Guild Wars 2

Paradox.1380:

How about you…. Go through look up what traits you think you might want? And unlock those first to try out your build. Or go into Heart of the mists and play around in there with different ones until you find some you like. Then either go out and collect THOSE traits doing whatever it takes to get them or simply buy them? And then later on get more as you grow with learning your new profession. Its not that expensive at all. You prepared the tomes and crafting mats/money to level why didn’t you go all the way with skill point scrolls and the needed money for the traits?

I’ve made several new characters and while I don’t really care for the new trait system there are ways around it.

How about we buy 3 manuals for less than 5g and have everything. Like the game had at launch and for the first 18 months of the game.

The new trait system is complete trash and the only reason there isn’t the same kitten storm as with the gem fiasco is because many vets didn’t realize how bad a change it was until way down the road because they were grandfathered in. So instead of everyone going bat kitten crazy over it day one, they are instead slowly souring. Its a horrible change that is detrimental to the game in the long term.

They made the rewards in EotM better than most areas of the game so that they would get people in that map. That way their metrics say they created a new WvW map that is a huge success. They have loot starved this game so that any new area they put out can easily have better rewards than other areas, so that they can have metrics that say how successful the new maps they put out are. Now if they adjust the other wvw maps to have equal rewards do you think EotM will have as many players? What if they gave other pve maps the same quality of rewards as in SW?

Morsus.5106:

Let’s say there are some fields that kids like to play on, and Marty wants to play Soccer (football for those of you outside the US). The sign outside the fields says that you can play whatever you want, and so Marty goes over to the kids playing baseball and says that they should all play soccer. The kids tell him that they don’t want to play soccer, they want to play baseball. There are some kids a few fields over playing soccer, but instead of going and playing with them, or finding some other kids to play soccer with, he keeps arguing with the kids who want to play baseball. “The sign says I can play what I want, and I want to play soccer!” He tells the other children, and so the other children ignore him and go back to their game of baseball. Marty tries to play soccer on the same field as the children playing baseball and runs into another child. The children kick him off of the field they’re playing on, and go back to their game. Instead of going and playing soccer with the children who are still playing soccer, he goes to the parents, and tells them how the other children are bullying him and excluding him. The parents scold their children for excluding poor Marty. Marty still isn’t satisfied, and demands that the parents make their children play soccer with him. What do you think the parents are going to do?

Very well done and thought out analogy. Now will the kids learn to play with those that want to play like them, I seriously doubt it. The type of person coming in the forums and complaining about zerkers and griefing others rather than creating their own lfm has issues that make it so they can not comprehend what an kitten they being. In fact many of them feel that they are in the right to be an kitten. So even though the answer is so simple, create their own lfm or join an lfm that is accepting of how they want to play, I just don’t see that type of person doing it.

Mo Mo.1947:

Gregori.5807:

Mo Mo.1947:

There also used to be a lot less gold in the market. You can make 1 gold quite quickly in this game now even if you’re a newbie. 1g isn’t that big of a deal anymore.

My newbie friend had about 10 gold in their first couple weeks of playing just from going around doing random stuff they came across. And she was around level 20 at that point so she has plenty of time to accumulate more gold as she gets into the higher level areas and starts getting better drops and doing more profitable activities.

And how is your hypothetical newbie doing with skillpoints? You know, the things that go to buying actual… skills… along with traits? And, which have been overall reduced since the beginning of the game?

If this newbie is swimming in skill points, give me his secret.

I dislike the gold cost but can live with it… as a leveled veteran. The skill point cost, on the other hand, that is both often forgotten in these discussions and much harder to meet than the gold.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Also, please let us know how this newbie is liking the idea of buying traits/obtaining through tasks once they’ve spent their gold on armor/runes/sigils/accessories and have rolled another alt or 2 and need to do it all over for them.

We’ll wait.

My actual newbie friend, unlike the hypothetical newbie you’re all advocating for, doesn’t care about any of that stuff yet. Because she is a newbie.

The trait unlocks annoy VETERANS. WE the VETERANS want a little bit of change in how the traits are unlocked for OUR alts.

The new unlocks system doesn’t affect newbies because they are TOO NEW. They’ve got plenty of other stuff to learn about the game. And in the case of my friend, the leveling system seems to be helping her learn about the game in paced increments without overwhelming her.

This is not about newbies. It’s about veterans. Please keep the arguments about how the trait system affects veterans. There are plenty of valid arguments about how the trait system inconveniences veterans.

Your friend is just as hypothetical, with out a name that we can verify in game and keep tabs on, everything you say about “her” is just make believe. But go ahead and please keep referring to your imaginary friend to make your point.

Edited to add this affects all players new and old. Who are you to say in a thread about the entire new trait system that people are only allowed to bring up arguments about vets and not new players.

Galen Grey.4709:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

I don’t think the trinity affects as much as people think. In most games with a trinity the class/profession you choose will decide what role you will be taking, whether its DPS, tank, or healing. In a game like GW1 there was a trinity but almost any class could fill any role. Yes I know some primary classes were tankier because of armor but the skills made it so anyone could do anything.

In GW2 every class pretty much has the ability to do anything also. Sure some classes are better at some things but most classes can fill multiple roles depending on build. The problem is that there is not any content that warrants having a healer or a tank. Since most dangerous things are conditions that can be easily removed and straight damage that is easily dodged, experience, skill and DPS will rule all encounters and dictate the meta. This is the core issue that those asking for zerker to be nerfed do not understand.

Until something is done about conditions and dodging the meta will stay where its at. I also want to say I am not asking for dodging or conditions to get nerfed. They just need to be reworked a little bit.

Thats exactly the thing I am speaking about though. When you say “The problem is that there is not any content that warrants having a healer or a tank.” Thats what other MMOs do to force people in those roles. It is simply impossible to have content that warrants a healer and a tank and at the same time leaves you free to play any role you want and at the same time it also allows you the freedom to play any role you want on any class.

Case in point is when you say "Since most dangerous things are conditions that can be easily removed " Thats a support role right there even though in this case you’re supporting yourself so to speak.

DPS rules everything everywhere because naturally thats what you want when you’re trying to kill stuff. Its Like I said not everyone goes DPS in other MMOs simply because content is designed as such that without having tank and healer you’re going to fail. Tanks and healers in those games pay the same price someone who doesnt go full damage in this game pays and to a higher degree. Lets not forget that Tanks and healer classes are great in dungeons and raids in those games but they’re the worst roles you can having in all other PvE. Especially healer they’re orders of magnitude slower to level then a straight up DPS build much much much worst then you get in this game if you go with a support build. Its basically excepted over there cause the game puts a gun to player’s head in like 5% of the content where not having a healer means a guaranteed failure.

I agree with everything you said. What I meant about conditions is that the system needs to be reworked so that it is viable for players to use in any kind of PVE without it becoming so OP in PVP. The devs have acknowledged this and have said its too hard so I would not count on it anytime soon.

I agree with you on the getting stuck in a rut waiting on a healer is lame in every game with dedicated healers. Classes in this game can fill any roll though. A warrior specked for shouts makes a great healer for instance. So I don’t think this game would be quite as bad as others if content was created that required more healing and defenses. I think that’s one of the biggest problems that many games have with a trinity is that only 1 or 2 classes can fill certain roles. In this game pretty much anyone can fill the role and still play very much like a DPS.

I would not change any existing content to fill this gap though. That is something I think they really messed up on in the past with Teq and a few other things. Its not that I don’t like what they did, I just think they should have created completely new content that did the same thing and left the old stuff as it was.

Overall though I think zerker meta should be the last of peoples worries. No matter what gets changed there will always be a meta because people like to do things fast and efficiently. The only change in any part of the meta I see is people changing up some skills/traits to get the defenses and healing needed for a particular encounter. I seriously doubt we will ever see any kind of content that requires someone with maxed out healing or maxed out toughness/vitality.

uberkingkong.8041:

You do play how you want.

It’s just with the developers making this game easymode, repetitive and all. Its just a lot faster to go full dps and breeze through everything.

I mean… They listened to you guys and tried to steer away from the meta by making world bosses harder, like SB more portals, tequatl you have to go through all the phases now, etc.
What you guys do when they tried to make it a bit harder so full dps build isn’t preferred?

You guys whined.

You guys are just as bad as the WvW community.
We want new modes, new things to do, server merges.

They give you exactly what you asked for, EotM, you guys whined.
People even whined about EotM not being like traditional borderlands WvW, they added siege disablers to help people play defense more often. Guess what??? People whined about siege disablers. People whined about EotM changing trends to bag farming instead of karma farming. People still whining about server merges, they merge servers in EotM.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Time-to-merge-populations/page/2#post4602340
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/New-trend-in-EOTM/page/2#post4597334
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Siege-Disablers-Ruined-the-Game/page/2#post4585398

Also just as bad as the PvP community.
We want deathmatch style games, we want new game modes, people to have to change there build/meta.

They give you EXACTLY what you asked for, Courtyard, you guys whined.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/people-are-leaving-courtyard-on-purpose/first#post4602422
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Why-Courtyard-why/first#post4603253

Nothing but a big bunch of babies whining. They keep listening to you, but your not the right person to listen too. They need to start listening to THE RIGHT PEOPLE.

Nobody asked for EotM. People asked for the devs to spend time on wvw so its not just a karma train flipping towers. People asked to make it more worth while to defend towers rather than let them get taken so they can get the reward for retaking the site. What did they give, an even worse karma train zerg with increased rewards because of how small the map is and they made it have no affect on wvw. It actually is like a training ground for karma flipping since everyone knows its the place to level up your character.

The problem isn’t that they are listening to the wrong people playing the game its that they aren’t listening to anyone playing the game. I do agree though that those asking for zerker nerfs are not the people to listen to.

Galen Grey.4709:

tom.7468:

Perfect balance is unachieveable but why can every other big gaming company pull of a decent holy trinity and some a soft trinity as in you can do trinity roles with multiplie classes like this game was advertised in the first place. It comes down to long cooldown and weak skills not even worth using.
I dont know why people try to build for anything else than damage in PvE.
And ofcourse dodging press v to avoid that obvious red circle.

Thats the answer right there….The holy trinity works because the game specifically limits you and forces you to take a role.

Think about the most successful holy trinity based MMO. There is no Zerger like meta class of course else it wouldnt be a very successful holy trinity based game. But consider why tanks build tank builds or why cleric build cleric builds? most likely its because dungeons / raids would fail if there is isnt a healthy mix of tanks and clerics… now imagine if there were no dungeons and raids in that game… what would happen? would anyone go for a tank role or cleric role? The rest of the content which generally makes up the bulk of the game content doesnt really benefit from a tank role or cleric role.. Questing is always a lot slower when done through a tank or cleric.

DPS is always the prefered faster way for solo questing why? because ultimately in most of these games what we’re doing is we have to kill stuff.. and its DPS that gets us there.

Remove the trinity barrier (ie that you can only have 1 main role per class) and things would change.. you’d actually get the same thing that we have in Gw2. Everyone would go DPS and perhaps just switching a bit to cleric / tank for the dungeons and the raid.

You also mentioned soft trinity but lets be honest, games that offer soft trinities still have the same issues, each class has its meta and the soft trinity is really just a gimick for anyone who is a min maxer and if you’re not a min maxer then gw2 offers much more roles then just zerker!

Why do people build chars that dont focus just on damage for PvE ? simple because its fun. Why do people pick cleric in a trinity based game? sure clerics are needed and that surely is part of the reason but lets not forget DPS are also needed and so are tanks. They pick cleric because they like playing a support role. They enjoy it. Now in Gw2 there is no content where you will fail unless you have people 100% focused on support but there is still a benefit to having support so why should someone who enjoys playing support give it up just cause it is not the most efficient way of doing things (which is debatable to be honest… in some circumstances having a mix of damage and support can boost damage to high levels then having just everyone focused on damage)

Gw2 is and has always been a game about freedom. Metas are exactly the opposite of that. Metas are about being the best you can be and there is always 1 best. A holy trinity based game simply forces people into 3 different roles but they still each have a single meta.

Problem isnt that in Gw2 Damage is the most optimal way to go… thats true in every single game. Problem is that for some whatever reason people want to be forced to play what they enjoy, they seem to be incapable of just choosing it themselves of their own free will.

I don’t think the trinity affects as much as people think. In most games with a trinity the class/profession you choose will decide what role you will be taking, whether its DPS, tank, or healing. In a game like GW1 there was a trinity but almost any class could fill any role. Yes I know some primary classes were tankier because of armor but the skills made it so anyone could do anything.

In GW2 every class pretty much has the ability to do anything also. Sure some classes are better at some things but most classes can fill multiple roles depending on build. The problem is that there is not any content that warrants having a healer or a tank. Since most dangerous things are conditions that can be easily removed and straight damage that is easily dodged, experience, skill and DPS will rule all encounters and dictate the meta. This is the core issue that those asking for zerker to be nerfed do not understand.

Until something is done about conditions and dodging the meta will stay where its at. I also want to say I am not asking for dodging or conditions to get nerfed. They just need to be reworked a little bit.

It will be funny if GW1 beats GW2

Vayne.8563:

I’m sure people will keep saying anything, but there are reasonable people out there reading this post who can now more easily dismiss those claims. Obviously something is being worked on, unless this journalist is lying.

So people might see people say that and shrug and move on…because now there’s something to show as a counterpoint (as opposed to just logic which worked before for some). This should help others make more educated decisions about posts that pretty much make stuff up.

Your goal may be to get people to dismiss those that criticize anet but until anet starts delivering something other than LS many will just dismiss what you have to say. All that the journalist said was that he saw people working on stuff at anet. They could be working on other games or who knows what. They could just have a huge marketing team in house to shill gaming sites rather than out sourcing. We don’t know or at least I don’t, so my conclusions are just as viable as yours unless you are privy to something the rest of the community is not. All we know is anet has a staff of 300+ and about 20 of them are working on LS. What the other people are working on we have no idea but the track record says not much besides LS and gemstore. Bringing up these topics to say hey look they are working something with out saying what is just more hot air.

Vayne.8563:

NNYinsanenature.5684:

Sogradde.8016:

Anecdotes are no evidence.
Vayne if you really want to shill so bad, you gotta try harder!
:^)

I don’t think he can help but make things up at this point.

Or you can listen to what devs have said for years from game to game, including some of the Guild Wars 1 devs and make an educated decision based on that information.

This game isn’t the only MMORPG in existence and for years devs have been saying how few people run the hardest content.

Most recently it was a dev from Lotro who said less than 10% of the population raids or did PvP…and that wasn’t recently that was consistently from launch.

You think Guild Wars 1 was any different?

Other devs have said similar things through the years MMOs have been a thing. Some of us ignore what devs say, some of us pay attention.

10% of your 7 million people that bought the game would 700,000. Even though its a small portion of the game its still a very large amount of people. I think all it could do by giving some of these players what they want is help the game. The majority of the things people want (like more dungeons, weapons, and classes) would not hurt anyone that does not want them. Just like how all the people that hate the LS do not have to do it and it does not hurt them. I’m so tired of people fighting against getting more new content. I honestly can not understand why anyone can attack every single idea for new content unless they are paid to do so because anet does not want to and will not do anything except for LS. Because there honestly is no down side to adding more stuff for people to do. Yes not every one is going to be pleased with everything but spreading the new content around more areas of the game (not just LS)so that each area keeps growing is your best chance of pleasing everyone at least a little bit.

If they started adding one existing weapon to a class per month it would be huge for this game. Even one per quarter would be pretty good.

EotM has good rewards, not good content. The game is so reward starved that where ever a decent rewards pops up there will be people there to farm it.

Tree.3916:

shion.2084:

This is great news! So you’re telling me that farming isn’t causing inflation, but is lowering prices? Awesome because I’d really like to buy a precursor since I’ve never had one drop (probably because I don’t farm enough).

So since I’ve been playing the enjoyable way to me, fractals, map exploration, a dungeon or two in a session, and saved almost every penny I’ve made for the last 809 days, I’m now closer to buying a precursor? I’ve got 401 gold Which one can I buy?

And when I get really lucky and manage to find a lvl 400 crafting material, can it sell for a lot to get me closer to my goal? Or has the majority of fairly “rare” things I am likely to come across now been devalued, while inflation has increased significantly for things that can’t be farmed?

There is a post on reddit where a guy compares prices (gems, gold and $$) of precursors and found that while the gold cost has been increasing, the actual $$ value is decreasing. ($$ value is if you bought the gold with real money vs. farming)

yes you currently get a lot more band for your buck buying gems and converting gold compared to what it was a year ago. It makes it much more enticing to buy gold then grind for it when they nerf every decent way of getting it in game. Plus they have nerfed all the drops so that supply is limited causing prices to go up. It makes that old saying exploit early and often the way to play. If you aren’t jumping in on the great farms that pop up now and then you are going to be grinding for ever to get anything. Just to clarify I’m not saying to exploit, just saying that if the opportunity arises to make a lot of money fast jump on it while you can because those types of things never last.

felessan.9587:

Wolfheart.1879:

To re-iterate my concerns with my last post, and to do it in a less grouchy, rambling way (I get like that late at night. oops!), here are some questions which I feel are pertinent to this thread. Perhaps these questions could be passed along to the devs/whoever is higher up in these situations. The questions are based upon the trait system as it stands, aswell as recent Anet responses.

1) Give that one of the aims of the new system was to promote greater build experimentation, how do you feel the system has done compared to that objective?
2) Do you feel that the current way of acquiring traits, either through unlocking or buying, promotes that experimentation
3) Do you feel that the cost side of unlocking (probably more aimed at repeat characters) is a good balance for those levelling new characters and for new players.
4) What was the logic behind gating lower level traits behind higher level objectives?
5) Is it truly seen as unreasonable to ask for status reports on issues that have been a concern for over 6 months?
6) When it is stated that our feedback is being considered, what exactly does that mean? Is it just being filed away or is it being used to improve the system? Either way, how can we know, unless a meaningful update is given?
7) Do you feel the way in which these feedback threads from that time was handled, with the lack of response for months on end was handled appropriately?
8) With the obvious time pressures for new content, and as said with the post in the Communication Disappointment thread, is the addressing of a 6 month old a priority anymore?
9) How many people are working on the trait system at the moment? I understand that probably the same people do several jobs, so can there be some sort of statistic to show how much work has gone into the trait system from the development end in, say, the last 2 months?
10) Witht he heavy focus being on the new content, would that push the changing of an older system (traits) further back in priority. With that, can any change to the system in response to feedback be expected in, say the next 6 months, 1 year, 2 years?
11) If unable to answer that question, can you understand why that frustrates players and makes us assume we are being ignored? (that question wasn’t to put down a strict timescale, but to find an assurance that changes will happen. Can that assurance be given?
12) Would some form of account unlocking of traits, perhaps with a different cost that would be economical for altoholics, but enough of a sink to be substantial, be something that could be explored?

Perhaps some questions that Anet could mull over.

All great questions. I think I remember the specific answers to two of them, though I can’t remember where the original posts are.

4) The idea of locking traits behind increasingly difficult content is to provide a sense of progression. I think it is supposed to give a player more of a sense of reward as they level and as they explore. If the Adept tier covers level 30-60, the content in it should cover that entire level range, so you always feel like you have something of your level to do.

10/11) It has been said explicitly that company policy prevents them from giving time frames ever again. Gaile has said repeatedly that she (they?) understands our frustration with the little information we’re given and that we should trust that they are working on improvements. We’ve also gotten the closest thing to a confirmation we’ve had in over a year that something was going to happen with the trait system; it’s buried somewhere in this thread.

I didn’t see him asking for any specific time frames. He gave time frames stating we have been waiting for 6 months. At this point in time they should come out and say what they are or aren’t working on. Its not the living story so there isn’t any spoilers they need to worry about. If they honestly care about the players they should let them know if they are working on fixing some of the trait unlocks, or if they are looking at overhauling the entire system again, or if they think it is fine the way it is. Those are simple questions with easy yes or no answers that don’t need to have any specifics attached(even though we’d all love to hear them).

the only reason they won’t say anything is because no they aren’t fixing any more trait unlocks, no they aren’t going to overhaul the system again(or roll back to old version), and finally do they think its ok the way it is, doesn’t really matter because they aren’t going to do anything anyways.

Edited to add I feel this way because the white knights have told us things are this way and they aren’t going to change. And they would be the ones to know ;-)

Jana.6831:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

16 days was done by one of the following.

a. Only unlocked a few traits and not all of them, to suit a certain build. Probably didn’t even finish a build.
b. Had an obscene amount of skill scrolls and enough gold to unlock all the skills from an alt. He will not be able to do the same for any other new characters because he won’t have the skill scrolls unless he saves up for another year before creating another character.
c. The character was created pre-April patch and was grandfathered in.

No, it is possible without buying a trait, except for one as that one is bugged.
BUT it requires a lot of knowledge about where to find help (websites) and how to do stuff in this game in general. Well and also luck as a lot of the traits aren’t soloable.

I haven’t given up on anet and hope that they realized that this system is a huge mistake and are working on something to make it better. That’s why I’m still keeping this thread alive as as long as it is I won’t give up hope, I guess. Well maybe in another 6 months I will lose hope no matter what.

It is possible to unlock all traits but I seriously doubt it can be done in 16 days. Unless he plays 12+ hours a day. Some of the events people get stuck waiting on for hours for just one event. Plus to level that fast he is in EotM the majority of his time. Don’t kid your self. If he unlocked every single trait he bought them with gold and skill scrolls.

Azzer.8137:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Basically atm, you waste to much time (and power to understand), to get your traits. Basic traits 6×6 = 36. While every single task may be small, it adds up a gigantic time sink. At on top of that, that some require an event to spawn (wich may not spawn for ages), and you create an even more crazy time sink. Then repeat that for 8 profession, And repeat that for optional alts, and you got absolutely a korean grind game. I have relatively low impact by this patch, cause i can play my 10 chars (made before patch). I got now 12 other chars, that I planned to play someday, but is impossible because of the super grind, necessary to get them going.

I wasted all skill points i could find on lvl 80 ele, and guess what, he still only has the mandatory traits, and somehow she still feels weaker then my other ele. It took me 1,5 months, but now i have 60 skill point scrolls, wich should boost, the amount of traits on that Elementalist considerably. But do you even consider this? 1,5 months farming on main (+ all the gold loss), to even make an alt viable without being hurt by the time sink. Now it’s kind of a passive time sink for me, since I can enjoy my main, slowly progress the alt, but still, having to wait that long, is tedious. But more so, I got the luxury of having mains, new players don’t. Take my word for it, someone planning to play 100’s of (fun) hours in guild wars, will not take this grinding, and will leave instantly. A lot of wow players are getting bored it seems these days, it’s time you fix guild wars so it is the same alternative as it was a year ago.

Thanks Anet… It’s for your own good. I know it’s hard to admit. Just do it, don’t even need an announcement. Keep it secret if you want. But fix this already, thanks.

took me 16 days to get my engy to level 80 and unlock all my traits…

16 days was done by one of the following.

a. Only unlocked a few traits and not all of them, to suit a certain build. Probably didn’t even finish a build.
b. Had an obscene amount of skill scrolls and enough gold to unlock all the skills from an alt. He will not be able to do the same for any other new characters because he won’t have the skill scrolls unless he saves up for another year before creating another character.
c. The character was created pre-April patch and was grandfathered in.

I like many others have seen tons of hacking and reporting the guy never did a thing. I would see the same guys doing it over and over for months when the servers matches would get locked with the same teams for months. The funny thing when you type it out in map chat the guild, class, and race in map chat and then people on your own server defend the guys. I think what a lot of us realized is that there is enough on all servers doing it that hopefully it evens out. Its a pitiful way to look at things but it is what it is.

Lord Kuru.3685:

It was just there so that the Chinese launch wouldn’t have massive queues. NA servers have pretty much not had long queues since way before EotM came out.

By the way, they also said that EotM existed so that new features could be tested for WvW. That didn’t turn out so well either.

You forgot to mention that it was also to satisfy metrics. People had been complaining since launch about a lack attention to WvW and numbers start to drop on all the non tier 1 servers. So they create a new “WvW” map. Then they make the rewards better than all other WvW maps so people will flock to it for the rewards. Now they can say they have given WvW attention it needs and they even made a new map that the metrics show is a huge success. If they made it so the rewards in the borderlands were as good as EotM I guarantee you things would be different.

There is no reason for them to not come out and list some of the suggestions they liked and will be working on. Unless they are not working on it at all. Like many others I get the feeling that the majority of the 300+ working at arenanet are working on a completely different game. It feels like less than 50 are actually on the GW2 team and the majority of those are probably in marketing, just browsing forums trying to hype the game where ever they can.

The few that are actually working on GW2 game development probably only have enough time to work on the things like the LS and these crappy features that keep getting pushed. They obviously don’t have the man power to even work on things they break with these updates as things have been sitting broken for months and years. It feels like the only time the devs are allowed work on fixing things is when it reaches third party sites or in their own free time.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

One percent? Lol. I feel you will be disappointed when an expansion the size of two full games does not appear.

Regardless, no date was stated, and that still puts it on the playerbase by choosing an arbitrary date of expiration. /shrug

A date doesn’t need to be given. They said xpac content would be delivered through the LS. While yes some content has come from the living story, overall the quality and the quantity have not come any where near what a true expansion would bring. Plus like I already mentioned most MMOs including the original Guild Wars had regular updates that gave more than the living story and even more than GW2 has delivered in total. Basically the living story is what every other game developer does but in a story format and excluding all the extra content that comes from true expansions.

There have been enough threads on this with people showing the full list of what has been done here and was has been done in other games, that even if it is above 1% its still pitifully low. Look at what the original Guild Wars released its first two years and you can even ignore the expansions to see how pitifully GW1 and GW2 compare. I would say its time for arenanet to quit talking and to start producing but we all know they stopped talking to us a long time ago.

saalle.4623:

All your “expansion” content can be added through patches so there is no reason to give up from LS and go to standard static boring expansion world..

It can be added through patches but its not. Very little compared to every other MMO is being delivered. Very little is being delivered compared to the original Guild Wars in expansions or in normal updates. I have yet to see a Sorrow’s Furnace type update in GW2 that had a place to farm great weapons and with so many fun and different things to do. Kilroy Stonekin was epic at the time. This is what I expected from the Living Story and it has not delivered.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The only ‘people’ who said to wait were the players themselves. ArenaNet has never given a timeline for when an ‘expansion’ would arrive. I fail to see where this “didn’t meet the expected timeline” comes from other than the people posting on the forums…especially the OP.

If there is evidence of ArenaNet stating there would be an ‘expansion’ within a certain time period (such as 2 years 25 days x amount of hours, or whatever), please do provide the link.

Arenanet said they would deliver xpac content through the living story. In over two years the living story has delivered about 1% what an xpac would deliver and about half as much as what other games deliver through normal updates. That is why people are saying time is up. They don’t have to give an exact deadline or an ETA. They said they would deliver through the LS and they did not.

Cross.6437:

Adjusting the prices for individual traits to make them comparable to pre-patch prices (a fraction of the cost of the original trait books), would go a long way to smoothing things over by making traits affordable again.

I just typed up a bunch of stuff that I thought could help smooth things over but then deleted it all. Because honestly smoothing it over won’t cut it. Its BS that a person can not just play the game the way they want like we used to be able to do. The old system was perfect and it wasn’t broken. Forcing this crap on everyone so your metrics show people in areas that used to be empty is really lame. There is no other reason than that for why it was done.

The one thing that really gets me is that they released such a broken system and they have done almost nothing to fix the issues with the system or the issues created by the system. I understand it takes time to fix things but they could and should be at least do a fix or two every month.

Yargesh.4965:

Serophous.9085:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

IPhyton.2348:

Im to the point that im ready to stop gambling wars 2 and looking for a new game unless i see a positive future.
Thank You for your hard work, even though it is very hard to notice sometimes.

Ahem

Mark Katzbach.9084:

It’s also worth pointing out that some people use claims of quitting the game as an attention-getting tactic, when in fact they are still quite active.

This is what intrigues me about people who ‘quit’, but yet stay in the forums active. Sure, maybe they quit in game, but they like being active in the forums to still point out flaws or denounce something whatnot.

But there’s the key. The quitters are still paying attention to the game, keeping the forums active (a dead game forum is scarier than one populate by complaints, then you know the game is in trouble if no one even talks).

Some quitters are simply waiting for anet to add something they like, then they’ll be back. Some may just wait for it to hit a higher popularity so they can slip back in and be part of it. Some may be here to denounce the game because they feel cheated in spending money and eventually not liking the game, justifying it as some kind of ‘revenge’ or ‘payback’.

But either way, its activity. They are still invested in the game despite saying I quit. And look at what happens. The NPE changes, the ‘quitters’ denounce and other players denounce, it gets attention on gaming websites. They get attention. The NPE, for good or bad, reached some of those who didn’t like it in the first place, and although its ‘bad press’ (depending who you ask), they may try it to see why its now ‘bad’ and realize to them its better.

When I quit WoW, I made sure to quit anything related to it. I even quit going to mmochampion until the urge to play WoW again was gone. And it worked. I no longer cared about patch notes or expansions, or anything. I don’t care about the rage people have that a class got super buffed or something. If anything, I am an outsider looking in, and reflecting back, I was shocked how I was just like that at some point.I kinda laugh at it now.

So here’s my advice quitters: if you want to truly quit, and not deal with gw2 ever again. Then stop. Stop everything. Don’t come to the forums, don’t read up on any news about gw2, don’t go to gw2guru. Go cold turkey. If you can’t, if you persist, then you are keeping the forums active and you are still showing signs of some willingness to come back. You haven’t truly quit, you are as active as ever.

I agree. The mindset reminds me of the Terry Pratchett line about how gods on the diskworld love atheists because their belief burns so bright.

Since companies figured that out years ago and started hiring people to keep forums populated with cheery threads there is almost zero chance that any MMO game forum will ever be dead.

Some of us stay around because we do actually have hope for the game and really want it to bring us back. Then we see more stuff that pushes us farther away and we are upset because we really do want the game to be great. But we want it to be great at being a game not at being great at milking money from the playerbase.

Steeldragon.7308:

Maybe the issue is that so many players of a MMO expect the companies to jump right up, go to a machine and simply push a button to fix an issue that the players have and when that button is not pushed they cry out “They are not listening!” I don’t think these players are being realistic here. When players have a laundry list of concerns each being the same, different or maybe even combined then that could put allot of strain on the companies having to look into the issues, where the root of the problem is and figure out what can be done to fix it and possibly perhaps find new coding to fix the issues. Depending on the issues, THEY CAN TAKE TIME to fix. They are not always going to be simple fixes like a simple push of a button. Have patience and enjoy the game while you can. If you don’t anymore because your concerns are not fixed, sorry.

This excuse works great for the first year. After the second year it is not an acceptable excuse. They have had plenty of time if they were actually working on issues that are on the list. The stuff they are working on instead has been breaking more than it fixes and its all to fix stuff that isn’t broken in the first place. Then they don’t even work on fixing those new things that are broken.

Roybe.5896:

IPhyton.2348:

Roybe.5896:

Here’s the problem with a boycott. NCSoft doesn’t care about concurrency. It costs them money. The more people that play, the more resources it costs. The are extremely concerned for retention. The likelihood you are ‘walking through the door’. WalMart doesn’t care if you go to Sears, they care if you go to Sears MORE than WalMart. That’s retention. To measure retention, in this game, actually costs YOU more money. Because you have to stop logging in completely. If you do that during the LS, you’ll have to pay to catch up.

So boycotting is actually expensive to do, for the player, since the best way to check retention is to count the logins during new release dates to see if interest is being maintained. If you miss, you either come back and pay some gems to get caught up or you never come back, and are replaced by new sales of ‘boxes’. (now you see the importance of the NPE!)

I totally get that, I used the boycott term as it is usually the last line of hope to get anything done IRL. As we have been repeatedly ignored by the devs and as they have repeatedly implemented controversial systems with every update lately.

Ok, so if you understand my point, explain how boycotting leverages pressure upon NCSoft. How would a boycott be enacted? What would you boycott? I see no pressure any group of people could possibly place upon this company. The only pressure that could be placed against them would lead to the closing of the servers.

You are kind of correct, the only chance of getting positive change is to get 3rd party sites to put the pressure on arenanet. That has shown to at least get them to acknowledge and say they working on the issue rather quickly. I have a feeling that Cox would rather them shut down the game and move on to the next project rather than focus on longevity instead of monetization.

MrSoul.3058:

IPhyton.2348:

I certainly hope not. Although it would be almost impossible to organize and manage such thing, at the end yes our message would have to be addressed.
For over two years most of the issues the community has had with the game have been ignored, or when addressed the old “we are looking into it” response then stuffed back in the bottom draw in hopes that it would be a forgotten issue.
On the flip side, content that are irrelevant and sometimes harmful to the player base is released with no prior discussion or heads up. No need to beat a dead horse by listing the many issues the game has had since release. In all honesty I believe most of the playerbase wouldnt even want a rushed fix.
All I come to ask of the dev’s is roadmap or a direction that they are taking the game. Not to be told to stop whinning or “we are looking into it”. Im to the point that im ready to stop gambling wars 2 and looking for a new game unless i see a positive future.
Thank You for your hard work, even though it is very hard to notice sometimes.

Boycotting the game will only cause the game to die, we tried it with Tabula Rasa and after a few months they shut down the servers, causing me and my guild(R.I.P. SFD xD) to lose our favorite game. Where as if we(arguably the “community players”) of the game at the time had stuck it out, the game may still be around, and we might have seen an Expansion or something at least. Way it went that game had a decent playbase at launch, then we all “boycotted” cos it had a lack of end game content, and boom dead over night. That’s just my one IRL example of where boycotting got me for a video game. Unfortunately boycotting rarely works when it comes to these kinds of situations as a company like Anet will always cut their loses and re-invent the wheel(so new IP), rather than dump a bunch of money in a project in the hopes of winning back an already obviously fickle playerbase.

We love the game enough to post these threads, and spend hours kittening at each other over the specifics in the comments, so best guess for the way to get the devs to listen is keep playing. Keep trying to enjoy the bits of the game that you still do, and keep creating threads but constructively discuss specific problems in your thread, and specific solutions to those problems. If they get enough hits on the forums Devs are bound to read them and if the threads are offering tangible directions for an improvement to actually go in…maybe they’ll pick up on what to do before they lose us for good if these issues are so bad.

Personally I’m just getting back into the game after a post-launch hiatus of about a year. After my recent experience have to say surprised at all the complaints on the forums, been loving the game more than when it came out. Maybe we expect too much from an MMO than doesn’t have a monthly fee? I dunno lol

Also think some chilling is in need, living world boots back up on Nov. 4. They butcher that release, then lets talk about boycotting for real xD

I get what you are saying but I think there is more and more people like me that see the game they want is gone. GW2 is not the same game that launched and with each patch it gets farther and farther away. I can accept that MMOs change and evolve but this is not evolving. This is a different game that I would not have bought for myself and my children. This is a different game that I would not have spent gems on and I feel like a bait and switch happened. So if this game dies because they don’t won’t to give the players the game that was promised than so be it and I hope it goes down as example of what not to do if you want your MMO to last.

Edit to add, supposedly the gemstore has made them more money than they would have earned with a subscription. So with all that extra money we the players are giving them I think its fair to expect just as much as we would get with a subscription. Especially since they gave us so much more with out the gemstore nickel and diming in the original Guild Wars.

lordkrall.7241:

IPhyton.2348:

erm ok jst a few to keep you amused.
zerk meta
pvp lack of content
condition in pve
lack of challenging content
lack of rewarding content
gem conversion
precursor crafting
zerg as the answer aka mindless and boring farming instead of fun content
that would be a great start!

That list is just that, a list.
It is also a very subjective list and not universal truth or seen as issues by everyone.

There is also a grand total of no suggestions on how to fix any of those supposed issues.

Quit acting like you haven’t commented on multiple threads for each of those, where people actually gave them suggestions since launch but nothing has been done.

Edit to say, zerk meta been here since launch, conditions in pve been an issue since beta, lack of pvp content since launch, precursor crafting brought up in beta and arenanet acknowledged near launch, content used to be rewarding at launch but was nerfed, content was challenging at launch because it was new and now everyone knows it all(easy fix is to add new content to keep players challenged).

This pretend you haven’t seen it, and then down playing it is getting old. Its not going to go away because you don’t want it to exist, its only going to go away if arenanet actually works on those issues.

Xillllix.3485:

Megaservers were made to compensate for all the empty maps because people are leaving the game. People are leaving the game because of the lack of new competitive content like GvG, guild halls and hardcore PvE dungeons, as well as a lack of variety (only party of 5 people, no new skills, no new weapon types, no new classes).

No since then Anet has gave us ZERO information about upcoming permanent content, they’ve even announced some new stuff like SAB would never come back. They backtracked probably when they feared losing even more players after that mistake.

Players complaints for the first year was: “everything is temporary”.
Their answer for season 2: “That’s all that you’ll get from now on, but if you want you can repeat it 10 times for achievements and grinding”.

Gem store update in last feature patch: "Don’t worry that “BUY MORE GEMS” button will only bring you to the same old screen". Then 2 months later they change that screen to a complete money grab with buy buttons everywhere. Players complained, once more they backtracked.

It seems with the CDI that they are really starting to understand that what this game needs is what players have been asking for since beta, Guild Raids, Guild Halls, Guild vs Guilds.

I have the impression that these thing takes time to do and therefore they have been trying to slow down player progression with the new trait system just to keep people playing longer while they work on these new game modes.

However we’ve waited a year now, buying gems to finance their work, and nothing was even announced. I give them 2 more months, if by the end of 2015 they have not announced that at least one of these features is coming I’m gone.

CDI threads are just there to blow smoke up your kitten . They will only do the easiest barely mentioned things and throw them in with some random BS they want to shove down your throat. That’s if they do anything at all, other than come in and tell everyone thanks for the great ideas and thank all the white knights for the praise.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Jana.6831:

I think you twisted the meaning of his words: There’s no way anyone knows which traits one is going to use and for most people it also isn’t clear who their main character will be. So saying that one has only to buy 15 traits is nonsense, even if not all will be used – but there’s no way to determine which ones that will be.

I challenge you to find any significant percentage of players that have EVER enabled more than 30 Traits on a character for any type of serious excursion into actual game-play…..that is LESS than half the available 65. I’d be willing to guess that 80% of players have never used more than 20 Traits on a single character.

Granted, this system inhibits testing and discourages “completionist” pursuits while being less than helpful to an entirely new player (that has NO idea what “good” and “bad” Traits might be), so I personally think it needs some drastic “tweaking” from it’s current state.

All of my characters used multiple builds of completely different traits. Depending on what I was doing or felt like doing. My warrior I used a DPS greatsword, sword/shield, a conditions hammer, sword/shield, a hammer, sword/sword build, shouts builds, banner builds. I changed traits regularly. I’d be willing to guess that the number is closer to 50% than 80% and pulling random numbers out of your kitten doesn’t mean a thing anyways. I met tons of people that played both ways. Some people have a class that they pretty much use every trait depending on the situation but like to play another class a certain way with one build because of the mechanics. It used to be able to be said that for all those players that only used one build and never changed traits there was a person that changed regularly. Now that they have changed traits it is said that for every person that has some random mixed up build at level 80 there is a veteran laughing his kitten off while he kills them in wvw/pvp.

Gregori.5807:

People didn’t find out how bad this was en masse. It kind of trickled in as people rolled alts and hit the trait wall themselves. A lot of people did not roll them right away, some still have not.

I’ve seen it mentioned on gaming sites here and there but nothing big.

Tachenon.5270:

I’m sure there are lots of people out there who still don’t realize the extent of the changes wrought by the trait system redesign. Anyone who hasn’t rolled an alt since the redesign went into effect won’t necessarily know about ‘trait hunting’. One of my guildies, for instance, didn’t understand what had changed until just the other day, when I was grumbling about it in guild chat.

These are the reasons why its taken so long to get this many posters and why the gem conversion went to over a thousand the first day. Many people had all the alts they needed at the time so it did not affect them personally so they did not care. Most new people don’t know any different and if they do not like they just quit. That reduces the volume of people affected tremendously. If it affected everyone instantly and uniformly the way the gem conversion did then maybe more people would have posted in the forums and more sites would have blasted arenanet. Its like a slow poison that someone ignored rather than the knife wound that obviously needs medical attention. Hopefully they can cure the poison before it does permanent damage.

lordkrall.7241:

This would make sense, IF they didn’t announce the changes so soon after the articles turned up.

What are you smoking. That is exactly why it makes perfect sense. The fact the big review sites blasted them is what scared them into emergency fix mode. Their silence and lack of action at fixing other needed things shows they do not care or think anyone else cares what the official forums think. But they know that sites like kotaku and tentonhammer have huge audiences and so they must be placated. So they did the easiest things they could and that is to release a general statement that they are working on it.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Labjax.2465:

barefootstep.7026:

Here’s another suggestion: replace the skill points needed to buy the traits with gems. I hear they are really easy and unconfusing to get these days, especially for new players.

…kitten, I just realized that that is still an implementation actually superior to what we currently have.

sad now.

Don’t give them any ideas. :P

Sadly it might be only way to get “the right” people outraged by the trait system since all of us talking about it now for 7 months don’t seem to hold as much weight as those people over on the gem exchange post.

It wasn’t the people in the gem exchange thread that got them to start working on a fix. It was the review sites that blasted the game and the people that chimed in on those sites. You are correct in saying that the correct people need to be outraged for change to happen though. We need more review sites to get in on this.

ZilentNight.5089:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Here’s an update for you:

It’s clear that quite a lot of you would like to have greater flexibility in using the Currency Exchange. Our intention when we designed the new interface was to streamline large volume purchases, which make up the majority of transactions.

In light of your feedback, we will update the Currency Exchange so that you can decide how you want to use it. We will keep the new streamlined system and also offer a new “Custom” button on the panel that you can use to exchange any increment of gems or gold.

We anticipate rolling this out soon. Stay tuned!

~~~~~

Sorry for the delay in posting this, but out of respect to our international community, we wanted to be able to post in several forums at once.

This is why I have stuck with Anet for nearly 10 years! since Gw1 launch!
They listen to feedback and do the right thing.

Thank you Anet!

They didn’t listen to player feedback. They listened to review sites likes kotaku and tentonhammer. If they hadn’t received such harsh reviews on those sites nothing would have changed. So if you want to praise anyone go praise the people running those sites.

Ayrilana.1396:

Arcadio.6875:

mtpelion.4562:

Greetings, time traveler! You’ve arrived in 2014!

Unfortunately, expansions in this day and age are a bygone thing of yore. We still pine for them due to nostalgia, but game publishers have learned that they can make substantially more money doing substantially less work and with substantially less risk by simply nickel and diming the market with DLC.

If it is an expansion you seek, I suggest you return to your original timeline. Here, we just read about them in history books.

In the current timeline, Rift released an expansion yesterday, EQ1 will do so in 5 days, WoW in a month, SW:TOR in 2 months, and FFXIV next spring.

Ayrilana.1396:

Yes. Please do expansions which a lot of players would complete within 1-2 months and then have to wait at least an entire year for another expansion. That would be so much better than now.

It would be.

But this is a terrible argument anyway. The game was released 2 years and 2 months ago. I’m still running the same dungeons that were there at release, playing the same classes that were there at release, playing in the same maps that were there at release, etc. Just because some players will experience the content in a few months doesn’t mean the new content stops being relevant in a few months. As I noted, the content that was there at release are still relevant. New content allows for more variety and stops the game from feeling stale.

There’s been some posts since I’ve started typing this so I will address the idea that new classes won’t change much. No. Every class plays differently from one another. Experiencing the game through another class is significant.

Nit really. So playing the same content but in a new class would be significant. So all those players who are complaining about a lack of content, but haven’t experienced it with all classes, should just play another class? I’m sure doing world exploration for the 9th time would be refreshing with a new class. Oh wait, it wouldn’t.

How many people do you think finished the living story releases within a week? I’m pretty sure it’s at least half. Dungeons can be experienced completely within a month as well. You’ll likely be bored of the dungeon by the time you’re halfway getting all of the skins.

No matter how you try to spin it, more variety is better for the game. People may not want to go get 100% map completion on another character but the majority would love to have another to class to mix in to WvW and SPVP. It may change the meta or maybe it won’t, but at least it gives people something different to play around with. Now for dungeons its like a family having a large movie collection. Some family members may not like every movie or maybe they are bored of certain ones. That doesn’t matter though. What does matter is that you have the availability incase you do want to watch a certain one. I buy movies all the time and watch them once and then don’t watch them again for months or maybe even years. Having the collection doesn’t mean I have to watch them everyday. That’s the point of a collection, so that I can watch them when I feel like it. That’s why there needs to be more dungeons in GW2. Sure we may not do them every day and not everyone is going to like them all but at least the option exist. More options means more ways to have fun.

I have never heard anyone ever give a bad review of a game for having to much of something. I have seen tons of bad reviews based on to little.

Tristar.2687:

ipan.4356:

The great thing is how Anet literally has no waay of backpedaling out of this.

Even a full retraction and reset will cause everyone to wonder why they did it in thhe first place.

There is no plausible answer other than, ‘We want more money and didn’t want you to notice.’

Please, just move on to a new game.

GW2 ‘golden age’ was year 1 (sadly, I missed even this, as I literally started playing right around year 1 and I’ve seen nothing but decline in game quality).

Star Citizen looks incredibly awesome.

The answer is: Nexon. Monetarization specialists that took over the game. You wonder why we get no new armors or weapons ingame, just skimpy outfits and all the other gimmicks in gem store? The answer is Nexon. They destroyed the whole franchise for me. Sadly.

I never mentioned this until a few others started because I figured I would get insta-banned or have my post deleted. For those that don’t know, one of Nexon’s star players is running the show.

Wolfheart.1879:

As it stands, the number of posts so far work out at more than a post a minute. It should be clear from that, that this isn’t a slight disgruntlement. This is a genuine issue Anet should recognise and start working through.

There is a lot of speculation that this is simply a money grab, and while there can be some merit there, simply because just to top up your gem stash to where you want it means either sinking a lot more gold than you need to just to get to your magic number (ok, you end up with more gems, but do you want those at the moment), or, if you haven’t the gold and want something that bad, you then have to buy gems. You pay over the odds for the number of gems you want, or you fork out the RL money.

Microsoft had a similar thing with their MS Points. Perhaps that was what Gaile was referring to as inline with other shopping forms. Perhaps someone should tell Anet how MS points are doing at the moment – they were gotten rid of in favour of a more transparent balance of actual money loaded into the account.

While I imagine the greedy side of Anet had an influence, I can also see that they were trying to solve a problem or confusion with the current system. That of inputting your gold and then coming out with what it will get you rather than inputting a gem number and getting the price back. But the “fix” is typical Anet of late. They start with a decent enough idea and good intentions, and just ride it off the cliff, going so overboard that the result does not really solve the initial problem and introduces new ones.

The idea of having the bulk amounts as options is fine. Nice, and easy for a simple go to in those moments you want to buy big. But why in Grenth’s name did this added functionality (and a very nice addition it would have been too) come at the cost of the present, clunky but otherwise very good current system. Was there seriously no way to incorporate both? Surely in a meeting somewhere the decision was made to remove the old functionality and replace it with this. What was the rationale behind such a decision? And if it was just something that happened without that discussion, that is a very serious failure of quality assurance and basic design. Its easy to jump to conclusions that this was an intentional change to force more gem purchases. A dastardly ploy indeed, and if true very regrettable. But I’m still not convinced it wasn’t just bungling. And that is no less a concern.

And once more, many of these design errors (I still like to believe they were errors, even if I’m less convinced of that) could have been avoided if the feature was discussed in the weeks before the patch. This is why transparency is needed. Oversights and mix ups are fine if you discuss them with us before release, because then they are sorted before they hit live, and we feel great for having helped a little. We still have no real idea of what is coming or the direction the game is taking, except to say from the path it has taken so far, we are not convinced there is a jolly destination at the end. Communication with us, greater transparency with is and a greater respect to your players (that, intentionally or not, is seriously lacking at the moment) would do wonders, would actually create trust in you guys and avoid the negativity, both on this forum and in news reports like tentonhammer an joystiq, both of which have something about the current row. Are you guys so blind to the PR disaster that is being unleashed? Its a pandoras box. Its out there now and its not getting back in the box. The only way to save face and rebuild is to engage. For the sake of the game we love and the members of the company that, despite this still have some respect from the community, be proactive and work with us. Do not ignore us.

There is no confusion and people aren’t speculating. Arenanet saw that other companies were making more money because they force you to buy in blocks and they want to join that crowd. The people making the decisions probably went to a conference or party and someone from one of the other companies told them how much revenue they are missing out on by letting people buy the exact amount they need. There are many extremely easy fixes they could add to fix this that have been suggested in this thread. All of them have one thing in common and that is allow you to convert exactly the amount you need. I’m pretty sure that is the one suggestion they don’t want to hear as it was mentioned a couple times before Gaile came in to the thread.

Izdubar.9540:

Look like an underhanded rat-fink marketing move to me.

Smells like one too.

I’m guessing this is what comes from having a “monetization lead” from scummy Nexon on your team. /slowclap Crystin Cox

I wish more people were in the know about this. Its not just that she is in a lead position, its that about the same time she came aboard, Nexon bought a large stake in NCsoft. Which for those that do not know was towards the end of beta. Which all goes along with the design goals up till that point being in stark contrast to what we have gotten since the game went live.

This to me is like Nexon found a game that had a great reputation from its predecessor with a large fan base and then bought it with the sole purpose of milking it for as much money as they can, even if it kills the game. Then moving on to the next project. Kind of like what Nexon does with every other game they have been involved with.

This is what makes me mad about GW2. It was a great game with the potential to go strong for years. The Nexon mentality is to make as much money as fast as possible for the short term, with as little investment as possible. It makes the few people at the top a lot of money but it doesn’t create games that go strong for years.

Phenn.5167:

GW2 really really needs two things:

1. A Public Test Environment where these kinds of changes (along with balance, etc.) can get vetted by the public. That the devs think they predict every single ramification of a change, and that their ideas will actually accomplish their goal smacks of a hubris of epic proportions.
2. A clear and consistent design philosophy for each significant area of the game. ANet needs a benchmark whereby all changes and additions/subtractions are measured. A good design philosophy would allow ANet to justify the decisions they make, and give the playerbase the “roadmap” ANet keeps clamoring about.

I agree with those two things but sadly I don’t see either one happening. Instead you are going to see more CDIs that lead to little or nothing. Just to keep hope going for those few that don’t realize its really just more smoke being blown up their kitten. Arenanet won’t do a PTE because they know nobody wants the crap they want to introduce. They won’t deliver a clear and consistent design philosophy because they know that no one wants to be told that dev time is better spent on monetization schemes(the latest being the new gold/gem converter) rather than making the game more fun.

Sounds like they found a way to get rid of zerg events for the holidays. Just cap the amount of players per map lol.

What is KZW? And I know English is your second language but are you trying to say people are quitting the game or are they really standing around AFK?

nightwulf.1986:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

I’m sure 90% of the people would be for the most part happy if we got a new race and a new class added, more weapons and I’m not talking about skins, more dungeons, more than 1 new map per year, more world bosses and events, more DEs, I can go on and on. The amount of this delivered is little or nothing. People have asked for all sorts of things for WvW and we got 2 things that no one asked for. The removal of quagan island for some stupid spvp crap that nobody does and a new map that has actually nothing to do with WvW and is all about zerg farming events. Yes I know EotM gets a lot of play but that’s because how lucrative the rewards are compared to everything else in the game. If they buffed the rewards in the other WvW maps to match EotM there would be a huge decline in EotM. Maybe if they actually worked on stuff that was asked for by anyone then they could start pleasing people.

There are tons of great ideas in these forums that players have asked for. Sure some are bad ideas but if the decision makers actually played the game a lot of those horribly bad ideas would be obvious.

Your previous argument was that most of the content/“stuff” coming out was crap and people complained about it. Everything else you said about not delivering new content is a different argument entirely. My point was that with so many different types of players, there will be criticism across a wide spectrum but probably not for the reasons you are citing. We (as in you, me and others) definitely don’t show this unanimous dislike of everything that has been coming out. There have been a lot of suggestions on how they can improve what has been delivered and evidence that they are acting on it (permanent living story content anyone?). I mean, any implementation of content can be better. I’m pretty sure that anything you or I can come up with can be improved on as well.

Finally, what you see as not delivering what people ask for, to me, usually appears to be some sort of compromise. It stands to reason that not everything asked for can be implemented as requested. Concessions have to be made in some cases. I’m not so sure the best idea is to let players decide what those concessions are by popular vote either. Forum suggestions, particularly on contentious issues, are often played out as power struggles between different interest groups who are only really looking out for themselves. Some people handle not getting what they want better than others. And yeah, they’ll let people know when they don’t get it.

My point about the crap is that out of the last 2 feature patches they have released 3 things in my opinion that are good(trait respect button, wardrobe, and level up rewards) and the rest is crap. Out of the everything else released since launch it was either temporary, gemstore, straight out crap, or just too little. If they would stop working on crap they could probably turn that too little in to something more acceptable. If the crap they released was a dungeon that sucked but was not temporary it wouldn’t be so bad as at least something new was added. But a lot of the crap is reworking existing stuff so there is not any gain in content its just a change.

No one asked for the new trait system, NPE, or the capture points in the borderlands. So they are taking a chance on whether or not it will please people. Adding more weapons, skills, classes, races, guild halls, maps/continents, dungeons, DEs, and world bosses is guaranteed to please people. Sure not everyone will be happy with every single thing but the majority would be. All they need to do is go down this check list and stop fixing the things that aren’t broken and it will make huge changes in the communities view of this game.

New weapons and classes would be good but I think just opening up existing weapons to existing classes would go a long way. If they could make it so every existing weapon is usable by each class it would be amazing. I’m sure that alone would get a lot of people off of arenanets back.

Monk is probably the one class I want the most. Ritualist would be next. Then any of the missing classes from Guild Wars would still be good.

Tengu, Skrit, Quagan, and/or Grawl would be what races I want to see. Any one of those I think would be a good addition with plenty of lore to build around.

Jana.6831:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

I’d bet money that they really wanted to level gate the entire wvw and pvp but they either couldn’t figure out how to or no one ever thought about the portals and hotkeys. Its 1/2 assed crap but they aren’t fixing it to be what I think they originally intended because it gives the white knights away to defend stuff. By making it sound like every complaint is really just misinformation. Which is why they won’t come out and say what is working as intended and what is not. They won’t say because they don’t know what they can spin one way or the other.

No serious wvw player levels their alt in wvw because of the traits. Had my mesmer as an example early in this thread: I had to do 100% map completion of herathi hinterlands to be able to remove conditions when healing. So even if they would hide it it wouldn’t make a difference, except for EotM which is doable without traits.
In the end what destroys their NPE is the traits as that will likely be the most confusing part for new players as one starts with none and they are hidden behind mechanics one only understands when knowing a website which explains it. So there’s no idicator as to how useful these traits are (and if they’re needed) and how to obtain them.

I agree with everything you said. I had guildies that used to level up almost 100% in WvW. I agree that being an up level in WvW is a recipe for failure but if you ran with a zerg you used to level up pretty fast. Now that EotM was introduced and the rewards are so much better than the other WvW maps I see no reason to level in WvW. When you throw on the new trait system that makes it even worse. Now people will grind level 80 in EotM and then grab the few easy to get traits for a build and then buy the rest.

The NPE and new trait system both have made things more confusing. None of it makes sense and nothing has shown that it was worth doing. If it really made a difference they would have been spouting off about how much better the change made things for retention after the free weekend by now.

I have 100% map completion on 5 characters. I think the idea of having separate map completions for WvW and PVE would be best. Where each one gives one gift. So you can still get your two gifts per person if you do it all. I like PVE and WvW so I would have done them both anyways. I just feel that people would be happier with less forced play and more chosen play. There are some areas of the game that do this well, like dungeons and there is other areas that do this bad like the new trait system. I’d like less of the bad and more of the good and adjusting old content to be more like this I think would be great for the game.

ColinJohanson.2394:

I just want to quickly add, there are some errors on this chart of how stuff is unlocking, as well as 1st character vs. account unlocks when some of these systems were carried between regions. We’re trying to identify what happened and repair those things assigned the wrong account/character fields, as well as levels.

Could you let us know what is being looked, what is working as intended and what is not?

Kuldebar.1897:

GuzziHero.2467:

sparc.3649:

Between making PVP not enter-able until level 22, to siege disablers (WVW BAND-AID), now this! Seriously ANET!? You’re taking what WAS a great game and “fixing” stuff that’s NOT broke. This one has to REALLY take the cake!

Just saying… you can still enter WvW and EotM using portals and the hotkey. I was in EOTM on a level 2 the other day.

That just makes it that much more senseless. Hiding things, that are still there is more likely create confusion, not reduce it if we are really concerned about “new players”.

Skill Point challenges are map hidden and disabled unless another player has already initiated a skill point encounter, then the under-level player can get credit.

Vistas are map hidden but achievable.

Many gather nodes were removed in addition to being map hidden…but entirely usable…

It’s a confusing inconsistent muddled mess that was perfectly fine before ANet changed it!

I’d bet money that they really wanted to level gate the entire wvw and pvp but they either couldn’t figure out how to or no one ever thought about the portals and hotkeys. Its 1/2 assed crap but they aren’t fixing it to be what I think they originally intended because it gives the white knights away to defend stuff. By making it sound like every complaint is really just misinformation. Which is why they won’t come out and say what is working as intended and what is not. They won’t say because they don’t know what they can spin one way or the other.

Edit to add: Honestly it just feels like it was a rushed job removing things off the map, having some of those things still usable but others level gated. All of it just seems rushed and half done with another patch expected to fix it. But that patch never came and arenanet has remained silent about it all. It makes me think they really do not know what they are doing.

nightwulf.1986:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I used to believe that Anet’s lack of transparency was a bad thing, but looking at how quick people are to fly to reddit when something happens that they dont like, in addition to all of the ridiculous suggestions we get and foot-stamping tantrums over the non-inclusion of features that Anet specifically said they’d be steering clear from, I’m actually glad they don’t talk about anything.

It keeps the forums more sane than they would be.

Maybe if 90% of the stuff coming out these days wasn’t crap then maybe people wouldn’t be complaining and talking so much crap. People just want a good product. If they don’t get it, then they will let people know.

Perhaps if 90% of the people on the forums all wanted the same thing, Anet wouldn’t have to bend over backwards to please everyone. People just want what they want. If they don’t get it, they will let people know.

#Alt perspective.

I’m sure 90% of the people would be for the most part happy if we got a new race and a new class added, more weapons and I’m not talking about skins, more dungeons, more than 1 new map per year, more world bosses and events, more DEs, I can go on and on. The amount of this delivered is little or nothing. People have asked for all sorts of things for WvW and we got 2 things that no one asked for. The removal of quagan island for some stupid spvp crap that nobody does and a new map that has actually nothing to do with WvW and is all about zerg farming events. Yes I know EotM gets a lot of play but that’s because how lucrative the rewards are compared to everything else in the game. If they buffed the rewards in the other WvW maps to match EotM there would be a huge decline in EotM. Maybe if they actually worked on stuff that was asked for by anyone then they could start pleasing people.

There are tons of great ideas in these forums that players have asked for. Sure some are bad ideas but if the decision makers actually played the game a lot of those horribly bad ideas would be obvious.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

I used to believe that Anet’s lack of transparency was a bad thing, but looking at how quick people are to fly to reddit when something happens that they dont like, in addition to all of the ridiculous suggestions we get and foot-stamping tantrums over the non-inclusion of features that Anet specifically said they’d be steering clear from, I’m actually glad they don’t talk about anything.

It keeps the forums more sane than they would be.

Maybe if 90% of the stuff coming out these days wasn’t crap then maybe people wouldn’t be complaining and talking so much crap. People just want a good product. If they don’t get it, then they will let people know.

lordkrall.7241:

Valandil Dragonhart.2371:

The majority of people I see speaking about Halloween in LA are reminiscing about the first year when the JP was in and the dungeon, reaper’s rumble, etc. and how they were so disappointed about how none of that made it into last year’s iteration.

While most of this is true the JP was very much available last year.

I also seem to recall people quite disliking the dungeon and Reaper’s Rumble during the first Halloween, which might very well be the reason why they didn’t put them back during year two.

Leaving stuff out that is already available because some people don’t like it is a lame excuse. Many people don’t like doing dungeons, should we remove all those from the game. Or what about all the people that hate pvp or wvw, should we remove those also. You should add content not remove it and those that don’t want to do it don’t have to. We all know not everyone is going to like everything. Which is why the more you give and the more varied the options you give, the better the chances of pleasing everyone.