Guild Wars 2

They’ve been disappearing gradually (SBI)

Whether intentional or not (and I’m thinking not :P) seems kind of cool and sensible.

You’re witnessing selection bias!

People who are enjoying themselves in-game are likely to stay in-game and help others enjoy themselves too.

People who are enjoying themselves so little that they exit the game are likely to come to the forums to voice their dissatisfaction with whatever is bugging them.

Aside; my server’s been really great so far this month in-game too. It’s been a blast

Sleepless.1906:

And to add one more… I don’t mind paying sub fees at all.

I’m very excited about both WildStar and ESO and both companies have said that they’re considering sticking to the sub model. And you know what? I hope they do.

Well hey, those games will be there for you, and maybe they will launch with subscription models. WildStar looks kinda good to me too.

I personally wish that they wouldn’t, because then I would play them.

Vayne.8563:

I wonder how many people who have complained about this have bought chests or keys anyway.

No kidding at all, I imagine the correlation is extremely high.

I know that I, for example, never hate RNG more than right after opening 10 chests and having a highlight of a Strawberry dye to show for it.

edit: Granted, I’m primarily just converting gold rather than spending cash. And I’ve bought a freaking Character Slot with in-game gold; what other game even allows you to do that? There are so many variables here, and these discussions always get so fundamentally philosophical…

rfdarko.4639:

Having a debate on personal philosophies regarding RNG are fine and all, as long as we all realize anet won’t and shouldn’t care. What they care about is the number of crates they sell. If the majority of the players really do feel that the crates are a rip off, then they won’t sell, and anet will use new business models going forward. If they sell, however, they they are completely justified in using RNG, however BS you may personally find it – the majority will have spoken with their wallets.

Instead of blaming anet, point the finger at the real culprits – the consumers. If you actually want to get rid of this type of RNG, get people informed about the purchases their making. Put some statistics right under their noses. Give them sound arguments. If the crates still get bought? Then we have to concede that anet has every right to supply what there is demand for.

This is exactly, to the tee, how I feel.

I mean feel free to keep making new threads about it and voicing concerns. Just make sure you understand that that part of this whole thing is useless. Not buying any gems yourself, and I guess especially trying to organize some kind of boycott would be effective here. Prove that it’s not in their best interest to do this- not in esoteric philosophical terms, but because it would actually work out better for them to stop doing it.

Otherwise, rhetoric about how horrible and unethical and damaging to the game doing things this way will run the risk of contrasting with reality. I mean they know what’s actually happening, how many spend and how spending trends have held or deviated over time.

All we have is our feelings, hurt, pragmatic or otherwise. And once again, I don’t personally like RNG and I think I’d be hard-pressed to find a single individual that does.

13 powerful bloods? That would be a record for me in an hour farming those skelks. Nice work. Grats on the box.

Oh man… so many things come to mind, I’m going to miss stuff for sure. Here’s what I got off the top of my head, just for open world things.

Cooler, non-dragon world events with bonus chest:
Golem Mk. II- intro animation is amazing
Dredge Commissar- the nearby massive battle between the priory and the Dredge is a sight to see. Grab a personal shield generator.
Dwayna’s Temple in Orr- great lore elements woven in
Melandru’s Temple in Orr- get turned into a puppy dog in the middle of a boss fight

More obscure world events with bonus chest:
Flame Temple Tombs
Fire Shaman Cinderspire
Ogre Wars
Zho’Qafa Catacombs

More obscure Meta/Group Events, no bonus chest:
Megadestroyer (Mount Maelstorm)
Devouring the Brand (Iron Marches)
Champion of the Sun (Caledon Forest… ahaha always makes me think of Charlie from Always Sunny)
Assault on Atrox (Fireheart Rise)
Cleanup Krewe (after fire elemental, requires a Matrix Cube Key on the ground in the reactor somewhere)
Toil for the Coil (event chain that unlocks CoE)

Memorable/awesome puzzles:
Chaos Crystal Caverns
Diedre’s Steppes
Goemm’s Lab
Vexa’s Lab
Portmatt’s Lab (figure out how to get on top of the Lighthouse!)
Forsaken Halls
Obsidian Sanctum (careful)

General areas that are cool to see:
Ebonhawke (if you were a GW fan at all, anyway)
The Dragonbrand (extends through Fields of Ruin and Blazeridge Steppes)
Old Lion’s Arch
Fort Trinity
The bottom of the Bakestone Caverns in Southsun Cove (right now especially)
Anything underwater in Frostgorge Sound
The Durmand Priory’s book tornado, and the Whispers’ globe
Divinity’s Reach never fails to impress me.

The two Guild Puzzles, Proxemics Lab and Langmar Estate, are also both amazingly beautiful.

Reddit’s your best bet.

Not a whole lot of what was said there has any bearing on reality, but I just wanted to confirm that yes, if faced with the choice, you are better off going to work for 3 hours than playing a videogame.

I’m not convinced it hurts the game’s image in a notable way. I think for it to impact the game’s image we’d have to see it translate to a decline in either sales or active population. Not, by the way, forum activity. :P

Consider how different the scenario would be if:
-You could purchase items with statistical superiority or gameplay alterations
-You could not purchase gems with gold
-Unique skins, items, and rewards were never offered outside of the Gem shop (I’d underscore the two completely new back items that literally every player in the game can get with about an hour’s worth of effort and no RNG)

Those factors not being true: of course it’s still annoying, but will it make the difference between playing and not playing for the average customer?

I’m sure we could find someone here on the forums that quit because of it, and another person who wouldn’t recommend the game to someone else because of it. There are other types of people as well. Would you, Vayne, avoid recommending this game to someone because of the items offered in RNG chests? I woudn’t. It wouldn’t even be in the top 10 things I’d mention about the game.

And of course, you’re under no obligation to support them. The best thing you can do to encourage ArenaNet not to offer items this way is simply not buy gems. But I made peace a long time ago with the fact that other people are going to. The allure is too strong.

Vayne.8563:

That’s a good post, Hawkian. It’s stuff I knew but never put together in my mind.

I mean I REALLY don’t like this RNG stuff. Drives me mad. I like the new skins, I want a new skin but I’m not willing to gamble to get a new skin. Yeah, that’s annoying.

On the other hand, there are probably tons of players used to this type of transaction who don’t think twice. Somehow, it’s wrong to me that they don’t think twice…like they should know better, or it should be obvious…but it’s not to lots of people.

I don’t like it at all either. I mean, again, on an individual level no one should.

To employ the popular analogy of gambling (this is not actual gambling, by the way, but I do not have any desire to get into that at the moment)…

It’s like an individual sitting at the slot machines and complaining about how low his odds of winning are, while he and 300 around him continue to pop in quarters every few seconds. Yes, of course you’re wasting money. Yes, of course the odds are atrocious. You should just know better, come on!!!

But obviously there’s nothing enticing about it, since as we all know, casinos are not profitable establishments and Las Vegas as an institution has no reason to continue offering slot machines.

Now, up until this point in my analogy I’d still simply prefer that everyone stop putting in quarters. They’re just hurting themselves. There’s no net benefit to themselves, let alone the other people playing slots, let alone the other people in the casino who aren’t gambling.

But here’s where the comparison diverges completely. It would be as though the casino was offering me, someone who isn’t gambling or really spending much money on anything at all, a valuable and enjoyable service. And the quality of that service went up and had the chance to last longer the more money the casino made. Now I look back at the people in the rows of slots and say, “Yeah! Go for it! I’m sure next time you’ll hit the jackpot!”

Bearzu Smash.5962:

No, consumers are attempting to make their voices heard because in a game where it’s all about the cosmetics for the majority of the player base people are being asked to gamble for a chance at cosmetic items rather than being allowed to straight-up buy them.

No, they aren’t.

What is happening is that a subset of the total number of people playing this game is complaining on a forum. You would do well to note that this is the case for any number of issues, every day, forever. And it’s extremely dangerous to extrapolate any meaningful assessment of the total playerbase from the content of the forums. ArenaNet and NCSoft know not to do this, and it’s a valuable thing for anyone who cares about the future of this game to learn.

Consumers making their voices heard in this case would be to stop buying anything associated with RNG for real money. Without any need for data I can tell you that this would be 100% effective in eliminating a random chest/box approach to introducing new items. Put in the simplest terms, if no one bought anything offered that way, they would make literally $0 offering things that way, and they would stop doing so permanently.

Of course, we know that isn’t the case. In fact, we can surmise from the fact that they have used this model of item delivery multiple times (though NOT, it must be noted, every time) that it is likely quite successful from a fiscal perspective.

I imagine that the monetization logic is something along the lines of: offering an item outright in the shop is guaranteed to produce x amount of $ from gem purchases per customer to buy that item outright, whereas offering items through the allure of random chance will produce a highly variable amount of $ per customer, based on their desire for the item, their tolerance for bad results, their real-life financial status, etc.

If a handful of players are willing to simply spend as much as they must until they get the item they desire (and I should not need to tell you the abject truth- these people exist), this makes up for the “lost sales” of a dozen or even many more people had they offered the item as a straight sale.

Furthermore, if another group of players isn’t willing to spend as much as they must, but is willing to spend a fixed amount to try- say, $20- and then stop, whether or not they got what they wanted- the $20 is the same from the store’s perspective as though they had spent it on outright purchases. If this group then comes to the forums and complains about how awful the RNG is, which do you think is weighted more heavily: the complaints voiced after the fact, or the $20 already spent?

No, this is going to continue, because it works. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t. You can’t let the fact that a lot of people here are voicing their discontent keep you from acknowledging what’s going on.

I don’t like RNG. You don’t either. On an individual level, no one should. But that isn’t how this works. We are talking volumes of hundreds of thousands of transactions. Talking about how bad it is here will not alter its use as long as the accompanying actual player behavior with regard to the store contrasts with those complaints.

I suppose that the most sensible thing to do in terms of being a “consumer making your voice heard” would be to organize some sort of community boycott of anything delivered through RNG in the gem store. With enough people committing to such a boycott (and not lying about their own in-game habits), you might make enough of a financial dent to change ArenaNet’s approach somewhat.

For my part, I really don’t care. I’ll convert a bit of gold and buy a handful of crates; probably get nothing good but be pleasantly surprised if I do. It doesn’t begin to frustrate me.

Why? Because there are, and will always be lots of things in this game that I want but can’t easily get. In this case, if someone spends all the money that I’m not willing to spend for the chance, it ultimately benefits everyone in the end.

The more money they make the better it is for every player, despite the fact that their methods of making money might not be enjoyable to any single player.

Should just be a toggle, yes. I like the “current episode” tracker but I can of course see how people would get annoyed by it.

When did you diligently work through them all? Tell me you tried guesting to get the last item before giving up.

I will refrain from commenting on the moral nature of asking for gem purchases (let alone the game proper) refunded at this juncture, and merely add that deleting your account because of an inability to get one achievement seems very reactionary and short-sighted. It would cost you no money, time, or effort to simply abandon your characters in terms of playing the game while leaving the account intact. Then four years later when the frustration of the year 2013 has left you, you can give the game another shot!

it is in the thread right above this one literally.

edit: okay well below now. stupid causality.

Hahaha the last remnants of the Molten Alliance survive unpiloted.

I’m sure this is a mistake, I had no idea they were still around.

Some Good Guy MMO Dev stuff right here.

Two new sets of weapons were added with Fractals (the Fractal skins themselves, and the black and white exotics that drop already bound). The Fused skins, guild weapon skins, SAB skins, Braham and Rox’s skins and the new creepy southun stuff would be it I think.

Yep you figured it out

The game would be better if stealth just turned you bright green

Thieves suck

;)

Lymangood.3679:

The way I feel now I just want to log as many hours as possible into this game and never pay them another cent. How profitable is that going to be for anet?

Can’t wait to find out!

Not that this really quite does what you asked, but you can do your PvP Daily/Monthly for your regular old PvE Laurels now, if you so choose.

Lot of people who “get it” in here so far. I can dig it

You aren’t rectifying common misconceptions, you’re spreading them. :-/

Guild Wars 2 has stuff to do for individuals, stuff to do for parties of any size, stuff to do for 5 man organized groups, stuff to do for massive unorganized crowds, and stuff to do for big organized groups like guilds. You can choose what you’d like to participate in on a multiplayer capacity, and it is massive in scale at its heart.

Everything in the gem store, no matter what it is, can be purchased with in-game gold by converting to gems. All comparisons to true F2P games fall so unendingly flat with me as a result. Just save up and buy what you want, or spend some money and support the game. I’ve done both and I’ll keep doing both.

If grinding tons of mobs for hours on end is how you “play you you want,” then do it. There’s unlimited farming opportunities out there in Tyria for you to go braindead from. What you’re reacting to is certain farming spots being nerfed when they become disproportionately popular which is the way it has gone in every scenario like this all the time ever. Farming DR isn’t even likely to affect a human player unless you’re staying in a 10×10 box of the gameworld for hours, and again if you really want to just keep going you can.

Don’t confuse people further by ill-defining the terms.

Nobody knows exactly how that will work but my favorite postulation so far is that, “those transmuted weapons won’t be boosted in power to match the ascended stats right when ascended weapons are released but will be quickly patched in a day or two with an ‘oops.’”

gfox, your opinion isn’t invalid, but I would wager that, when coming up with a general vision and direction for a new painting, you imagine that painting at some point being done, even if finishing it takes you longer than expected.

ArenaNet’s project both isn’t designed to be “finished” and, we are now discovering, is actually designed to be constantly changing, so that the world will be slightly or even dramatically different every time you return. It’s an enormously different beast from making a painting or a sculpture or a film, or even far more relevant design projects like single-player RPGs.

We’ll certainly see what happens but I’ve generally been very impressed with their iterative approach so far and wouldn’t consider anything that’s been added a “band-aid” with the exception of some of the shallower quality-of-life adjustments (like the guild missions tab). Instead I view every new platform for content delivery they’ve added (from Fractals to Guild Missions to the Super Adventure Box to, of course, Living Story) as strengthening the foundation of the game. So… no, they didn’t “sell out” from everyone’s perspective or an objective perspective. Some people have even had their expectations exceeded.

On an unrelated note, Pandora doesn’t live in the box. -_-

“All classes welcome” is the best comment you can write or seek when using GW2LFG.

I will accept payment for this advice in either silver or ectos

Man this complaint falls flat when you consider that:
1. You can buy the book without spending any real-world currency at all
2. People who have the book can psychic the dances to other people
3. The dances were already in the game long before this, already accessed through the gem shop, but in a far less convenient way and on a temporary basis
4. This permanent book costs less than two Boxes o’ Fun which would last for a total of 30 minutes.

With all that into account the complaint “I don’t like these dances being sold” morphs into “the price in gold of the book to permanently obtain these dances for myself is too high” and I mean come on.

Just relax and enjoy the groove

It’s funny because Ulgoth is one of the daily bonus events and people hit him up pretty frequently. I see 20-30 people when I hit that event without batting an eye. However, the rest of the zone is certainly depopulated most of the time. It’s one of my absolute least favorite zones (centaurs… centaurs everywhere).

It would be kind of cool if every Meta Event chain in the game actually spawned the daily bonus; easily curtailed by giving accounts a max of 20 (the current limit you can obtain). The big world events would still be popular, but lesser-known metas would be done more regularly and it’d allow people to do their favorite chains rather than the ones on “the list.” Granted I have no clue if Gargantula would apply, I’ve never done it myself. :P

Evindor.1780:

New Character Yo, I’m pretty sure this is not suppose to be publicly known because this would cause rage in the gaming community. There is of course a positive reinforcement element in this story.

Vol, there is probably a delay in the increase to avoid it from being too obvious. Further more, with this hidden Magic Find increase you can still be unlucky and not get good loot. Of course the chance of that happening is lower than those who don’t spend money in the Gem Store.

A positive reinforcement ELEMENT?

Out of curiosity If ArenaNet came out and said “nope, buying stuff with Gems in no way affects your drops,” would that dissuade you from thinking it was occurring, or make no difference?

Meh.

I speak for the underground thieves’ collective when I say “bring it on,” I suppose.

Great class. Doesn’t need much help, doesn’t need much nerfed… won’t complain when either come down the pipe.

poof

Equanox.2081:

That they implemented this is really bad.. Basicly pay to win.

“That they” implemented this? Are you kidding me? O.o

Evindor.1780:

Give it one more week, MrKnieves. Do a few world bosses and I’m sure your Gem Store purchased ‘hidden’ Magic Find will kick in.

Jandus, of course it’s impossible for me to single-handedly gather enough data on this matter to get any sort of statically significance. It is, how ever, a fishy matter, to say the least.

Er, wait, are you being serious about this? I thought you were just venting cause you were jealous of your friends.

Accurate yep. Good way to redeem the situation if you accidentally get two of the same ring.

Zacchary.6183:

So it is possible to have 2 ascended gear equipped? Yay!

Not two of the same piece.

If you ever catch me in-game anywhere (any character beginning with “Hawkian”) say, “do something fun!” and I’ll make something happen. Whether it means throwing down a box of fun, my Warlock’s cauldron, or leading folk nearby on a cool event or puzzle- I try to memorize a lot of fun, lesser-known stuff- I’m always up to taking the time to do something cool with people who are into that sort of thing.

Sauzo.6821:

Anet needs to check out how the RNG affected Tera….its F2P now and lost a lot of servers. That should speak volumes to how fun RNG is when it’s tied to a key component in the game(top tier weapons for Tera and legendaries for GW2).

I hear GW2 might be going F2P any day now

I thought it was per character? That’s changed?

I know the thread is already filled with a lot of serious and less-serious responses to your actual points about farming, but I’m not actually sure if they can be rationally addressed. I need to call attention to this part:

it has taken me nearly 3.5 months to make, and I am a insanely dedicated GW2 player. I am in a sense addicted to this game. I play 8-18 hours a day. There have been many all-nighters. I take breaks to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, but other than that I have no life. Now I chose this life style because I wanted to take on the nearly impossible goal of creating a legendary

I think the first thing you should do is take a complete break from the game altogether. :-[ I don’t mean just cutting back from eighteen hour days, but not having anything to do with Guild Wars 2 for a while. No logging on “just for an hour” to farm, no posting your impassioned complaints on the boards.

The thing is, I think you’ve correctly identified a possibly clinical obsession and maybe even a compulsion. I hope I don’t come off as sarcastic or dismissive of your complaints, but I don’t think what you’ve brought up here constitutes a healthy desire to see the game change for the better so much as a surfacing of potentially dangerous addiction to the pursuit of a digital item.

Your life will not appreciably improve by obtaining a Legendary weapon. Please take a break!

Rama.6439:

Don’t let them give you some stupid story, it’s temporary cause they make money that way, they add in a temporary dungeon like SAB and the new one and the add items from it to the gem store, they think everyone in game is stupid and dont get it, but some do, they have stuff in game that they can add to and build on but they just ignore it cause it wont make them money. But it will lose them players doing what they are doing, keep it up please, by all means, keep it up, I like not having overflow in LA anymore, doubt it will ever be that way again.

This comment jumped way the hell out at me, and I just wanted to note that Overflows in LA on my server were pretty much par for the course up until the moment the Bonus rares for world events were turned on. I don’t think I’ve seen an LA overflow since, though Queensdale, Sparkfly, Frostgorge and Wayfarer overflows occasionally do pop up at exactly the event times. It is my contention that at any given moment the population is now spread out across more zones than they are concentrated in LA. Your theory is good too though!

I specifically entered the thread to see which you meant.

This is the most meta I have ever felt.

Super Adventure Box will return, if you’re interested keep your ears to the ground.

To be frank, speaking as someone who loved the crap out of GW1 but is just trying to be objective, I think it feels very very dated now. After the first BWE for GW2 I went back and got three more HoM points, and it really stood out to me. The way you can’t attack at all without a target, can’t jump, can’t switch your skills at all outside of a town… it just feels mechanically poorer despite being an amazing game for its time. You can get the lore stuff very adequately from watching videos and reading the wiki.

That said, if you do want to go for HoM stuff, you can get the trilogy + EotN for a ludicrous value at this point.

Mathias.9657:

Is that supposed to make me grab one before they run out, because it actually makes me not want to buy them out of spite.

You show ’em!

tolunart.2095:

Tachenon.5270:

tolunart.2095:

They are trying to be DIFFERENT from every other MMO out there, complaining because the game doesn’t work the way every other MMO does is kind of missing the point…

Putting square wheels on an automobile would make it different from every other automobile out there, too. Still doesn’t make it a good idea.

There is no excuse for temporary (non-seasonal) content.

You’re welcome to your opinion. I like the idea, although I’d prefer it goes a lot farther. But I realize it’s not practical in this kind of game to change the environment on a server-by-server basis. According to the Official Word in this very thread, they are pleased with how it’s going, too, and will use the experience to adjust future efforts, but there is no sign they will abandon them.

So I suppose you’d better get used to it.

Well, they don’t have to get used to it

Iron Maiden.7453:

Thanks chap! But now its saying The Vigil are on a mission to raid a molten alliance weapon testing facility in diessa pleatu

Indeed, if you’re interested, there’s a special dungeon you can run by heading to Diessa Plateau and finding a group. It will level you up to 80 inside; however, considering how new you are this would still be a challenge.

Nothing in Flame and Frost is “necessary.” You happened to come in right at the very tail end of a story arc that’s been going on for four months, so if you like you can just ignore all of it. If you’re interested though, definitely look for and read everything a Herald has to say.

Flame and Frost is a Living Story content arc. Think of it as “what’s going on right now” in the Guild Wars 2 world. If you click on it, it will take you to the achievements page where you can get a little detail about what to do to contribute to the war efforts. You can also find a Herald in any major city for more detail.

You can reach any city in the game very easily- first pull up the PvP menu and go to the Heart of the Mists. Then, walk through the purple gate to Lion’s Arch. Once there, you want to find the Gate Hub, which has gates to all the other races’ cities including the Black Citadel.

Pretty much to the tee what I was hoping you guys were aiming for.

Hickeroar.9734:

You have to hit the node more than 24 hours after you hit it last time on that character. Is it possible you’re not hitting that node after the elapsed time on that character?

This is most likely the answer- the 24 hour window is also character based, not account, so depending on when that character last hit that node it might not have popped back up.

TheVirtualFrog.8714:

It’s quite easy being top dog when others have already paved the path for you.

That explains why so many other games achieved the same level of success this one has in the first three fiscal quarters of their existence! It all makes sense now.

;)

The game will continue, no doubt about that. The question is that with how many players will it continue?

I dunno.

Jae.5138:

the dropping sales of the game speaks for itself.

Jae.5138:

problems that are making the game lose more and more players.

Jae.5138:

The game is dying in that the player base is decreasing. There’s no denying this.

Jae.5138:

Guild Wars 2 is losing its players, or that its player base is not as strong as some of the other mmo’s out there.

What evidence are you drawing from?

This is a simple question, and since your assertions entail both that what you are saying is true and claim that the numbers “speak for themselves” and “there’s no denying” them, it should be very simple to answer.

Without this evidence, it is extremely difficult to find any of your arguments sound or worthy of attention. You didn’t begin from a position of stating that these described issues were not to your personal preference as a player and thus disappointing to players of your type; you went straight for the implications regarding ArenaNet’s bottom line.

This brings in the investors.

ArenaNet isn’t a publicly traded company, and I have no idea what you think they’d be counting on or expecting angel investors at this point for anything at all. If you meant to make some broader point about NCSoft’s stock and the future impact it might have then say so- but for the moment that has nothing to do with ArenaNet’s budget/revenue/the development of GW2 so far as we know.