Guild Wars 2

I am really hoping something legitimately good comes from the skill splits. I have been asking for them since before the game was released. They have a chance to make each area of the game have its own flavor whilst still retaining each skill having the same function. I know that initially they won’t jump into the deep end with this, but they have a real chance of offering players diversity of game play with this. I wish they’d just dive into the deep end with it. It could be something great.

Sadly, the legendary debacle has really tainted my view of this game. Multiple times they have said they were releasing them and they failed. It’s bad enough they were supposed to come in 2013 and not behind an expansion pack paywall, but to put it as a selling point for the x-pac and then drop it after the x-pac was out is just heinous. Customers deserve to be treated better.

I am cool with the lack of communication I guess. They can’t over promise and under deliver. Heck, is the Legendary Armor even in the game yet? Like, can I go get a full set of Legendary armor right now if I owned HoT? How many months has HoT been out?

Josh Davis.6015:

Trigr.6481:

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Balancing SPvP individually——-

- This is probably the single most important change that the SPvP community needs whether you realize it or not. Not only does this make sense, but since SPvP is already isolated, not one change you make here effects the rest of the game. The way it currently works the devs expect us as players to think about the rest of the game before giving changes to a specific game type, however this way of thinking will never create good balance and the reason why is the majority of changes people suggest are obviously only made and will work for Spvp. WvW and PvE are very different in terms of balance and changes for one often conflict with the other two making the change almost meaningless to begin with.

The Lesh Prince recently developed some tech that makes skill-splitting more feasible than it was previously – you’ll see some PvP (and PvE) splits in the next balance update. It’s important to understand that changes will still need to be global, but we’ll definitely have a bit more flexibility moving forward.

Keeping parity between modes when possible is important to us – but when it’s not feasible we’ll look at splits.

edit: that clickbait though

adjusts tie and taps mic a few times. 4 years. I’ve been suggesting this for 4 years.

Sadly, yes. There are only a handful of builds I can run effectively in sPvP without owning HoT. Nothing about the PvE in HoT interested me, but I still wanted to play sPvP. That only lasted a week or so during the first season. I quickly learned I couldn’t play many of my core professions effectively against elite specs so I quit. $50 was too steep a price tag for someone like me who only wanted to PvP.

Fantastic addition ArenaNet. Good on ya for finally following through.

The only thing that’d surprise me at this point is if they actually started finishing up years old stories. So I guess: The Wizard’s Tower? The one location that I’d be surprised by.

I haven’t looked at the responses but if that were truly the case OP, they would have started making the BL Chest underwater weapons again. Not gonna happen.

Welcome back old friend. Every time this thread comes back over the YEARS it brings a tear to my eye and a smile to my face. Someday. Maybe.

I think the target audience shifted to a degree. It’s my opinion that ArenaNet shifted focus slightly away from long term retention to a more mobile game style market.

I didn’t buy HoT and own 2 accounts for GW1 and GW2 that have everything prior to HoT. Does that mean anything? Not really. Whe HoT was announced I would have purchased it if it were available at that time just because there had never been a prior GW franchise release that had been anything but fantastic. ArenaNet’s track record of excellence had earned that from me. Once information kept coming out though, I made a decision to not buy it though and I am glad I didn’t as it’s not my cup of tea.

I am hopeful that future releases will get the GW franchise back to being more the type of thing I want to play. This RNG account bound weapon thing that recently happened is a step back though. I am not a fan of that type of monetization but that’s one of the things I was talking about with the mobile-games-like business model things I was talking about earlier.

They can’t make the Legendary armor available outside of raids. Even less people would raid at that point.

I think I’d have put Legendary armor acquired via a similar method as weapons but made Raid Armor Skins, Fractal Armor skins just like the dungeon and karma sets etc.

The other way I would have done it is made it acquirable via multiple methods: WvW, PvP, PvE etc.

Doesn’t matter though as it’s not even acquirable 6+ months after the x-pac release. Heck, we don’t even know what it looks like yet.

mrstealth.6701:

Iason Evan.3806:

My other issue with this is that no one asked for weapons to be delivered in this fashion. Not a single person from the community wanted this. There are things the community has asked for that you used to offer like like new earnable armor sets or even armor skins coming back to the cash shop.

It’s impossible say with certainty that no one likes this system, but from what I have seen there are quite a few that aren’t happy that it is practically the only way weapon skins get added. The fact that it’s based on RNG instead of direct purchases makes it worse to a lot of us, as well. Anet seems to be completely oblivious to these finer points.

The situation with gemstore armor skins was almost the same. Players seemed more unhappy with the fact that the gemstore was the only place to get new armor skins, not the fact that armor skins were being sold there. Anet’s “solution” of only selling one-piece outfits was born from this failure to understand the issue, combined with the ease of producing outfits compared to mix-and-match-able armor sets. The result is that since they vowed to no longer sell armor skins in the store, we’ve only had somewhere around 6-7 sets of armor added, at least half of which require HoT to obtain.

I understand that armors are considerably more work to make, so they aren’t going to be added as often as outfits. But that’s not really much of an excuse to almost never add them at all. For a game where skins and fashion are the primary end-game, that $50 expansion had an abysmally low number of new skins added with it. And to add further insult to the lack of new armor, the pace of BLC weapons seems like it’s just ramped up since then, proving just how easy it is to add new weapon skins.

Fair points all. Your response is great because it addresses concerns because you read, understood, and responded to what I was saying. The ArenaNet responses in here haven’t done that at all.

ArenaNet, let’s have an actual discourse where both sides say what they want to say honestly to each other. I don’t even feel the person from ArenaNet is even stating the actual reason this stuff was implemented the way it was. Items that are special to the community aren’t special because we have to hope we get one by luck. I could go back to the first person camera reasons that were given at gamescom a while ago. The reason the dev gave wasn’t even close to the reason why people wanted a first person camera. It was actually opposite of what that dev thought. Until we get past these disconnects there isn’t going to be any real communication going on whatsoever. When that happens, one side or the other is going to feel like they aren’t being listened to. I don’t feel listened to because the devs responses to people in here haven’t addressed the things the customers are actually saying.

SarahWitter.2317:

I’d like to reply to those who are saying that making this set account-bound is “a money grab.” Please keep in mind that we make the same amount of revenue for each BLC weapon skin that enters the game through MTX regardless of whether or not that weapon skin is later resold on the trading post.

The currency exchange is a player driven market and as the gem-to-gold exchange rate has increased, the trading post value of BLC weapon skins hasn’t kept pace. That leads to the common complaint that it feels bad to buy Black Lion chests for gems, because it seems as if they’re full of things that you could have bought more cheaply by converting your gems to gold instead. It’s not our goal to make you feel like a chump for buying chests. After all, by buying chests, you’re supporting the creation of the content that everyone plays. So it’s nice for there to be account-bound things in the chests in addition to the other tradeable items. With a lot of the chest contents, it’s not possible for them to be account-bound, because for a lot of things you’d be screwed if you got dupes and couldn’t off-load them to friends or onto the Trading Post. By putting the skins on the Black Lion Weapon Specialists we support those who have stored tickets and still have a combination of account-bound and non-account-bound items in the chest, as we did before today’s release.

This set of purely cosmetic skins still can ultimately be acquired either by purchasing them or by earning gold in the game and trading it for gems. If you like getting skins from the chests that can’t be obtained more cheaply through the trading post, use your claim tickets on these weapons. Or if you prefer tradeable skins, use your claim tickets for the other weapon sets, or acquire those weapon sets by trading for them with other players who bought them with claim tickets.

We on the dev team want to thank you again for taking the time to share your views with us.

It would be super helpful if you were responding to what the majority of us are saying in our argument. You aren’t though. I am sure your metrics show that a ton of people like to gamble their gold or real money on chests. I get that. Preying on the proclivities of people who like to gamble isn’t a new thing. Releasing skins that can only be acquired through luck is awful. It’s doubly awful after charging money for an expansion that promised new legendary weapons that are now suspended indefinitely.

My other issue with this is that no one asked for weapons to be delivered in this fashion. Not a single person from the community wanted this. There are things the community has asked for that you used to offer like like new earnable armor sets or even armor skins coming back to the cash shop.

Where’s the Legendary Raid Armor?

This new little experiment you guys are doing with these skins is super gross. Full stop.

SarahWitter.2317:

Reading this thread, we understand your questions and want to share a little information: This set is designed to be a special, exclusive set and therefore it’s a little different than most. There are a couple of other interesting factors that you’ll want to know: The set is available for one ticket. It will remain priced at one ticket into the future, so someone who wants it now doesn’t need to be concerned about it becoming unavailable or about it rising in price in the future. Other sets currently available are not account bound, such as the Cavalier Weapon Set which was recently released at a price of 1 Black Lion Claim Ticket and remains at that price now. In addition, we do intend to continue to offer tradeable sets in the future. If you’d like a preview of the new set, go to your bank wardrobe and filter for “Privateer.” We hope this answers your questions, and thanks for sharing your thoughts.

-Sarah

This is the type of info that needs to get out before it’s released so people know, this is a different thing. If it’s a special set, why do we have to gamble for it? There aren’t enough new earnable armor or weapon sets in the game as it is and now we have to gamble our hard earned real world or hard earned in game currency to maybe get a chance of one or a few of these? The anger and frustration have many layers and rightfully so. This was a terrible decision.

This is a pretty glaring omission of information especially in light of the legendary weapons being put on hold indefinitely.

Am I out of line in assuming that Legendary armor could be put on hold indefinitely as well due to the precedent set by the Legendary Weapons remaining incomplete?

Information concerning this would be a good thing. We are over 6 months past release of HoT and bullet points used to move copies of the game are still not in the expansion yet.

I think the more productive solution would be to drain a lot of the water from the game and convert the newly dry areas to land content.

When did they last include underwater weapons in BL Chests? It’s been a long time. Underwater combat and zones are dead to them and they have proven it with their actions.

I can see wanting a toggle for it, but it really should have been designed from the start to be like how it is now. Much better. Good job ArenaNet. That being said, I would be all about a toggle for it to be the way it used to be as well.

I think the crappiest part in the whole Legendary system is the fact that there was zero willingness to compromise in regards to releasing new legendaries. If the quest for them is too much for the studio to handle at least release the skins. Instead we get a whole boat load of nothing, but I digress.

I have always purchased the legendaries because I wasn’t sold on HoT and never bought it. There just wasn’t enough there and I felt like a lot of it was empty promises.

It’s the gem price. They’d have to do an absolutely new one and all the people that have the one that is already out would raise heck about it. That was the first thing I thought of too when they announced gliding was that they should make the carpet a glider.

Stuff like this really stinks. I decided a few months before HoT’s release that the game was moving in a direction that for me personally wasn’t my cup of tea. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to get stuff in the gem shop. I just bought the Chaos Gauntlets. They’re dope. There should always be options in the gem shop for people who decide certain content isn’t their taste. Is it a big deal? Not really. I think the bigger issue for me personally is the lack of armor sets. Mixing and matching is always better.

Can we at least get a full update table for this stuff?

Super stoked you guys decided to do this. That doesn’t mean it was handled the right way though. The skins that were added to the forge are skins people could buy even if they were prohibitively expensive. The skins that should be added are the pvp skins that are still totally unobtainable right now. This is another 1 step forward 2 steps back issue. It feels like everything that is being done is for ArenaNet’s real world economy and little to no thought is given for the skins that players want that they cant obtain. Please correct this.

PS you really screwed over those of us who used these items as investments. When the market has no laws, why should we invest our time in playing your market? There’s no certainty that there are any fundamental rules in place. The market laws just change on a developer whim and that’s disappointing for those of us who find the market game exciting. Just food for thought.

I’ve asked on quite a few occasions over the years for better footfalls for the rifle and the torch. I wouldn’t hold your breath for the new short bow.

The best thing Mike O’Brien could have said to appease the countless people that are bummed by this is, “Sorry we are cancelling the Legendary Journey portion of the Legendary Weapons. I need that team focused on making new content. You will however be getting the full Black Lion Weapon Skin team on finishing up the Legendaries we promised you back in 2013 and again promised you with HoT.”

The way he did it involved zero compromise on his part to get players what they have been promised two times already with zero results. Quite frankly, it’s unacceptable.

At this point a compromise should be made. Let the staff working on the “quest” portion of the legendary journey work on new content. Put the completed legendary skins in as drops in HoT.

What really should happen is that the legendaries should be in as drops for everyone across the entirety of the GW2 game as the legendaries were supposed to come out in 2013 without an expansion purchase. They were supposed to be for everyone.

There is a complete lack of integrity in what is happening with all of this across the board.

You just made a lot of people happy.

Well done!

There are a few of us ticked they threw the legendaries that were supposed to come out in 2013 behind HoT’s paywall and now those aren’t even coming.

The core issue here is they continue time and again to not deliver on what they say is coming. Not only do they fail to deliver, they put it behind a new paywall and then fail to deliver again.

That’s unacceptable as a business practice. It goes beyond the thing they aren’t delivering on. That’s the actual issue for me. They are in the habit of practicing bad business.

• 2013- New Legendaries are promised. This was before expansions were ever going to be a thing in GW2. They never came.

• 2014- Nothing on the Legendary front.

• January2015- PAX South. HoT Announcement. Colin and Mike take the stage and announce that Legendaries are coming with HoT. Those of us with the brain capacity to remember things from 2013 are ticked. These weren’t supposed to be behind a paywall. They were supposed to come out two years prior!

• March 2015- Linsey Murdock Blogpost- All the way at the end of the blog, *the deal has been altered: It’s gone from new Legendaries to, “…handful of new legendaries”

• August-September 2015- It’s announced that we are getting 3 new legendaries at launch with more to come.

• March 2015- Legendaries are halted indefinitely.

That’s just the facts. You made multiple promises. They were broken multiple times. You should follow through on your promises and at the very least release the Legendary items you have finished without the journeys.

• Keep your word and release the Legendaries. Full stop.

I absolutely appreciate the honest, simple communication about this. It’s fantastic. Thank you.

I am bummed that something like new Legendaries are being suspended right when we thought they were getting a second chance after such a long and terrible delay prior to this. You know your company better than I do, but I can’t say as I agree that moving six people elsewhere that could be working on new Legedaries which are what most people consider the ultimate in end game progression is the best idea.

I will however reiterate my total appreciation for the transparency. I really hope this kind of honest communication continues.

Absurdo.8309:

Dashingsteel.3410:

Would you say that there are more people raiding now than people doing dungeons before the reward nerf? I would highly doubt it. So the metrics might be a little self-serving.

How popular would raiding be without the carrot?

The carrot is pretty bad, if you raid just for gold. I sometimes spend more in food than I get back from the reward. The rewards are also only weekly, mitigating its farm-ability. I personally raid for the challenge, the skins, and the (low) chance for ascended gear.

If you want to make gold, silverwastes chest train wins every time.

This answers why the legendary gear is raid exclusive. The gold is bad. The time sink can be large. Offer people another avenue to get Legendary Armor and no one will raid except for people that want the challenge and the challenge alone. Is that group large enough to justify raids on its own? I don’t think so.

ArenaNet went on record saying the raid team is fairly small. Raid exclusive skins are like fractal skins. A whole tier of gear(Legendary Armor)dedicated to raids that only a fraction of your population want to play? I can’t say as I agree with that line of thinking on ArenaNet’s part.

The raid should be dropping raid exclusive skins like the Fractals drop Fractal exclusive skins with Ascended items dropping frequently in raids like they can do in Fractals. Legendary Armor, like weapons should be available to everyone through other means.

Good read and very well written, Vayne. I don’t always see eye to eye with your opinion, but on this we agree. One of the issues I think is they have no way to gauge this kind of interest with a metric.

I really hope they go back to some of the things that made this game great when it was released. It really is a special game, but it’s so far removed these days from what I liked about it. It’s all wait and see for me these days and daily login rewards with the hope they return to their roots.

BDO has really filled the void for me these days. I drive a farm wagon around trading goods. I decorate my house on the coast. I enjoy fishing trips on my buddy’s fishing boat. You may want to give it a try.

Maybe next time don’t announce major nerfs to content like they did with dungeons 2 weeks prior to HOT’s release and months after taking pre-orders.

I really hope it’s a return to form for ArenaNet. I know what they are capable of. They are capable of making the best MMOs ever. Let’s all hope they return to that with their words, actions, content, and more.

It was thrown in as a concession rather than a fully featured and fleshed out thing. It’s too bad really.

You’re the best, man! Best of luck in all your future endeavors!

Bump because we have a new game director. Also because we care about the game and the direction it heads in.

If Tengu ever make it in as playable, I want a Penguin Tengu.

“A Pengu.”

Well, I am bummed to see Colin leaving as he’s one of the nicest guys ever, but I am excited about new game direction and from an OG at that! Best of luck Mike with your new role and hopefully a fantastic direction for the game. I look forward to following the game from a distance more now this year than I already was enjoying it.

Hopefully this rekindles my desire to play the game again. I’m excited!

TPMN.1483:

If that is a WHOLE Expansion – NO NO NO….

We need more than 4 maps this time – The Desert is 4 maps.

Bruh…there are multiple biomes in each map. We aren’t ready to discuss how many biomes are in each map at this time and a few of them may not have multiple biomes, but the more we market this expansion, the more we want you to treat each biome like it’s a whole map.

apocalypso.4895:

Iason Evan.3806:

I don’t own HoT. If I wanted to come back to at least try the new season, should I bother? If I should bother, what core professions are competitive? Thanks in advance.

Simply put, you don’t stand a chance, check my post above yours.

Your post was what made me respond. I wanted to gauge how you guys felt about it. Is that really the overall consensus? That Elite specs re pretty much required to be competitive? They say they are trying to grow esports and then hide all the competitive specs behind the HoT paywall? I guess I’ll wait to return then unless someone has a core spec or two they’d like to share that is competitive. Thanks again for the feedback.

I don’t own HoT. If I wanted to come back to at least try the new season, should I bother? If I should bother, what core professions are competitive? Thanks in advance.

Bullet point list:

• Tengu as the next playable race

• Zones that run the gamut of level ranges. Loot and level scaling make this an ideal decision for this game and make leveling the new Tengu Race feel more fresh.

• Tons of different zone climates and differences. Give us map variety not only in appearance but also in the way content is made for each map. They all need to feel unique in both presentation and in terms of what we are doing in them.

• Dungeon Rework. We have existing instances. They need to be reworked to better fit today’s GW2.

• Tying up loose story ends. Magdaer? Rytlock and Sohothin? Livia? Anise? Will we get endings from George R.R. Martin before GW2 writers tie up side stories?

• This one’s a big deal for me if you are charging 50 bucks again: At least 75% as much earnable armor and weapons as in the base game at launch. The absolute lack of that in HoT was one of many reasons I didn’t buy HoT.

• New Cultural Weapons and Armor paid for in exactly the same way as the originals. Add in Cultural gliders earned the same way as well. If I am purchasing an expansion with money, I want the bells and whistles to go with it like in the base game. I don’t want this stuff Day one on the gem shop. It’s a gross tactic.

• The rest of the Legendary Weapons we were supposed to be getting in 2013. Just release them already for the love of all things good. I’ll be frank: The way you guys put these behind a paywall when you were going to release them prior to even thinking you were ever going to do an expansion was an obnoxious tactic.

I think the chat channel idea is brilliant.

The return of earnable armor sets in game. New cultural weapons and armor sets. That you buy at a vendor in game for gold.

I for one would love a return to the way armor and weapons were released at GW2 launch as earnable. HoT charged a similar price tag at its launch as GW2 proper did at its launch except it was missing the copious amounts of armor sets and weapons that a player could either earn or pay for via in game currencies. There were myriad ways to earn them too! Karma, gold, drops, crafting! The amount of this stuff has all but ceased and it was part of what made the game originally great.

Bluxgore, I appreciate your efforts in trying to illuminate how everything works. The paincakes are delicious btw.

The better thing would be to allow us to get an entire set of one of the armors that we want without having to get pieces of the one we want less. I got to 17.5k and stopped. Best decision I ever made in this game.

I always go for the laurels for my two accounts. The items can be transferred between accounts which is nice. Right now I just sit on the laurels. One could say I am resting on my laurels til the game interests me for more than daily log in rewards.

Comparing BDO to GW2 is like comparing Street Fighter to Mortal Kombat. They are so different it’s not even funny.

TexZero.7910:

It’s going to sound bad but ….

Was no one at anet thinking hey this expansion should roll out and tie right into the next story and we should have that ready to go within 2 months ?

I just can’t possibly believe that they don’t have it atleast written, and designed that just seems incredibly short sighted.

Those were my thoughts heading into the expansion and were one of the major reasons I didn’t purchase it. I felt like they would tie an entire season that would start about 2-3 months after the “ending” of the expansion. The season would last a year. That didn’t sound like my cup of tea as it would feel like frontloaded payment for content. All the details were super murky. There’s so much stuff they said was coming with the expansion that isn’t even here yet and we are almost at 4 months after the fact.

I didn’t buy Street Fighter either for the same reason. Game companies are doing this more and more where they sell you the core of a game and promise you they are building into it for the future. When exactly?

ArenaNet: “Hey, pay us up front for all this cool stuff that is coming in the future.”

Me: “Hey, in the future, how about just giving me all the cool stuff up front when I pay for it?”

you stop spending money op. that’s how you let a company know you are interested in their current direction.

But you gotta keep dat guild hall crafting grind goin’ until you feel you bled enuff gold out of the rich folks. then you implement a fix six months after the fact.

Scribing and guild crafting were terribly implemented and have little to no resemblance to the rest of the game in regards to sink costs and time associated with them.

Malchior.1928:

Andraus.3874:

He is just trolling sorry there’s no info.

ANET WHY

They got you to buy the expansion didn’t they? That’s why.

The less sarcastic answer? When they did the announcement in January of 2015, they said “new legendaries”. Then in March in Linsey Murdock’s blog, at the very bottom of the post it said “handful of new legendaries”. Then it got whittled down to 3 during gamescom or PAX Prime. I don’t remember which and then the post you cited as having “regular intervals”. 3+ months later and we still havent even had information on what “regular” means. It’s awful communication. I feel your pain, Malchior. It’s one of the main reasons I refrained from purchasing the expansion. Too much lawyer talk and not enough just being straight about what was or wasn’t actually going to be in the x-pac.

I think the better solution would be for ArenaNet to introduce maps in the future that span level ranges and difficulties that are appropriate for the level ranges. You also need variety for map design. Exploration is a good example for variety. There are different types of exploration. Some times the beauty of a map can be what you are exploring. Sometimes the exploration is the navigation. How do I get around this map? What’s the best way to tackle it? How do I not only survive, but thrive in the event chains? Exploring some maps might mean taking in the story chunks the maps give you.

I think there was a distinct lack of breadth and variety with HoT. I’d love for them to release a few level 20-30, level 30-40, level 40-50 and so on and so forth type maps. I’d also love for them to release some level cap maps that are good for exploring in different ways than what HoT offered. Since we scale to level in GW2, not everything has to be at level cap, but it was smart that they released all high level content for HoT. It was badly needed.