Guild Wars 2

knives.6132:

In short, you want people to carry you

If we’re going to go there, then I will say that you can easily be carried, even with making the commitment to get on a third party voice chat and listen to someone call out instructions in your ear.

Don’t act like it takes any great amount of personal skill to listen to a voice in your ear and follow the herd.

As far as I can tell, wurm requires a handful of skilled players, strong coordination to kill the heads at the right time, and a bunch of zerglings with good gear and the ability to follow instructions. Go ahead and correct me if I’m wrong, but I seriously doubt I am.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the topic of using siege weapons as a role mechanic in these fights, is that something we want to see more of? I often worry that siege weapons can be just as boring as standing in the safe corner pressing the same attack. Do you feel that they can also cause some contention between players?

My instinct is that player-controlled siege weapons are kind of an iffy choice. Reason being that you end up with the scenario where people “troll” by controlling a weapon and doing nothing, or people just refuse to man them because they don’t enjoy that kind of mechanic.

Personally, I am of the latter group; I prefer to control my own toons and their abilities, than try to work out the controls of a siege weapon in mid battle.

But automated weapons get around this, I think (at least in the imagined scenarios in my head). If you keep the player activity to things like charging them (not unlike the “gather” events out in the open world) then it becomes a matter where you only need a small portion of the people to participate, which means: 1) no trolling and 2) people who want to opt out of the mechanic can do so shamelessly.

Hope that helps.

I can kind of understand why you’re bothered by it. Being in a guild that regularly completes “raids” in an organized fashion does not necessarily mean that the individuals involved are all top-notch players. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee you that most of them are mediocre and get by on a mixture of wearing high level gear and following directions like a herd of cattle.

But this has always been a problem with raids, in every game. Whether you are an excellent player or a mediocre one, you have to find some group that will bring you in and be competent enough to down the content.

There is, of course, the “organize it yourself” argument, but let’s be real here: Most people have no idea how to organize a bunch of players and/or have no desire to do so.

I don’t think it’s healthy for the community that wurm is an open-world boss and yet, because of the way maps work, it feels like an invite-only raid instance. But what can I say.. I’ve never bothered to seriously attempt wurm because of this and I’ll probably just keep ignoring it.

I just don’t want to commit the time for that kind of serious organization right now.

I feel like if you’re going to tweak, the emphasis should be on “engaging.” And not just in the, “You better move from this spot because he’s going to wipe the whole zerg in one swipe” kind of engaging.

Here’s the kind of thing I’m imagining. Maybe it’ll spark some ideas:

Thought #1: Temporary platforms spawn at certain parts of the fights (4-5 of them, not unlike a jump puzzle) that lead you up to a temporary buff (something like.. 50% increased damage against Shatterer for 5-10 seconds).

Thought #2: The Shatterer flies up into the air, spewing purple death crystals at random. After a few seconds, a spawned crystal blows up (like the Ele skill) and then it drops shards on the ground that players can pick up. They then take the shards and run them over to a cannon, to charge it up. Once the cannon has enough power (something like 10-20 shards worth) it automatically fires at Shatterer and knocks him to the ground.

In essence, mechanics that encourage people to pay attention, but aren’t super unforgiving if they’re a bit slow on reaction time – at least, not super unforgiving to the whole zerg.

Good luck!

No, the cost outweighs the gain here – the cost being that now you feel like a little kitten weakling when you get downleveled and all of your progress in the game feels worthless.

Furthermore, if you’re leveling and you go into an area a bit below you, now you gain no power advantage and might as well be in a level appropriate area. In fact, if pushed too hard, now you’re actually hurt more by getting downleveled while leveling.

Honestly, while I would like for you to get a tweak that makes it easier for your friends to play with you, I think Arkiel has a good thought that they can just remove pieces of gear. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than making max level characters feel like their leveling and gearing efforts are worth nothing.

Perhaps there’s another way to do this that helps everybody. No idea what though.

Kalavier.1097:

“Hey, we brought his corpse to his bodyguards… he was killed by an arrow to the neck/stab wound by a blade/fireball.”

“No Mordrem attack like that.”

Congrats, now you’ve started a mystery that could shatter the alliance.

Fine. Turn back on the mini waypoint thingamajig and then walk out of the room. Problem solved.

And you’re assuming that the bodyguards live or that his body gets discovered intact.

Anyway, you guys are so overthinking this. It’s just a stupid storyline in a video game, holy crap.

1. Redesign of trait system, with ease of access re-emphasized.
2. Stored/saved builds (traits, armor, weapons).
3. A side door, so that Lumbergh can’t see me.

Evans.6347:

I am so excited about this exciting blog post of excitingness!

You see, for years I have struggled, often crying myself to sleep at night, with my failure to teach my dog how to play Guild Wars 2.

As clever of a girl she is, she just couldn’t grasp that downed state. It was just too overwhelming. But now I see the light at the end of the tunnel! Thanks to these wonderful features coming in September, I can finally explore Tyria with my best canine friend.

In fact, I’m sure if I can convince a couple of chickens from the neighbourhood to pick up the game, we could even form a dungeon team in a couple of weeks. It’s just that easy!

…

Tsssk, as a veteran I have to say fowl play Anet. At this point, do you give a cluck about us still? Because you’re really ruffling some feathers.

Anet’s goals seem a bit scrambled, but the yoke is on us.

Pipra.7580:

What gold sink? The backpiece is practically free if you put in the work to make it yourself.

If you don’t have 400 in certain professions, you have to buy components from other people.

And if you give me a “just go grind those professions” line, my eyes may just roll out of my head and onto the floor. But absurdity aside, I actually did grind the professions I needed. I was gonna put in the time and make it, despite my better judgment.

Then I saw Mawdrey come out (the ascended part) and I said screw it. If I am ever bored and need to spend some gold one day, perhaps I’ll complete the exotic part for the skin.

I am thinking more of Mawdrey with that analogy than ascended items. Mawdrey was dangled/advertised in our faces as part of Dragon’s Reach and we were handed components for it through the story, then faced with the mindless repetition, i.e. “here’s a tube and a cap for free, now if you do all this mindless other stuff, we’ll give you some icing to put in the tube.”

Very strange.

Malkavian.4516:

It’s true people play games for the fun of it. But there are different gamers out there and considering this is an MMO, there are different things to do to achieve that fun. People craft different things to make their characters look appealing. Others just wanna play PvP to improve their skills. Some just wanna finish the story and enjoy what the game has to offer it. Bottom line, if you don’t want to make something because you think it’s a waste of time and resources, then simply do something else that you think is worth it.

No no, you misunderstand. I can’t just ignore it, the same way I can’t ignore it if I’m eating cake and someone keeps bringing in new kinds of icing. I want to try the new icing because it looks delicious, but I want to try it with my kitten cake, not be forced to go through a tedious process to eat it on its own. Capisce?

Malkavian.4516:

@Labjax By reward should be equivalent to the effort, it should also come down to: “do you want this item?” If yes, then work for butt off for it. If no, then what’s the problem?

That’s just the thing tho, bro. Items should never ever be the end goal. Look at any game throughout history. I mean, do professional basketball players play tournaments for the trophy? Do baseball players play solely so that they can win the world series? God, no.

People play games because it’s fun and for the challenge and so on and so forth. Winning the trophy is a cool way to reward those who go the extra mile, but doing a laundry list of tedious and repetitive tasks is about as “going the extra mile” as folding your sheets over and over for no apparent reason, other than to get a gold-plated.. sheet.. trophy.

Seven Star Stalker.1740:

On the topic of chests I’d say the only change I want is for them to get rid of useless crap from them like boosters and only have things that are useful and rare drop. Then, reduce their drop rate aswell.

That way there’s actual incentive to buy them, and there’s a real reward. Right now getting a bunch of boosters.. Well, it helps that there’s the sparkly dust conversion thing now, but it’s still kind of cruddy.

The main one that gets me is getting an essence of luck out of a BL chest. It’s like, “Oh yay, something that I can get from salvaging literally any kittening item in the game.”

“Here’s an essence of luck, better luck next time! Get it! Haha… ha. ha.”

Relshdan.6854:

this vet since beta strongly disagrees.
i want to more “maudrey crafting”……but on weapons and armor. the process to craft the maudrey back piece requires one to do nearly every aspect of PvE play…….this is EXACTLY how they should introduce more new weapon/armor skins….and implement precursor crafting.

I cannot agree with this with the bad taste that Mawdrey left in my mouth. I strongly believe that the reward should be about equivalent to the effort. For precursors, something Mawdrey-like might be ok – their upgraded part (legendaries) are possibly the most sought-after item in the entire game.

For normal items, I don’t care if it’s pink, purple, or gold, it shouldn’t be requiring an absurd amount of effort. And by effort, I mostly mean mindless time/gold sinks. Because that’s what Mawdrey essentially is.

And it’s what ascended crafting essentially is too.

It’s not a “fun” system. And I’m not going to feel like I earned anything if I sink months of time and gold into getting such items. I’m just going to feel like the most duped moron on the planet for thinking it was worth it.

I have put effort into getting gear before in other games. Effort like raiding 4-5 nights a week and passing on loot 90% of the time for other people. That’s effort. And when I finally got an upgrade, I didn’t feel like I had crossed a finish line; I just felt like here was my cake – working with other people to kill a boss – and now here is the frosting, something fancy for my toon.

I love good crafting systems and I’m thoroughly disappointed when crafting professions are essentially useless at max level. But I also want to play the game to have fun. And I refuse to try to squeeze fun out of grueling time-gated processes just for the sole reward of a few extra stat points, so that Lumbergh’s stock goes up one extra point.

Bob, Bob, see, it’s just a problem of motivation.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

And if they had implemented these changes in the game without announcing them beforehand? Can you imagine the uproar?

Poor Devs…condemned if they do, and condemned if they don’t.

I feel bad for them. But in fairness, it does seem like there’s some kind of disconnect going on of late, especially considering their efforts to communicate better after all of the feedback that they aren’t communicating well.

Incidentally, they should really make a separate forum to discuss the feature pack. It’s impossible to keep a topic on page 1 in this forum right now, with all the different threads ending up in here. Lot of stuff is just getting buried in the flurry of feedback.

For example, the communicating with you and CDI topics threads have gotten bumped to page 3 and 4 already.

Boneheart.3561:

There are only so many orphanages.

If I call you Ghandi, will that make you happy?

Nokaru.7831:

Yup. The apologists here don’t understand what I’m saying.

It’s admirable to make a great game and make a profit. It’s contemptuous to turn it into junk and fleece customers for everything they can in an effort to make a killing.

I think it’s often more complicated than fleecing vs. quality though.

From the player perspective, we’re like, “We want to have access to everything without feeling like we’re going to a casino.”

From the game dev perspective, they’re like, “We want players to stick around, so that we can make a profit and put food on the table.”

These aren’t incompatible goals, but the sad truth is, which one of these is more likely to keep people coming back?
1) Casino
2) Linear progression ladder with visible, concrete steps that eventually end

For players, #2 may be more desirable, but then they lose interest once they’ve acquired everything (which is only a matter of time). #1 is less desirable for players, but it’s also more likely to keep them coming back endlessly, hoping that the next “dice roll” will win them the jackpot.

For the game devs, the most desirable one is whichever one is more fun for players, but if players also leave too easily, then money stops coming in for the devs and they are out of a job.

And even that is probably simplifying too much. It seems nobody knows how to keep players’ attention long-term anymore, if they ever did – at least, not without using tactics that are ethically questionable. WoW hit the perfect storm of magical MMO success and everybody has been trying to make WoWbucks since.

LostBalloon.6423:

Can you guys at least post the titles (tomorrow) so that we can at least speculate over the weekend, and not just have them pop when the first article of the week gets released.
Nothing major, bit it would be cool.

I’m starting to think they stagger the announcements, so that they have time to sort through the kittenstorm from each separate post. :P

Boneheart.3561:

Bandits lit an orphanage on fire. Inquest abduct and experiment on live creatures. Bandits sell fellow humans to centaurs.
I’m not having a dialogue with arsonists. I have no pity for torturers. I’ll not weep for slavers.

Phlunt took candy from a baby. A dangerous piece of candy. By law.
Phlunt has everything you need, you have nothing he wants.

Note that you didn’t say, “All bandits lit an orphanage on fire. All inquest abduct and experiment on live creatures. All bandits sell fellow humans to centaurs.”

The argument holds no water, sorry. If we’re going to be concerned about being super moral, then our characters should not be killing first and asking questions later, and apparently feeling no guilt or trauma from all the murder that they do.

That’s how the villains are cast in like every other entertainment medium ever.

Can we at least agree that we’re bullkittening ourselves when we think that we’re ever a shining beacon of morality in an MMO?

I thought about suggesting this in my thread here about the leveling change to downed: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Delayed-downed-state-access-and-confusion/first#post4343556

I think you’ve got a good idea here.

In honor of the 2 year mark, I wanted to make a thread where we talk about our favorite / most memorable moments in GW2.

For me, it was (story related) doing the personal story as Order of Whispers and having to let Tybalt hold back the enemy while we escaped, during the battle of claw island. Those words he said about his past and being afraid were truly touching. RIP Tybalt.

And the first time I saw Tequatl go down, knowing that we had worked strongly together as a team, was such a great feeling.

Share your moments!

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So I don’t get it… if the change is so subtle that we won’t notice then why was there a multi-paragraph blog post about it? And how would a change so subtle we don’t notice have the effect of making players get more drops they can use…

those two statements are mutually exclusive. It can only be one or the other… so which is it?

Yeah, that confuses me too. Only thing I can think is if it’s some kind of algorithm that does a one-note “let’s get your gear up to the level range you’re at” kind of % tweak and then you don’t see it once your gear is up to date?

I don’t know. It sounds like poor Stephane is trying to translate programming speak to layman’s terms without breaking company policy, resulting in a confusing word salad of contradictions.

Andred.1087:

Do you think there are zero people key farming that would be amenable to buying keys in absence of an easier alternative?

No, but the fact that the possibility exists says nothing about the number of people it would include.

As I said earlier in the thread, I think this whole discussion is moot until we actually see the new system in detail.

But in a theoretical sense, we are talking about hypothetical lost revenue that no one can actually confirm with hard numbers. Which is not something that any serious developer would base major decisions on and I doubt Anet has – they would have some kind of numbers at hand, if they were to do such a thing.

I can say, for example, that my interest in black lion keys would be nearly zero if the only method of obtaining them was the store. And I can pretty much guarantee I would just use convert gold to gems if I wanted to buy one.

adozu.6398:

what about his bodyguards? would you also kill a number of innocent asura so they won’t tell anyone you killed their employee because he was somewhat of a jerk?

you sure that trip in omadd’s machine didn’t have any unintended effects?

I think it’s funny how we have achievements for killing thousands of sentient beings (bandits, inquest, centaurs, etc.) yet we bring a “story” character into the equation and suddenly it’s, “Moral quandary of the century!”

“Oh, but Labjax, those are bad guys.” How do you know? Did you go try to make peace with them? Did you ask all the peons if they’re a fan of the constant fighting and death?

That’s what I thought. Now let me punt Phlunt off a cliff like a football. :P

Vol.7601:

Anet has also had lost revenue opportunities from those who would rather key farm than buy keys. The lower price of the skin on the TP also lowers the gold/gem rate to the disadvantage of Anet, although that calculation is a lot more complicated and it’s not 100% affected.

This assumes that people who key farm would spend $ on keys in the absence of key farming.

Delaying giving new players downed state will just increase their confusion – that is how it seems to me. I will explain why below. I also want to say that we should have an option to opt out of this, if nothing else – otherwise, you are artificially limiting our capability when making alts, not unlike the trait changes.

Why the delay will be confusing:
In most MMOs that I’ve played, when you die, you die. There is no downed state. There is no chance to recover. You are dead and you have to go through whatever “respawn” process the game gives you.

The first time I got downed in GW2, I knew immediately that this game was different in that regard. I knew exactly what to expect, “When I die, I can potentially recover from it.” Had my first downed been before level 5 with this upcoming change, I would have thought that this is another game where you die and then you respawn and it’s over.

Then I would have been confused to see that I magically get the opportunity to experience an entirely different death system at level 5. The reason being that the expectations are already set after that first “downed/dead” experience.

If you want the system to be more clear:
Change the UI, honestly. The downed skills are all red skills with nothing particularly discernible about them, other than reading the entire tooltip as your health drains away.

You could do this by changing the ability pictures themselves – for example, a healing symbol for the 4th skill. You could change the colors (e.g. healing is green, auto attack is red, utility is yellow). The possibilities are extensive and I’m probably scratching the surface on how you could do it.

In summary:
I know you want people to understand how the downed state works, but there are ways to do it that won’t put veterans through unnecessary pain and/or potentially cause further confusion and mangled expectations among new players.

Please learn from what happened with the trait system. You can do better than this.

I got the same impression, but no point arguing about it until we actually see the changes firsthand. If giving out a key is still a level 10 story reward and there’s a way to game the system, you can be sure that people are going to figure it out.

And it’s not like it’s a thing where Anet is going to be like, “Oh, yeah, we don’t want to mess up your keyfarming. Let’s rethink this system.” Being fine with it and wanting it to be an option are two different things. So no point in making a big stink about it.

We’ll have plenty to pitchfork about when the time comes, if this does kill key farming and the BL weapons market goes through the roof.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Regarding unlocking traits, the New Player Experience will effectively be exactly the same, except in the way it’s presented to players.

Can you elaborate on what this means? Or is it not finalized yet or something?

I got to admit I’m kinda bummed that this “fresh start” does nothing major for traits. That is one of the main things that I feel gypped on, having joined the game after they were changed. I still haven’t unlocked all of my traits on a single character; the current system doesn’t exactly encourage me to experiment and get to know my class.

I mean, just something as simple as being able to unlock specific traits with a few skill points (and no money) from the trait UI would be awesome. It’s confusing that most everything is spoonfed to you, except for traits, where you need to go do random crap to unlock them, or go to a major city to buy them.

I’m sure there are several ways you could do it that would be just as in-your-face and informative as the skill point system for new players, without being excessively tedious and expensive.

Belenwyn.8674:

Is it known if we can select the stats for those rucksacks? During leveling we do not have a satisfying access to rucksacks. This could open much more variety and better access to this sort of item.

I’m just guessing here, but I would imagine they are like other crafted items in that you probably get whatever stat set your “optional” component is.

Electro.4173:

Apparently there’s a large number of people who feel being kind of a jerk is grounds for execution. Yeesh.

It’s a video game, silly. I play them to be absurd, not to consider the moral quandaries of eliminating some pixels on my screen. If I was concerned about that sort of thing, I wouldn’t be playing an MMO where you murder everything to level up your character.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The intent of the Renown Heart system was originally to help players find event content. They also provide a decent method for us to give the player some context and awareness of what’s going on in the area. There are probably a few issues in that design which we could discuss. We could also let it suffice to say that hearts do not make the best repeatable content the game has to offer.

On the topic of keeping players engaged with open world content, I think this goal may be for more approachable from a different angle. Consider Dry Top, which has no hearts. Players on that map are participating in events all the time, largely on the premise that each event contributes to both map-level and personal-level goals. This gives me the notion that with a little help at the system level, events can and should be the bulk of repeatable open world content in Tyria.

I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that.

I like the spirit of Dry Top’s design, but there are a few things that bug me, personally:

1) Timers: I don’t like feeling pressured to get X done in Y amount of time to gain access to rewards and then lose all progress after a relatively short amount of time has passed.

2) Difficulty of events: This relates to timers in that people are often going to skip over one event to do another purely because of time constraints. Cuts out some of the “dynamic”/spontaneous feel for me.

3) Special currency: I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it makes me feel more motivated to participate in the zone activities and unlock tiers. On the other hand, it makes me feel like playing in Dry Top is wasted time, unless I want a specific reward from that zone.

I feel like the system of unlocking tiers/rewards could be carried over to other zones with some tweaking. But for me, the big thing is a persistent notion of progress and accomplishment.

For example: Say you take the event chains in a zone like Harathi Hinterlands and show the amount of centaur control vs. seraph control in a way that is similar to the Dry Top tier system. Something like this would mostly be a UI change and then you could add in certain merchants or zone-wide bonuses, depending on how much stuff is under seraph control.

Which would solve my complaints in that:
- Instead of a timer, like Dry Top, you base it on the events themselves.
- Difficulty stops mattering significantly because the related events for seraph control are specific and targeted.
- Any related rewards – if added – would be bought with universal currency.

Ohoni.6057:

I agree on this, NO to profession loot. I want my Thief to have just as much chance of getting Great Swords and Silk in my drops as any other class.

This sort of thing is what I was talking about in the Communication thread with “if you tell this stuff to us early, we can tell you it’s a bad idea before you waste time trying to implement it.”

It’s not a bad idea on the whole though. It’s just an idea that needs some clarification (e.g. whether it affects level 80) and perhaps needs some tweaking. As others are pointing out, a lot of the complaints are because of existing issues with poor acquisition for certain mats. If they addressed those sort of issues separately, then we’d be better off on two fronts.

I think they are a neat addition to the crafting disciplines – a way to craft back items for leveling characters and new skins in the process. Win-win.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

If i read it correctly, this is only the case for LOWBIES. Not lvl 80’s.

Yeah, they did say “leveling characters.” I guess I’m just assuming they may be including 80 because:
1) They didn’t concretely state that it wouldn’t.
2) It would be really nice in some ways for level 80s to get stuff that they can use as well. Acquisition of a decent set of rares for a new level 80 would be a lot easier, for example (without needing to buy them off the TP).

Rozbuska.5263:

Profession loot is very very bad idea.
- there are items for example rare GS or staffs what have like double average price than other weapons so again favor for already prefered classes like War or Guard. End precursors? So meanwhile Warriors ect will drop Dusks for 1500g while other cant drop it?.

Although I understand and agree with some of the concerns surrounding this change, I think this one is something that would largely balance itself out over time. They are higher demand items, but the price stays high because the supply isn’t very good. If most of the GS/staff-wielding classes have a better chance to loot such items on their own, then the market demand should (in theory) go steadily down, hopefully to a more balanced sale price.

Precursors, however, are such a horrible % chance already that I’m not sure they’d be significantly affected. And remember that the change didn’t say you can’t loot items for another class – it’s just that your chances are lower.

I’m inclined to say that precursors should be exempt from this change, if only because the already low chance may just cause people to all play classes that can loot the high demand ones in the short-term, so that they have a better chance of making huge profit. Which could balance the precursor market some, but would probably take months to see a significant impact.

Hmm, how bout this:

Make it so that the resource drops (such as silk and leather) have a chance to drop from any armor class, if the armor is in the range of something like 75-80.

This way:
- People are still more likely to get useful gear, even at max level
- People farming for end-game mats won’t get gypped because of their class’s armor type

Side note: Loving the spirit of the changes!

Saint.5647:

In game this translates into the political inquiry as to why the Commander of the Pact murdered an Asuran dignitary.

Why is everyone assuming that it would be public knowledge? All you have to do is say that Mordy’s forces attacked in a big way and it was all you could do to get out alive, much less save the council member with no combat skills. Thereby explaining away his death and giving further reason for the forces to join together – a council member killed by Mordremoth’s forces!

Leo Paul.1659:

I nominate Steward Gixx as Asuran overlord!

Hehe.

pdavis.8031:

Also that video is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Yeah it is.

Thread has too much story. Needs more gameplay.

No, but seriously, I didn’t read closely enough to confidently say whether I agree or disagree. I will just say this: I am mostly of the opinion that good gameplay trumps good story in a video game.

The problem is, these bigger games I think are kind of becoming cinema wannabes, sprinkled with interactivity. Which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. For example, Assassin’s Creed 3 did a lot of interactivity silliness that was (I guess) supposed to make you feel like you were more a part of the story, but instead I just wanted to smack them for introducing mechanics that were out of place and difficult to understand. Some of the earlier games in the series were the same way.

But on the flip side, had they left too much to story, I might have complained about it being an aggrandized movie.

So I think there’s a balance to be had and we’re just going to have to put up with it for a while, when we play higher-end-budget games; it seems there’s still a lot of outright experimentation going on in this industry and nobody really knows when or where some of the best choices are going to demonstrate themselves.

As for myself, I feel that the simplest mechanics are often the best and player choice is important to providing a truly interactive experience, if not required

Bubi.7942:

@Labjax:

The problem with the word is exactly what mah described:

“What you’re referring to as elitists are players who are more skilled than your average zergling expressing their confusion at people being unable to complete and/or complaining about the LS instance(s), not ‘elitists’.”

Currently the bottom 1% is calling the other average or even low skilled players ‘elitsts’. And it’s kinda disgusting.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to this. You’re just pulling it out of your magic hat that the “bottom 1%” is calling average/low-skilled people elitists. For one thing, I consider myself an above average player, I had no great troubles with this fight, and I was the one in question who was referring to certain types of people as elitists.

Second, being elitist, at the very least in the context that I was talking about, is referring to an attitude. It doesn’t require people to actually be “elite” players in a more objective sense of the word.

What’s disgusting is people looking down on each other for being different. It’s just one of those things that is never pretty, no matter what the excuse is.

And once again, I’m not talking about people who are expressing innocent confusion and never was.

Have a good night.

Black Lotus.7318:

Considering that releases are part of a “living story,” I can understand and appreciate the unskippable dialogue the first time through. Oftentimes during dungeon runs, I feel pressured by the group to skip through dialogue, even if I haven’t been able to experience it once.

That being said said, any subsequent repeats of a storyline should have a skip option. The dialogue never changes from the first to the tenth time, and it does become quite repetitive. Forced dialogue is great the first time around, but please add a skip option for repeats.

It would have to recognize by account though, or else it loses half of it usefulness. I can think of two main reasons for people repeating: 1) Achievements 2) Alts.

Subsequent would work for #1, but if it only recognized subsequent for specific characters, then it wouldn’t help with #2.

Otaur.9268:

When you see ppl getting ascended chests all the time in WvW and PvE, it would be nice to know what those are.

I guarantee you that you are witnessing the outliers. Next time says they got an ascended chest / links one, ask the rest of the group what they got. Bet you it’ll be the same random crap that you did.

Ashen.2907:

I’ve seen the opposite position argued very effectively. A casual player might not play as much but might want all of the same goodies in game as the hardcore player with thousands of gold from dungeon speedruns, farming, etc…so how is he going to get that cool stuff?

…with his credit card of course. A hard core player doesn’t need to spend a dime because his play style, or volume rather, covers his needs.

Maybe, maybe not. That’s assuming most casual players have money to throw around.

Vayne.8563:

See, Labjax, I’m not actually trying to dismiss anyone. I understand that people have problems with things. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. I am saying that believing you are a majority because of what you see on the forums can be a mistake.

Rift focused at first on raids and dungeons to the exclusion of the open world and people left in droves. I was one of those people. They apologized on their forums afterwards and tried to make some content for people who didn’t want to raid, but for many, including me, it was too little too late. They were in that position because they listened to the forums, which didn’t accurately represent a lot of the player base. Because a lot of people who play like me have no reason to post.

I’m saying that people are coming out and saying I have a clear majority the forum seems to say so. I’m saying that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I could mean something but it also might not. It’s certainly not conclusive by any means.

Which gets back to the use of the word exciting. I don’t believe, and never have believed that most of those blog posts target us. I believe they target people who go to the website occasionally, as opposed to reddit or the forums. Certainly the lack of detail would back that idea up.

I never really felt the website was aimed at me. Most of it is pretty basic stuff.

No, I agree that we as players certainly shouldn’t think we speak for anyone other than ourselves, unless we’re directly speaking for other people (such as guildies). I wish that went without saying, but I don’t think it does.

Also, Rift is not a strong example. I feel that Rift was always trying to be a raiding game most of all; in fact, AFAIK, many of the devs were in high-end raiding guilds (they just kept quiet about what their in-games names were). So it made perfect sense that their main focus was raiding.

Heck, there were moments when I stepped back and felt like the majority of the game’s activity centered around the raiding community. It wasn’t like this game where events have a life of their own. It was like “events” were driven almost entirely by raiders who needed some kind of gear/token from them.

Side note: I thought (and still think) the basis of this thread is silly. If I spent months working on something while being told to keep my mouth shut about the majority of it, I would be very excited to reveal it when the time finally came. And I would be proud of what I produced. Doesn’t need any more explanation than that, IMO.

I never was a big fan of the parts where characters are using dialog bubbles and you can’t skip through it if you’re uninterested in the story at the time (or have seen it before).

I think this is just an unfortunate consequence of them doing lower-budget bubbles instead of creating full cinematics. Perhaps they could add an extra dialog option that appears at the bottom of conversations such as these? Would read something like, “Skip dialogue.” Not unlike the button in the cinematics.

For example, with the summit, it could skip to the next part where you’re operating the podium. That way if you misclick, you aren’t missing everything at once.

Vayne.8563:

Sure it’s a possibility, but let’s look at it this way.

Almost all min-maxers are going to be on forums looking at that sort of thing. But almost all casual solo players aren’t going to be. We know a reasonably large percentage of people just solo through MMOs as if it’s a single player game. We know it from stuff said by other devs, and even Anet long before Guild Wars 2 launched, had information about soloing on the FAQ. If it wasn’t an anticipated question, I doubt it would have been there.

You don’t need to go on forums to play Guild Wars 2 like Skyrim and I strongly suspect most people don’t. Those people aren’t interested in dungeons and often aren’t interested in PvP, or even WvW. They just bang around the open world killing stuff. Some might find a champ train. They just hang out and have a good time and kill stuff.

It’s a pretty big segment of the population you’ll never really hear from on a forum.

So when people make statements like there’s nothing new in the game or there’s no content…I’ve heard complaints from people that there’s too much in the game and they keep feeling like they’re falling behind.

You don’t see that represented very often on the forums either.

There are definitely people, however, who asked for updates to be spaced further apart, to keep the pace more relaxed. But you don’t hear from those people all that often, even though I know they’re out there.

Noted, but try looking at it this way as well: The more casual someone is, the less important that person actually is to the longevity of the game. Think about it. Say you have a pool of 10,000 players and out of that 10k, only 100 are active on the forums.

Now imagine that 80 out of those 100 are people who play 6-7 days a week for hours at a time. And that the rest of the 10k goes on a sliding scale with a few hitting as much as 6-7 days, while moving quickly down to 3-4, or as little as 1 day a week for an hour or so.

The more casual it gets, the more we’re looking at a player who rarely contributes to making the game look active – who rarely buys anything from the store or has an impact on the game’s community in any way.

I know my numbers are rough as crap, but the point is: I think high forum activity is more likely to be an indicator of high play activity than it is an indicator of low/casual play. And the people who are playing the game all the time are the ones who are really the lifeblood of the community; they’re the ones who make it look active, even during slow times of the day, which makes the game more attractive to casual players (who want to find people to jump into stuff with at any old time).

Obviously there are people who are very active and don’t touch the forums as well, but the “casual majority” isn’t necessarily as important as it’s made out to be. They are more important in big chunks – not so much as individuals.

Anyway, I’m not trying to overblow the importance of listening to people who are, for some reason, obsessed with internet forums (such as myself). Just that I don’t think it’s something to dismiss based on conjecture.

Duke Darkwood.4237:

If it comes down to a battle of wits between them, I’d put my bet on Taimi.

I still want to just punt Phlunt off a cliff. I mean, why do we need a battle of wits for this. Come on. The dude cowed in the corner the moment any sort of combat started. It would be so easy to dispose of him!

In fact, if the rest of the council is as cowardly as he is, we might as well just do a Pact takeover of the Asuran council. Then we can put Trahearne in place as the “secret” council lead. LOL.

Vayne.8563:

It was meant to say that gaming communities are seldom represented by forum posters in any way that is meaningful. This I truly believe and I truly believe most devs would probably agree.

I don’t know if I’d go that far. Yes, some forum communities undoubtedly misrepresent the general pulse of player satisfaction and feedback, but it’s also possible that forum communities can house some of the most fiercely loyal and creatively dedicated players, who want the game to be even better than what it is.

So I think the forum communities can just as easily be misleading as they can voice concerns that no one else will. For example, guilds sometimes have members who complain about various features in a game, but for whatever reason, those same players don’t send their complaints out in any way that a dev can see them. And yet they still have that possibility of quitting the game over something that went too far in the wrong direction.

Yeah, start calling it all stimulating and racy instead. :P

Politics and MMO forums. These seem to go hand in hand a lot and not in the way that you might imagine – I’m not talking about people trying to post about political issues on internet forums.

Rather, I’m talking about people lobbying for certain gameplay ideas or features, as if this is a warzone and the “last man standing” gets the prize of developer attention.

Now don’t get me wrong; if I want developers to implement dancing kittens, then I’m going to voice that opinion and let none stand in my way. The problem here is not the fact that people lobby for what they desire out of the game; the problem is that people are often dishonest about their motives and fight against others’ ideas, even when the two ideas in question are not mutually-exclusive.

Textbook example of this is the divide between “PvE” players and “PvP” players. You will see one “crowd” decrying the other in a variety of ways, ranging from insulting the entire playstyle to claiming that one of the two “groups” is “getting all of the attention.”

How is this dishonest?
If I want more dungeons in the game and I start talking about how Anet neglects PvE and they’re obsessed with competitive PvP, what am I actually accomplishing?
1) I’m not stating my intentions outright – my real intention being that I want more dungeons.
2) I’m hiding my intentions by scaling the issue into a larger problem – that “PvE is getting neglected.”
3) I’m creating an imaginary battle between PvE and PvP players.

The end result is: Developers don’t hear my honest opinion – they just see me insulting and degrading others. And my real agenda may never actually get seen.

People won’t listen to me if I’m honest
It’s easy to look at the way developers respond to feedback and think that to get their attention, you have to write a numbered list, while describing in detail everything that is wrong with the game and what you would like to see in the future.

I’ve been there. But the reality is, sometimes the most honest and simple opinion is the easiest to digest. If I want more dungeons and I just say, “I mostly do dungeons in this game and I try to entertain myself with the existing dungeons and sometimes other content, but it’s hard to do so. I may drift away from the game if I don’t see more content like them, whether I’d like to or not.”

The end result:
1) You are being honest and upfront.
2) You aren’t demanding anything or talking down other peoples’ opinions.
3) The devs get a raw, honest take on what’s likely to happen to your in-game activity if you don’t see more of the content you’re looking for.

TL;DR
Be honest about what you want and if your opinion contradicts that of another player, just be honest about why. If you don’t want Player B’s suggestion to go in the game because you feel it will mess with Mechanic A that you enjoy, just say so.

There’s no shame in having an opinion. But if you disguise your opinion behind posturing and insults, you just wind up looking like a kitten – and not the cute kind.

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