Guild Wars 2

any of the WvW dailies today?

More likely the devs will need tear buckets when their challenging content gets completed far faster than they expect.

Getting rid of a whole host of items with no compensation of any sort: not cool.

Vayne.8563:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Vayne.8563:

They’re not actually nerfing the rewards. They’re simply not upgrading them.

False. Dungeon rewards are going to be heavily nerfed.

The guy was talking about zone rewards, which is what I was talking about. No one mentioned dungeon rewards.

However, dungeon rewards are pretty much out of line with every other reward in the game. No other activity generates direct cash that way, or puts gold into the system. Which doesn’t have anything to do with what the guy said. You should try context sometimes.

He directly talked about reduced dungeon rewards. From his post:

“while non-buyers still have to suffer the consequences of reduced dungeon rewards”

You should try reading posts before reflexively responding to defend Anet sometimes.

Lapiy.7160:

If you remember CD had to fight past the 2 bandwagons of HoD and NSP while only getting 2 guilds, everyone said we would never make it

Bandwagon of NSP? You have no idea what you’re talking about.

Vayne.8563:

They’re not actually nerfing the rewards. They’re simply not upgrading them.

False. Dungeon rewards are going to be heavily nerfed.

Andred.1087:

they kept me waiting a long time

That was very realistic.

Andred.1087:

we appeared on a brand new, never-before-seen Fractal island!

… and that’s when you should have known it was a dream.

Wethospu.6437:

In my opinion having to spend 5-10 hours is easy. That’s the time you spend on a little solo. But since it was the first boss, I assume it was meant to be easy.

I disagree that it was meant to be easy.

This is their newest shiniest pet project: the challenging group content they were bragging about for months. It’s supposed to be so hard that exotics isn’t supposed to cut it; ascended gear is recommended. It’s supposed to be for guild groups; pugs aren’t even supposed to be able to get through it.

Imagine how great for hype it would have been had it not been completed during the beta weekend. “See, I told you it was hard. Get ready for a real challenge.” They’d say. And dungeon forumers would kitten themselves at the thought of such a magnificent challenge.

The benefits of showing off a truly hard boss during the weekend are just so great. What’s to be gained by releasing an easy boss?

So anyway, the boss turns out to be much easier than they anticipated. They’re panicked, and so they finally, at the 11th hour, they do what they should have done in the very beginning: they bring in top PvE players for help.

At least the story has a happy ending.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Diku.2546:

Offer solutions folks…or the solutions get drowned out in an ocean of argument.

Yes. This.

Also, please express your thoughts as concisely as possible so that the reading of them — and you know they are being read — is as productive as possible. By that I don’t mean to discount your passion or refute your passion. But if you write your thoughts as briefly as possible, that ensures that the team has the time — in what is an incredibly busy time for our company — to read all your thoughts in an efficient and meaningful way. Thanks for that.

I want to address something I’ve seen creep into this discussion from a few forum members. The original plan (call it Plan A, Saturday evening) was adjusted due to what seemed to be preponderant base of opinion from players. It was temporarily thought that going to a Saturday morning reset, Plan B, would be better, based on the first set of comments in this thread. But when it became clear that no, Plan B was actually not as good for players as a whole, the team then went back to Plan A. At absolutely no time did someone come up with a plot to manipulate you. At no time did someone say something in an insincere way , as in “let’s present Plan B to make Plan A appear better.” Both plans were an honest attempt to balance player desires with developer realities. The Saturday reset is needed, as John explained, and of the two options, based on your feedback, the evening reset is the best for the majority of players. That’s where we are right now, and you can be sure that there was no conspiracy involved in the outcome.

When you read the OP and John’s newest explanation, it feels like he was being extremely disingenuous when he was pitching the time change being for the benefit of WvW (in the OP). Whether this is the case or not, that’s how it comes across. That leads to directly to people believing in tinfoil hat theories.

More generally, Anet’s communication regarding WvW is abysmal. Furthermore, players feel like there is a severe lack of regard for WvW when it comes to development. Combine these two with what many players believe is the devs’ total lack of understanding of the game mode, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Remember Golem week? Same thing.

• Poorly developed (awful, awful exploit — that was never fixed)
• devs: “More golems!” players: “You’re not serious.”
• and complete, absolute silence (to this day) from Anet about the issue.

That’s just the latest example. It keeps happening again and again. It makes players angrier and angrier, so when next time the same thing happens, the explosion is even bigger.

This cycle isn’t going to stop until something is done. The easiest is communication. Why not do something about that so everyone can move forward?

TheFamster.7806:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Without the input of top PvE players, there’s little chance the raids will turn out well.

Just look at how fast and easily the boss was downed in the beta. I doubt they intended for that to happen as they were supposedly showcasing their new hard/challenging content. In fact they’re probably in panic mode, hence the invitations.

Losing the idea of “world first” is definitely worth it when the alternative are raids that will be easily completed a couple hours after they launch.

Umm i just want to tell you that they made the boss down easy. In fact Team A theorycrafted over 5 hours and had many practices, and not only that but individually they are excellent players. Also it took them 10+ tries not including the figuring out mechanic part, many being leaving the boss at 0.1% health before wiping. Team B spent much less time to kill the Vale Guardian nonetheless, but it took us a good solid 6 hours+ before we were able to kill him.
And 1 mechanic of the Vale Guardian is missing, so you have to take that into consideration as well. Also out of many, many raid teams, how many actually have killed the Vale Guardian? I’m sure EU could have done it too without the unfortunate schedule, but I am sure the percentage is very small compared to the entire active GW2 population.

I hope they make more designs like this, and I don’t mind the rise in difficulty after DnT/Att’s feedback, but it saddens me to see when people think the Vale Guardian was easy to kill when it fact it took us all the weekends to theorycraft, practice, and execute the mechanic. And I can’t stress this enough, that all of our members in our guild, are all tested and tried veterans who were very adept at their class.

Yes, there was a lot of work put in to prepare for the beta, no doubt. I meant easy as a relative term: when you’re touting how hard and challenging your new content is and it gets done in just a few hours, that’s too “easy.”

In the end, the boss was defeated well within the time limit, and despite an extremely limited amount of play time available. The important thing is that once something has been done, the builds and techniques are out there and it soon becomes routine.

Within a few short weeks, regular (non-elite) guilds will be doing it first try. For content that’s gated weekly, that means their new flagship content will account for very little total playtime. And as Anet is all about the metrics, that means raids will be abandoned development-wise in short order.

They either need to be made significantly harder or the time-gate has to be decreased (or both). So it’s good to have some elite players giving input on what I presume is the former.

Without the input of top PvE players, there’s little chance the raids will turn out well.

Just look at how fast and easily the boss was downed in the beta. I doubt they intended for that to happen as they were supposedly showcasing their new hard/challenging content. In fact they’re probably in panic mode, hence the invitations.

Losing the idea of “world first” is definitely worth it when the alternative are raids that will be easily completed a couple hours after they launch.

Why throw away a week and keep 1 day instead of count this week and not count the 1 day? Weird.

LetoII.3782:

Things like this buff should be given to the losing server, not the one on a roll

If the losing server takes SM then they get a stealth buff? Sounds interesting, actually.

How else would you track hackers, trolls, and griefers then?

X T D.6458:

Trajan.4953:

OK, in light of the Xpac and the obvious need to react and hotfix all the inevitable bugs, crashes, exploits etc that come with any MMO’s expansion, if A-Net says they need the time to ensure a smooth sailing ship I will take that on good faith.

An Expansion is a huge undertaking and all game modes will suffer not just ours. We have to support the company as much as possible to ensure all the bricks fall into place, and I do.

Having said that, what is a reasonable time frame to, at least, re-visit the topic of returning Reset to its accustomed place?

Personally speaking, I think 1-2months would probably be enough time for things to settle into place, considering that the halloween event is going to be running the same time as the expansion, kind of seems like they doubled their workload there. I am hoping it goes back to friday, I can understand the reasons to change it to sat…just wish they communicated it better in the first place.

You cannot seriously believe this was originally intended as a temporary thing, that they just “forgot” to mention it in the OP?

And do you really think they’re going to revisit this in the future once the change has already happened? I doubt it.

fishball.7204:

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

Launching a game is an enormous undertaking and our teams need time to address any issues that come up. Therefore after launch we must move WvW reset to Saturday. We will keep resets on Saturday to address issues and once we are in the clear we will evaluate the best time for WvW reset both for us as a company as well as for our players.

Since it is clear that we cannot pick a time that will work for everyone, we will be maintaining our original plan of shifting reset by 24 hours, to Saturday evening. That time was based on data for when prime time occurs in each region.

Thank you,
John

We understand that launching HoT could impact WvW and shifting reset temporarily would not have been met with such resistance if you had been forthcoming in the first place and explaining why you had to do it as well as mentioning that the switch was temporary.

They couldn’t mention it was temporary probably because it wasn’t meant as a temporary change. (Of course, they’ll probably retcon it to be so now.)

By the way, he didn’t say it was temporary. He said that in some nebulous time in the future, they would “evaluate.” What are the chances they keep it Saturday forever? I’d say pretty big.

Also, comparing the original post with this new one, it seems the part about how moving reset to Saturday would benefit WvW was just a cover for the real reason of server maintenance. If so, this is, in a way, good news: they’re not so out of touch with WvW that they truly believed this was a good idea.

Baron Oakley.1539:

Chris Barrett.3280:

Here’s what the Heart of Thorns release will look like for WvW:

The new round will run until the new reset times on Saturday, then end and update Glicko ratings. After it comes up again, WvW will be running as “normal” except for the changed reset times and the new Desert Borderlands.

Does this mean that they’re actually going to adjust glicko ratings based on a matchup that lasts only one day and where most people will be playing the new PvE content?

I read the OP as saying this week (of 6 days) won’t count at all, while the one day matchup from friday to saturday will count as a whole week. Doesn’t make any sense though.

cillard.3986:

coglin.1867:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If that’s actually the reason for the change, it’s definitely not worth losing 16 or so hours out of every matchup every week.

I am not certain you understand. There are 168 hours in every match up, regardless of what time or day it resets.

No he understands just fine. It is your understanding that is lacking.

A typical job/school for the majority of people is Monday through Friday. When he said said that, he was talking about meaningful and enjoyable WvW at time when the majority of people are available to play.

If you actually understand WvW and are more than a casual, you should have a firm grasp on the fact that fun game play dies down for the last couple days of a match up. So instead of those slow days being Thursday to Friday evening, those slow days will be Friday to Saturday afternoon.

Perhaps you can see the issue?

He already understands. It was just a failed attempt at a witty response.

Derenek.8931:

Then that player gets a tag that warns other player’s that they will boot or grief you because your build isn’t good enough for them.

Booting you because you’re not a team player is hardly griefing.

John Corpening.9847:

Another reason is the emergent gameplay that has come from reset. It has become one of the most exciting times for WvW and we would really love for more players to have the opportunity to experience it. We have many more players logging in on Saturday than on Friday which means with this change many more people will be available to experience the rush of claiming objectives for their world during reset.

If that’s actually the reason for the change, it’s definitely not worth losing 16 or so hours out of every matchup every week.

This has been going on since the game’s launch. Whatever Anet’s doing (or not doing as the case may be), it’s not working.

root.2859:

Still no official response, WOW.
I didn’t preorder HoT because i lost trust a year ago. Seems they have a whole team brainstorming day’n’night to prove all my doubts Whats next, golem week forever? No stab year? Fix lag and never touch wvw again, best solution for everyone (sadly).

Not surprising. To this day, they have never even acknowledged the problems of golem week.

Weekends are when people have time to play. Reset on Wednesday means the mid-week nightcappers have already determined the matchup by the weekend.

The effect of the scores on player enthusiasm should not be underestimated.

Right now, players from underdog servers make efforts to be only down by 5000 by the end of the weekend.

With Wednesday reset, you’re already down 30,000 by Friday night. There’s much less motivation to work hard to only be down by 35,000 by the end of the weekend.

Synosius.9876:

dancingmonkey.4902:

None the less, the WvW scoring week will have the same amount of days in it either way. it seems to me that way too many are over reacting, as well as putting to much artificial value on playing at reset.

you are right, it doesnt make any difference mechanically at all and it is indeed artificial value but friday reset has become our tradition. its more than just some arbitrary day just like a national anthem is more than just a song.

He’s not right at all. And it’s much more than tradition.

1. The weekends is when a lot of players actually have time to play.
2. Reset and the days right after reset are when matches are “meaningful” as the scores are 0-0-0 and everyone starts out on an even footing. This is when people have fun.
3. The days before reset are meaningles because the results have long since been determined. This is when people k-train.

You want to match 1 with 2, not 1 with 3.

PopeUrban.2578:

Lord Kuru.3685:

PopeUrban.2578:

Lord Kuru.3685:

You can see in all of OP’s examples that the way Anet works is they have a vision for how their game is supposed to be played, deviation from that vision is not supported — and in fact sometimes actively discouraged (remember the “you’re violating my game mode” dev?).

They’ve been operating like this for three years and it’s probably too much to expect them to change now.

That particular dev was completely right, and anet handled the problem of conflict between GvG and WvW in the best way possible. They created a space people could GvG without interfering with WvW ques and gameplay.

How is that not listening to to community?

That was damage control. There was ENORMOUS outrage after that incident and that forced Anet’s hand. Same thing with the multi-colored commander tags, by the way.

I don’t think the outrage was as enormous as you think it was tbh, or that it in any way “forced” anyone’s hand.

Certain GvGers got a thing they wanted, and like to think they got it because they made it happen. It’s cooler and edgier than saying “Ah, yeah, Anet was pretty decent about that.”

Anet was extremely cool about that. It would have been super valid of them to say “This is disruptive to WvW and we are going to start kicking people from WvW for it.” And they chose to support that community rather than squashing them.

I’m not saying everything Anet does is good and right and just, but this particular thing? They were being pretty good and just about it until they finished a “final solution”

LOL. No one’s stroking their ego because they “made it happen.” The OS arena wasn’t even close to a satisfactory solution.

The outrage was so great Chris Whiteside had to bite the bullet and actually interact with the WvW community by posting a response.

Superior Rune of the Trapper Recipe.

New fractals?

Dungeons are dead. Fractals are the new dungeons. And raids are the new fractals.

Remember how well the dungeon revamp went? Expect the same with their new focus on fractals.

That they would think this is a good idea shows they have no idea what they’re doing, or they just plain don’t care how this affects WvW. Probably both.

PopeUrban.2578:

Lord Kuru.3685:

You can see in all of OP’s examples that the way Anet works is they have a vision for how their game is supposed to be played, deviation from that vision is not supported — and in fact sometimes actively discouraged (remember the “you’re violating my game mode” dev?).

They’ve been operating like this for three years and it’s probably too much to expect them to change now.

That particular dev was completely right, and anet handled the problem of conflict between GvG and WvW in the best way possible. They created a space people could GvG without interfering with WvW ques and gameplay.

How is that not listening to to community?

That was damage control. There was ENORMOUS outrage after that incident and that forced Anet’s hand. Same thing with the multi-colored commander tags, by the way.

You can see in all of OP’s examples that the way Anet works is they have a vision for how their game is supposed to be played, deviation from that vision is not supported — and in fact sometimes actively discouraged (remember the “you’re violating my game mode” dev?).

They’ve been operating like this for three years and it’s probably too much to expect them to change now.

TurtleDragon.3108:

Lord Kuru.3685:

They can’t even get their one big centerpiece – the raid – out in time for HoT. Anet’s simply are not capable of bringing out more fractal content in the near future (or even medium future) — even if they wanted to .. which I have doubts about.

Delaying raids a few weeks happens in other MMOs as well to allow players to not feel like they have to rush through the xpac content to get ready for raids. If they were ready at release then all the serious raiders and world first racers would have to grind to max level (or in this case, grind out masteries) ASAP. Off the top of my head, Heavensward and Warlords of Draenor did it recently.

Or we can just be cynical and say it’s not ready lol, that works too I guess.

Only the first wing will be released around HoT. The rest “sometime in 2016.” So yes, they’re not ready.

Bezagron.7352:

Eight Samurai.6840:

Ooooh let’s also not forget that they have no new plans for making new fractal islands. So new system sure, but same dozen or so fractals you have been doing the last 2 years! With a static island per level they essentially made it almost impossible to add new maps without also changing the entire rotation.

Bar the last 3 years, going forward Arenanet have stated their supporting Raids & FOTM. And that dungeons are now not.

With this I would think new FOTM maps are incoming. Which is sonething they have talked about.

Talk about wishful thinking. There is zero evidence that any new fractals are coming. In fact, the “ravamp” looks exactly like a cover for that fact. Furthermore, they are struggling; struggling to get their one single raid out within a reasonable time after HoT’s launch. Do you really think they have the time/resources to make a new fractal map?

More likely, a year from now, we’ll see another fractal “revamp” where they’ll think up a couple new instabilities and increase the max level to 150.

rfdarko.4639:

They want to incentive people to do fractals instead of dungeons? Great, fine, that in itself is good. But that’s a false equivalence because while there are 20 something explorable dungeon paths, there will be three fractal SHARD dailies. So your daily instanced content experience post-HoT will consist of what is currently less than a single fractal run. After that, what? Raids? That’s gated to once a week.

Unless you’re selling high-level fractals or raids (assuming its possible) the only thing left to do that’s profitable is open world zerg. And realistically, that’s where they want and expect dungeon runners to go. They keep saying “fractal/raids” because that’s what we like to hear but three fractal shards a day and one raid a week is not going to keep people occupied.

Also, don’t forget that there’s only going to be one single raid for the forseeable future. And they aren’t even able to get that out in time for HoT’s launch. To think playtime is just going to shift from dungeons to fractals and raids is ridiculous.

Pandabro.8743:

Lord Kuru.3685:

So a big chunk of the endgame will be lost (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Anet will replace that dungeon content with new fractals and raids).

I cannot fathom that Anet would shift rewards to a new area and not have plans to add additional support to that area. It’s pretty clear they have some sort of plan to regularly add new fractals. We just don’t have any details on that aspect yet.

It’s pretty clear they have no plan to regularly add new fractals. Hence the “revamp” which is just a rearrangement of current fractals.

They can’t even get their one big centerpiece – the raid – out in time for HoT. Anet’s simply are not capable of bringing out more fractal content in the near future (or even medium future) — even if they wanted to .. which I have doubts about.

Jerus.4350:

TurtleDragon.3108:

reapex.8546:

TurtleDragon.3108:

Here’s another problem I have with dungeons instead of fractals:

Yesterday I was teaching a RL friend who came back into the game some instanced content. I can easily take him into any dungeon and know exactly what path I’m doing, as well as having no AR or gear requirements. Can’t say the same for fractals as I’m limited to low level ones and also don’t know what fractals im getting other than swamp. I could bring him into a high level one and 4 man it, but that obviously wouldn’t be very fun for either of us.

Time to learn new content, I guess.

Why are you telling me that? My point is that Fractals and Raids have a high barrier to entry for new and returning players to the game. Fractals have gear requirement (and raids too, to an extent) and Raids are obviously not meant for new players and have full ascended gear as a recommendation. Dungeons filled that void of 5 man content for players that cannot commit to a raid team or do not have the gear for fractals. I can’t bring my casual friends into progression raiding or lvl 50+ fractals.

Absolutely.

Dungeons are your intro to group play, from there you get better and enter the more intricate dungeons (arah/aether), and then from there fractals are within your grasp to start and as you get into the game and get geared higher level fractals. All culminating in the highest challenge, Raids.

There has to be a starting point and that is dungeons.

Dungeons are hardly a prerequisite for fractals. New players will go directly to fractals because everyone will tell them dungeons aren’t worth the reward.

So a big chunk of the endgame will be lost (let’s not fool ourselves into thinking Anet will replace that dungeon content with new fractals and raids).

In the end players will get bored more quickly and thus move on to other games more quickly.

They’ve already explicitly stated that they have no interest in improving dungeons at all, so this is not going to happen.

It’s very possible the dungeon nerf is part of a bigger plan to starve, of gold, those players who only have the core game… “incentivising” the purchace of HoT.

If so, they have no reason to increase fractal rewards.

Enko.6123:

Think of it this way, you don’t report him, he will definitely not be banned. Report him and at least there’s a chance that he will.

On the other hand, reporting takes time and effort. You have to weigh that against the chances of action by Anet.

ZERONIX.5873:

I don’t mind grind or wvw but I absolutly refuse to do pvp never have liked pvp never will in any game.

I think the way it’s usually done is people will (roughly) AFK through the PvP match while they watch TV (or something similar), so you wouldn’t really be doing PvP.

It seems they think revamping the structure of fractals (raise level cap, instability tweaks, etc.) from time to time is a good substitute for creating new ones.

Risingashes.8694:

ANets intention is clearly to move gold rewards from dungeon to fractals.

This is set in stone.

So with that in mind, how can dungeon rewards be improved to continue to properly compensate people for running them beyond achievements and token based weapons/armor?

I think the entire point of the nerf was to not properly compensate people for running dungeons in order to disincentivise dungeon running.

Eight Samurai.6840:

Rising Dusk.2408:

If you know the player names of the group who did this, please send in a ticket to Customer Support through this area of the website with as much information as you can provide, including when the run happened, when it was sold, and so forth. They will be suspended and/or banned for it if they’ve done it enough.

Lord Kuru.3685:

There’s a guy infamous for stealing other people’s instances. He’s still around after three years.

Feel free to do what I suggested above as well; evidence helps. If you don’t want to / don’t care, send the evidence to me and I’ll make sure the right people see it.

I think that person he’s talking about is more than likely someone else. Back when the old dungeon system was in place where there was a party leader of a dungeon party, there was someone who would ‘buy’ an arah path from an LFG, somehow take over the party, and kick everyone else to become the party leader and sell all the spots for all the profit. With the new party system there is no more party leader and you need 3 votes to kick someone. More than likely that’s not him but who knows.

oh yeah… almost for sure OP’s guy is someone else… my point was that this guy was super infamous and yet was never banned (I see him online sometimes) so why bother with reports?

On the other hand, I’m talking about sending reports through official channels: I didn’t know it was possible to send reports directly to Rising Dusk … maybe that’s worth a try.

There’s a guy infamous for stealing other people’s instances. He’s still around after three years.

milumilu.1759:

anyone saying that gw2 is a grinfest should play certain korean games for a year xP

Just because there are other games that are more of a grindfest than gw2 doesn’t make gw2 any less of a grindfest.

I wonder where they think all the gameplay time currently spent on dungeons is going to go? Fractals? Raids?

Fernling.1729:

Their confidence in the new HoT content is worrisome. Kind of sad that they have to do this in order to ensure people will choose the new content over the old.

This. It’s pretty clear that they think HoT can’t stand on its own merits… that they have to nerf the core game in order to make HoT appealing.

It’s a really bad sign.

“Farming” dungeons? With once-a-day runs? Can that be called “farming?”

Sounds to me like this is just a way to reduce income from the core game in order to “encourage” people to buy HoT. If a SW nerf comes soon, I’d say this is confirmed.

“For the sake of the economy” is just a cover for reducing rewards in the core game to push people to buy HoT. Not a surprising tatic with the F2P and expansion model.

… be salvaged. Don’t put good runes on them.

Jayne.9251:

I’ll have you know there was no sucking up on my part Mr.K.

I was just being my usual pollyanna and actually looking at this new thing like a puzzle to be solved.

Oddly I had this weird dream about you last night sir. I was on your doorstep, rang the bell, you opened it, and I started singing “The sun’ll come out tomorrow! Betchya bottom dollah that tomorra! There’ll be sun!”

And then you slammed the door on me.

Annie! Where do people know it from these days?