Guild Wars 2

Caro.2730:

I am really sick of all these stripper light armors for females. We need something less revealing, classy and yet sexy at the same time like Anise’s armor.

Wait, wut. The armor for females in this game is soooooo mild compared to most games. Heck, half the outfits don’t even show skin.

Go play Tera for a day and then tell me all about the terrible stripper armor in this game.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Huzzah!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjftsPeef_s

For ALS Awareness and fun!

Chris

Lmao. “All about iteration.”

Unless it reaches a point where the majority of players are standing around waiting for the boss to die, I don’t see the issue. You have to understand that not all people who AFK for periods of time are doing it out of laziness. Some people have kids or they get called to do something, or nature says hello. Whatever the case may be, some world bosses (including waiting for the pre to start and the time the pre takes) can easily run 20-30 minutes per fight.

And if you’re running every world boss every day on reset, then you’re going to get a little burned out on giving 100% effort. Is it fair? Honestly, sometimes it’s completely fair. Megadestroyer, you can get extra bits of loot if you participate in the pre vs. standing around. Same thing with Fire Ele and a bunch of others. Heck, Mega even spawns a couple veteran mobs throughout, so you lose out on that if you aren’t paying attention.

Off the top of my head, I think most of the world bosses do a good job of rewarding those who are paying attention the whole time and participating in the pre’s. Taidha may be one of the few that is off-putting in that way.

tigirius.9014:

Some of us would love for them to “steal” our ideas and implement them. LOL :P

I can second that, haha.

Saylu.8271:

I think you are mistaking copyright infringement and plagiarism. Taking the actual word is copyright infringement. Stealing an idea and not giving credit where it is from is pretty much plagiarism. Many people do this. Plagiarism isn’t necessarily a crime but rather an ethical concern.

You know, I’m not sure where this plagiarism tangent started from, but there’s another phrase we use for “idea stealing” – it’s called creative collaboration. Or we could just call it, “Every artistic field ever in the history of humanity.”

You have to realize that stealing an idea wholesale is almost impossible to begin with (or at least, near impossible to prove). Most ideas go through several iterations when you actually try to put them into practice. And it’s surprisingly easy for two or more people to come up with the same idea, independent of one another.

Furthermore, one hasn’t produced anything by coming up with an idea. There is no observable piece of created material that can have its origins examined. Idea “stealing” will never be a serious concern because not only are ideas cheap and meaningless on their own, but people can claim “stolen idea” at random, in a world where it’s taken seriously – with no way to verify who “thought of” the idea first.

People who obsess over others stealing their ideas are usually concerned because they haven’t extensively gone through the process of bringing ideas to concrete reality. And that grueling process often tears our “nobel-prize-winning” ideas into the ragged shreds of thought that they really are.

At the end of the day, execution is what people are capable of observing, so it’s the only thing that matters.

Not to be cynical, but… ok, who am I kidding, I’m about to be cynical.

I’ve seen this kind of thread so many times throughout games and the fact is, sometimes we just burn out on a particular game, it changes into something different from what it started as, or we change as a person and so it feels different.

It’s not always just the second one (that the devs have “abandoned what you love to do and there is nothing more for you”). In fact, I’d say most of the time it’s way more complicated than that and we just tell ourselves that our reasons for feeling estranged are simple because it makes leaving easier.

When the reality is that a part of us is still attached. We don’t really want to leave. You don’t make a post like this if there is no uncertainty. If there was no uncertainty, you would already be out the door.

We want the games to keep being what they once were – keep giving us the same feeling they once did – but like everything in life, things change or wear on us and time marches on. So we hope that the devs will give us a game that renews the love we once had and will work around the clock to make it happen.

And the cynical truth of it all is that we’re infatuated with an ideal more than anything. That amazing feeling that we remember getting – the one that we’re begging to get back and continue having – was never perfect. It was always riddled with its own set of problems. But we remember it so fondly because back then, our enjoyment surpassed the problems.

So the real loss here is the loss of joy and fun. Not a loss of a particular piece of content that will magically make everything better – and not something that we can place in a box and write with just a few words. We lose the joy and fun for a variety of reasons and sometimes the game itself will never be enough. Sometimes we have to rediscover the fun for ourselves.

You know what the most fun-filled joyous moments are for me in an MMO? When I’m first trying it and I know just enough about it to feel like I’m Mr. Awesome, but little enough to not feel overwhelmed by the weight of its inadequacies.

If I am spending my time looking far into the future, then I’m not enjoying myself. I know this because I remember playing games as a kid and how the game was all that mattered in those moments. There was no, “I hope this game will be fun next time I play it.” It didn’t matter because I was lost in the fun.

If that simple joy and fun is gone, then it’s not a game anymore – it’s a chore. I didn’t really have a planned coherent point to saying all of this, but I’ll improvise: Rediscover fun! That’s the part that is firmly in your control – the one part that no one else can take away from you. And it’s all of ours for the taking, regardless of what games we’re playing, from Guild Wars 2 to freeze tag in a backyard.

FWIW, here’s what random.org says on the subject. Kind of interesting – they use atmospheric noise apparently.

RANDOM.ORG offers true random numbers to anyone on the Internet. The randomness comes from atmospheric noise, which for many purposes is better than the pseudo-random number algorithms typically used in computer programs.

http://www.random.org/

But yeah, your typical seeding setup is not perfect. However, I don’t think the typical algorithms are poor enough for your average person to predict anything without running thousands of iterations at a time (which is highly unlikely in most scenarios).

So the good news is, the tin foil hat is a bit understandable; I’m not sure there’s a single algorithm/seeding process that is perfectly random. The bad news is, the imperfections are probably not significant enough to justify the paranoia that you might have about a particular character, account, etc.

As far as I know, others are correct that seeding can create some weird “streaks” of luck, but ultimately, it’s a temporary thing – not something that’s going to stick with a permanent thing like a character.

Keep in mind that even true randomness is going to result in some people being “luckier” than others – at least in the short-term. Have you ever noticed how at the end of some big events, you’ll see people linking highly rare items that they’ve just looted? I’d bet you anything those are the anomalies at the events – the outlier “lotto” winners who, out of a large pool of people/rolls, got a lucky die roll.

Welcome to marketing, honestly. The whole point of marketing is that things sound better than they are; that’s what sells products. It’s the capitalistic culture we’re immersed in and Anet is acting normally by following it, so that they can make money off of their game.

I mean, can you imagine what most new MMOs would look like with honest marketing?

“Enjoy our brand new, innovative game with 1 or 2 features that haven’t been used in MMOs before but have been requested by communities across the MMO genre for years! Immerse yourself in a world that is only slightly different than the ones you’ve seen in every other MMO ever, as you rush to complete a linear leveling process and then run out of things to do within a month once you reach max level!

Get your typing skills ready as you prepare to go straight to the forums when you realize that the game has not lived up to its marketing hype! Prepare to put up with unsatisfying and ultimately repeated game mechanics because honestly, they are what works and you want something that this genre is years from ever delivering. Then promptly leave after 2 months for the next MMO and announce it on the forums, only to find your way back after you go through this same cycle with the newest MMO.

Enjoy your stay in MMO land. And be sure to bring a wallet. Free-to-play is the best way to make money now, so you can expect that fluff content is going to cost you a lot of money and be near inaccessible if you don’t have any."

JackDaniels.1697:

There is a difference between voicing your concerns, giving constructive criticism, suggesting an idea and simply straight up whining. And most people on this forum, the only way they know how to express themselves is by complaints only.

My thinking is these people are not very educated and have no real life social skills to begin with. Any normal person would understand that the devs are humans too, and that they WILL make mistakes, but it is up to us to let them know about it in a civilized manner, not kitten about it because it makes you feel better to talk to someone like that.

I’m glad the OP made this post, because people really need to open their eyes and see how much harm and negativity they are bringing to this environment.

I don’t think it’s so much a lack of education or social skills. I think it’s just that a lot of people see these situations as, “If there is a problem, it’s the devs’ job to fix it – that’s what they’re paid for.” So to them, trying to come up with complex suggestions or arguments is like doing the devs’ work for them.

While some of us are just genuinely interested in how games work on a theoretical level and want our favorite games to be better, so we delve into complicated stuff as if we are developers ourselves.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

That doesn’t mean we haven’t been reading feedback. It does however mean we have lost our connection and honestly a lot of the team who care deeply about Arena and the community are to scared to post because let’s be honest forums in general can be quite toxic.

I’m not sure what your setup is for moderation and forum-related rule-breaking, but I would recommend that your forum team talk about how toxic posts are being handled and possibly crack down more.

The devs should not have to feel afraid to post and I think part of setting the stage for that is just laying down the law when people are being abrasive without being constructive at all. I’m sure you don’t want people to feel like their opinions are being censored, which is (I would guess) why more posts aren’t being infracted.

But personally, I would rather have to watch my own attitude a bit more than to have you guys afraid of your own forum community.

I think a lot of people treat devs/companies as punching bags when they’re frustrated with a game and while that is fine in private, it’s not fair for you guys to have to wade through it every time you want to interact with us.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Now, if you had actually read the thread, you would have found multiple posts from different sources on how the Blix train pulled activity from the temples and other major events in Cursed Shore. Yes, it made the zone more active from a population stand point, but it made the zone less active when it comes to meaningful activity.

I thought I explained this to you earlier, but I guess you just glazed over the entire post. There is no such thing as “meaningful activity.” Doing temple runs is not something that is “supposed to happen.” It’s just a set of events that people happen to like to do because the rewards are good. Not unlike Blix…!

This notion of “meaningful” activity is something you invented. It is not a remotely objective standard.

Do you not realize that the rewards from doing Blix are exactly the same as running champ/event trains in that area? The only difference in terms of rewards was the rate/quantity at which people were getting them.

Raire.7983:

That’s an understandable conclusion, if you looked at a page like this one:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mystic_Forge/Equipment#Backpieces

But most of those back items have alternate (non-fractal) recipes now (you just have to click on each backpiece page to see them). The only real exception has been the Fractal Capacitors, but I, for one, am perfectly happy with that arrangement.

Oh. My mistake.

Let me go dig my pitchfork back out of the trash.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Everything up to “kicking the crap out of them” is also legal, and might actually work unless they don’t care. Trolls exist in RL too, and the only thing keeping them in check is the threat of impending physical violence . . . unless they know the law won’t protect the person who threw the first punch.

Of course, the problem arises same as it does in the game – there is very little to really stop someone from being a pest if they stay entirely within the rule of law. In the game, really toxic people can have the final trump card played and have ANet just terminate their service. This is not something which can be done to some jerk who pays only in pennies for purchases over ten dollars and insists on counting it out one at a time . . .

True, there is only so much you can do about it. I guess my point was more that the general population is not going to go around trying to justify these peoples’ behavior just because they can get away with it.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Basic morals? Basic morals aren’t even applicable here. Particularly because your comparison is invalid. You are comparing “abusing morality without breaking the law” to “burdening another group by following existing law.” That’s a fairly freaking important distinction. What is that distinction? That the mere existence of a conflict that is created because of the law being followed implies that something is either wrong with the law or with the offended party. Because “the law” in this case is “playing this game properly by making every attempt to succeed if it is within your means to do so and it is your desire to participate in the event,” we can conclude that it is not at fault. The fault, then, lies with the offended party. The “offending party” hasn’t done anything wrong from a moral or legal standpoint. They’ve completed the mission and created a result that was good with an unfortunate bad result that should not have needed to come about.

Now, why do I say that there is a good result from the “griefers” actions?

I don’t think you understand what I’m talking about. There are people whose sole intention was to make life worse for others. I’m not talking about people who want to complete the event because they feel it’s better for the game, or because they feel it’s right, or because they just want to complete things rather than fail them.

I’m talking about people who have no positive goal in this matter – whose only goal was to use it as an opportunity to upset others.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Because it destroys activity in Cursed Shore by heavily reducing the traffic to the temple events.

Players clustered in farming content are players who are not out in the world populating other content. Already-low map participation decreases, community interaction dwindles, certain items become more plentiful and others become more scarce, and the entire game suffers for it. All so that a few players can get the carrot that they’ve been chasing a bit faster.

(And I say this as someone who hasn’t been to Cursed Shore in months, much less participated in Blix to farm or to grief it.)

Not having been there in months would explain your lack of understanding of how it works, I guess. “Destroying activity at the temple events” just means lack of activity at the temple events… the only “damaging” thing there is the glut of materials that came from the frequency of loot that people were getting from the blix event. There are still plenty of people in CS in this scenario – they are just doing Blix instead of chasing the event/champ/temple train.

Players clustering in certain maps is a good thing. The reality is that there aren’t enough players to consistently populate all of the maps in the game in a big way. So getting them in one general area means the people in that area will have a better experience with group content. And if it’s a consistently active map, they will know where to go to have that good experience.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

At no point in this have I even mentioned toxicity. Even without it, the structure of this event and the abuse that sprang from it was a burden on the game as a whole and it needed to be treated. Granted, it’s a symptom and not the underlying cause, but it is still a step in the right direction.

And who was arguing that it wasn’t toxic? I don’t know. Certainly not me.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

But, oh, the farmers are mad that other players have rightfully reported the issue and had the event nerfed.

Do you feel vindicated now?

Honestly, in my case, I’m not even mad that it was nerfed. I fully expected it to be nerfed within a week from the moment I first witnessed it. I would have been surprised if it hadn’t.

It just doesn’t sit right with me seeing people try to justify poor behavior (on either side). And it looks like people are trying to justify trolls, so that’s what I’m arguing against.

Well after reviewing the list of ascended backpieces on the wiki, now I get it. I guess ascended backpieces are mainly supposed to be a fractal-centered item.

Perhaps the issue here is not the ascended part itself, but the access to the skins. Tbh, I couldn’t care less about getting the minor stat increase if I’m not going to be doing fractals, but I love unlocking skins.

Here’s a suggestion: Give us a version of this backpiece (ascended level) that is skin only and can be obtained through various kinds of currency. Heck, make it another forge recipe if you want. And then be the coolest people ever and do this with a bunch of other fractal-component backpieces as well. #WardrobeForever :P

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Welcome to life. This is how it goes, honestly.

But people do get called out in life… or other people stop hanging out with them and ostracize them. Or they get the kitten kicked out of them silently.

My point being that saying the above stuff shouldn’t happen – that their behavior is somehow irrelevant just because they aren’t breaking the law – is absurd because it’s saying they should have special privilege to do what they want that no one actually gets in real life.

I’m not saying Anet has to do something about them (there are circumstances where it’s difficult to tell a troll from an innocent party and act accordingly), but there is no irrelevancy to them doing wrong. That’s the part that makes me scratch my head. :S

Duke Blackrose.4981:

There are no points of view to consider here.

One side was exploiting for profit.

The other side, intentionally or unintentionally, angered the other side by playing the game as it was intended by completing the event when they had the desire and means to do so. The motivations of the group that was playing properly are completely irrelevant. They haven’t broken the game’s mechanics nor done any explicit action that should, if the quest were working in a healthy way and the community wasn’t going out of their way to exploit an oversight in the game’s mechanics, cause any distress. There can be no “deserving” any of the harassment that they had probably gotten in return unless they, in turn, had dealt out verbal harassment of their own.

Completing an event as intended isn’t griefing. You can attach any stigma or personality you want to it, but it’s still just performing a natural function of the game that should not have clashed with the desires of another group to begin with.

And no, abusing fail states and reset timers isn’t a natural state of the game. Quests can fail, but they are intended to fail when there is an insufficiency in the numbers and/or skill of the players (or lack thereof) participating in the event.

So it sounds like you’re saying that as long as you’re not breaking the law, you can be the worst person possible to others and no one should dare call you out on it.

Two wrongs do not make a right. This is basic morals man. If people are “playing the game the way it’s supposed to be played” with the sole intention of angering other people, they are still doing something wrong because of the intention behind their actions…

In the eyes of the “law” they’re fine, but their actions are not coming from an innocent place. Saying it’s irrelevant is absurd. There’s a reason why morals go beyond legal law in real life…

unicorngirl.1487:

Stage 1: People find a way to exploit the game.

Stage 2: Other players complete the event the exploiters were exploiting.

Stage 3: Exploiters get REALLY ANGRY at the normal players, and start abusing and harassing them in mapchat and whispers.

Stage 4: ArenaNet intervenes by patching the event so it can no longer be exploited.

Stage 5 (current stage): Exploiters continue to whine instead of accepting that they got off lightly (no bans) and moving on.

You forgot a few stages in there where trolls try to ruin “exploiters” day and a bunch of people act self-righteous, even after it’s been fixed.

There’s plenty of “toxicity” to go around on both sides, which is why it was fixed (as stated pretty clearly by a dev). I’m not sure why the topic is even still open at this point. I don’t think there’s anything more to be said here.

Seems no one really wants to consider the other side’s point-of-view.

ipan.4356:

I’d love to see what they could do by combing user created content with procedural generation with developer created content.

By leveraging all of these together, they could create a level of content never before seen in any game.

I’m just trying to imagine what this would look like though? I like your spirit, but ideas are cheap, as they say. Execution is unforgiving hard work.

ipan.4356:

As to whether it’s “realistic” or not – I simply believe that the dev’s don’t do enough.

They have over 100 people, or so I hear – what do they do all day?

You gotta keep in mind that not all of those employees are working on traditional PvE content, or even directly developing the game at all. There is the community team (which may or may not include marketing – I’m not sure if they’d be considered separate “groups”) and the testing team, for example. None of those are technically “developers,” though they certainly play an integral part in making the whole process run smoothly.

Then there’s the “focus” part; depending on staff size, some employees are going to be focused specifically on certain types of gameplay, such as the WvW-specific people (they can’t be expected to work around the clock to develop open-world PvE content).

And then there’s the problem of player allocation. In a game like this, every time you create another map or another event, you risk dispersing players more, causing the less-interesting pieces of content to be virtually abandoned.

I know I’m throwing a lot at you that you probably aren’t interested in delving into, but despite abandoning the career choice, I studied game design and have made a few simple games myself. I don’t make excuses for devs often because I know they’re professionals and they’re getting paid to do good work, but I can tell you with confidence that game development is not a field where the answer to most questions is as simple as, “Let’s make this amazing idea a reality – hey, it worked!”

More often, it’s a question of, “Is this amazing-sounding idea something that works long-term, is largely enjoyable to players, and doesn’t drain all of our development time trying to get it to work?” And then it’s a time-consuming process that can, at times, stump people with realities that no one could have anticipated.

Yes, even professionals. I would bet money on it. You just aren’t going to hear it from them in a space like this because then they’ll just get mocked by people who don’t understand the process.

ipan.4356:

I found this paragraph particularly telling, because it’s ironic that you use the word ‘dynamic’, because this has a lot to do with people’s disappointment over what was promised in the Manifesto.

What you are describing is what we were told we would get – what we actually got was far less than that.

I don’t know enough about the origins of this game to say anything here. I could give you a line about how development plans change or how marketing is often a lot of BS, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been said before.

Your cause is a good one IMO, ipan, but it has to be replaced with something. The vacuum it leaves is essentially no PvE content. We can’t just demand for faster content updates because it’s not a realistic request; developers simply don’t have enough time, even working 24/7, to produce original content at a rate that will prevent people from having to repeat.

As far as I can tell, you need a system that is somewhat dynamic. It has to give players the tools to make their own content, in a sense (not necessarily in a literal sense – they just need the tools to challenge/entertain themselves in new and interesting ways).

Like the spirit of being able to choose difficulty settings in a game, only more robust and varied.

But it’s not as though no devs have ever thought of this fact. I’m sure many have gone down the rabbit hole, only to find nothing particularly useful/workable. I still think it’s a good thing to talk about, but if the answer was easy, we’d probably have it right now.

ipan.4356:

Ok, I just logged in to check the TP, so for example:

Yakkington’s and Reyna’s are 8 gold per piece right now, ’Zerker’s is almost 7.

That’s what I mean.

On average, exotic armor runs about 30-40 gold or so (give or take) just for the armor set.

Add in a full set of superior runes – Exuberance is almost 16g per rune, and Sigil of Bursting is about 16 1/2

Yeah, I was just thinking about zerker. I forgot about how bad that stuff is. The demand affects it stupid disproportionately.

Now I remember why I mostly just run rares and greens. :P

ipan.4356:

On average, each piece comes to about 4-5 gold per piece.

But I mean like, what gear are you trying to buy and from where? Typical exotics off the TP are not usually that expensive, from what I can recall?

ipan.4356:

A full set of exotic gear is about 30-40 gold.

O.o what exotic gear are you shopping for bro?

maha.7902:

No, looking down =/= elitism.

I don’t know what your deal is with this word, but, um…

elitism
the attitude that government should be by those who consider themselves superior to others by virtue of intelligence, social status, or greater accomplishment.

And here’s a slang definition as well:

A person who believes that they are superior to others (and thus deserve favored status) because of their intellect, social status, wealth, or other factors.

And condescension is:

an attitude of patronizing superiority

So… yeah. I suggest you let this one go.

maha.7902:

And then calling me one too? Stay classy, I didn’t know teaching players how to run dungeons and not caring what build/gear people used constituted elitism, but YMMV.

I didn’t call you one. Again, there is no slight here. Only a perceived one. I made a guess that perhaps you’re bothered by what I’m saying because you think it’s an accusation that you, specifically, are an elitist in some way.

I have not actually accused you of being one. Considering that I know nothing about you, it would be absurd to assume such a thing.

Grats to the winners. Some of the choices in this thread blew my mind. You guys are awesome.

maha.7902:

Elitism is the exclusion of others from your group due to your belief in your own group’s superiority. 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’. So how about you stop throwing the word around when it doesn’t apply? It’s an overused buzz word by angry forum goers on the same level as words like ‘toxic’ – they have no meaning at this point, people just throw them around when somebody says something they disagree with, which is exactly what you just did.

Oh, so this is personal to you, ok. Have you heard the expression, “If the shoe fits?”

Never once did I indicate that people who are “confused” about others’ struggles are being elitist and toxic. You just concocted that out of nowhere, I guess out of some hurt at the notion of being an elitist yourself?

In fact, I just clarified for you that I’m talking about people who look down on others for being less skilled. Which is part of the definition and/or slang of the word elitist and is a world apart from basic confusion.

Please do yourself a favor and take a step back from this. My goal was not to insult random people for doing nothing wrong and you seem to be getting insulted for no good reason.

Erukk.1408:

Zoidberg

Imagining Zoidberg voicing a Jellyfish and saying some of the typical sort of GW2 lines just made my day. Actually, I think imagining Zoidberg saying anything is great.

maha.7902:

You’re throwing this word “elitist” around.

I don’t think you actually know what it means.

I know exactly what it means, regardless of whether I’m precisely referencing the official definition or using it more as slang. In this case, I’m talking about video game elitists – players who think they are better than other people (like better as a person) because their skill level is higher.

Essentially, any variation on players with an above-average skill level (real or perceived) looking down on people whose skill level (real or perceived) is average or below-average.

So maybe it’s best you review the definition, cause I’m not sure you know what it means.

gobax.6185:

Tbh, an mmo without farming / grinding is not an mmo at all.

That’s your opinion of what an MMO is. It’s not the single definition.

gobax.6185:

Man, players these days wants everything to be handed to them in a silver platter.

A lot of people play games first and foremost FOR FUN and finding themselves doing grindy tasks for end-game is NOT fun to them. Seriously, you guys who are making analogies between this and having a job are hilariously missing the point; games are not supposed to be jobs.

The fact that some of us can get pleasure out of games being similar to jobs says more about our apparent lack of ability to relax than it does about people who just want to log in and enjoy themselves.

The onus of oddity is on us for thinking that a work-like game is somehow “normal,” not on the other guy.

ipan.4356:

The weird thing is that so few people question this.

Why is this normal?

Why should games be slot machines?

Why would we pay someone else so that we can repeat repetitive tasks?

Games should be challenging – rewards should reflect the level of challenge.

But repeating mindless tasks simply so you can pass a gate and to repeat a different mindless task is not a game – it’s a chore.

Games shouldn’t be chores – they’re games!

And I would start holding developers to a higher standard.

This idea, that ‘this is just the way it is, and all MMO’s are like this’ is what allows MMO developers to get away with it.

Stop accepting the status quo. Stop accepting normal.

Challenge it and light a fire under their kitten . Get up and make them do something about it.

Demand better.

It’s easy to say that and I understand where you’re coming from, but the problem is, how exactly do you fix the issue?

I mean, if you look at some of the most popular games throughout history (or just your personal favorites) what kind of themes do you find? For me, it was games like Ocarina of Time and I fell in love with the seemingly endless ability to explore every nook and cranny and find something cool to do.

I played through it all the way several times.

But… it was also one of the few games I had access to at the time. It was basically the first RPG I played and the only RPG I could play at that time.

I could still see myself sitting down and enjoying Ocarina now, but it would be different. For one thing, my mentality has changed (it has been affected by games I’ve played); I would likely find myself speeding through dungeons and searching out every upgrade as if it’s a competition.

That change in mentality isn’t something I can just instantly reverse. There’s also the fact that because I have access to so many other titles (many of them RPGs), if I got bored with repeated content on Ocarina, I would probably just set it aside and forget about it for months at a time.

Contrast that to back in the day when wanting to play a video game meant I had to make do with the few titles I had access to.

See, part of the issue is that fewer options inspires more creativity. Depending on what environment you grew up in, you might remember finding ways to entertain yourself before the glut of TV and video games. I know I experienced it. And it holds true even within a video game; if I feel like I have few options, I will be more likely to try to eke out entertainment from something that I would otherwise abandon.

Now granted, developers can give certain tools to players to encourage creativity (e.g. things like player housing) but the traditional layout of “PvE” content (open-world or instanced) is thus: Fight mobs, kill mobs, get loot, repeat.

Which has a certain kind of appeal (mainly gear progression) and it’s hard to put a creative spin on it. I think the most potential I can see would be is you had some really advanced AI to pit players against, but we’re really not that far into AI yet. Part of what gives PvP longevity is the very fact that players can compete against each other, which is – in theory – an endless source of competition (because we’re adaptable human beings).

AI is not like that and so it becomes something that is either too hard (too much HP, too harsh mechanics, etc.) or too easy (yawnfest, loot, fall asleep, etc.).

If you have any thoughts for how to inspire that sort of creative longevity in traditional PvE content, feel free to share. It’s a fascinating question to me.

Hey, thanks for reaching out guys. Hope you continue to do so. An act of good faith is an act of good faith – I’ll take it with open arms.

Astral Projections.7320:

How long would people play the game if exotics were worthless vendor trash and a few days of doing world bosses got you all the Legendaries you could possibly want?

Well ideally you want people playing the game because it’s fun, not just for loot, but who am I kidding? People play to gear themselves and then they get bored when there’s no more gear.

We really need to start calling end-game “continue-game” or something. End-game sounds like it’s an endless battle to keep people interested when they hit max level. Which it pretty much is. In every MMO. Bleh.

Sariel V.7024:

Indeed. It’s a fine example of the entitled bullying detractors into submission. Kinda how like gangs try to silence onlookers when they’re busy committing crimes they believe they should get away with. “It ain’t your business,” is the usual refrain, and I’m sure these farmers would get violent with anyone disrupting their sure thing, if only they could.

tvtropes.org has a great page on troll logic. Somehow, the people who are exploiting this event are trying to paint themselves as the kittening heroes in this scenario, while anyone actually doing things as intended are idiots, evil, disruptors, the actual problem. Ah. Yeah. That works. Great job guys.

takes a drink

Half the people here make me sick.

Lol, no the people exploiting the event are not trying to paint themselves as heroes. That’s absurd hyperbole and I bet you know it is.

As someone who has participated in the Blix stuff (I’m not ashamed of it) I’m simply suggesting that people look at it from more than one viewpoint. I would never be one of those people who screams obscenities at someone who mucks up an exploit – that’s just not my style.

But I can’t deny it’s frustrating when people purposely muck it up (an honest mistake is a different story, but it’s hard to tell the difference) and as exploitative as the Blix stuff is, it is still an open-world event; it’s just failing one event to do another event, basically (and repeating that process).

Equating it to gangs and crime is absurd. Most people doing the event just want to have a good time and get some loot. And honestly, the repetitive event aspect of it isn’t even that fun to begin with.

I have seen exploits that must have a winner and loser (e.g. one party’s day is going to be ruined no matter what). But that doesn’t have to be the case here because of how maps work. Not that it matters at this point, considering that a fix is coming.

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Labjax.2465:

It’s more of an unintentional troll than an exploit, considering how easy it is to screw over the people that are trying to do it.

And now that you’ve posted about it, it will probably get trolled even more in its last legs of existing before a fix comes firing in, by a crowd of people who somehow believe that two wrongs make a right.

Completing the event isn’t a “wrong.”

Someone just heard that this massive crowd of people was having a difficult time beating this extremely difficult event and decided to lend them a helping hand.

I assume you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but I actually wasn’t calling the completion a “wrong” – I was saying that in reference to failing on purpose (wrong #1) and completing it to grief people (wrong #2).

ShinjoNaomi.1896:

Would more communication be good?
Sure.
Would it help much?
I honestly don’t think so…

It’s akin to trying to appease a fat kid by feeding him more candy… It’s never enough.

And as it has been pointed out earlier in this thread… There is a large difference between the forum goes here and the much larger majority that just play the game and never come here.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…
It only takes a relatively small number of people to turn forums like these into a toxic cesspit…
No amount of ‘open communication’ would ever help with that, and if anything, would only give more fuel to fan the flames…

People aren’t asking for candy though… they’re starving and are asking for just one meal a day at least. Something to chew on that is nutritious and will last.

And I guess you could say the feature pack does that with its staggered daily updates (on weekdays) but that’s something that will stop once the feature pack is released.

It’s also very short-term; less than a month in advance sharing the information and judging by the way they handled the commander tag debacle, the features they’re talking about in the blog posts are already primed and ready to go.

Anyway, the word I’m looking for here is “presence” more than anything; you can have a presence amidst your community without giving them a rundown on every design conversation you have. You can answer questions and just say you can’t answer when you can’t (see: the economy thread with lots of John Smith Q&A).

The devs having a presence makes us (the players) feel more like they are in touch with the playerbase, even if they aren’t. It’s a psychological thing and to be honest with you, I’ll take false confidence in my devs over no confidence any day. One of them leaves me with a positive feeling, at least, even if the outcome is the same.

And I will defend devs who instill confidence in me because that’s just the kind of person I am.

Rouven.7409:

I agree it’s not the same, but I don’t think it matters on a larger scale. Keep in mind that this affects more than just T6 mats. Your personal crapshoot roll does not change yes, but X amount of people are rolling now 100 times more than they should for X amount of time played. I believe if we would have seen large swings then the system in place would not be good enough and someone would not be doing his job.

Unless it’s an intentional time limited event made to shake up the market. All largely speculation of course.

Well yeah, I think from an economic standpoint, the major questions would be whether it’s having an unintended impact on the market and whether that impact is a distinctly bad thing, keeping in mind what their gameplay goals are (which we’re obviously not privy to on a detailed level).

Rouven.7409:

The problem is once it reaches a critical mass. I am willing to bet that we could farm this event in harmony, a band of brothers and sisters against the undead – it would still be nerfed. It creates an imbalance by not having the same limitations.

True, that can be a problem. But I suspect they knew about this event before any threads were made and were keeping an eye on the market (or, if nothing else, they would have noticed any major shifts in the market and looked at what was causing it). The interesting thing, though, is that I don’t think the T6 mat market has been significantly impacted by this.

It appears to have gone down a few silver here and here from the Blix glut, but I think it will bounce back very quickly once the event is patched.

I mean, the fact is, even with this event, the rate of obtaining highly-sought-after loot is not amazing. Getting a lot of champ bags is a crapshoot of dice rolling at the end of the day and the averages aren’t going to be mind-blowing. Something like farming a node, on the other hand, yields the same item every time, guaranteed.

Gedekran.1487:

A player should not feel ostracized for wanting to complete an event.

Well no, they shouldn’t. In principle, it’s a bad situation, and I’m sure this is the main reason Anet is taking action to fix it.

But it is interesting to think about how that situation would look if the roles were reversed – if a big group was trying to complete an event and some lone person had a special way to fail it. I wonder if anyone at all would defend that person then.

People have a tendency to decry poor behavior until they feel it’s justified, at which point all bets are off.

kokiman.2364:

Wrong approach to the whole situation, imo. They should just ban the players who literally abuse failure states of events.

I don’t think you understand how many people they would have to ban and how much that would hurt open-world activity, considering that most of the people who found this farm found it because they do a lot of open-world farming.

Also, to those who are taking this down an anti-champ-train slippery slope, the way Anet is talking about this situation would indicate that they didn’t actually want to do anything about it, but are doing something because of the negative feeling it’s creating on the whole.

I believe they’ve even stated outright before that they don’t mind champ trains and such, and are completely ok with them. If you consider the way whats-his-face-lead-designer-guy talked about open-world content in that interview, it’s clear that anything encouraging healthy, vibrant open-world play is a good thing to them and they only feel a need to put their foot down when the bad outweighs the good.

Gedekran.1487:

All “farmers” that participated in failing this event should be feeling relieved right now. This way Anet gets to fix this exploitative behavior and point to the toxicity of the community instead of calling it for what it was, an exploit on game mechanics. Then banning the people who exploited it, even if temporarily.

Well as far as exploits go, it’s not much of one. I mean, sure if we wheel out formal definitions of exploiting, it’s probably going to fit… but it also brings people together doing an open world activity for hours at a time. Which is apparently Anet’s baby when it comes to GW2 PvE content, judging from the way they have talked about it.

So they can’t be too kitten people for doing open world stuff, even if it involves some exploitative use of events, simply because they would shoot themselves in the foot, concerning what they hope players will spend a lot of their time doing.

I think it’s worth saying that if people feel such an intense need to farm/grind that losing an “exploit” like this hurts a lot, then it’s something to look at as far as general event layout goes.

I have seen exploits in games where it’s so bad that people are basically getting all of the rewards they need in a few days, but that sort of gravity doesn’t seem to be the case here. The fact that people find stuff like this and use it feels more like a sort of silent battle against the intensity of the grinds they’re being faced with.

If that’s too cryptic, what I’m getting at is: Make some farming chains easier to do and/or nerf the related grinds. Or, since that is probably a terrible oversimplification of the design, take a closer look at how rewards are being handed out and how many of them people need to get their desired items.

Which you have probably already done before, but I’m suggesting you do it again, Anet. :P

Some random thoughts to get the wheels turning:

- Linear paths are one way (token currency, like the badges of honor) but they have the issue of, “Ok, I got all my badges, now there’s nothing left for me to do, or to spend them on.”

- More control over what kind of loot you get could have an interesting effect. For example, “Hey, you can take those 4 Vial of Powerful Blood and turn them into Ancient Bones in the Mystic Forge. Just add water. And make sure to use the filtered kind, cause tap is gross.”

Anyway, you’re professionals. You’ll figure something out.

Chris Cleary.8017:

A fix is currently being prepared for this issue.

While the behavior (design) of this event was acceptable in the past, changes in the game over time have created an environment around this event that has become increasingly toxic (for the community) due to unintended use/change of mechanics.

Players should not feel that they are in the wrong for completing an event (or event chain), and that is what is happening with this event. The respawn timer for this event will be significantly increased.

Thanks for letting us know. It’s appreciated.

Shjade.4697:

It’s true that there isn’t much way to deal with real griefing going on (easy example: people who take over turrets at Tequatl and refuse to actually use them, just firing into the ground next to their turret throughout the event instead of spearing Teq or clearing poison). Outside of reporting such players, there’s not a whole lot players can do about this kind of thing. Nor should their be; as frustrating as that is to think about, any mechanic that could be added that would enable players to moderate the activity of other players would always, inevitably be used for griefing and trolling more consistently than it would dealing with trolls and griefers. Instead of preventing this kind of behavior it would only enable worse forms of the same.

This is, of course, beside the point when the request is brought about by someone who encourages exploiting a game design flaw for personal gain over playing the game as intended and rather selfishly insists he should be able to remove players who disagree with his philosophy on how to play from the game.

You are exactly the kind of person who should never have powers over another player.

This is one reason why open-world raiding (essentially what Teq is, albeit not the hardest of raids) is a difficult beast to design. If Teq was in an instance, you could just kick the people who are griefing/trolling mechanics and do the fight at your own pace.

(I’m not saying GW2 should have instanced raiding, mind you – just talking about one of the tough parts of making open-world stuff work.)

Draknar.5748:

It’s less about when gamers started playing but rather when they were born/how they were raised. Typically people born mid-late 90s and up were/are part of the “everyone’s a winner, there are no losers” generation. Nobody was/is allowed to feel bad for not being as good as someone else in anything. They were/are raised to be extra sensitive and that if you hit an obstacle you can’t overcome, it isn’t because of you or your skills because you are perfect just the way you are, rather it’s because that obstacle isn’t accessible enough to everyone’s wide range of skills and thus needs to be changed or able to be bypassed so that no one feels like they are failing.

That’s why with this boss fight, the ones that have failed it don’t think to themselves “hmm, maybe I need to re-think my strategy here”, they think “wow, that boss is waay too hard, they need to fix it!”

Dunno when OP was born, but I would venture to guess mid-90s or later.

This is all hypothetical of course, I’ve done no research.

It’s an interesting theory, but I think the mid-late 90s generation wouldn’t be complaining about this sort of thing because they’re the ones who are more likely to have been born with a controller in their hands – experts at video games at a young age, simply because of the exposure.

Personally, I think the crowd most likely to complain about this stuff (for its difficulty) are the 30+ people with families and jobs who play games as a low-intensity hobby, some of whom may have the potential to kick the kitten out of the elitists but simply don’t have the time to hone that level of expertise.

Granted, sometimes having all the time in the world will not make a mediocre player into an expert, but that’s just how life works with any activity.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

You do realize that it is because the forums have a tendency to erupt like Mt Saint Helen that they don’t talk to us, right? If we had more people that did take the time to breathe, chill out, and then broach their concern in a calm, rational way, they might be more inclined to discuss things with us. At which point, yeah, we’ll get more input on future items. However, it’s never going to happen if people keep lashing out first and thinking after.

This isn’t a good excuse. Amidst the volcanic eruption, I see plenty of people who are giving feedback in a calm and tempered way. Those of us who are calm can’t do anything about those who aren’t and those who aren’t are probably not going to 180 their behavior patterns because of a weak argument that doing so will get us more dev interaction.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Those of us who enjoy the game and have been enjoying it for years are still in-game.

I feel compelled to point out that while you are decrying one group’s “us” agenda, you are pushing your own “us” agenda.

Must every forum post read like political lobbying?

Dusty Moon.4382:

It wasn’t – players whining about certain builds that were OP only to make others even more OP. There was no balance in that game. Then the players wanted a 3-faction PvP BUT the lore only had in 2 Factions. So, they created something out of thin air that just made the game even more MEH.

If all you’re taking into account is the PvP of that game, you’re going to get a very distorted view.

The PvP was easily the worst part, compared to other games in the market.

I mean, they even said outright that they were not going to support arena-style PvP. PvP was arguably the red-headed-stepchild of that game and probably still is.

Behellagh.1468:

I think they have a more traditional development environment than an “agile” team that can “pivot” on demand.

Maybe so. If they are slow to respond, that could explain why.

Hate to say it, but the best solution here is just pointing out to Anet content that is vulnerable to being trolled/grieved and hope that they make it better. Trolls troll because they can and it’s easy – simple as that. If you take away their options to troll, then they’ll find some other place to do it that’s hopefully nowhere near you.

Kaldrys.1978:

Another victim of Anet’s weird obsession with oversized pauldrons.

Incidentally, every MMO I play seems to have an obsession with making oversized shoulder items, or having a shoulder piece only go on one side, thereby bugging the hell out of us people who want symmetry. T_T

I don’t know what it is about shoulders. Maybe it’s a lot of the same artists.

Behellagh.1468:

My point is what we are seeing is there interpretation of what players were asking about a year ago and nothing more recent than that because it takes that long to formalize the idea, develop the schedule and assign the personal to implement it.

You have a good point, though when it comes to the tags specifically, the most time-consuming part was probably the account-bound thing. With the right assets and tools on hand, the color variation part could take all of an hour, if that.

Probably spend more time testing the new colors than making them.