This game started as a game advertised to casual players, where you could play even abit and never miss out on anything.
From a 2011 interview with Colin.
“The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.”
That’s how the game started. The thing is, dungeons never made it as raid substitutes.
I think that raid exclusive items are fine, especially if they’re skins. The problem, I think is legendary items. They were marketed as the only real endgame, long-term goal. Their original implementation required doing some dungeons – -which ANet thought of as taking the place of raids. However, those dungeons were reasonably accessible and the Legendary weapons could be bought, anyway. This created the expectation that Legendary items are grindy, but doable as “play how you want” goals.
Had dungeons turned out the way ANet envisioned them, and had they used Account Bound on L. items at the start, we’d have been having this conversation about accessibility 3+ years ago.
So, no. There was never a promise that you could play a bit (and do whatever you want) and never miss out on anything.
I don’t see anywhere from your post, Colin claiming they were intended just for the hardcore crowd.
All I see is, they were planning to add armor skins as dungeon path rewards , which they did.
Saying stuff was too easy and did not turn out as planned still remains your own words, and is no where to be found in the post you quoted so far.
You must have missed, “And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.” Explorable dungeons paths were originally aimed at “coordinated teams of skilled players.” That he thought of dungeons as raid equivalents should tell you something. That they turned out easier, especially after more than 3 years, well, that’s a player thing.
But, if you’re going to play it that way, you should provide a citation where ANet said players could get any reward they wanted easily and doing whatever content they preferred. Don’t take my word that you won’t find one.
This game started as a game advertised to casual players, where you could play even abit and never miss out on anything.
From a 2011 interview with Colin.
“The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids.”
That’s how the game started. The thing is, dungeons never made it as raid substitutes.
I think that raid exclusive items are fine, especially if they’re skins. The problem, I think is legendary items. They were marketed as the only real endgame, long-term goal. Their original implementation required doing some dungeons – -which ANet thought of as taking the place of raids. However, those dungeons were reasonably accessible and the Legendary weapons could be bought, anyway. This created the expectation that Legendary items are grindy, but doable as “play how you want” goals.
Had dungeons turned out the way ANet envisioned them, and had they used Account Bound on L. items at the start, we’d have been having this conversation about accessibility 3+ years ago.
So, no. There was never a promise that you could play a bit (and do whatever you want) and never miss out on anything.
I don’t hate it. I love it. I just find it funny over last summer theyd say several times that the Berserker meta will be less common and yet… No? I don’t mind I just wonder why they made their content the way they did it they wanted to change it.
And yet, in raids, there are roles for healing, aggro management and condition damage as well as direct damage. Some people, at least, who wore berserker gear in open world PvE cannot afford to do so in HoT maps. If they in fact said exactly what you state they said, then they’ve made berserker gear less common.
Some posters seem to have gotten the idea that ANet intended to make the player-driven meta avoid optimized damage. The best they could do in that regard was to introduce different roles and make using them better in at least some fights. They did that. Clearly all they intended to do was to introduce mechanics that meant that not everyone in groups would be wearing all-direct-glass all the time. They were never going to make everyone play bunkers.
I’d guess a fair number of people crafted Asc. Armor specifically for raids, or converted existing stuff to Viper’s. Having that kind of commitment to optimization might in fact mean that the player took the time to learn the fights and has made some effort to improve his play.
People like control. They can’t control whether someone really knows the fights, or whether the player’s twitch reflexes are up to the fights, so they try to control the things they can. Think of it as playing the odds.
The solution to this issue, as well as any other accessibility issues, is not to PuG.
Anet is aware of the problems with the megaserver and they’re working on it. They’ve said as much. They also said it wasn’t a quick fix. Apparently they’ve already been at it for a couple of months.
Agreed.
Sad really.
Also agreed. So very many things that are wrong with this game seem to be “not a quick fix.” However, it would seem to me that if my game were designed mainly to feature large-scale PvE events in shards of maps, it would have been better to design infrastructure that supported those events in the best way possible, and which would allow for quick fixes if things go awry.
I’m sure this has already been covered, but why does raid gear invalidate the promise that “BiS” gear would be earned by level 80 and not afterward? You can obtain gear with equal stats. I don’t see where they promised that all gear would be available prior to or upon reaching level 80. Simply that the gear you obtain after reaching level 80 will not have a statistical advantage. Is that not the case with legendary items?
Correct, L. Armor will not have a statistical advantage over Asc. Armor. However, some consider L. to be a higher tier because of the OoC stat switch feature.
Further, are there not legendary items available via sources other than raids? If ANet delivered a paid expansion that only made these items available via raiding then I agree that they should provide new legendary items for non-raiders. And why would anyone have a problem with that in a game like this?
Currently, ANet has no plans to release L. Armor attainable by any means other than raids. Some raiders seem to have brought along from other games the idea that raiders “deserve” better stuff as raid rewards than are attainable elsewhere in “easier” content. ANet seems to be taking the view that L. is a cosmetic tier — and since skins were always planned to be the rewards for certain content, have taken that approach. The way they iterate, however, this could change.
But honestly, I am so confused by this thread. It seems simple, as an outsider (new player). With no statistical advantage to gear, it’s all down to fancy skins and bragging rights, right? So why can’t raiders have their fancy skins and bragging rights, and everyone else can have theirs, too? Are resources so short that we need to fight about skins? That gem store seems pretty full of them! What’s the deal? I really don’t get it!
Some raiders want exclusive access to skins. My guess is this is at least in part a prestige issue. Other people want them because, well, they want them. The argument about whether raiders deserve better rewards than other players is as old as rewards in raids. It’s people being people — having agendas, preferences, feeling entitled to something, or what have you.
As to resources. L. Armor was hinted at less than a year after launch. It was actually promised as a raid reward 14 months ago. The first raid wing has been out ~4 months and still no sign of L. Armor. At this rate, yes, there is a decided shortage of resources, insofar as prestige skins go. There is no prestige attached to gem store skins. Anyone can buy them, you can wear them without ever taking a character out of your home city.
Is HoT Worth It At This Current Moment?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
You ever have that one professor, that designed his tests, not to test your knowledge of the subject matter, but as a means to bolster his ego at your expense? Just one question after another attempting to catch you on technicalities, lack of clarity, or just outright trick you in to selecting the wrong answer.
HoT is the game version of those tests and its makers the designer version of that professor.
From beginning to the end it is an exercise in frustration. Champion level mobs disguised as veterans, group events disguised as solo events, mere skill point acquisition requires a bloody train of players. It makes you not want to explore as you spend hours trying to get somewhere only to inevitably find at the last step that it requires a mastery that is hours of farming away. Mobs seem purposely designed to have no telegraphing on their attacks whatsoever, and attack at a frequency that completely nullifies everything the base game taught you about active defense and evasion. You want to get to that event? Worse, you need to get to that event for some piece of progression or other? Too bad, waypoint closes down as well as the five nearest. Happen to meet one of those unsoloable champs disguised as a vet while hoofing it? Lets port back to the very entrance of the area, the only WP that is ever open! And then, oh boy, the event credit, is that ever a great system! I have lost event credit literally a fraction of a second after killing an event spawned mob, seconds after going down, walking back to an event from the WP, because mobs didn’t spawn, because mobs clearly within the event circle were not ‘event mobs’, while resurrecting players and event NPCs, and lost event credit because I was fulfilling the event objective but doing so without killing event mobs!
I like challenge, in both exploration and combat. But HoT doesn’t challenge you to use what it taught you better, it throws everything that it taught you back in your face and tells you you’re an idiot. This was an expansion made by developers trying to prove their superiority to players and the gaming/MMO community at large.
I agree with this post. I’ve long believed that every “improvement” to mobs (whether via revamps like Krait and Risen, or new armies like Karka and Mordrem) has been an ANet reaction to the claims of “too easy” and “faceroll” that are inevitable in MMO’s, especially with this type of quasi-active combat. The kicker is that the people who make such claims will make them no matter what the developer does, unless the mobs are made so hard that only the best players can beat them.
Oh I get it … you’re one of those people that argue the details and miss the meaning. OK, that’s fair enough. You get BiS gear from doing ‘activities’, regardless of what you want to call them and Anet never gave anyone the impression you shouldn’t have to do these ‘activities’ to get BiS gear either. I could be more vague, but then you would just troll me because I’m being to vague /sigh.
There’s a real disconnect in this post. What part of, " Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours. It’s all about collecting the unique looking stuff and collecting all the other rare collectable items in the game: armour pieces, potentially different potions – a lot of that is still up in the air and we’ll finalise a lot of those reward systems as we get closer to release. And those come off of things like the bosses at the end of dungeons – the raids." did you not understand?
Is it because one can get L80 Exotics via dungeon tokens? News for you. That does not mean you had to do dungeons to get Exotics. That’s what the phrase, “have to raid (dungeon) to get BiS” means. It means there was no alternative. And it means that ANet said that would not be the case back in 2011. That actually was the case when the game launched, and remained the case except for a small period between Asc. rings via FotM and Asc. jewelry via laurels.
No one is saying "can’t get BiS gear without doing anything. You made that up.
I believe the biggest sticking point is L. Armor, not the raids themselves. It’s unfortunate that exclusive access to better gear is part of the baggage that comes along with raids, but there it is. I blame D&D.
Do you mean D&D or DDO?
I meant the PNP game. D&D had, “Kill things and take their stuff” long before MMO’s became a thing.
I am going to say that I think raids were a bad idea. It has nothing to do with how hard they are, or any of that, but simply that there really was no need for a 10 person dungeon in this game.
Maybe, maybe not. However, the place of raids in GW2 was supposed to be taken by explorable dungeons. That didn’t work out so well from ANet’s point of view. I believe there were two reasons to include raids.
- As a replacement for explorable dungeons that they felt they could commit the resources to on a regular basis. Note that while FotM could have played that role, adding a fractal a year (or less) was not the robust content addition that was needed.
- As an answer to the no (or not enough) end-game comments seen all to frequently on MMO fan sites.
I believe the biggest sticking point is L. Armor, not the raids themselves. It’s unfortunate that exclusive access to better gear is part of the baggage that comes along with raids, but there it is. I blame D&D.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
I’ve got a different opinion. GW2 was a great game until ANet started trying to bend every which way to appease the people who wanted this game to be like every other MMO out there.
That’s not to say that the game does not have problems. I just don’t see the same ones the OP does.
I think you’re right, but for different reasons. I think Anet tends to be willing to try things out more than just about any other MMO. We like how the game started, so we’re focused on what that game was. But there are 300 devs in the game and we also know that Anet has often given them their reign to do stuff. That’s how SAB and the combat mode came into existence after all. People working on stuff they wanted to do.
My guess is that not everyone who works for Anet sees the game as you or I might (and I do think I like many of the same things you do). They come in to replace people who were here and they bring new passion and new ideas. My guess is that if they love something and they think they can produce something that really adds to the game, Anet will give them a nod.
We keep saying it’s Anet giving in, but just as gamers are divided on what makes a good game here, what makes you think that gamers aren’t divided about what makes a good game at Anet?
From where we stand, it looks like a mess with no real structure, but that could very well be because we attached ourselves to a vision that was stated years ago and new people are there now doing different things.
Look at how many of the top guys inception aren’t here. Jeff Strain, Eric Flannum, Jon Peterson, Jeff Grubb, Chris Whiteside, and now Colin. There are more, many more.
But as people change in a company, so too can the vision for where the game should go next. We only know really what Anet had planned for this game before launch, but afterwards, there was plenty of room to fill in the gaps.
Take challenging content. The game had very little even moderately challenging content, for me anyway, before recently. Yeah, Liadri when it came around. Maybe a few of the achievements, but once you do those, they’re not repeatable.
People say Anet was driven by the fan base to do stuff they really didn’t want to do. I believe there were probably always elements without Anet that thought there should be more challenge, or raids, or even something like gliding. As the staff changes, so to do the visions of what this game should be.
Some good points, there.
I’d say though that vision has to flow from management. Unfortunately, the only management I can see that is still there is Mike O’Brien. Most of the names you named were mid or even upper management.
Perhaps I’m cynical. I believe that money is the prime mover, and that ANet wants to appeal to more demographics to up their market share. At a guess, the number of potential players who “hated traditional MMO’s” was not as large as they would prefer. Hence, the movement to add more traditional MMO stuff to the game. The problem there is that those who hated MMO’s start to feel like the company is betraying them — sometimes for questionable upsides.
It’s like the new Bat/Super movie. It’s touted as being all dark and moody like Marvel used to be. I get that DC movies have largely been disappointing to their producers, but embracing a style the other guys did and moved away from is certainly going to alienate some DC fans — and I don’t believe it’s going to appeal as much to Marvel fans or even general audiences as the company might prefer.
Being cynical, I tend to view the experimentation in a bit of a darker light. Those who dislike MMO’s have likely already spent their money. Also, where can they find another MMO that is not worse than GW2 as far as their dislike of MMO stand-by stuff goes? Why not try to appeal to the other side, as the one side is either tapped out or isn’t going anywhere anyway?
I’ve got a different opinion. GW2 was a great game until ANet started trying to bend every which way to appease the people who wanted this game to be like every other MMO out there.
That’s not to say that the game does not have problems. I just don’t see the same ones the OP does.
I’m stating the fact that a surprisingly decent amount of players have cleared/worked on content in the raid wings.
According to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/47um5k/raid_5/
41.5% of players have at least stepped foot in the raid and attempted a boss. About 21% of players have cleared a boss, or wiped enough to gather up 50 magnetite shards. What’s more is this is an understatement since a lot of raiders do not use gw2efficiency. You may think “Well 21% (Most certainly more) of the player-base is not significant.” I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. It was speculated that HoT sold about half a million copies. If 21% of the player-base came to this game to raid, or raiding keeps them interested I’d say this is having a positive impact on sales. As time goes by the content will become natural and more and more players will participate. Evidence points to you being the minority when you account for all aspects of this game.
If significant numbers of players who raid don’t use the site from which the numbers are pulled, what is the likelihood that players who don’t raid bothered to use the site? The sample from which the percentages are derived is skewed, badly. It’s kind of like deciding that — since almost everyone who goes into a bar drinks alcohol — that almost everyone in the overall population drinks alcohol. The poster who put the numbers acknowledges this when he says, “Keep in mind that players who are more likely to play raids are overrepresented (sic) on gw2e anyway tho.”
Also, given the Q4 revenue numbers it looks unlikely that 41% of players even bought HoT, never mind raided.
What’s more telling is the actual numbers of players who can be seen to have raided (based on possessing shards during the sampling window), which are not trivial. However, while significant, the numbers are not overwhelming. I know that of the 1.5M claimed monthly account logins, there’s likely a lot of 2nd, 3rd, or Nth accounts. However, all of the players represented on GW2E are not likely anything but a significant minority of all players.
@ the thread
I’m not a raider anymore. I stopped raiding in 2010, when I realized just how much time I was spending on it. Raids being in the game does nothing for me. I’m also not inclined to build a Legendary anything. So, I don’t have a horse in the race.
I’ve generally been supportive of the idea that the game should offer hard, instanced group PvE for those who want it. I’ve been supportive of the idea that there should be prestige rewards associated with raids. The general MMO population (not just raiders) have demonstrated time and again that a lot of them will not play without rewards.
However, I do not think that offering L. Armor only in raids is good for the game in the long run. Certain L. Skins, yes. However, there should be some means for players not inclined to raid to get an iteration of L. Armor.
It’s an unfortunate aspect of GW2 design that Legendary gear encompasses almost all of the long-term goals the game has. There are way too many players in the game who don’t give a fig about hard instanced content for such a goal to be available only via that style of play. For the long term health of the game, ANet has to learn how to diversify their offerings to accommodate diverse play styles, not try shoehorn players into content they don’t care for because rewards. We’ll never know, but consider for a moment how many more might have bought HoT if there had been a way to get L. Armor in general PvE and in WvW tied to HoT.
What’s even more unfortunate is that this issue may be a moot point if ANet cannot figure out a way to offer both more content and more L. skins at a greater rate.
tl:dr: While I believe raids are good for the health of the game, I also believe that multiple paths to attain goals is good for the game. ANet should stick to the idea that certain skins be tied to hard, instanced PvE content, rather than an armor tier.
- Buy and activate HoT.
- Open Hero Panel.
- Click on the story icon on the left.
- Look for and then click on the Heart of Thorns story.
- Activate it.
- Enjoy.
It’s worth noting that if you have multiple level 80 characters, once you’ve done the first HoT story step and landed in Verdant Brink (VB) on your first choice of character, you can then take the other characters to VB by going through the portal in the Silverwastes, without doing the story on them.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
Those people felt justified in asking for harder open world content and they got just that.
And yet they continue to spam their 1 button while only playing with the zerg and grouping for solo content. All HoT did was kill off the less populated maps. The increase in difficulty simply made certain people fear playing outside of the zerg. Designing everything to split up the zerg is what killed it. Where you only needed 5+ people in the past, you now need 20+, though people want 50+ and commanders everywhere.
If they want to continue with this zerg design, they need to split the meta from the maps. The meta by itself should happen in its own sectioned off instance where everyone there is only there to participate. Dragon’s Stand is very close to that design.
I tend to agree with this analysis, and would support that kind of play for the large meta events. Keep the exploration objectives gettable without completing the meta so those who want to get them can not taxi to the populated map.
My opinion, albeit brief.
Stability change was for the better in pvp. It is nice to have other means than boon strip to counter low stacks of stability. And adds interesting gameplay.
Stability change did not work well in wvw, where the number of players casting cc can vary greatly.
This is my truth on the stability change. I know a-net doesn’t like to see different skills in wvw/pvp/pve, but I’d like to see the stability change only take effect in pvp, with wvw and pve going back to the old model. (perhaps just wvw even)
HoT in particular has mob groups in herd events with lots of CC’s. PvE stability should be more like WvW than PvP if there is to be a difference.
(edited by IndigoSundown.5419)
The changes forced me to play a different class for comwnding in WvW. Warriors were incredible in WvW, but now if you don’t have a ranged weapon you’re pretty much worthless in large fights.
Boy, it sure is a shame warriors don’t have ranged weapons, then.
The warrior profession brings a lot more to the party fighting in melee, and its ranged options are pretty anemic by comparison. If someone is optimizing, warrior is not the best choice for the ranged WvW meta.
Have you tried soloing explorable dungeons?
It looks like the April quarterly patch is supposed to take steps to make HoT more accessible. I’m not sure what that means, but it might mean you’ll end up liking it a bit more — or maybe hating it less.
I don’t recall Anet EVER saying you won’t have to raid to get BiS gear.
To paraphrase: ‘Explorable dungeons are the Raids in GW2.’ At the time that was the plan, the dungeon gear, while BiS, was not the only way to get such stats.
Then there was, “Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours.”
You can see both the paraphrase and the quote here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-guild-wars-2-preview?page=3
So, BiS shouldn’t really be the issue, raids or not, because ANet basically did create a game where you did not have to do raids or their equivalent for BiS gear. You’d be better off focusing your disdain on the idea that apart from a marginally valuable stat switch feature (given the relative ease of changing Asc. stats), Legendaries are not better than stuff available via crafting, much as was the case with explorable dungeons. The Eurogamer article, as much as it has been quoted to protest Asc., in that light becomes a defense for placing Leg. Armor in raids. It is, after all, rare and desired almost entirely for its looks.
I don’t see how any of that invalidates. Raids are dungeons/dungeons are raids; It’s just a label. You ALWAYS needed to do them to get BiS gear.
“best statistical gear” is just a fancy way of saying “From a performance evaluations, statistically, the gear you can get at level 80 doesn’t differ from BiS”. Unfortunately, developers should never speak in absolutes so there is an exception to this; Ascended weapons. Otherwise, I don’t see too much of a problem here; I think it was always the intention to make people do teamed, instanced content for most of the BiS stuff … it would be kind of stupid for them not to.
And yet crafting remains a viable means to obtain BiS stats, with only a few prefixes gated, and only at the moment.
2) wipe out the old raid and put in the new on the same old map. Which, imo, is very possible. Once any new raid is in, any old raids will be essentially abandoned. How many raiders are going to go back and do old content when there is are new raids to do. They might as well clean off the area rather than have old content sitting there essentially abandoned.
- How will they know when the last player who wants it has gotten what they want from the earlier raid? Or do you think they would go with the leading edge? I’m not sure that would be well-received, though it would certainly cement the notion that raids are only for the leading-edge players.
- There is (hopefully) a plan for what they want to put where on maps. I have a hard time believing that there are not enough dead areas on maps to put any number of raids. Think fringe areas.
- At the rate they’re going, 7 zones (8 if you count the Zephyr Sanctum cliffs, which are not currently accessible) have been added in 3.5 years. Also, we’re looking at about 1 raid a year. At that rate, it’s going to be an exceedingly long time before they run out of maps.
- Finally, remember how popular ANet removing content has been? Once bitten, twice shy.
Will that many people be doing old raids for old rewards when new raids are there to be done?
I was just saying to the person I responded to, don’t be too sure that ANet won’t wipe out old raids. Maybe they’ll have a variable portal like the guild hall portals for the current raid and X number of old raids but if old raids are sitting there essentially abandoned then it’s quite possible they’ll be cleared.
Well, one never knows what ANet might do.
Theoretically, with no stat progression, old raids need not become obsolete. If the currency dropped remains desirable, I could see dedicated raiders doing more than just the current three wings.
2) wipe out the old raid and put in the new on the same old map. Which, imo, is very possible. Once any new raid is in, any old raids will be essentially abandoned. How many raiders are going to go back and do old content when there is are new raids to do. They might as well clean off the area rather than have old content sitting there essentially abandoned.
- How will they know when the last player who wants it has gotten what they want from the earlier raid? Or do you think they would go with the leading edge? I’m not sure that would be well-received, though it would certainly cement the notion that raids are only for the leading-edge players.
- There is (hopefully) a plan for what they want to put where on maps. I have a hard time believing that there are not enough dead areas on maps to put any number of raids. Think fringe areas.
- At the rate they’re going, 7 zones (8 if you count the Zephyr Sanctum cliffs, which are not currently accessible) have been added in 3.5 years. Also, we’re looking at about 1 raid a year. At that rate, it’s going to be an exceedingly long time before they run out of maps.
- Finally, remember how popular ANet removing content has been? Once bitten, twice shy.
I don’t recall Anet EVER saying you won’t have to raid to get BiS gear.
To paraphrase: ‘Explorable dungeons are the Raids in GW2.’ At the time that was the plan, the dungeon gear, while BiS, was not the only way to get such stats.
Then there was, “Everyone, including casual gamers, by level 80 should have the best statistical loot in the game. We want everyone on an equal power base. The rare stuff becomes the really awesome looking armours.”
You can see both the paraphrase and the quote here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-09-27-guild-wars-2-preview?page=3
So, BiS shouldn’t really be the issue, raids or not, because ANet basically did create a game where you did not have to do raids or their equivalent for BiS gear. You’d be better off focusing your disdain on the idea that apart from a marginally valuable stat switch feature (given the relative ease of changing Asc. stats), Legendaries are not better than stuff available via crafting, much as was the case with explorable dungeons. The Eurogamer article, as much as it has been quoted to protest Asc., in that light becomes a defense for placing Leg. Armor in raids. It is, after all, rare and desired almost entirely for its looks.
Ok, so I take this to mean that you don’t intend to engage in a productive discussion? If we can’t even agree that the Earth is round what’s the point of debating Heliocentricity?
There’s a vast difference between fact, speculation and falsehood. With regard to this topic.
FACTS
- The generally accepted bellwether for WoW raids was that ~5% completed one or more raids. That was before Looking for Raid, after which that percentage doubtless went up.
- 5% of WoW’s 12M apex is 600,000 players.
- HoT was marketed as including raids. That means that the raid demographic was targeted by HoT marketing.
- An article in Fortune, written to tout the partnership of ANet with another company to promote GW2 PvP as an ESport cited 1.5M monthly logins before PFF.
- The revenue figures for GW2 in Q4 15 reveal that in addition to gem sales — which were cited as “stable.” — GW2 brought in an additional $13-14M during the HoT launch period.
- ANet stated the participation of GW2 players was higher than in other games. They did not say whether that was based on pre-LFR or post-LFR numbers.
- The persistent world content in HoT dwarfs the content in two raid wings by an order of magnitude.
- ANet has announced an upcoming “casualization” of HoT (whatever that means).
- ANet is a business, which exists at least in part to make money.
- Casual players do not speak with one voice. Just on these forums, the word can mean casual (time), casual (no hard content), casual (hates grind) and doubtless other preferences. These subdivisions of casual do not all share the same inclinations or desires.
SPECULATION
- It’s unlikely that HoT sold more than 560,000 copies in Q4 15. The number of copies is more likely somewhere in the 300-400K range based on the reported revenue and the retail and wholesale prices.
- 600,000 WoW raiders is a substantial demographic, larger than HoT sales. Did ANet hope to entice raiders to buy HoT who had not bought GW2? Did they get such sales? It certainly seems possible. It also seems possible that some of the existing GW2 players bought HoT because of raids.
- ~1M or more accounts logging in per month did not buy HoT. Surely some of these are 2nd, 3rd or nth accounts. Surely some are people who only log in for daily login rewards taken in case GW2 changes to their liking down the road. Surely, though, some of them are active players who chose not to buy (those who complained about the price, for instance).
- Whatever making HoT more accessible to casual play means, it seems likely that it is going to take substantially more dev resources to accomplish than it took to make three raid bosses.
- Whatever changes there are to HoT, it seems possible (if not likely) that ANet is hoping to sell more copies as well as to address some of the complaints.
FALSEHOOD
- Since casuals do not speak with one voice, you cannot be said to be speaking for casual players en masse.
I don’t have any problem with most of this but I absolutely 100% do not believe that Anet was targeting WOW raiders with this release. Not even a tiny little bit. Not at all. It doesn’t make sense.
Assuming that WoW has 600,000 raiders, they also have many many raids. They’ve been making raids for a long time. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t even have a single raid yet. No one, and I do mean no one, is going to leave a game with a dozen raids for a game that has two raid wings. Anyone with half a brain, and I assure you Anet devs are smart enough to know this, is that they won’t get 1% of WoW raiders. They’re not after that market.
What they are after is people who are no longer playing WOW for other reasons, who still want raids in their game. Which might be more people or less people.
Back in the 80s and 90s, if you wanted to be a name in electronics in NYC, you had to have an electronics store on 47th Street in Mahanttan. No one ever opened a store there thinking it would be profitable, to my knowledge anyway. People opened stores there to have a presence, because that was a row of electronic stories, and to be there meant you were in the game.
I believe that Anet felt GW 2 wasn’t being taken seriously on other MMO forums and sites, particularly because people could repeat the oft used phrase no end game. Over and over. You see it all the time. It doesn’t matter if the game has an end game or not, people always said it didn’t.
By putting raids into the game (ie opening up a store on 47th street) they were hoping to add another word to their ads to attract people in general or expected raids in MMOs whether they raided or not.
I think that’s far more likely than ANet trying to get people away from WoW. Because that makes no sense at all to me.
Ok, I’ll buy the WoW raiders bit. However, what’s the current pop on WoW? ~7M or less, down from a 12M high? 5% of a ~5M discrepancy would be ~250,000, still a sizable demographic. Of course, one game isn’t going to attract them all. However, the MMO business seems to be very heavily rated on market share, and every regular user helps.
Your point about the game being taken seriously on fan sites is well taken. Those opinions seem to make a large difference in sales.
I hate Pirate Ship. I sincerely hope this had a positive impact on PvP, because it blows chunks otherwise.
Ok, so I take this to mean that you don’t intend to engage in a productive discussion? If we can’t even agree that the Earth is round what’s the point of debating Heliocentricity?
There’s a vast difference between fact, speculation and falsehood. With regard to this topic.
FACTS
- The generally accepted bellwether for WoW raids was that ~5% completed one or more raids. That was before Looking for Raid, after which that percentage doubtless went up.
- 5% of WoW’s 12M apex is 600,000 players.
- HoT was marketed as including raids. That means that the raid demographic was targeted by HoT marketing.
- An article in Fortune, written to tout the partnership of ANet with another company to promote GW2 PvP as an ESport cited 1.5M monthly logins before PFF.
- The revenue figures for GW2 in Q4 15 reveal that in addition to gem sales — which were cited as “stable.” — GW2 brought in an additional $13-14M during the HoT launch period.
- ANet stated the participation of GW2 players was higher than in other games. They did not say whether that was based on pre-LFR or post-LFR numbers.
- The persistent world content in HoT dwarfs the content in two raid wings by an order of magnitude.
- ANet has announced an upcoming “casualization” of HoT (whatever that means).
- ANet is a business, which exists at least in part to make money.
- Casual players do not speak with one voice. Just on these forums, the word can mean casual (time), casual (no hard content), casual (hates grind) and doubtless other preferences. These subdivisions of casual do not all share the same inclinations or desires.
SPECULATION
- It’s unlikely that HoT sold more than 560,000 copies in Q4 15. The number of copies is more likely somewhere in the 300-400K range based on the reported revenue and the retail and wholesale prices.
- 600,000 WoW raiders is a substantial demographic, larger than HoT sales. Did ANet hope to entice raiders to buy HoT who had not bought GW2? Did they get such sales? It certainly seems possible. It also seems possible that some of the existing GW2 players bought HoT because of raids.
- ~1M or more accounts logging in per month did not buy HoT. Surely some of these are 2nd, 3rd or nth accounts. Surely some are people who only log in for daily login rewards taken in case GW2 changes to their liking down the road. Surely, though, some of them are active players who chose not to buy (those who complained about the price, for instance).
- Whatever making HoT more accessible to casual play means, it seems likely that it is going to take substantially more dev resources to accomplish than it took to make three raid bosses.
- Whatever changes there are to HoT, it seems possible (if not likely) that ANet is hoping to sell more copies as well as to address some of the complaints.
FALSEHOOD
- Since casuals do not speak with one voice, you cannot be said to be speaking for casual players en masse.
Player-side behavior is not an Anet problem.
it’s their problem because they designed ALL CONTENT needing at least one or two other people
It is a Massive Multiplayer Online game though. It would be awkward if it were designed otherwise?
Have you looked at any other MMO’s beside this one. Any of the recent ones offer group content in dungeons and raids, and only a small amount of group content in their open worlds. Everything else can be soloed.
Once was on a glass thief, once on a Rabid Rev, once on a glass Ranger and once on a glass Mesmer.
Maybe it was the glassiness that helped. I forget whether people were saying that having very high health was better or very low, I think it was low, since the damage was relative to health or something.
Just did it on a Soldier Necro, ~30K health. Afaics, the damage is a percentage of health, as is the heal. Thus, not a factor.
The mastery makes it easy but it is not required. All it requires is spamming the heal skill(or setting it to autouse) and a bit of math. I forget the percent the skill heals you for but you just need to start spamming the heal a bit before you have lost that amount of health.
I’ve tried it a lot, and I’m fairly sure it’s impossible without very specific circumstances. I mean, there are various class buffs that would make heal more effective, stat loadouts, alacrity, etc., but for most classes I don’t think you can just roll in there and “do it right” to pass it. I would recommend doing the combat ones before that one without Adrenal mushrooms, unless you carefully research the tools you need to do without.
I’ve done that one four times. Once was on a glass thief, once on a Rabid Rev, once on a glass Ranger and once on a glass Mesmer. The only one who had anything special going on was the ranger (I used Troll Unguent, then picked the bacon — mostly to see if it would work). The other three were all very close, but I only had to retry on the first run though on the first character. Not sure what issues you’re running into that lead to that perception, but none of my characters had anything special going on. I didn’t even use the heal on auto. I generally have good ping.
There was a time GW2 was Casual Friendly
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
The problem is that model is stupid and doesn’t work. That’s why Anet abandoned it.
More like Anet found out they don’t have enough resources to make it work.
Which is funny actually, Living World was supposed to be a cheap alternative to churning out expacs, but it ended out too cheap for many players to appreciate, and yet still too costly for Anet to maintain. So, in the end they decided that going the expac route will still be cheaper. Which, unfortunately, shows.
I believe not-enough-resources and too-cheap-for-many go hand in hand. It’s hard to believe they couldn’t create a few events and some click-stuff achieves using the four teams that get two months to produce “their” biweekly release. The “crazy” came in when they tried to up the ante with things like the Battle of LA.
I don’t necessarily think adding raids was a bad idea, but I do think it was a bad idea to place so much focus on the raid for so long. I think it would be better to alternate raid releases with content that’s more accessible to the general community of players so people who aren’t interested in raiding don’t feel bored or left out.
We got an expansion with content for a lot of players — four zones, meta events, adventures, exploration and rewards to chase that one can actually get. Then we got one raid wing — three events, really. Then we got a Shatt rework. Then another wing. Still no L. Armor as raid reward. Come back and complain about “so much focus on raids” if you’re a WvW player, but not if you’re into general PvE.
Anet have admitted that HoT failed the casual audience
they plan on rectifying it with the next map..whenever that comes out
lets see how many will return, when the time comes
they have lost a good deal of core players with this one
That’s a separate issue, having to do with the almost-everything-requires-a-herd nature of HoT. The instanced group PvE crowd getting a teaspoon of content after years of nothing new has nothing to do with what ANet said.
And yet those fraction still deserve content.
For all the times I’ve heard this I’ve never heard an actual justification.
They paid for the game, the same way the people who don’t want to raid did. Anyone who paid for the game can come here and ask for something they want. If ANet deems it wise to provide that something, they might do so. If ANet provides it, they’re acknowledging that that demographic is large enough to warrant some dev effort.
So when are they adding naked Charr skins? I bought the game, and I want naked charr skins available.
If you are thinking “OH HELL NO!” – well, welcome to the world of everyone else when Raids were announced for Guild Wars 2.
Raids do not belong in Guild Wars 2 any more than they belong in Call of Duty. You don’t go a high-end Steakhouse for discount fried chicken, and you don’t play Guild Wars 2 for Raids.
You’re free to make a request for such, if that’s what you really want. People have asked for a myriad of things. Some of them have been added, some not.
ANet has iterated a lot of things. We’ve gone through LS1, then their approach changed to LS2. Then they switched to an XPac model. Reportedly, there will be a LS3 and a second XPac.
There was always an intent to provide content for those who like harder, more demanding instanced PvE. The first iteration, explorable dungeons, didn’t work out so well. FotM has scratched some of that itch, but ANet has not managed to add anything to FotM over long periods. Raids is just another iteration for those who like that type of content.
This is just ANet adding something for this demographic, which is either the second or third most neglected subset of the total player-base (with WvW far and away the most neglected).
So raids vs WvW neglect is basicly like finding a crying baby with poop in his pants and then giving him a cigarette to stop the noise.
Also, the baby is on fire.
I’m not a heavy WvW player, but I’d have to agree that WvW is the red-headed step-child. And you forgot the gasoline.
I don’t necessarily think adding raids was a bad idea, but I do think it was a bad idea to place so much focus on the raid for so long. I think it would be better to alternate raid releases with content that’s more accessible to the general community of players so people who aren’t interested in raiding don’t feel bored or left out.
We got an expansion with content for a lot of players — four zones, meta events, adventures, exploration and rewards to chase that one can actually get. Then we got one raid wing — three events, really. Then we got a Shatt rework. Then another wing. Still no L. Armor as raid reward. Come back and complain about “so much focus on raids” if you’re a WvW player, but not if you’re into general PvE.
“So, why is ANET going down this path?”
Assuming that “this path” refers to offering raids at all, the answer is simple. There is a demographic that likes hard, instanced PvE content. The content that enticed these people to GW2 at launch was explorable dungeons. For “reasons,” ANet abandoned that content. They also added FotM. Fractals, for all the recent rework, has offered the same instances for a long time. Raids are in a similar vein, and are new. This is just ANet adding something for this demographic, which is either the second or third most neglected subset of the total player-base (with WvW far and away the most neglected).
“There is nothing wrong with adding raid wings. the problem is when it is the ONLY content being released.”
Raids were part of the selling point of HoT. The first wing required a 4 week wait after HoT released before it was available. The second wing has required a wait of an additional 111 days. Meanwhile, the poor, neglected other PvE players got four zones and decent amount of events with HoT launch. They’ve also gotten a Shatt rework, and have whatever the April quarterly release will offer to look forward to. The next content for raiders is due in July.
The reality is that the content being released is not enough for virtually everybody. “Only content being released” is true only if you have an extreme case of myopia, otherwise known as, “What have you done for me lately?” This complaint is nothing more than the usual, “Every MMO out there does not produce content fast enough.” filtered through jealousy that someone else got something this week and the complainer didn’t.
Shatt can fail with full maps. Individual skill contributes disproportionately to the fight in terms of the break bar in the healing crystal phase. With enough people who do this expeditiously (whatever that number is), the fight is easy. All anyone else need do is damage. Without such people, Shatt’s not going down. Since breaking the break bar makes or breaks the event, knowing how to do this is a good idea — if you want to beat him.
Impossible to say with certitude at this point. For me to prepurchase the next XPac, Anet would have to demonstrate some willingness to make it something I’d be very interested in. Implausible, but not impossible. I prepurchased GW2 based on trusting ANet to provide a quality product that meets my desires for a game. It was, for me, an excellent value. Since launch, however, ANet has demonstrated that they are much more interested in players with very different preferences than they are in keeping me engaged. HoT, which I got at a reduced price, has yet to get anywhere close to being worth the investment, and is not likely to. That trust has eroded.
The sheer number of players remove any need to adapt.
To get around that, you have to go where the people are not. That generally means going where the rewards aren’t. It’s still possible to get into an engaging fight, even in core. I got a condi necro into a fight with ~8 Sons of Svanir and ~4 griffons in DHC a couple of days ago. It reminded me of old times, before mega-server. Much rarer to find that opportunity now.
Personally, I don’t really play alts so I’ve only played through HoT 1.5 times. First as a zerker ele and then as a zerker ranger wearing only rares, half accessories and no runes/sigils/upgrades. Although poorly geared, the ranger was easy, simply because of the pet tanking everything, plus I primarily skipped through everything and focused on the story.
To be fair it may of seemed easier due to the fact that it was your second time through, and rangers have the inherited advantage of a pet. Gear really doesn’t make too much of a difference from rare to exotic to ascended. At least not a very easily noticeable different.
Well, actually, ranger is just easier. I tried ranger early and there is little comparison. The only profession I’ve had a comparably easy time with in HoT was a power Mesmer with lots o’ clones/illusions/phantasms, although a bunker Engie is not bad.
I believe WS and GW2 are apples and oranges as regards raids. WS was aimed at the raid crowd, but made preparing to raid into a massive chore, while many raiders were getting older and no longer had the time to throw at preliminaries. GW2, on the other hand, has made raids accessible to organized groups with little to no preparation. They’re going to make some adjustments to LFG as regards to PuG raids, but that seems to be a minor blip compared to the issues with WS.
Bought heart of thorns, but no revanant?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: IndigoSundown.5419
My purchase of HoT in December, and the subsequent linking of the key to my existing account, opened that content to me immediately.
If I remember last year’s sale correctly, there were very few days where I wanted the sale item.
One of my biggest issues is, all my characters are running the Item Booster buff, most of which have the 2 hr. timer on them some, the 20 min timer, and honestly… I am certainly not hoarding those bad boys, and the farm itself doesn’t seem worth doing w/o the Item Booster.
That having been said, with the boost running, I try to make the farm quick as possible so I don’t run the timers out so much, it’s not like I own a thousand Item Boosters, so in this case, I view a rare commodity.
Maybe all of that is feeding into the under-lining issue. I am causing the stress my using so many character to hit both patches, timed because of the item booster and it’s, “Get it done, get it done, get it done…” for what seems worth it every 7 PM cause it does rake me in about anywhere from 90 to 130g a day…
(Side note: 90g to 130g due to the fact that I take the flax, make oil then make Kegs and sell the kegs. It’s the kegs that give me the profit.)
With most players so unable to even keep 5g on their person and having to beg in mapchat for people to buy them things, I thing 90-130g a day is worth the farm… until it start hitting 11 PM and I go looking for the Tylenol…
Perhaps live with half the gold and stop at 10pm? Six hours? I rarely play for more than an hour at a time. I used to be able to play GW for that long, but I get tired more readily now, and can get a headache after two hours.
I’m not sure if I can quantify it, but it generally involves fighting multiple mobs, needing to go all out (or at least having very little room for mistakes) and at the end feeling exhilarated. Oddly, this seems to happen more for me in core maps (with enough mobs, with a plus for being lower level than the mobs), whereas in HoT, similar situations leave me feeling aggravated rather than exhilarated.
Take the Veteran Mushroom King (please). All it seems to do is launch, knock and pull. So, stability, as much as the character can manage. Lacking enough stability, just use a build with some sustain and put up with its spam until it’s dead.
Unfortunately, while I used to find outnumbered situations frequently in core, it’s been happening less with mega-server. The polar opposite is daily events in low-level zones where mobs don’t live long enough to attack. In HoT, though, I can find outnumbered situations fairly frequently but I find the mechanics of a lot of HoT mobs more annoying than challenging.
Then either the 6 people do a terrific job and the 120 not so much, or the 120 have a much bigger workload.
Raid = small map, a few mobs, 3 bosses with novel mechanics; rewards; achievements. LS Episode = modify existing map or new zone (See DT and SW); multiple dynamic events; multiple champions with novel mechanics; rewards; story step(s); achievements; maybe a jumping puzzle, and other stuff. It’s likely that story is the main culprit, as most everything else hinges on what the story is.
It kind of annoys me to think that someone really thinks that a 3 year old easy content is as good as a new content of the same irk. It´s basically if you have invented the wheel and people who hunt the biggest game instead of stags get carts for a comfy living while the others don´t and have to drive on old one wheeled bikes.
I agree that old content is old, no matter if you prefer raids or not.
The point that hardcore people have not got much of stuff they like is true, but it still leaves me some questions:
What are they still doing here then when the had to suffer for so long? Please keep in mind that this is actually an argument used against people opposing raids if you turn it around.
“Their” content was supposed to be explorable dungeons, which were never quite as challenging as might have been preferred, and which have been abandoned for a long time; then FotM, which have seen new fractals with great frequency (/sarcasm). There was supposed to be something for “them” along with stuff for everyone else. “Their” investment in GW2 is the same as every other demographic’s.
Are they really so dense that they can´t stand open world events like Marionette was because their chosen comrades could not fight all the time at their side and they had to share the exactly same loot with players they did not know?
Instanced content was adopted in other games for raids for a variety of reasons, including developer control of difficulty balance (set number of players cannot “outnumber” the content as they can in a zone); developer ability to make sure that different groups of players cannot interfere with others’ objectives (see SW map progression v. chest farm) and player control over who they play with.
I do not say that HoT maps are too hard for solo people or something like that, they clearly are not. But they are tedious, not that big, hard to navigate and more grindy, so they pose a greater challenge to people that like to casually explore or do things on their own at their own pace.
Agreed. I always feel like I’m in the way of other players who want to complete events and push a meta if I’m there to do something else. The verticality is also an issue for me in terms of “can’t get there from here.”
Where you are completely right is that the tides will turn again. It is just the question how many people will be there to be swept off that tide.
That last is likely to be influenced by what other options are out there. There just aren’t a lot of MMO’s that offer what GW2 does.
Other comments in italics.
ANet iterates all the time. They’ve said they are going to be making some adjustments to HOT. If you’re enjoying the rest of the game, play it. If not, take a break. One thing consistent about GW2 development is that ANet has been all over the place with development. Maybe the next XPac will be better for you, or maybe whatever adjustments they make to HoT will make it more palatable.
1 looted in 3 years here. Although it’s not like it’s easy to tell you have a precursor.
A little blue text somewhere near the bottom of the items description is not that recognizable, assuming you looked at the item description. I bet many have been sold for base value.
Considering it’s likely the most important LOOT you will ever make in the game, I think a Precursor drop should be announced map wide by the game system and the item itself should be almost flashing red and green.Oh, in all that time my luck has been 6 times better in the mystic forge.
Given the rarity with which I find an exotic item of any kind in loot, I tend to look at them more closely, if only to see if I’ve unlocked the skin. I don’t think anything more than player’s actually looking is necessary, and would oppose any such “announcements” as unnecessary, intrusive (unless I turn off game announcements, which has consequences), and frankly obnoxious. Then there’s the possibility that if someone can’t be bothered to look at an exotic drop to see what it is, why would they pay attention to an announcement?
Buying the GW2 and complaining about the lack of raids would be stupid, you knew it was not that kind of game before you put the money down. I suspect that a lot of people bought the game based on the original vision and were happy in the game. but a small percentage were “stupid”; they bought GW2, realised I did not have WoW’s endgame so they spent the next 3 years complaining loudly on the forums until Anet gave in and changed direction, completely disregarding all the other happy players who did not feel the need to complain.
OK, lets’ look at that. What content was marketed as the stand-in for raids? Content that would require communication, coordination and skilled play? Explorable dungeons. So, what happened. Dungeons did require skilled play — at first. However, they were abandoned. FotM was also supposed to scratch that itch. How long has it been since there’s been a new fractal? So, you had a demographic that bought the game and were left hanging by the developer. Sure, they complained — just like people are doing in this thread.
You’re describing a situation there that never existed.
Click ‘g’ 150 times, those were S1 achievements. Events that disappeared? S1 too.
The 2 week release cycle that was upheld for S2 bar the half-time break, wasn’t like that. At all.
…
Of course there were few who like that. I’d go as far as to say that no one like it, because it never happened.
I would be a lot happier with the game if there were was something new every 2 weeks. Even if it wouldn’t be amazingly groundbreaking. Because it would only have to last for 2 weeks. It would break the monotony of absolutely nothing for many weeks.
LS S2 consisted of 8 episodes. It was preceded by a 4 month hiatus (only the festivals that don’t count). After 4 episodes, there was a 3 month hiatus. After another 3, there was a 6 week break for Wintersday. Over the course of 10 months (March, 2014 to January, 2015) there were 8 LS releases.
After it ended, there was a ten month break while HoT was worked on. HoT had a complete story, comparable to LS S2 in length. It had 4 zones, compared to LS2’s Dry Top and SW. It had about 2-3 feature packs worth of features. The differences were that it was mostly all released at once, and there was a price.
I get it. People prefer more content, more often. It’s been a long time since ANet released anything I found of more than passing interest. Maybe I’m just used to that state of affairs from every bloody MMO I’ve ever played. I just don’t see why that desire — which is fine in and of itself — justifies griping that some other demographic got a small bone after almost two years of nothing for them.
I deleted a L80 without thinking of consequences, about a month before its third BDay. Cost me a dye. If I’d thought, I’d have waited until after.