thread Summary: Everyone hates this patch and we feel betrayed that ArenaNet went back on their design principles.

Can we get rid of the Ascended gear now?

Not ‘everyone’ but a pretty notable portion. Sadly, it’s too little too late – this isn’t the first promise Arena Net have backed down upon and chances are it won’t be the last.

I just feel betrayed and disappointed. I’d endured disappointment after disappointment in various other MMO’s and then finally GW2 came along and actually delivered. Now I’m meant to sit back and shrug my shoulders when core game design promises are broken this early on?

I just can’t figure out who the target audience is meant to be. Why does ‘endgame’ content have to involve a mindless grind and gear progression? I guess I’ll re-sub to a certain other MMO. At least I can collect pets and such without just buying them from a trading post/gem store.

sigh

I didn’t like Pyre either. Some of his flavour dialogue made me raise an eyebrow and a lot of similar dialogue can be found in GW2. I’m not going to beat around the bush here, since I’ve already seen one MMO drop the ball with its lore in order to play favourites with playable races. I’m not going to ask for humans to be ‘better’ or more prominent than the charr, though I do expect Arena Net to treat the human lore with the same amount of passion they are quite readily throwing in the direction of the charr.

synk.6907:

Garenthal.1480:

This isn’t entirely unexpected. I find GW2 to be an incredibly enjoyable game, though I didn’t buy into the marketing hype for the same reason I have walked away bitterly disappointed from other recent MMO’s – promises are broken. Rarely does a business remain loyal their cokittenget audience in the world we live in.

The thing is they have just under a decade of doing well by us players with GW, so why change GW2 in only a couple months?

No clue why infusion couldn’t just be a mechanic to mitigate Agony like it is for Spectral Agony in the first game. For some reason you have to boost the stats on gear as well?

But legendaries are OK. Good for legendaries, I guess. Everything else, here comes more impetus for transmutation stones sales…

I wish I knew. I can only offer a few theories from the perspective of a seasoned MMO player, but this…sadly isn’t new. I can sympathise with anyone who feels betrayed simply because I have been in the exact same boat back when WoW decided to cater to a completely different target audience, often on a patch to patch basis.

I’m not going to quit because of this, though it is making me want to invest less time in GW2. As it stands, I still think it is the most promising MMO on the market (though for various unrelated reasons I’m very keen on what TES: Online is set to offer).

This isn’t entirely unexpected. I find GW2 to be an incredibly enjoyable game, though I didn’t buy into the marketing hype for the same reason I have walked away bitterly disappointed from other recent MMO’s – promises are broken. Rarely does a business remain loyal their cokittenget audience in the world we live in.

I realise that this probably comes off as pretty cynical, though I’m going to try and not let this ruffle my feathers too much. I will say that I have a few concerns about how the community will evolve in the immediate future. I unsubscribed from WoW for a variety of reasons, mostly because I wanted something fresh and based on skill rather than gear. If the community begins preventing players from teaming up based largely on whether or not they have ascended gear, then that will only serve to prove many of the folk in this thread to be correct in their unease.

Obsidian.1328:

My problem with the Charr is thus: they are fake.

They are at best the forced construct of an unfolding lore that deparately needed to have them be the good guys now. The whole spirit of GW2 is this not-so-subtle moral tale on how we all need to get along and forget our past grudges. Why? Because the dragons are the bad guys now. The Charr used to be be the quintessential bad guys: brutish, ugly, feral…basically beasts who knew how to fight in formation. They were the primary enemy in GW1 Prophesies before the expansions came out.

Comparing the Foefire to the Searing is like comparing a housefire to an earthqauke. The Foefire, while tragic, only affected one city. Given the extreme hatred between these two races it doesn’t seem so surprising really. The Searing on the other hand, affected every single culture in Tyria. And in a very bad way. It opened the door for invasion of both Kryta and Orr by the Charr.

The Krytans had to turn to abject slavery under the White Mantle and the Mursaat to be saved annihilation by the Charr. It took years of civil war and death to oust the Mantle out, and the strife bled into Magumma and the Shiverpeaks as well. The land was in shambles after that, and they were the lucky ones.

When the Charr came marching on Orr after the Searing, the humans turned to the Vizier in desperation. Secretly he had been biding his time for such an opportunity and promptly used the Scepter of Orr in the Cataclysm to sink the entire continent to the bottom of the sea. Hey, at least he killed the Charr too. :/

And we don’t need to talk about Ascalon. So…one event made mad ghosts out of a city. The other changed the entire face of Tyria forever…in an ugly way. Two kingdoms dead and gone and one on the ropes. All because of, directly or indirectly, the Charr and the Searing.

It’s not a fair comparison.

Yet, even with all of that, my biggest gripe with the Charr is that they were conjured out of thin air. I’ll explain.

The Charr of GW1 were, as I mentioned, beastly and cruel. The only advanced social structures they could boast were a rudimentary caste system and some effective mass military tactics. Other than that they weren’t too far off the DNA path from the grawl.

The Charr of GW2 are rediculously different. They have these modern, steel-girded cities, advanced weapons of war, a finely-tuned army and social structure. They are marvels of modern engineering for goodness sake; 4-story tall motorcycles? What the heck is that? They went from communicating with grunts and rudimentary speech wearing loincloths in GW1 to being the champions of technology in GW2.

All in the span of 250 years…

That is some crazy-fast evolution. Meanwhile the Asura (the obvious engineer choice) are over there twiddling their thumbs making yet another Golem based on the original model. And now everyone is supposed to be all friendly and nice because the dragons are around. /facepalm

So, to me anyway, the Charr are the superficial construct of a storyline that desperately needed to make them be the good guys now. Hate to say it, because I really like a lot of the writing that went into both games, but it’s bad writing.

You might as well line up every human in Kryta and have Rytlock walk along them, slapping each one in the face and laughing gleefully as he carries Rurik’s stolen sword with him.

Oh…I didn’t make a Charr character if anyone was wondering.

Very well said! There’s not much more for me to add, but I thank you on behalf of many a frustrated lore fan!

The game is doing exceptionally well, as far as I’m concerned. I play on Tarnished Coast and there’s never a shortage of players in pretty much any zone I venture to. If you don’t see anyone around, ask in map chat if anyone wants to team up.

Josh Foreman.8250:

We run one-time events at the time where we have the highest concurrency.

With all due respect, that doesn’t really account for the players who are heavily invested in the game and the lore in particular. As a role-player and lore fan, I love seeing events unfold in real time. I’m lucky enough to be able to be around when they occur, but I can only imagine the sheer frustration that like-minded players who cannot make it endure.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I do feel a little troubled by a supposedly ‘innovative’ game taking the ‘majority rules’ approach.

The moderation does appear a little overzealous at times. I’d like to think that it’ll improve in the future, though – Arena Net recently announced that ‘better communication’ would be one of their main areas of improvement in the immediate future.

For what it’s worth, I’ve received two infractions myself – both from the same thread claiming that I was going off-topic when in fact I was simply discussing the subject from the opposing side’s point of view. That did make me raise an eyebrow and left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. It could be a genuine mistake, but I do like having a clean record and thus I always strive to uphold the rules.

The sad thing is, I very rarely see posts with ‘kitten’ in every other sentence deleted, even though it’s obvious the poster in question is dropping curses left, right and centre.

I’d rather see new abilities and weapons given to the existing professions instead of seeing new professions pop up to potentially overshadow an existing niche. I still have a bad taste left in my mouth from what WoW did in regards to adding new classes.

I just wish we had a major male lore figure turn out to be homosexual to balance things out. Is it too much to hope for Logan to realise Jennah is playing him like a harp and to decide to embrace one of his Seraph soldiers?

As far as I’m concerned, the mission had an excellent concept but poor execution. It didn’t necessarily need to be longer, but there’s a fair few plot holes – why aren’t we given the option to dissuade our mentor from sacrificing themselves? Why is the commander entrusted with the defence of Claw Island so arrogant and reckless? What happened to the Asura who was situated upon the wall? Why is Mira screaming about being blinded, only to be perfectly fine afterwards, showing up in a later mission in the personal story?

It’d be pretty awkward to have the option to have one’s player character fall in love with a particular NPC only for hundreds of other players to end up going down the exact same route. If anything, player marriages would be a better route to go down, though even then it’s pretty awkward and dodgy territory due to how seriously some people take it.

I despise Tybalt. He’s an excellent character, though in no way was he suited for a secretive order that accepts very few failures. The fact he added an element of comic relief to almost every Order of Whispers mission was a little annoying, too – especially since it came at the cost of the giving the more important and intriguing lore figures much less screen-time.

I believe you’re meant to strategically use the bombs strewn about the area to take out the larger groups, without running in head-first. Assuming it’s the mission I recall, at least!

Yeah, Destiny’s Edge would have been much more tolerable – and it would have allowed for every race to have a figure to look up to during the latter portion of the personal story. It’s a real shame that Destiny’s Edge was effectively thrown to the side due to a very forced bout of ‘conflict’ that just came across as childish. Logan and Rytlock whining at each other got old pretty fast, yet more unusual was Zojja’s hatred for Eir. They would have been much better suited to leading the war effort in Orr, considering how they’ve already got plenty of experience in dealing with the minions of the Elder Dragons and the Dragons themselves.

Trahearne could still exist, he’s an interesting character – but one who just wasn’t suited to getting such a huge role. It’d be better if he acted as an advisor of sorts, perhaps briefing Destiny’s Edge and the united Orders on the various horrors of Orr.

His accent isn’t British. It’s exceptionally rare to find someone who talks like he does naturally, since in most cases anyone who does talk like him is usually putting on a fake accent to fit the damaging Hollywood stereotype that paints all British people as either talking like a street rat or a pretentious snob. A shame, really – England has a huge variety of diverse accents even within the space of a few miles.

Although I don’t play a female human myself, I wholeheartedly agree with this. I really don’t understand why so many games insist on making females squeaky and irritating in combat situations.

Changing core game mechanics very rarely ends well.

It’s a shame to see that a very enjoyable part of the game is likely to never play a part in PvP because of the incessant whining of players who claim to be ‘competitive’ but refuse to learn how to master an – admittedly situational – aspect of the game.

>_>

Sharks aren’t an issue if you tackle them one or two at a time instead of rushing past them, though most people seem to simply rush from one objective to the next and then complain about being swarmed by players or enemies.

I’ve definitely noticed a significant drop in the amount of players lurking in the heart of the mists as well as in actual SPVP games. I suppose a lot of it is down to the current lack of incentives, though hopefully that’ll be solved with the upcoming changes in the November update.

As for whether or not it’ll become an E-Sport? Too early to tell, though I suspect it’ll be a niche if it does.

I wonder if people realise that they wouldn’t have to contend with crowd control if they didn’t run through groups of enemies in the first place? It’s not rocket science and it’s the price people need to be prepared to pay for trying to rush through content.

I find it to be pretty hilarious, to be honest. Without sounding overly harsh, I’ve noticed that most real women tend to play attractive female characters whilst men playing female characters tend to make them very…trashy looking. I’m confident enough in my sexuality to be able to play a male character, though.

…it’s already notoriously difficult for certain professions to gain ‘gold’ in an event already, there’s really no need to make it even harder for those of us with limited AoE tagging options.

There’s a pretty hefty amount of black lion chests floating around that are very unlikely to ever be opened unless some major changes are made. I firmly believe that the keys should be available in bulk for a much lower gem price.

I’d say the biggest issue at the moment is the lack of masculine versions for most of the ‘caster’ weaponry.

I loved it. It’s far more engaging and elaborate that what I’ve found in other MMO’s for seasonal achievements.

Account sharing is illegal, as far as I know. Posting about doing it on an official forum isn’t the best possible thing one can do.

Spreading false rumours should be met with a ban, as far as I’m concerned. It brings nothing of worth to the community beyond tricking new and/or naive players.

Didn’t Arena Net claim they wanted to distance themselves from allowing lore to be driven by references to popular culture?

Map completion isn’t mandatory. The rewards are nice, though not essential. Let’s not forget that you can go back and do anything involving map completion at any time, so there’s no rush if you’re stuck on a particular vista.

Arguably even if people remain stuck on a vista then they’re simply earning their achievement. It’s a bit of a bonus for the perfectionists among us. As for jumping puzzles, practice makes perfect!

I lean more towards the greatsword, though that mostly boils down to personal preference in my case. I love casters that wield swords rather than staves, I just wish we had a bleed associated with at least one of our sword or greatsword abilities.

I really hope you’re not serious about clogging up the support ticket system with inane jokes.