Guild Wars 2

1.) log in to my multiple accounts(because i truly adored this game at one point)
2.) get log in rewards everyday so i can keep stacking those laurels
3.) hope and pray the game goes back to its long-term, high replayability of yesteryear so i can return with lots of laurels!

Not even the most ardent of the blindly loyal can deny the sharpness of your truth sword! It’s double-edge cuts through the sinew and marrow of the matter!

Also, it breaks my heart.

good communication. start with that. until then, i’ll get my daily logins and log out.

The thing I don’t get whatsoever is that the stuff you guys are saying is like initial spitball session type stuff for design. ArenaNet has said time and again that player protection is paramount to them. In game gold is real money in a lot of cases. Aside from the fact that scribing and guild halls in general are just a flagrant and blatant gold sink, with how it was implemented, it feels like(keyword: feels)zero forethought was given to protecting players money in this whatsoever as it pertains to scribing. I mean, our banks are on lock down because they are insanely thoughtful about protecting their own money when it comes to gold sellers, but protecting players money isn’t actually a paramount concern or this would have been factored in to the design as a foundational thing.

+1’s to all of you.

Scribing now: “I want to make a nice table.” Looks at cost “I don’t want to make anything anymore.”

I never thought I’d say this ever, but WildStar owns this game when it comes to building stuff. Let me be perfectly clear in my criticism here: It’s not on the creative talent. The stuff you can make is awesome. It’s on the decision makers that want to turn this entire game into a gold sink. Sure, some crafting stuff should be prestigious. All of it is a chore and money sink though.

WildStar gave out AMAZING quest-based Christmas decorations this year.* No grind. Just fun holiday-themed items I can pull out every year for my housing plot.

ArenaNet. It’s ok to borrow ideas as good as Carbine’s implementation of personal housing for guild hall crafting. When something is implemented that well you want to copy it to an extent. Your designers and artists and guild hall map builders are top-notch. Don’t ruin their work by being stingy with the costs. Let players go wild with their designs without having the arbitrary costs make the whole process feel dirty.* That’s what’s happening right now.

I think the name of Wintersday should be changed to more honestly title it what it’s become:

“Broken Toypocalypse Gold Sink Achievement Festival 2015”

If you think the shoulder skins are there to commemorate the in-game holiday you are sorely mistaken. They are there to pull large quantities of gold out of the economy and to add artificially high-time investment to the game. Period.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Iason Evan.3806:

The least they could have done was fix Toypocalypse. So now they sell Wintersday quest content and leave broken stuff broken?

Is, ‘Yuck!’ a reasonable reaction to have?

And here I was under the impression that this thread was about the new pet, glider, and the guide that points out how to get one or the other.

My apologies. I had no idea your ‘valid’ and ‘reasonable’ opinion was, “Yuck.” And it’s about something not even involving the actual topic? Even better!

By all means, please derail the topic with more of your insight.

Sounds good. Here’s more insight! ArenaNet needs to rethink their business strategy. Lots of people originally into this franchise were into it because ArenaNet bucked many industry trends when it came to markeeting and pricing. Now they seem to want to be market leaders in changing their original b2p philosophy of retention through garnering a spirit of loyalty in their customers by providing real value to that of high turnover, mobile game style microtransactions at every turn.

I’ll echo my opinion of that with the same sentiments I shared earlier: Yuck!

In the future, don’t tell me I can’t have an opinion and share it. I am of the opinion this should have been a holiday quest for everyone to do sans gem cost. Nothing about my OP was caustic or inflammatory.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Man. Complaining, complaining, complaining. If you don’t like it, don’t buy and don’t get the glider skin.

Neither is game-breaking nor necessary.

I’d apologize for my valid and reasonable opinion if it weren’t for the fact that I destroyed that part of my brain that cares with a coat hanger I shoved into my nose to purposefully destroy it.

The least they could have done was fix Toypocalypse. So now they sell Wintersday quest content and leave broken stuff broken?

Is, ‘Yuck!’ a reasonable reaction to have?

It’s brilliant design. ArenaNet gets to trumpet that they have new earnable skins in game and also make the gem shop fare seem more attractive at the same time. Why grind when you can bust out the credit card? Why should holiday items not be grindy? You don’t want to spend time with fam do ya?

I feel you fam. Their decisions for the last year or so have been nothing short of deplorable.

They are trying to be all things to all people and failing on a lot of fronts for sure. Making the holiday shoulders easy to acquire flies in the face of their design. Them making something that you can earn easily makes you not pay attention to the items on the cash shop. They put this stuff in the game to earn and it makes the cash shop stuff look more attractive. You say to yourself, “Gee, I really want those shoulders for the snow effect but that will take dozens if not hundreds of hours for me. That costume on the gem shop on the other hand is just a credit card purchase away.”

Conversely, I don’t think they would be able to support having enough content for most people’s tastes if it was a sub only game. The content in HoT is really good, but there ain’t much of it that is lasting. They are in a bad spot right now. I am really looking forward to what they try and do to right the ship in the coming year or if they don’t have to because they have enough people that buy frequently enough on their cash shop that they can ignore the people that have stuck by this franchise for years.

I was stoked when 5 keys cost me about 25-40g. That range seemed fair. That also meant that 800 gems didn’t cost as much gold. I bought a few armor sets. Now, not only is the price for gold to gem conversion really bad in my opinion, but you can’t key farm like you used to and they don’t sell or even make a reasonable amount of armor for the game anymore(gem shop or earnable).

People complained about the halloween shoulders. they complained about the rng. is there rng involved with this? if there is, then they should have listened to the community. if there isn’t, then they listened and all is ok.

here’s my hunch: they want this stuff to be a lot of work so that just buying stuff instead of having something to play for is more attractive.

where’s all the new earnable armor sets? there aren’t many at all. why? again, i come back to my theory that they want you to buy your fashion on top of the 50 dollar purchase you made with HoT. Then they can point to the bat shoulders and these shoulders as them putting stuff in the game.

they didn’t even fix toypocalypse so that you could play with your friends. This game is a wreck. I get my dailies every day in hopes that this game’s former luster and shine returns, but I am not holding my breath. From guild halls to masteries to elite specs to holidays to time gated raids to the new crafting profession and terrible MMR in pvp, it’s all a grind compared to what it used to be

Hey it’s back! I’ll say again what I said before. I crafted this set in PvP crafting. For those that don’t know, the only way you could get this set was to craft it. That was back in the good old days when there was a Mystic Forge in the mists.

So what am I gonna say? Make a PvP track for it. You get one piece per time completing the track. It was pvp only back in the day and should remain that way. Most people just want the shoulder pads anyways.

They said they were gonna re-add this back in the game ages ago, but I wouldn’t hold your breath. ArenaNet can’t even be bothered to put in a sufficient amount of earnable armor sets for 50 dollars let alone putting a set back in for a pvp track.

It’s pretty awful how they treat their playerbase these days. Everyone who bought HoT should have gotten all the new faces and hairstyles for free. They should have been included at launch for 50 bucks.

As long as RNG isn’t involved I am fine with however they want to implement stuff.

Niyu.1350:

So,

Recent patch hit, still can’t even put the back piece in the mystic forge, no dev response saying anything like “looking into it” or any confirmation. Bug report has been submitted.

Did I waste my gold in getting this back piece? Am I destined to have to get another Ascended back piece just so I can have it infused to be in line with other ones?

It may be a thing of having to transmute that skin on to an Ascended piece. Lame they haven’t contacted you or addressed the issue. With all the bugs recently, my opinion of the game this last year is going in the wrong direction.

I havent taken a look at what that thing needs, but if they removed the RNG out of it then it’s all good.

Tigaseye.2047:

Iason Evan.3806:

Which hairstyles are better? The ones that came with HoT as part of the premium-priced x-pac or these new gem shop ones?

No new hairstyles came with HoT, specifically, as far as I’m aware.

They were all part of the base game, or “exclusive” ones, only available via hair/total makeover kits.

As far as which were better – these latest gemstore ones are, generally, not their best work, as far as I am concerned.

Most people, on here, have been asking for long, natural, loose styles.

Mostly wavy, or loosely curly.

But what we seem to have got (for human and Norn females, at least) are more plaits/braids, purely trend-driven styles and updos.

Human ponytail is quite nice, in theory, except it looks kind of fake, skinny and off-colour.

More like an inexpensive, ponytail extension, than a real ponytail.

My comment was more a dig at AreanNet for not including new hairstyles with their “premium priced expansion”. They really should have. Zero new faces or hairstyles. Very few earnable armor sets or weapons or backpieces or gliders. They could have thrown in 50 new dyes as well that only drop as unid-d dyes in HoT and so much more.

My point with my comment is that they really skimped on the padding with the expansion, but not on the price point.

Which hairstyles are better? The ones that came with HoT as part of the premium-priced x-pac or these new gem shop ones?

they should add a downvote system to the regular forums. they can deduct AP from downvotes. that way everyone will stop posting here and start posting on reddit like they want them to anyways. i asked for a month whether or not we’d be able to do toypocalypse with a group. i got my answer in game today.

the communication issue is real.

WolfsFang.2301:

Astra Lux.2846:

Please split PvP and PvE skills.

Dont worry they will. Though it will come within a few months of GW3 being released just like how they did it in GW1. Anet has a tendency to release anything that’s important way to late. Anet needs to open up a whole new studio just to fix bugs seeing as how slow they are.

I’ve been asking for skill splits on these forums for 3 years. Don’t hold your breath.

Nausicca.6038:

I spend most of my time in old Tyria maps. New maps are pretty but they don’t have the variety of wood/ore I need to make gold.
And if I want to pew pew things, I chose Orr or SW over any HoT map. This is the first MMO where I never go to the xpac areas to farm things :/

^This is the prevailing theme of players who bought HoT in my guild. Well it was when they were all still playing. Everyone said HoT was gorgeous and it was fun. It had no long term appeal though. Long term is farming mats and doing events over and over that you find enjoyable. HoT is definitely lacking in that area for some people. Also, dungeons are gone in terms of replayability. Same for Fractals. We’ll see what happens today to rectify them being garbage for the last two months as a long term play option.

One raid, 4 maps and a Fractal and Dungeon Nerf over the last 2 months with nothing added the previous 10+ months prior to the x-pac. If you can’t see why some people would be disgruntled by that it can’t be helped. I can understand why people are content with HoT, but those people should be understanding of why people aren’t.

I’ll say it once more with feeling, “Skill splits please.”

I wonder how Chris Whiteside would have handled Guilds.

Dashingsteel.3410:

There should be a balance between skins you can earn in the game and skins you buy in the gemstore. Right now it seems to be tilted in favor of the gemstore.

^ Well put. Succinct and hits the nail on the head. The above point also eludes to the other point which is communication. ArenaNet hears us and continues to ignore and leave it unaddressed. They charged 50 to 100 dollars. That’s a premium price point for an expansion. There is a distinct lack of earnable items for that price point. That issue should be addressed.

I didn’t get to watch the livestream today, was there any info on whether or not we could do this as a group? Anyone? Thanks in advance for any info I missed!

I agree with your points OP. Another thing that is baffling is Why are people who have already qualified for the tournament playing in the qualifier? This is akin to Tiger Woods circa 2002 at the height of his powers playing in a U.S. Open qualifier when he already had a spot in the tournament. It makes zero sense.

I feel like some of the design elements in HoT are passive aggressive responses to the community. For example: There is zero way people can have an objective meeting and come away thinking the majority of people who play GW2 would find Guild Hall building fun. Key word is majority. The game has, for the most part been built around casual play. The amount of materials needed to build the upgrades in the guild hall are not a casual amount. So the place that is meant to be a social gathering place in a game designed for casual players needs to be an almost bottomless gold and material sink?

That’s passive aggressive design response.

Besides dailies, my guild has literally quit GW2. Over 180 people. It shocks me. I don’t know who they were designing this for, but it’s not my guild and we are all sad about it.

I’ll keep doing my dailies in the hopes that they change the direction of the ship towards something more palatable on the horizon.

You can’t hide the best current builds behind a paywall. That’s precisely what has happened though. There are very few core builds that can compete with the elite specs that are part of the current balance.

Elite specs are only usable by purchasing HoT. New teams from big e-sports franchises like DOTA and SMITE and LoL won’t buy HoT out of the gate to try PvP out in GW2. If they do come over, they will try it as a free player, see that nothing they are using is current and go back to the games they have already sunk thousands of hours into.

ArenaNet has the whole thing backwards.

When you design the majority of your so called content around gold sinks and the cash shop that’s a problem.

They charged a premium price for the expansion and put little to no earnable rewards in the game. Day one outfits though? Outfits and cash shop stuff galore! I have no problem with a 50 dollar price point if it feels like I’m getting my money’s worth. I didn’t buy HoT precisely because it felt really light in the earnable armor, weapon, backpiece and glider department. There’s barely anything to actually earn.

When I am charged a premium price for an expansion, it better come with all the bells and whistles. This x-pac didn’t. It came with a double portion of cash shop though. That’s double dipping in my book and it’s terrible.

Throw the terrible communication in the mix and it’s a recipe for disaster. 2016 is going to be an interesting year of doing daily logins and seeing if they change up their game plan to be more player friendly. If you want my money make a game that is fun and has long term playability. Until then, I’ll just collect T6 mats on my multiple paid GW2 core games.

Any update on this? Anything at all one way or another would be awesome! Thanks!

If you want to play something that does obscene damage and uses a bow and gets rid of the awful pet AI play a Dragon Hunter. You get traps that actually work and heavy armor to boot.

Any update on this at all or just wait til it’s out and try and go in with a group?

Been asking for skill splits since the beginning. The notion that people can’t figure it out is a sham. People that are good enough players to know they can handle playing WvW/PvE/PvP should be all about skill splits. More so after the elite spec debacle took any creativity out of making builds.

I would love to be able to run totally different specs for the same profession in different formats. At least then there would be build diversity.

They say they want to be esports and then make all the elite specs HoT purchase specs. If they really wanted esports, core specs would be just as viable in pvp as HoT specs.

I agree. Skill splits have needed to happen for years. With the tiny size of the skill balance team though, it won’t happen. It won’t happen unless ArenaNet realize they need to loosen the purse strings and bring more people on board to fix some of the glaring issues.

So many skills and profession mechanics are just straight up busted.

Any news on this before the event starts so we know what to expect? I really feel it’s a reasonable request. The information I’d like to know is simple:

Will we be able to do Toypocalypse with a pre-made group this year or is it still broken like last year’s event"

^ This touches on something else that is totally relevant right now: Communication. If you tell us whether or not grouping up for this event will be available, that’s good communication. It’s not spoiling anything and it let’s us know if we should be looking forward to doing this with guildies like we have in year’s past.

Heck, even if you don’t know if it will work or not, you can just pop in here and say you don’t have a definitive answer at this time. That’s good communication too. I have asked nicely and often about this for over two weeks and have gotten zero communication whatsoever and it’s super frustrating.

Mez, that title has a spoiler in it. smh.

EDIT: actually, i love that it works both ways. you are saying, “hey! don’t read this thread. it’s a spoiler. and the title itself totally works because you are also saying, this thing that follows spoiler is the actual thing i’m spoiling.”

kudos!

It’s almost like this whole game would benefit from skill splits.

It’s almost like there should be separate solo and team queues.

The fact that a ton of testing was done last year at around this time for this specific system and it’s in the state it’s in is an egregious error. I played a ton just to help you guys during that testing phase. A lot of these are really gross oversights and I don’t believe it’s your guys fault. I think if you want to grow this game into something it needs a bigger team.

Management needs to loosen the purse strings.

Astralporing.1957:

So, now that GH won, can we finally get the updrafts working in LP?

same. similar.

What this means is we get to wait longer for new legendaries. Every day means new reasons to be glad I didn’t buy the expansion. First I was ticked that they gated the new legendaries they promised us were coming to us in 2013 behind the HoT paywall. Then I realized even if they hadn’t gated them behind HoT’s paywall, I still wouldn’t have the opportunity to get the one I wanted because it still wouldn’t be out yet.

3 years later(2016 is less than a month away) and we still don’t have new legendaries in the game and they were gated behind a new paywall.

That’s deplorable.

It’s pretty gross. How is this not exploitative? In all honesty, I’d love to see the logic employed to justify this as a non-exploit. If it isn’t an exploit, it’s a design oversight at the least.

It needs to be fixed.

Bluxgore. Come on, bro.

Want difficult content? Do raids in Green gear. ArenaNet could offer better rewards for groups completing the raid in green gear or blue gear.

I still think there should be automatic raid gear like the automatic stats in PvP. That way everyone can technically raid with no gear checks done by the community. Hide groups from seeing AP. If the community is going to gate raids, the least ArenaNet could do is make raids accessible to everyone.

Too many gates in HoT for everything. It’s super gross.

Gating, gating, gating, all winter lonk. gating, gating, gating. Makes your raid game stronk.

I wonder if threads like this and lack of responses from official channels are why people think communication could and should be better?

Also, I’d love to have these be presented in an a la carte fashion. Everyone who decided HoT wasn’t for them won’t get these because what are they going to do with a glider?

How many kittens are given there? In Happy-Time Rainbow Kitten Land? One kitten given? Zero kittens given?

We should all be respectful. It starts at the top though. ArenaNet’s messaging for the past year has been less than up front. Remember the HoT announcement? New Legendaries! Then in a blog post in March all the way down at the bottom of the blog post it became a “handful of new legendaries”. Then in August it became 3 new legendaries at launch. Well after pre-orders.

Not only that, but those were legendaries Colin told us were coming in 2013. This year they got thrown behind the paywall of HoT. Legendaries I was told I would be getting years ago are now off limits to me because I refuse to give money to a company that can’t learn to just be up front in their communication.

Players need to be respectful too. It starts at the top though. If they can’t mean what they say and have to stoop to coy market-speak, how is that speaking to the playerbase in a respectful manner? Short answer: It’s not. It’s highly disrespectful. It insults my intelligence and makes me skeptical of anything they say because they refuse to be up front in how they communicate to us.

There is a distinct lack of earnable armor sets, weapon sets, backpieces and glider skins.

How many earnable glider skins are there to be earned by playing content in HoT?

I don’t know bcause I didn’t buy HoT because they wouldn’t communicate how much stuff there was to earn in their premium-priced expansion. It wasn’t for lack of asking either. I asked multiple times how much horizontal progression there was in HoT in terms of earning gear and got zero response. Because of that, I decided I wouldn’t be getting the x-pac.

Any news yet? Any information would be great! At this point, I’d settle for a, “With the new PvP system, we just couldn’t swing it. Sorry.”

Hey again! Any word on what is up for this for this year’s event? A heads up would be grand! Thanks!

Azure The Heartless.3261:

At least things were acknowledged.

And reasons for certain decisions are fine by me, as long as there is some game plan for when we can expect to see things change and know that our opinions are being heard (and at least lightly considered) in the meanwhile.

It’s a crazy sensation to level a character to 80, sink gold into it, sink gems into it, and then learn you cant function in a combat setting for an undefined amount of time, and on top of that have no inkling as to whether or not the balance team thinks something is wrong.

^ This sums up how I feel about it. We get zero feedback. They were doing tests for this stuff over a year ago and yet in my second match I was placed against a premade guild team with 4 random people. I have rallied for solo queue for literal years. You can’t mix the two groups. It’s fair to no one and promotes mismatches. It feels like ArenaNet hears us but doesn’t listen, but I wouldn’t know because they don’t acknowledge or communicate it one way or another. Telling us “You hear us” doesn’t cut it. Period.

2nd overall match since the new league system was implemented. 5 randoms vs guild team. I’d dig up several posts of mine from over a year ago talking about how we needed split queues, but I am so tired of it all falling on deaf ears.