There’s not such thing as servers anymore as far as PvE is concerned.
You could farm dungeons to make gold then.
LOL!
You (OP) are asking Anet to either pay for some sort of voice comms service, or write one of their own. How likely do you really think that is? Here’s a hint: not a chance.
I’ve seen a small influx of new players but nothing like what was expected. Outside of raids by the servers big guilds, I think most of the people I’ve met have been newish to WvW. Some were solo, some came in small guilds.
On the other hand, I think the biggest reason on my server that population has dropped is guild halls. We were already pared down to a dedicated core that was largely willing to stomach the new BLs if we didn’t like them…but we also really want to help gain strength as a server which means tons of guild hall grinding.
The disillusionment with the guild halls has been more crippling than the disillusionment with the new maps.
+1
If players had been able to “play” with stuff right away it would have mitigated the problems to an extent. As it is players began either leaving the game or grinding PvE, and then leaving the game.
This is probably a big factor.
When you take out all the people who went to grind PvE, all the people who quit the BLs, and all the people who just plain quit the game, the population fell to below the point where good gameplay could be had.
So as those coming from PvE trickled back in weeks later, the gameplay just wasn’t there anymore and they didn’t stick around for long. In this way, the population never got back to the critical level where good WvW gameplay can happen.
At this point, how many potential returnees are there left, still grinding PvE? I suspect not enough to bring populations back to the critical threshold even if they all came back at once.
Of course, even if the PvE grind requirement didn’t exist, all the other “features” of HoT probably would have done WvW in… just a bit slower.
I understand the idea that server identity and pride sound unimportant but they absolutely are important. Look what happened with automatic upgrades, it takes that feeling of success away when you manage to defend something because there was no work involved in getting it upgraded. Thus, a lot of people have stopped caring to defend at all.
And when no one cares about defending, the fights disappear. This is something that the people who only care about “fights” don’t understand. The PPT players and fights players need each other. If you kill one off, the other group will die as well.
And at this late point in the game’s life, if you kill servers, the PPT players are going to leave the game.
Why do you keep missing queue? Is it that hard to pay attention to the game? If you’re getting up to grab a drink or something turn the volume up so you can hear the warning sounds. Not hard.
From his post, it sounds like the was online for 3 hours, but only get 3 queue pops. In which case, I’d give him a pass on having to pay attention the whole time.
WvW upgrades we’ve already unlocked now need to be unlocked again behind massive gold and time gating that only the largest guilds can accomplish. My kitten hurts from how hard we got screwed on this.
If you don’t have HoT you can’t even get the upgrades you once had.
Well it was kind of an “Exploit” so I’m glad they’re getting it fixed in a timely manner. <3
Remember golem rush week?
Dungeon gold was also heavily nerfed (66% less now). Fractals: you can’t get some of the dailies unless you have HoT.
So your experience may be degraded from what you saw before you quit.
I read that over and over again… what is so important about that? Yesterday, I reached the mark of two months playtime and I accumulated enough gold to buy enough gems on the tp to afford Living Story Chapter 2 and thanks to people who don’t run dungeons any more, because “it isn’t worth it any more”, I haven’t yet had the chance to see a single dungeon from the inside.
People will play really fun content even if it has little rewards (see pre-HoT WvW). People will grind really awful content if it has really good rewards (see SW, or HoT in general).
Dungeons are at a point where the amount of fun provided does not make up for the severe lack of rewards.
It’s going to be F2P (no P2W, they get their money off many costumes)
Anet claimed GW2 would be like this also, and look how it turned out.
I already played BnS in Korea and Russian client, Alpha and Closed Beta on BnS EU and I can assure you its F2P and non-P2W
That’s good to hear, I hope it stays that way. It’s just that this experience of GW2 going P2W makes me a bit wary of the B2P or F2P model.
It’s going to be F2P (no P2W, they get their money off many costumes)
Anet claimed GW2 would be like this also, and look how it turned out.
Definitely won’t happen. The reason for the OP new specs is to push players to buy HoT. This idea runs completely counter to that.
Has that style of gameplay been completely killed off?
A lot of the “fights” people underestimate the importance of PPT players’ roles in creating the environment for fights.
There’s some pretty interesting symbiosis between the fights players and PPT players that makes WvW fun for both. But if you merge into factions, you’re going to lose the PPT players. And a lot of the fights will go with them.
A lot of the “fights” people underestimate the importance of PPT players’ roles in creating the environment for fights.
There’s some pretty interesting symbiosis between the fights players and PPT players that makes WvW fun for both.
A lot of stuff from the core game have been nerfed, seemingly to “encourage” people to buy HoT.
Guild upgrades, for example (particularly WvW: you have lost all access to WvW upgrades). Dungeon gold was also heavily nerfed (66% less now). Fractals: you can’t get some of the dailies unless you have HoT.
So your experience may be degraded from what you saw before you quit.
My own experience says that for me B2P held me in the system longer than I would have tolerated ANet as a subscriber. However, ANet also did not collect gem sales from me that would equal a 1:1 with what I may have paid in a subscription model. I’m not sure which model would have capitalized on me more.
I do suspect that I’m a bad example for both models, in terms of monetization, because I have a low tolerance for displeasure in subscription, and a high resistance to impulse purchase of vanity and convenience items. Neither model succeeds against me when the product is failing its purpose more often than not in my judgement. In other words, I’m not the ideal customer. I’m a hard sell.
You’re not really getting a free ride though. You’re kind of working for Anet as a “playmate” to their real customers: those who exchange cash for gems. This is an integral role because probably only a small minority of people do buy gems, and if only they were around, the game world would be too empty and deserted.
That’s why cash shops that give big gameplay advantages are so dangerous: if you drive off the “freeloaders,” the actual customers have no one to play with and they leave also.
I think HoT is a problem in this way. HoT players have an enormous advantage over core players (OP new professions, guild upgrades, new gear sets, gold-making-opportunities, etc.), and that’s going to drive a lot of core-only players to leave the game. But that empties the game world more — at a time when Anet can’t afford the game world to be more empty.
Among the community of current GW2 players, there is surprisingly little talk about former GW2 players, such that I suspect that most current and former GW2 players simply aren’t maintaining relationships.
I wonder if this is a GW2 specific failing, or a failing of the whole idea that B2P games can easily entice old players to return because it’s “free.”
Probably a bit of both, but the latter reminds me of when an old girlfriend wants you back but you’ve already forgotten about her (and if you’re smart, you know that whatever broke you up before is going to do it again).
Frog Fractions! That’ll fix the server problem.
I still have contact to some players who left for TESO or other games long ago. Some were still interested in GW2/wvw and asked me about HoT and the new maps and..
Well.. what could I say? Empty deserts with PvE-stuff all around, k-train on EBG and everything below T2 is dead. You think they will return? ^^
The last good decision was removing the orbs…
That’s interesting.
The general thought before HoT was that tons of people would come back on launch day to check out the game: simply because the B2P model means they can do so for free, so they have nothing to lose.
But it seems despite that, people still waited to see how HoT would be received before deciding to reinstall (or not). And when it landed with a big thud, they never even bothered.
Perhaps power of B2P being able to bring players back to the game after quitting has been overestimated? Or at least: Anet so disillusioned their WvW customers that even the power of B2P couldn’t make up for it?
If fractals are the new dungeons then they’ll add one more new fractal to the game (while removing another to make room for it). Then they’ll completely abandon the content once their next new shiny project comes along.
Remember before the release of HoT, many WvW players expected a massive influx of players that would come back to the game mode upon HoT’s release. People thought this would go some ways towards fixing the population balance issue. And one of the big worries was hot to retain these players once they did come back.
We now know there was no massive influx (to say the least). So why was this not predicted? We did have a preview of the new BL, and though people didn’t like it, there was no expectation that it’d be completely empty of players.
Was it the changes to guilds and WvW upgrades? The autoupgrades? The huge grind required to play the new professions?
Or were these all small mistakes that, when put together, created an unpredictable perfect storm of fail?
I have no doubt that PvP is growing, but growth does not equal majority. They recently said that since F2P they are getting 3.1 million unique log ins a month.
IIRC that was for the month after it went free to play ie its not an ongoing figure. I would think the November figure would be significantly lower.
They’ve been caught being disingenuous with stats before. A while back, they said WvW was doing great; then it turned out they were including all the PvE-leveling-karma trainers in EotM.
So that “3.1 million logins a month” is probably not the “per month” thing that it sounds like. It’s probably, in one particular month (when it went f2p, they got 3.1 million logins that month).
Grind is optional
I never understood this response yet I hear it all the time.
Yes of course the grind is optional. This is a video game, the whole thing is optional. How is this relevant to the discussion?
The grind is optional in ALL MMO’s. You never have to grind if you don’t want to. But compared to the optional grind in other MMO’s GW2 has much more grind for a similar level of achievement.
At least based on my personal experience with SWG, SWTOR, WoW, Rift, LOTRO, WildStar and GW2.
Because of progression
In other games sometimes a grind is needed for you to progress
If you want to play wow now, raid its latest content, raid leaders will ask you for a legendary ring. If you don’t have it then no raid for you <———- Mandatory grindIn this game nope nothing like that
Raiding WoW latest content is optional. So that’s not mandatory grind.
It does not impact me in the least. I do not participate in PvP, if they want to use that as an advertising method good on them.
Getting twisted out of shape by things that you don’t do is a waste of time.
Except it does impact you. The money and dev time required to support sPvP and esports could have gone towards creating content that perhaps you do participate in.
They measure your progress in PvP. Seems the fewer you have the better because apparently, if you win 4v5, you lose pips.
There was some dev information that they would not add raids to the lfg as they intended raids to be done by established groups, not by pug’s (or should that be “purs” “pick-up raid squad”?)
I dont understand them then as there are many good players out there, and a pug turns into an organized one with ts when they know tacs. Its like anet doesnt believe in their own playerbase, that we dont have the ability to adapt and progress as individuals, if they go along with the quoted sentiment.
Seems they’re trying to attract new customers that are used to more “traditional” MMOs. So they need raids.
But raids are “supposed” to be really hard content. Hard enough that pugs should be unable to do them — otherwise it makes the game look bad. And if you think your raid is too hard for pugs, why would you create an LFG for it?
Of course, reality is that the raids are puggable, and lots of pugs want to do them, and so no LFG is a problem.
Why not? Because WvW ranks are completely meaningless. And because Anet is desperate for players to notice their failed esports: hence the obnoxious icons, while on the other hand, they don’t really care that WvW exists, so why show it off?
Colin said that the marketing team said that the esport thing brings in new players and that it is pretty successful at doing that. If that is true I have nothing against it, more players is good.
Well, he’s certainly not going to say it’s been a total fail and that they’re throwing good money after bad even though by all indications that is the case.
They need the grind to give the illusion of content because they didn’t create enough content.
If the rumors are true and the get rid of servers, then you’ll have wasted your money transferring.
For a game whose endgame is supposed to be cosmetic upgrades to your character, it seems pretty foolish to gate something like Legendary armor behind something you expect only 5% of players to complete.
If the rumors are true:
don’t waste your money transferring now.
I hope this kitten is just kitten:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3uznbc/major_wvw_overhaul_colin_j_ft_e/There are some bad things mentioned in this.
The OP there even admits the information is outdated, and he might have misheard some things.
Except judging from Anet’s past missteps, the entire theory seems extremely plausible.
I think it’s hilarious just how badly they understand some things, such as the aura change. They were supposed to be obvious and easy to read, otherwise people would miss them being up.
Seriously this war on visuals has got to stop. I want to play on pretty MMO not a failing esport.
How hard did they nerf the auras?
I could have sworn they claimed to have already done this several patches ago.
Don’t like ‘em? Then don’t do ‘em. Simples.
I’ve never been in a dungeon, a fractal or a raid, and my time in HoT was very short-lived but I’m enjoying the rest of the game just fine.
You don’t need those rewards to enjoy yourself. You do, um, play for enjoyment, don’t you?Indeed, I do. But tell me, how many times can you do the same fractals, dungeons or PvE events before getting bored? If they don’t add new content for existing game modes, then where is the fun?
If the only new end game content takes the form of a game mode I don’t like, while the game modes I do like are ignored or worse, intentionally abandoned, then how am I meant to have fun? X__x
This is exactly why so many people, who clearly aren’t the target audience of raids, are attempting them (or attempting to join LFGs). There’s simply nothing for people to do outside of grinding for this or that.
And they have a miserable experience — after they’re not the target audience.
So a lot of us think that WvW is very low on the priority list for A-Net because we don’t spend near the amount of $/gold on the gem store… amirite?
Why the kitten haven’t A-Net introduced WvW exclusive armor and weapon skins yet?
Cost 400 gems plus X-amount wvw tokens… yadayadayada
That’s just a made up myth. Has there been any official statement that that’s actually the case? I don’t think so.
WvW players are generally poorer than PvE players. The rewards for WvW are miniscule in comparison to PvE. Yet WvW players do buy skins, and other gemstore items: you always see them in WvW immediately upon release. So I think an argument can be made that WvW players might spend more on gems per capita than PvE players.
If you read about the New Coke fiasco, you’ll note that Coca-Cola actually realized there was a problem and acted on it really fast.
It doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case here.
Some good thoughts. Hopefully someone who’s developing a WvW-type game will see this post and consider his ideas (or maybe some player here is a future-dev will remember this post when the time comes).
Under that theory, Anet thinks there are enough other things to do that those who will not do raids will still have plenty to keep them occupied.
This is the problem. There isn’t enough to do for those who aren’t in the official raid target audience. Yeah, there’s grinding for this and that, but that gets old really fast.
So these players only have raids to get out of the grind. But they weren’t designed for them, hence all the “I got kicked because I was wearing full knights gear” threads.
November 17 update notes say:
“Players will now earn personal rewards on guild rushes as soon as they cross the finish line.”
Anyone actually got personal rewards when they cross the finish line? Also, aren’t they called races now?
People not posting on forums: Playing the game mode.
LOL. This hackneyed argument. And it’s not even remotely true either.
As for T4, it’s dead. No already queue in EB at 10:00pm pacific time (and of course no queue in the BLs — and that’s reset night, weekend, with a new server in the matchup.
You’re likely to not have the stable WvW playerbase back until all the newness of every other style in the game wears off, plus Wintersday.
The new PvE content argument. What about the fact that there’s new WvW content also (the BL)? Shouldn’t that be a counter to the new PvE? Shouldn’t WvW players be eager to spend time playing the shiny new BL?
They’re not. It’s a total disaster.
Since when did GW2 become a Hardcore MMO?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Lord Kuru.3685
Much of this game is still as scrub-friendly as you can get.
Hey, anyone got a fire extinguisher for this pointlessly inflammatory comment?
Thx.
That’s about as truthful as it gets … there is so little content in GW2 core open world that requires anyone to actually think about what they are doing or what build they use. I get why Anet did it and I get why Anet made HoT the way they did.
The fact is that without that challenging content, the game just gets boring, even for casual players. It just becomes a more mature version of some game for young children. The only bright spots for challenging are the instanced team stuff. That’s a very sad amount content that appeals to anyone wanting more than to be able to play while watching Netflix.
The fact remains that if you still want that casual experience, it’s still all there and lots of it. I think the reality is that casuals are complaining that HoT is too hard for them because they are bored with core because they know it’s too easy. So they just want more of the same easy content to watch Netflix through, just newer.
Perhaps the core stuff was too easy, but with HoT, they shifted too far towards the “hard”/time consuming content. The grind now is real. Raids are inaccessible for casuals.
Is someone going to enjoy grinding for mats the entire time they do have free time to play? Casuals leave and the game is dead because it’s not hardcore enough for more serious gamers.
Since when did GW2 become a Hardcore MMO?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Lord Kuru.3685
A huge factor in the draw of the game (pre-HoT) was that it was casual.
Someone with a job and family could log in despite having limited free time and feel like they accomplished something (do some map completion, do some dungeons, kill a few foes in WvW while following the zerg).
Someone who has a lot more free time to play may think the game was “easy” because of this, but that was precisely the point.
But with HoT and the new grind associated to all aspects of it, the casuals don’t feel like they’re accomplishing anything when they do have time to log in.
Anet has basically turned their backs on their main customer base. So the question is, will this “new” version of GW2 get enough “serious” players to replace all the casuals who quit?
Unlikely.
The problem isn’t that you want to play a tank build. The problem is that you’re expecting people to take you when they’re currently looking for DPS. Maybe you’ll find a group looking for a tank and you can play your guardian with them. But if you wanna get in raids you should be flexible and play multiple roles.
No, I am not “expecting” anything actually, and I’m pretty dang flexible
The “problem” as you put it is that there are more players than not demanding “15k+ APs Fully Ascended Berserker Gear, to be PINGED to the squad leader before he even admits you into the party.” THAT’S the problem.
That to me is going passed being an Elite and going straight to Elitist Mode. The moment these start adding specie restriction to the mix, they’ll have graduated cracking whips.
Aside from the AP requirement, which is somewhat understandable (see below),
that’s the gear needed to complete the content. Without nine zerkers (“condi zerkers” included), you can’t beat the raid. It’s as simple as that.
The raid leader doesn’t want someone sneaking in with gear that’s going to cause the raid to fail, wasting 10 people’s worth of time. And people will try to do that, hence the gear pinging.
As for the AP requirement: The raid leader obviously would like a way to measure potential squad members’ experience with the game. AP, while not being a great metric for that, is the best available — it’s better than nothing.
Of course DPS meters would the issue as it’d be easy to see who’s freeloading, but whatever casuals who haven’t left the game due to HoT’s grind are REALLY not going to like that.
There are a few different things that require HoT in subtle ways some just to make it a little “easier”. For instance Toxic Spores, 250 needed for a recipe +1 gold or HoT vendor 25k Karma.
Seriously? What else is there?
Many of us know that the Guild Halls created an aspect where guild members could go and joke around in their own instance. Your guild hall is what you make of it. However, after capturing our guild hall I noticed several Guild Upgrades that we had earned before the expansion that were not automatically included.
1. +5 supply on claimed camps. It’s one of the last upgrades to WvW war room.
2. Claiming period. Why does this even need to be earned? But if that was a simple unlock then all the pre-expansion bonuses should have been unlocked at the same time.
3. The stat bonuses and other enhancements from claiming. We spent “Influence” on them. If you’re going to make us spend favor and materials on them I want the “influence” my guild spent earning them pre-expansion back so I can purchase more Favor in the new system. My guild was and is small and every point we spent was hard to earn pre-expansion. We had all the WvW guild enhancements unlocked pre-expansion.On a side note: Guild Catas are only bling now. You ruined the tactical advantage of making them by upping the supply cost to superior cata level. Pointless to even make them.
Yep what happened to not discarding what players had earned prior to HOT (I think Mike O’Brien said that)?
Did he actually say that? Because that makes it worse when they did exactly that.
People not posting on forums: Playing the game mode.
LOL. This hackneyed argument. And it’s not even remotely true either.
As for T4, it’s dead. No already queue in EB at 10:00pm pacific time (and of course no queue in the BLs — and that’s reset night, weekend, with a new server in the matchup.