Guild Wars 2

Tachenon.5270:

The unanswered questions remain: why did people leave? What prompted them to log out and never log in again?

There’s no exit survey. Even if there was, how would anet know if someone was logging out for the last time? I quit for around five months and anet never contacted me to ask me why I wasn’t playing. Maybe I played too long before leaving. Maybe I didn’t stay gone long enough. Maybe I’m not the metric they’re looking for.

And another thing: one of the anet guys said they did this because ‘over a years worth of testing with new players found we were absolutely able to keep them both more engaged, and more likely to return to keep playing Gw2 as a result of the intended system’ and then further clarified that ‘testing was done predominantly in the west focused on players who played guild wars 2 today, people who played gw2 at launch and left, people who heavily play other MMORPG’s, and people who heavily play RPG’s.’

Fascinating.

Does that mean there been a (gasp) test server, somewhere, running various NPE versions of the game all along, for testing purposes?

They make it sound like that but who are these people testing. I have never heard of anyone getting invites for a special test server. I understand NDAs and all but I would have expected some kind of slip up after a year of it. Or are these testers just friends and family of anet staff that are telling them what they want to hear. Or maybe hired from a third party company for play testing and who knows what the backgrounds of these play testers are. Are they just random people from a temp agency who have never even played games, if they do play games do they play MMOs, do they even play rpgs or are they into sports games or shooters or racing sims. Many people are only in to certain genres and so their opinion is worthless as they are not in to MMOs and they will not play this game no matter what change you make.

Saying the metrics say this is what you want is absurd when nobody who plays the game was ever asked. So what metric told you this is what your player base wants.

If anet would use in game polls (the ones they have available and have used in the past) they would see what changes people want and what people like. There is no metric that could tell you that people want the leveling system gated more than it was. And grabbing a small group that does not play your game and asking them what would get them to play it is a recipe for failure. If they were going to play the game they already would be playing it.

Asking a baseball fan what it would take for him to become a futbol fan. And then taking his ideas and changing the rules of futbol is just going to kitten off futbol fans and it most likely will not draw baseballs fans to replace all the futbol fans that are lost.

You have to cater to the fans you already have and make their experience better. Making your current fans happier will spread positive word of mouth about your company and the players will be actively “recruiting” for you. Sadly the people making these decisions just can’t or won’t accept this.

I’ve said it before and it feels even more so now. Arenanet/NCsoft is trolling us. None of this really makes sense and the fact that they use NPE after SWG had such an epic fail with the NGE is just comical. Its like we are an experiment to see how bad of a game they can make and how much they can tick people off and still get people to give them money.

siralius.9517:

Etien.4601:

Sure the megaserver system (with some flaws) gave this issue a solution. But seriously they had to stop there and not push this new leveling nonsense.

I’m a qqer. I’m open to the qq. But I fail to understand what the problem is. If you’re a vet you should know the game by now, you should know the world, you should know how to level your toon quick. It should literally take you but a few hours, at max, to hit lvl 15 (from mapping). At this point, what is locked, other than skills, that doesn’t allow you to explore? I’m not for or against the leveling rework this feature patch; I can’t be either or because I haven’t leveled a new toon since it’s been implemented. Only thing I know is, the maps and the stuff inside them are being used more than what they used to be. This is what I think Anet needs to continue to elaborate on.

Forcing people to do stuff they do not want to do so that people can feel like maps aren’t empty is absurd. When the game launched they said you could WVW and PVP with out ever doing pve. That is not true any more. they could have stopped fixing stuff after the megaserver but no they had to not just merge servers but also force everyone to do events and then make everyone with a down arrow a kitten by not allowing them skills and abilities until high levels. They have crossed the line so many times I am surprised there is people stubborn enough to keep playing.

I’m happy you enjoy your pve it really is worth it to ruin the game for so many others so that you can have more enjoyment.

Anyone know what else they need to do to get US/EU servers on the same page as China. I’m sure someone out there knows what else is left to be changed.

jclink.6308:

ipan.4356:

Make a game based on the decisions of your corporate accountants, and the game will tank.

Every.
Kitten.
Time.

Two of my favorite games did a “New Player Experience”
SWG and MXO
Both are still going strong today!
Oh… wait.

I think its funny that such an epic failure like SWGs NGE would be forgotten and actually repeated by any other company after such a short period of time. 20-30 years I can see making the same mistake but not this soon. And just like with SWG by the time they come around and start giving the players what they want it will be to late. If they cut the BS right now and said sorry bad mistake lets roll back it might be salvageable. But we all know the guys making these decisions will never admit they are wrong. Plus they can fudge the metrics with the megaserver and china’s income subsidizing the losses in EU/US servers, so they will spin the metrics to say what they want them to say.

bartmoss.5107:

Carcerus.9107:

If you’re a player who really will stop buying gems because of the changes that were introduced in this patch, then you weren’t going to be buying them much longer anyway. You would have found some other justification for stopping soon after.

At least in my case, you are incorrect. Not that I need a “justification” when it comes to my money. But thanks for trolling, it was a cute attempt.

Yeah I had no problem spending money on the game until I saw the direction the game was going. Saying I wouldn’t have spent money anyways is weak. I’m one of those guys that prefers a subscription and realized that many players spend more in the store than what they would have with a subscription. I spent money because I believe in supporting something that I like. I am not a freeloading ftp kiddie. I have extra money that I really want to spend on a good MMO but sadly this is no longer it.

I keep hoping with every patch they will prove me wrong and get me to come back. And every patch I get pushed farther away from that. It was a great game at launch and had huge potential. Its just too bad that whoever is making the decisions is allowed to keep making them.

lol the metrics told them players want this? How, there is no metric that could say that except for a poll. They did not give any polls in game to the playerbase so its all lies. Please tell me how a metric could tell you that the majority of players would like to have there abilities gated more than they already were with out a poll.

Since there is no subscription and no exit poll for canceling said subscription where did they get this information. They didn’t. They made it up because some guy in a suit that doesn’t play games is in charge of making the decisions. Nothing else makes sense.

Yargesh.4965:

People don’t like change that is at the heart of it.

and people hate bad change. If you change someone’s drink from coke to pepsi they may not like it. When you change it from coke to urine I can guarantee that they will be upset. Then telling them its good and they should enjoy it or that its what they asked for is baffling.

That video wow. I have been thinking SWG NGE lately but now its official. The leveling changes, the trait system, skill system, everything. They went and did what SOE showed everyone not to do.

At least they have China to subsidize the cost and megaserver to give the illusion of population.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Paradox.1380:

I honestly think you guys need to calm down. Its not that big of deal, almost every MMO I’ve every played Level/Skill Point gates off their skills to help with NEW players learning the game giving them time to adapt, etc. They have tested this in China, they KNOW how their game plays to new people. As a player you only have one side of the experience, they have both ends. Why don’t you just let the people do their jobs? Its not even that big of a deal really.

It is not a big deal for you. And what people do here is called feedback, which is necessary for a game’s development. I complain about the game because I care, if I didn’t care I would simply play something else.

I’m all for feedback, and I understand that. Complaining without offering anything of a solution, however is NOT feedback it is whining. There are ways (a stickied thread even) about how to give constructive, proper feedback. That’s why I stated people needed to calm down. The world isn’t going down in flames because they are trying to make their game a little easier to play.

The solution is: Don’t change something that isn’t broken.

that’s the kicker. According to the players, it was broken.

Don’t blame Anet. blame the people who can’t learn skills.

who are these players that say its broken. I have never met one. I believe its a flat out lie or extremely misunderstood metric that is saying this. When anet/ncsoft start letting us see the data(all the data, not just a single metric) I will start believing. Until then its made up fluff to push the agenda of a couple “decision makers” that don’t play the game they are making decisions for.

Edit: They could have easily added some in game polls to ask players what they think about certain things. Like “should we add a tutorial with better instructions/descriptions or should we revamp the game for the challenged”?

Neko Dudley.2495:

This really stinks of executive meddling. Some marketing monkey at ncsoft has to be behind it. No way can I believe the players or the Anet designers wanted these changes.

That’s what I keep thinking. No actual gamer or game developer that actually plays games would think these are good changes. Players don’t want a “new game experience” we want more stuff to do in the current game experience. Chasing away your current playerbase and tainting your reputation is not going to get you players to replace the ones you lose.

its not the players that need the dumbing down, its the guy in charge that doesn’t play MMOs that is catering to himself. How these guys get in to decision making positions is beyond me but it obviously is not because they know what is best for the game. More and more I feel like this is just another SWG being flushed down the toilet with the CU/NGE. Its funny that whoever is in charge did not learn from the biggest mistake in MMOs ever and is actually making the exact same mistakes like they are reading smedley’s playbook.

A simple tutorial that can be skipped on any following characters after completing once is all that was needed. Not an entire revamp.

Its all too late now though. They wasted all their resources revamping the game for China and they are not going to stop until US/EU are caught up. So when they finally get done slowly rolling out the changes this year, then they will finally start trying to fix all this broken crap sometime in 2015/2016. Of course they will keep the lights on because China will subsidize and megaserver will keep zones populated up until there is only one instance of every map.

felessan.9587:

Daggos Skelito.2910:

Do people honestly believe tweeking the new trait system would be better then reverting to the old one? You know, the one that was actually enjoyable! Someday someone will give me the true reason this was changed.

No, I do not believe my suggestions are actually better than just reverting.

However I feel we have to meet the Dev team half-way since too much time and effort was put into this change for them to just throw the whole thing out. I’m not a tech person, but I’ve been led to believe that it’s not just as simple as “flip a switch and go backwards”.

Plus the old system wasn’t accomplishing what the designers wanted – using situationally dependent builds and tying in a feeling of progression that the players has requested.

For these reasons I’m almost 100% certain they won’t do a rollback nk matter how much we beg.

All the effort was put into creating a new game for china and giving it the same name as the US/EU game. Now they are just slowly bringing us to the same state. There is nothing for them to code its all done already. You are correct, they will not do a roll back but they won’t meet halfway either. They are going to make this game exactly like China’s version. Its just like what SOE did with the combat upgrade. Funny thing will be when they realize its not working like SOE did and then they go and do an NGE, rather than go back to what made the game great at launch.

I see these servers lasting a lot longer than SWG’s though. As they have China to subsidize them and the megaserver to keep the zones populated.

oh yeah and to stay on topic, new trait system is bad and the guy who came up with it should get canned. Or at least hazed, lots of wet willies, tittie twisters, and wedgies

They need to make it a toggle or why even bother.

Behellagh.1468:

Vayne.8563:

But a lot of those changes were made to the China release due to research from the American release. They knew more when they made the Chinese release.

I agree with this. It’s GW2 V2.0. From Global Guilds to a more guided tutorial/help for new players who are accustom to be led from area to area. Making leveling a big thing rather than a muted “oh look, I have skill points to spend”. Yes it’s skinner boxish but other than a flash along the XP bar as it resets leveling in this game is fairly uneventful. There’s no “gratz” because nobody quite notices, even you.

I also like skewing drops more toward your profession. Do you want players to buy what they need or do you just want them to sell what’s not wanted.

And yes it’s not all good. I’ll hate it if weapon swap is moved to a higher level unlock and while I agree that the downed skills menu is confusing for a newbie, was to me, pushing it off to level 5 feels is a little late for me.

I don’t think they learned anything, I think a different suit got in charge that doesn’t understand the game (because he doesn’t play them) and made a bunch of changes for the china release and is now forcing those changes on us/eu servers.

In some games they have a check box so if you want the drops to be based on profession then you check the box. For those that don’t want it you the leave box unchecked. I have no idea why anet can not do something simple like that. It is one of those easy things they could do that actually pleases everyone. A blanket change for everyone is a waste of time. As you only please half the people either way if you don’t make it an option that can be toggled. So why even waste the dev time. Unless it really is just a simple 3 click change and they just added it in so they have something to add to the blogs. I personally prefer to have it open for all drops at level cap so that I have a chance at a lucky drop for any of my characters. Being based off of profession only really helps while leveling and for those that only play one character or profession.

Vayne.8563:

Pandaman.4758:

I’m just baffled by what was so confusing about rallying that they had to make it a level 5 unlock and how making it a level 5 unlock will magically teach people how to rally; if they didn’t understand what it was when it’s first presented to them, covering their eyes and telling them to ignore it for five levels isn’t going to help.

If you want people to learn what a feature is, you explain it to them.

Have a tutorial where a Rally Trainer NPC jumps out of nowhere, downs you with a sucker punch, starts screaming at you to hit #4 if you want to get back up, kicks you to interrupt your rally, screams at you that you’re a yutz for trying to rally while under attack, then jumps back into nowhere before you can get back up to retaliate.

Maybe have him voiced by Ronald Lee Ermey.

It’s really interesting. If you present too many things at one time to people, they don’t get all of them. So, you’re in the game new. Maybe even it’s your first MMO. You get a bunch of weapons and new skills. You go down in a fight. In most games you just die. You don’t even really know a downed state exists.

Level 5 is pretty fast to get to. What’s the big deal?

my daughters are wondering who these people are that you are referring to Vayne. Toddlers? If my 11 yr old could figure it out when she started playing I would assume so could most people. Unless they have some kind of huge learning disability but then they are going to have issues no matter how you present it to them. So why dumb it down for those few that it really isn’t going to help.

Those that keep trying to say its hard for new players to understand and learn the game need to stop. When I told my daughters, that started playing this game at ages 11 and 13, that they were making these changes they asked if they were talking about 4 yr olds trying to learn the game. This is one of simplest games to get into and does not need more dumbing down. Those that have a hard time picking it up should not be playing it, they probably shouldn’t even touch a computer.

When SWG launched it was a very hard and complex game to learn. I met children under 10 and people with autism and other mental challenges that spent a lot of time and learned how to play it. challenges may not be for everyone but this game is not challenging to learn.

These changes feel like they are made for people who will not be playing this game anyways. Like some guy in a suit that doesn’t play video games says he doesn’t get it and we should make these changes for him and people like him, but they won’t end up playing it anyways so why make these changes.

I understand they are just trying to slowly match the us/eu servers to what they did to china but china should have just cloned us.

Excursion.9752:

“Our second week of September 2014 Feature Pack reveals is focused on improving the Guild Wars 2 experience for new and veteran players alike!”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/feature-packs/

Hope this means what I want it to mean. Adjustments need to be made because new characters have it way worse off than the veteran characters do. When it comes to the trait system.

They are going to mess something up for veterans now so that they can be at the same level as the new players. That way its not worse for any single group. I wish I was joking but this seems to be the mentality arenanet has lately.

Zenchii.6531:

So, am I the only one surprised that they didn’t do this with skills instead?

IMO they should revert the Trait change and create new elite skills that are unlocked in a similar manner.

For example: There’s a wraith boss with a small army of abominations that you encounter in your personal story. Imagine if defeating it as a necromancer unlocked a “Summon Wraith” Elite skill.

This, in my opinion, is what should’ve been done instead. It gives you something to do while leveling/at max level while also not limiting you from doing something as important as experimenting with builds on a lower level alt.

From what I’m understanding in this thread (I’ve never played GW1 myself so I could be wrong), this is more akin to how it worked in GW1, yes?

I mentioned this a few times back in the first few pages of this long kitten thread. People keep saying they did this to be more like gw1 and what I don’t get is why they didn’t use skills then. Traits just does not make sense. Traits are the core of your character and skills just add utility(except of course engineers). Skills already cost skill points so it would have been easier to just add a gold cost on to them and then they just add the unlocks. It seems much easier to code. It just doesn’t make sense to me that they would do this to traits. Which is why I think arenanet/ncsoft is just trolling us and laughing their kitten off that people are still giving them money.

it would be nice if they brought back the old pen/shelter farm that people would farm for completion all day long. You get event completions and lots of loot and it wasn’t for the champ bags.

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

There was no end game in GW1.
There was optional skin/achievement grind. (You could literally get maxed character with all maxed stats and all skills in less than 5 hours.)
GW2 doesn’t even have that. RNG is beyond insane and acquiring something rare and good looking is next to impossible.
Not to mention all the good looking weapon and armor skins get added only through the gem store.
And these are only few issues of the PvE.
WvW and sPvP is entirely different cluster kitten.

Getting something rare and good looking are next to impossible? How so?

Most of the rare stuff can be bought on the trading post and most of it isn’t that expensive. Plenty of good looking stuff for not that much gold. Dungeon weapons and armor are available for anyone who wants to run dungeons. The skins in WvW are pretty cool and are available to anyone who gets badges, which now includes achievement hunters. There are plenty of karma skins floating around and karma isn’t that hard to come by.

And yes there are rare expensive skins just like there were in Guild War 1. The frog scepter, the bone dragon staff, the celestial compass, the voltaic spear, all rare items. I farmed for the stupid frog scepter. I ran Bogroot Growths so many times and never got one.

And yes, while many of the new skins are only on the trading post, just about all of them can be found on the black lion trading post. They aren’t particularly more costly than the high end weapons in Guild Wars 1.

Vayne you are exactly right. Silly people go grind gold and buy everything you want. Do not try to farm anything when you can grind gold or buy gold and go get it off the trading post.

chemiclord.3978

Hell, from what I understand, there was a depressing percentage of players who never even LOOKED at their traits in this game (and probably still don’t really), much less experimented with them.
.

I keep hearing people say this but I seriously do not believe it. Its data pulled from metrics to support what they are selling. If we had the full data would it show that its a huge portion of players that never made it to level 20? Would it show that its mostly players that played for only 1 month and have never logged in again. Is it from players that just never got to a level where they had points to put in so they never bothered looking at the trait window. Its pretty easy to use metrics to say “this percentage of player accounts have characters that never opened the trait window”. And its just as easy for them to narrow it down to “A high percentage of players never opened the trait window”. I’m sure there are tons of people that had alts under level 10 that they never opened the trait window because there was just no reason and now after the patch there will be even more that don’t open it till they hit level 30.

Until arenanet starts showing us the numbers( all of the numbers not just the ones they want you to see) its just complete BS and should not be used in any argument.

I think for pvp if they would give us all the gw1 GVG, arenas, and HoH it would do a lot to for the end game. They could even copy everything exactly for the maps and game modes as the current stuff they have doesn’t compare. Then the only thing they need is regular updates to make wvw meaningful. Make defending and holding things actually matter. None of these things are grindy unless you are forced to do them for some dumb reason.

For PVE they need more maps, more world bosses, more events, and more dungeons. Preferably all level 80 so that they can be tuned for level 80 geared characters. I see no reason to make low level content that people will blow past in a week as there is plenty of stuff already for people to do for xp.

There is no reason any of the above has to add grind. The pvp stuff is just more choice in what to do. The pve stuff can be created with or with out grind. The LS is the kind of stuff other games have for filler between big updates. Its the appetizer before the meal.

Guhracie.3419:

Some of my friends were talking about buying new character slots for some new roleplay characters. I reminded them of the trait system, encouraged them to look it up on the wiki, and pointed out that buying a new character slot is like supporting the new system.

I will continue to actively discourage people from buying character slots, and I will continue being unable to recommend the game, and after four months, I have serious doubts that Anet intends to do anything meaningful with this system.

The sad thing is I don’t actively discourage people. They ask me how the game is doing and I have to pitifully tell them the state of the game and all the changes as they laugh at me for thinking a FTP game that lets you buy gold with real money would not go down hill one way or another.

Player.2475:

What do you think about the difference between the old and the new?
I think the only improvement the new one has over the old one is that you can reset traits whenever and that you can get traits via events/exploration.

Other than that, I think the mere suggestion that getting 1 point per level starting with 11 was too complicated for new players to grasp to be utterly laughable. I know Guild Wars 2 is a pretty casual game and I suppose many players from the Angry Birds audience play it, but I do not think people are so stupid they would need 20 extra levels to figure out how to work the concept of getting 1 point every level and 1 passive ability every 5 points. Pushing it back to 30 just makes the entire gap from 10 to 30 pointless, since you only unlock 1 utility slot every 10 levels and… well, that’s pretty much all you’re doing. By level 20, I am sure everyone understands how utility skills work and wouldn’t get a mental breakdown if they had to choose a major trait and new utility skill at the same time.
I think the new trait system is pretty much an insult to our intelligence… and for anyone defending that 1 point instead of 5 is more practical… if you reset trait points you could simply click on the trait of your choosing and it would dump the required amount of points in it, whether it took the old 20 or the new 4. No biggie for higher levels, but impacts low levels severely.

I am fairly certain Anet are too stubborn to change the system back or at least lower the requirement back to level 10, since that’s how most developers are with these things because “effort” was put into making the changes and reverting even a part of them would mean that “valuable” effort has been lost… but even after months of having to deal with this new system, I simply cannot get over how much more satisfying spending 1 point every level was, as opposed to a gap between 10 and 30 and then every 5 levels.

What do you think?

hahaha they through another new post in to the closet to be ignored until forgotten.

If you don’t want to do the meta then make your own party. Its very simple and I guarantee you will find other players that don’t care about the meta and will join first group they see. Now if you want into the meta group because you want to speed run but you aren’t willing to bring a character built for the meta then you need to go take a hike. You are then basically one of those elitist but are expecting them to do something that you are not willing to do, take a non-meta build character along. If that’s what you really want, then you need to make your own party. I have seen tons of guys put lfms like that.

tldr

If you don’t want to join the meta, then make your own group.

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Because some of us want to play a multiplayer game with that kind of sensibility and that was lacking in MMO space. That’s why. That’s exactly why.

Are you saying someone who enjoys that KIND of experience can’t also be social and want to play with other people? I bet there are a lot more of us out here than you think their are.

I’m a social guy. I like being in my guild. I like playing with friends. And I like not having to sit there and plan a raid for an hour before I jump in and attempt to run it so I might or might not get gear I need to go to the next raid. I don’t want an instanced game. I want to play in the open world.

I’m happy to trade Skyrim’s solitude for a social MMO that centers around stuff I enjoy.

There are dozens of MMOs for people who like other stuff. Can’t we just have one?

Nope, that makes no sense. This game as no “Social Features”. You have chat and that’s it. You can Play with your friends and like your guild in a game that’s well made

You’ve got to be joking. You don’t need social features to play with people. Want to hear a social feature? Mumble. That’s a social feature.

We do our guild missions together, run dungeons together, clear zones together. I can’t do that in Skyrim.

I’m not sure why you don’t understand this.

So… when exactly does “Start Having End-Game Features” start overidding “Being Able to Play With Friends and/or Guild”?

It’s changing the game, that’s what it has to do with it. You asked the question, I answered. This is how the conversation went.

I play this game and like it, without a traditional end game. Traditional end games tend to make the community more competive rather than cooperative. I wanted a cooperative non-competitive PvE experience to enjoy with friends. This game offers that.

Traditional end games creates haves and have nots. That’s not what the devs are trying to do here. You suggest that many of the things I like would be better in single player games and you’re right about that. But you’re leaving out the social aspect.

People have come on these forums asking for things like dueling, dps meters, gear check, all the things that come with the end game you want. And every time someone posts for stuff like this, there’s a bunch of people who shout it down. Not one or two. A bunch of people. Why?

Because those things ruin the type of game we want to play. Adding the types of things you’re asking for will inevitably lead to the kind of game I don’t want to play.

And because there are dozens of games made for you and only one game (so far) made for us, it would be nice if it remained a game for us.

If by a bunch of people you mean something 5. And as far as Im noticing there are equally the amount of people supporting this idea. And by the way: At no point in time does having end-game features change at all the game, other than expand its longetivity and giving something to do when waiting for content.

This is what I don’t get, why is adding real content and more stuff to do at end game such a bad thing. All those that want to wander around doing nothing or just doing LS can still do that. Adding more stuff like dungeons and maybe some kind of raid would be nice. I didn’t have time for fractals and so I never got in to them and I think my highest level fractal is at level 2 or 3. Its not my bag so I didn’t do it but I would never say it should be removed or hate on those that do enjoy it.

They should have already put the silk recipes back to match the others. It will still be the most expensive mat since it used in more than everything else. It just won’t be grossly overpriced. The people that defend this are just the guys that are making tons of money off it. Those same people would make money with the cost to make damask equal to leather and mythril counter parts. They just won’t make as much. So they are trying to make it sound like its a bad idea.

For those that hate dead zones, you could have had that fixed with real server mergers or just adding pve maps and not adding the cities. The few things that it fixed could have been fixed with out causing all these new issues.

And the megaserver is the exact same thing as gw1 districts without the ability to choose your district.

Eric.6109:

Been playing more and getting to understand the traits’ system.

As I see it, the idea behind doing something to get a trait isn’t bad. The problem is when you need to do stuff that isn’t solo-able. Sure, if you have a guild they can run you through it but if not you’re left at what chances you have for that event to be “up” and there are enough players in the area that want to do it.

Even bigger problem are the traits that require you to complet an instance. Again, with no guild you won’t be having an easy time getting it – especially not when you see tons of “5000AP lvl80” requirments at the PUG panel or worse – “xG per boss”. It’s ridiculous that to get an Adept trait you need to be at lvl cap with end-game equipment.

Furthermore, the silence from A.Net is… Well, bewildering, to say the least. After all, they (a representative anyway) started this thread for feedback, and given the amount of comments you’d think that some sort of replay was is order especially when so much players comment negetivley about the change.

On a plus side, I never played before the change, so at least I don’t miss how it was. Guess the joke’s on me :P

I think they created these threads knowing the feedback would be negative. That way they could use them as an excuse to merge every new thread into one so they don’t cover the entire forum. I also think they never planned on replying from the beginning.

In DDO after running something 20 times they would give you a reward list filled with most of the rewards. So after grinding for a couple of months to get something you would have a greater chance at getting it. Sometimes what you wanted would still not end up being in the list but it still gave you a large list of items and normally at least 1 thing was usable. The idea that you could try for something your entire time playing and never get it is lamest thing I have ever heard. How anyone can defend that is beyond me. There is no reason ever for something to not be achievable in game when enough effort has been given. I and most others are not asking for free stuff. It is a simple thing to make it so something is random but gives you better chances as you keep trying. Or you can just make it so 1-3 tokens drop from every mob and it takes 1000 tokens. That way some will get lucky get there’s first but other people will still have a chance at getting it eventually.

Marvel Heroes 2015 and StarWarsGalaxy emulator

I want to add. These are all totally different types of games from GW2. I find them all enjoyable and are what I have been passing the time with. LoL most know what that is. MH2015 is an ARPG like diablo that you get to be marvel comics characters. SWGEMU is trying to bring back SWG from before all the changes. They are completely different games and if you want something similar to GW2 then these are probably not for you. I don’t think there is many games out right now that have the action/graphics of GW2.

LoL, MH2015, and SWGEMU

Azhure.1857:

I see no difference in your perceived token system and the currency system already in place. Except maybe the copper, silver, and gold coins have your face stamped on them instead of the BLTC?

I was going to say the same thing. They already made loot so scarce that you just save up tokens(gold) and trade it for what you want on the merchant(Trading Post). They just give you a “winning the lottery” chance at something special while collecting those tokens.

Kohlteth.3715:

Wow just wow, still nada from Anet on this….. maybe because the Chinese MMO market LIKE grinding !

Dunno why they cannot have it and let us have old system back, ( with the respec option) after all, they have totally different servers / system after all . ( If WoW can separate that market from NA/ EU why can’t Anet? )

Like I mentioned in another post, Now that China is doing so well they can let it subsidize the US/UK servers. They don’t care about us anymore. From now on I would not expect anything except LS and gem store updates, not that its any different than before. With how well china is doing they can let US/UK servers run on life support and the mega server will make it look like everything is ok until the very end.

Ox See Sox.3687:

First to say, i had 7×80 characters before update, and after i created and leveled 2 more.

At first i was annoyed with the whole unlock thing, cause u get to certain levels and u dont seem to progress much.

But after i gave up and really hunted some Traits, i ended up being very happy and satisfied. I got to know a few places, events, areas that otherwise i would never discover. And its very satisfying to do a “new” content u have not see and then being awarded with a certain kind of reward associated to that.

Suggestion: On future expand the system for New Skills, Armor Skins, Weapon Skins, Titles, Consumables.

Its very pleaseant to complete content and be awarded differently.

Peace

What “new” content is there that you haven’t seen already besides the LS2 which has nothing to do with traits? For a new player I can understand that but not for someone who has multiple characters created after the change. Once you unlock all traits on 1 character you will see all the exact same “new” content on any following characters. The only way around that is to buy the traits or do extensive research and planning for a certain build and only get the traits you need for that build. So yes first time it might be fun for some.
I have 5 characters with 100% map completion created way before the evil patch. The first 2-3 weren’t bad but by the end of the 5th it was getting painful. I think for my next three characters it would have taken me over year(if done at all) as I just did not want to do it anymore. Luckily it was my choice when doing 100% map and I didn’t feel like I had to do it or do it in any particular order. So when I would start getting burnt out I would do something else until the time I was ready again.

Shift Focus.9083:

Dawdler.8521:

Mounts, lol… Player housing, even more lol… Marriage system?! Downright laughable.

Its real simple. There are two types of peoples we want to bring back to the game: Roleplayers and WvWers.

The former are often smart enough to see straight through flimsy features like housing or marriage (again, lol), they probably want better basic functionality instead (like improved megaserver tech that doesnt scatter them to the wind).

The latter isnt going to give a rats kitten about anything other than WvW and GW2 is in dire need of improvements and tune ups in that area.

What about PvEers you say? HA! Grinders that have left the game isnt going to come back. The ones that havent left are still running around flipping over rocks in Orr in order to find some wooden sticks and possibly a worm or two. Or speedrunning dungeons with 5 man warrior teams. What are they going to do with player housing? Design it like CoF and start working out ways to run even faster?

But of course, Anet only seem to care about the PvEers. Living story, yay!

First of all, I was listing features and things people have been talking about and would like to see in game.

Yes believe it or not people have asked for a marriage system, go look it up on the forums, or is it too hard for you to comprehend?

Secondly, I’ve no idea what you’re even going on about with COF, who has ever mentioned wanting a home instance like COF to run it faster? what? I’m so confused.

To all of the people laughing at some of the suggestions I put up, that’s your own opinion and it does not reflect on the entire player bases opinion on things, as mine doesn’t either, but it’s there, and people have suggested it, so get over it.

I don’t see why there is so much hate for new content. Especially when most of it will either improve quality of life for all players or will have no effect on them. I wouldn’t want or care about some of the stuff on the list but I don’t see why someone would waste the time to hate on it unless they actually felt it would hurt the game. I didn’t read many like that though, most of the post were all just a bunch of “that’s lame” and make fun of it. Kind of reminds me of kitten bags in high school, they are just hating for the sake of hating.

Marcelinho.3190:

NOTE: GW2 already sold 3.8 million copies in china in 2 months and a half.

actually the game is dying

:/

http://ptrealms.com/gw2/conteudos.php?id=5166

Since when does the amount of sales for China have anything to do with what is happening on US/UK servers. The only thing China will do is subsidize the other regions and keep the life support running for them way past the time they should shut things down. That part is good for everyone that still enjoys the game and that want to keep playing it for years. It also means they do not have worry about retention for US/UK servers.

Back on topic, I don’t think LS will bring back anyone. It might get some people to check things out but I believe that once they see the state of the game they won’t stay for long. That is in regards to players that have left already of course. So I completely agree the LS will not bring back players. New players that are enjoying the game and those that still enjoy the game will mostly likely enjoy it but they are not returning players.

Lostyus.4250:

Vayne.8563:

Long before mega servers were annouced, there were constant threads about no one on my server, game is dying. And there were many threads complaining about guesting and not being able to get into your server. We saw those threads frequently.

If Anet hadn’t forced people to post about megaservers in this one mega thread, (so they can ignore them) then this board would have been full of complaints about megaserver, just like the “game is dead” threads. There is this megathread as testament, but also there are a hell of a lot of separate threads that have been deleted or closed because it wasn’t posted in this thread.

Don’t forget merged in to this thread. They used these feedback threads to hide the hate and are hoping that it will eventually disappear. When they merg new threads with old ones does it bring them to the front page or does it stay buried?

Majic.4801:

Trait Answers

I wouldn’t confuse silence with apathy on the part of the developers. They did start this thread for a reason, after all, but it was to hear what we think, not tell us what they think.

It’s been a few months, and while there’s a lot of feedback here, I’m sure the devs are looking at how players are actually dealing with the new trait regime in game. How many do the required unlock deeds? Which deeds do they complete, and which do they never complete? How many buy the traits instead? How active are players at the sub-80-level now versus before the change? And so on.

As frustrating as it may be, it’s unlikely we’ll see major changes to the system soon, not because the devs don’t care, but because it takes time to decide how best to move forward. Gathering and analyzing all the information they need to do that takes time, and even more time to make the necessary design decisions based on what they conclude.

The current system offers things players have been requesting since beta, and took a fair amount of engineering time to implement, so I doubt ArenaNet will want to scrap it entirely. Rather, we can expect them to “iterate”, as they are wont to do, and refine the system so it better suits players needs.

Locked Away

To that end, I expect they will adjust many of the unlock requirements to make them more appropriate for the levels at which they become relevant (i.e., no requirements to run level 80 content at level 60) and reduce the preponderance of group-only content needed to advance characters.

The group-only requirement is one I’m pretty sure the data shows issues with. I know Colin has indicated a desire to push players out of their comfort zones to get them to try other aspects of the game, but some things just won’t happen.

To wit, I enjoy the personal story aspect of the game, but as long as group-only Arah sits at the end, none of my 32 characters will ever complete it. Not a single one of them. Almost two years and counting, 27 level 80s, it ain’t happening, and that’s not going to change.

It’s not because I don’t like group content. Indeed, when I’m in the mood for it, I absolutely love it, and when I’m in the mood for WvW, good luck trying to lure me away from the Mists. But when I’m not, absolutely nothing anyone does is going to make me like it, because what I like to do and how I choose to spend my free time is never up for a vote or debate. Period.

That’s obviously a non-negotiable for me, but I do otherwise enjoy the game and have high hopes for the future. Thus I counsel patience, though I can understand why that can tend to be in short supply.

The scarcity of patience, however, only confirms its value.

If what you said was true they could at least come out and say that they see there is a problem and they are trying to come up with a fix. What they are doing though is ignoring it in the hopes it will go away. They have a proven history that says they will not do anything unless it relates to gem store, LS, or fudging the metrics. Fudging the metrics because they haven’t tried to fix anything, just make the metrics show what they want on the bar graphs

You say that its only been a couple of months and to have patience. How long should people wait for something before it is okay to no longer have patience, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years? These are feed back threads that anet created. Why is asking for a reply to such threads such a hard thing to do.

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

From my perspective the Mega Merge was done to proactively avoid traditional server mergers and give the illusion of a populated game to new consumers, as well as easing the new player experience with populated zones.

In that, it could be said it was very much a success. If that is indeed what the Megamerge was intended to do, Anet has really no incentive to roll it back or change it.

I think the pro and con sides were kicked around internally and measures were taken to present the merge as a game enhancement with full awareness and downplaying/silence upon the many negative aspects. I think they felt the importance of merging outweighed alienation of a substantial segment of current consumers.

Not a first. The core of SOEs NGE was exactly that, a calculated risk that new acct aquisition would outpace loss of current consumers they knew they would upset. Smaller scale, same calculated risk and acceptance of current consumer losses in favor of new acct purchase and retention.

Those of us that feel the game lost too much are simply the numbers the spreadsheets deemed acceptable loss. As such I feel nothing will change. We were written off long ago.

You hit the nail on the head. In my opinion traditional server mergers would have been way better but doesn’t look good on the quarterlies so some dink in a suit pushed this through with out a care to the consequences. Its obvious that the updates that have come in have all been for manipulating the metrics to have nice bar graphs on the quarterly stock meetings. The problem is that since its all been about the metrics.

WvW has dwindling numbers, lets create a new map and make it the best place for grinding out xp and skill points plus make the gold and karma rewards decent, now metric shows an increase in the amount of people in wvw.

Metric shows people aren’t playing in certain areas and people complain about not enough content/things to do so lets update traits to force people in to more areas and do things they do not want to as its cheaper than actually creating content. Metric now shows players in more areas of the game and we didn’t waste resources on creating new content.

Dwindling numbers are causing a loss in gem purchases, lets nerf all loot and gold income and add more gold sinks one of which we will tie to traits so if people don’t want to go to areas we are herding them to for traits they can buy them with gold but they will also need skill points so we can get them grinding skill points in EOTM. Metrics now show gem store sales are up.

Servers are going empty and some maps are deserted but if we merge servers people will say we are failing and it will hurt quarterly stock meeting. Come up with new idea of megaserver which is the exact same thing as a server merge except instead of merging 2-3 servers together you merge them all. Metric now shows all maps have players and there is no more home servers so nobody can complain about “their server” being empty.

Everything they do is to fudge the metrics for the quarterly graphs. The funny thing is that all these are symptoms of something else.

Vayne.8563:

Kohlteth.3715:

I was referring to this thread that they created for feedback on the new system, and then nothing back from them, not a word in 30 pages.

So you’re saying that changing stuff isn’t as good as them saying something in this thread.

Anet put in an update and asked for comments. They changed what they did based on comments. You come in and say they did nada.

What they didn’t do was type something on a forum. What they did do was change something people asked to be changed. I’m convinced more changes are coming but that they’ll take time.

Why not say something? Possibly because they’re trying a variety of things and don’t want to talk about stuff they can’t do.

Obviously they do not have the QA for proper testing so they should run these things by the community for feedback on any possible outcomes they haven’t thought of. So they should say something. Dropping blind and untested changes over and over is a recipe for failure

echo.2053:

Lol d3. That is a great example of how to make a p2w game that kills a great series. I love d2 and lod but d3 is absolute garbage with every patch being wtf why ? If you think this last patch is the savior, you must not have read all the patch notes completely. While the removal of the rmah is a great change. It’s complete counteracted by legendaries and elite set are now account bound with the ONLY POSSIBILITY to trade them is a 2 hour window with players who were present during drop. Lol yeah have fun with that gem.

Gw2 by no means is perfect. As it’s been beaten already the skills being dumb down for the masses, plague of players who think their every action deserts exotic, ascended and precursor drops ( what games doesn’t have this though ), dungeon that give out now 2nd bis gear easy mode.

Lmmmao gem store is p2w. Please flatter Me more with how the skins that give no stats make me op. K thx

what a hypocrite, the exact same thing that made D3 p2w makes GW2 p2w. D3 use real money buy items off RMAH. GW2 use real money buy gems then buy item off TP.

Ascimator.6735:

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

why should we settle for something that is not as good as we had before. Ya ever heard the saying if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. That was one part of the game that was fine and did not need fixing. So why should we settle for something less than we had before.

Oh, you wouldn’t believe how often things like that happen in every sphere of life. Slightly better than demanding more and more until your natural human greed can’t be satisfied.
As I’ve said, I don’t see how the SP/silver cost for a newbie is so insurmountable, unless they are completely unable of planning ahead and mapping out a general way they want to play their character. And most of the people I see complaining (I really want to use a harsher word because it fits better, but I’ve been warned once already) are on their 2nd-5th chars, have enough gold (do you REALLY need every single trait?), have access to leveling/SP tomes and are generally more experienced, allowing them to plan ahead better and buy only the traits they know are good.
It also would not really be repelling for a newbie to discover they can’t unlock this one major trait yet. Most likely they will either scrounge up 2sp and how much silver again it was or will be patient. Unless, of course, some heartbroken lvl 80 walks up to them and whispers “pssst, quit this game, you don’t deserve the world to be SO CRUEL”. You are only complaining because it’s been easier for you before.
Besides, if you want to test different builds, there’s this shiny mode called sPvP where you can tinker with every trait without any effort and test them out on dummies and NPCs.
tl:dr: the new change does not really harm neither newbies nor veterans, the only reason of 29 pages here is because people have accepted the mentality of “ANET WHY DONT YOU LISTEN TO US!?” instead of adapting.

When a restaurant changes its recipes sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. If I preferred what they had before and I tell the owner, he might take it personally or he might listen and go back to the old recipe(especially if enough people do the same). Its true some people might not think the stuff is that bad but everyone who tasted the good stuff will tell all there friends and family that its not as good anymore and it will affect their business.

I may be the exception but when I enjoy something I tell everyone and when I dislike something I do the same. For about the first year of this game I told many people about how good the game was trying to get as many as I could to join. Now many of them ask me sarcastically how the game is going because the word is out there already that GW2 is a flop. Then when I tell them about the state of the game and all the wonderful updates they just laugh because its kittening pitiful.

The only thing you can expect in this game is more LS and more crap in the gem store. Everything else in the game will stay exactly as is. That is except for the few things they pull out of the stupid ideas hat just to mess with the player base. This game is an experiment to see how far they can push people and still get their money. So don’t expect anything that was good from GW1 as that is part of the pushing people thing- see how bad they can trash an IP and still get your moneys.

Ascimator.6735:

Kohlteth.3715:

Though you do have some very valid points, have you tried ( from a new player with no saved up gold etc) to actually " play their way" and use the supposed flexability of builds since the patch…

Where for a lvl 30’s skill you have to be in a lvl 50 area, or kill a boss that takes a major event chain ( new player remember so no guild mates)

Or get slaughtered over and over in WvW when the trait you need is in a green area and they are dominating the war and you are red !

Or maybe you say buy them …. great but new players are going to need the skill points and for sure are not going to have all that gold as dungeon farming is basically lvl 80 onwards (lvl 80 Zerk only LFG ) especially now that new players are not going to have the needed traits……

Or you could just accept that you won’t necessarily have access to every trait in the tier just because you can equip them already. You don’t complain that you are not granted all the lvl 45 gear once you’re lvl 45, right?
Think of them as goals, not rewards.

why should we settle for something that is not as good as we had before. Ya ever heard the saying if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it. That was one part of the game that was fine and did not need fixing. So why should we settle for something less than we had before.

Ascimator.6735:

Scientia.8924:

@Ascimator.6735

1. Irrelevant point because the majority of traits are not simple+stat modifiers that are found on armor sets.
2. YMMV. Though I will say you are in the minority when compared to the other 1400 posts.
3. Irrelevant point – this is an MMO, not an offline single player game. How do you think Anet pays for all the ongoing 24/7 server upkeep and employee labor in a game without subscription fees? If they don’t retain players, they are paying out of pocket.

1. I meant it in the sense that you won’t be willing to switch between different builds (DPS, survivability, etc) without having different sets of gear to fit these playstyles.
2. Point taken.
3. I have serious suspicion that the majority of people who complain about changes buy gems regularly. And until they do, they are little more than a waste of server space, not to offend. Besides, a significant part of the playerbase, as it often happens, might not be visiting forums at all, so that “everyone wants change you are losing players anet” attitude is prone to be exaggerated. Potential players Anet will lose because the complainers will tell all their friends “Don’t buy gw2, they made it so you have to put in a little more effort to become cool” is, on a rough estimation, nothing next to the influx of newcomers through various channels.
To put it simply, go ahead and quit if you so desire. Unless you spent more money on gems regularly than on the game itself, that will be a net gain for Anet. And I’ll personally be glad to have less lag and less players with a bad attitude.

I spent hundreds of dollars on this game and it is why I have complained. I feel most of those that complain do it because they, like me, feel ripped off that they spent so much money on this game, only for anet/ncsoft to ruin it.

EDIT: oh yeah and thank you for bumping this thread we need all the help we can get to keep it alive till anet does something

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Emapudapus.1307:

Why does guardian have 2 same traits in zeal traitline, XII and XIII, both increasing burning damage? I mean …. who designes these traits x.x .

- Trait XII Kindled Zeal: Gain condition damage based on your power. (All codition damage ups 13% of what you have in power)
- Trait XIII Amplified Wrath: Burning damage is increased. (Fire Damage ups 33%)

Maby you should read them better? They are pretty far from the same thing.
I can’t figure out a build to use Trait XII with though but maby if you go with with rampager stats and have sigil of earth, generocity and/or Torment. Something like that.

since guardians only have fire and nothing else for condition damage they are exactly the same thing except one gives better payoff. Any added conditions you can stick with sigils or runes is irrelevant.

1 in every 3 or 4 sets put in to the game and not the gem store would still make them money and at the same time give people something to work for in game. No one is saying for them to not make money. It is laziness and greed as the small loss on one set here or there compared to how many they pump out would not hurt their profits that much. And it definitely would not make it so they couldn’t afford to keep the game running so stop saying that crap.