Guild Wars 2

Zalavaaris.5329:

People keep talking like wow is a bad thing. WoW with gw2 combat and the system that allows anyone to fulfill any role would be the perfect game.

You forgot the bit about not having to sacrifice your first born just to get a drop you need to even attempt an instance other than the one you’ve been doing for two months.

I really think anet should just buckle down and make a release schedule and stick to it so everyone stops complaining.

eg. “we make a release every 2 weeks in the following repeating order: PvP, Raid, Open World, Dungeon,WvW”

Then we can stop the continual posts about “but X got Y and N never gets Z” because everyone will know exactly which patches address their favorite mode.

beware the grizwhorl

Oh.

Well at least I already have a buttload of obsidian shards I guess!

phys.7689:

PopeUrban.2578:

phys.7689:

Endless Soul.5178:

I think it’s sad that patience seems to be a lost virtue these days.

if something doesnt make people more interested in the first few hours, thats basically a pretty big fail. Patience is for tasks, not entertainment.

I get it. I don’t play PvP in this game as I prefer a higher stakes style of PvP and find the sPvP arena style boring, and WvW fighting over things I have no investment or ownership in tedious. I prefer more old school UO or EVE style PvP, basically, I like knowing pvp means risking losing stuff. I’ll probably never really enjoy GW2’s PvP

Most of those games also have PvE that’s not particularly immersive or challenging, so I look elsewhere for my PvE.

GW2 PvE is highly story/lore centric. If its particular brand of charm doesn’t quite grab you in the first few hours, it’s pretty unlikely that it’ll hold your attention no matter how challenging future content is. Personally I’m happy they’re adding more challenging content while trying to keep the things I like about GW2 PvE (The exploration and ongoing story) but if you’re looking more for a sort of less twitchy and more tactical thing I doubt it’ll have staying power for you.

Different strokes for different folks is all. Nothin’ wrong with that.

you do realize you can no longer actually do the story line till around level 10, and the content designed for the first 10 levels is generally some of the least engaging content lore wise? It was designed as being side things to accompany the personal story which starts out being the main narrative, while the initial hearts/events are fluff. Later on you get more involved lore chain events and the story is more spaced out, but starter zones is like kill some wasps, water some cows kill random bandits.

it used to be, by the time you were level 9, you had basically done the whole first story arc. Now, all you ve done at level 9 is water cows, kill random bandits, help plug some walls etc.

My first (and still main) character was a human in queensdale and I found a lot of story right there. I got to know about the war between the humans and centaurs, some funny stuff about skritt, a little mini-dungeon.

Just because it’s not a railroad doesn’t mean the story isn’t there. Queensdale might be a zone that seems boring now, but as an introduction to the world it was pretty effective. People had problems and I helped them, I learned that bandits and centaurs are a big problem there, met some interesting people, etc.

It felt like a place, basically, and because it felt like a place I wanted to explore it and see what was going on in that place. Event chains get boring after a while, but when you’re dropped off in a fresh zone knowing nothing, that idea that things can just happen in unexpected ways or places was something at leat I found to be lots of fun.

I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what was going on in pretty much any zone of WoW, or everquest, what those places were about, what the people in them cared about, or what their roles in the world was. I can do that in just about every zone in GW2 there, and usually with several anecdotes about “oh yeah, that’s the guy that’s always trying to research the tombs” or “that’s the lady that owns the orchard” or “centaurs like to raid this place for beer”

Sure, maybe it’s not what does it for everyone, but I found it pretty immersive and effective as a storytelling mechanism to get me to see the world in a similar way to how my character might see it if he were a real person exploring there.

Agreed. They tried their absolute hardest to make the open world the primary arena for all endgame content, but in the end they ran in to two major issues.

You can’t balance encounters for challenge when you also have to ensure that small groups of players can’t disrupt the event, and you can’t reliably scale threat or enemy numbers enough to maintain that threat in the face of a whole map full of enemies.

Silverwastes is their best attempt, which is a massive modification of an approach they tried with the marionette. Force the zerg to split up and cooperate by default.

The problem is if you force enough splitting that a whole map’s worth of players will find things individually challenging, then you design an event that’s impossible to complete with less than a full map. This, you have to strike a middle balance that will invariably become trivial once the map scales up to a full population, as is the case with silverwastes.

To design truly challenging content, you have to pretty much have a general idea of the required number of players, and be able to balance around that target number. Instance scaling works pretty well for this reason. You can pretty easily balance something when you know the minimum and maximum number of players, and those two numbers are pretty close together.

Scaling just plain doesn’t work in the open world for anything you’d want to be “raid level” challenging. it’s an awesome mechanism for general events, since the whole map spawns multiple events at one time, and there’s more incentive for doing nearby events than there is to try and pile the entire map on one event at a time.

phys.7689:

Endless Soul.5178:

I think it’s sad that patience seems to be a lost virtue these days.

if something doesnt make people more interested in the first few hours, thats basically a pretty big fail. Patience is for tasks, not entertainment.

I get it. I don’t play PvP in this game as I prefer a higher stakes style of PvP and find the sPvP arena style boring, and WvW fighting over things I have no investment or ownership in tedious. I prefer more old school UO or EVE style PvP, basically, I like knowing pvp means risking losing stuff. I’ll probably never really enjoy GW2’s PvP

Most of those games also have PvE that’s not particularly immersive or challenging, so I look elsewhere for my PvE.

GW2 PvE is highly story/lore centric. If its particular brand of charm doesn’t quite grab you in the first few hours, it’s pretty unlikely that it’ll hold your attention no matter how challenging future content is. Personally I’m happy they’re adding more challenging content while trying to keep the things I like about GW2 PvE (The exploration and ongoing story) but if you’re looking more for a sort of less twitchy and more tactical thing I doubt it’ll have staying power for you.

Different strokes for different folks is all. Nothin’ wrong with that.

Ferguson.2157:

sephiroth.4217:

I got about 30+ Risen Priest Of Balthazars

You can mystic forge those.

Since when?

Last time I tried you couldn’t.

So I deleted the stack because I couldn’t sell them.

I’m very happy that they settled on 10 players. I was worried when they posted that ad for raid content designers that we’d just be getting instanced open world blob fights.

The open world stuff is fun when you just want to cruise around and collect free loot for no effort or just enjoy the little event chain stories and feel immersed in the world, and I love the ongoing LS and personal story solo instances and the season 2 mastery achievements, but a major sadface my guild always had was a lack of stuff to do as a group. It got really disheartening to constantly have to say “sorry, group’s full”

10 players is a spot on perfect amount, but I hope they follow it up with the same storytelling solo instances, fun to kitten surf open world content and a few 5 man dungeons as well.

I have sorely missed the tactical small group challenges that made the original guild wars stick for so long, and hope to see them return designed around the fast paced GW2 combat I’ve come to love.

Kevan.8912:

Healix.5819:

Kevan.8912:

I feel that just “skill, strategy and coordination” is something rarely seen in MMOs.

Basic skill, strategy and coordination is required in all raids. Skill is to not stand in fire, strategy is planning to not stand in fire and coordination is to get everyone to move out of the fire at the same time.

But in most (or all, maybe) MMO’s, a certain good gear is required for endgame content.
And that gears requires hours of farm, grind, craft, etc.

And just to make a refer. to the old-but-still-good argument about manifesto, gear_treadmill and so on…if there is the introduction of any new infusion, it IS a treadmill.
And “mandatory” grind

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but GW2 is not “most MMOs” kind of on purpose.
That’s why they designed masteries in stead of new tiers of gear. I’d expect to grind XP and hero points, but would be very suprised to see raid-specific gear progression. Fractals are “the gear progression dungeon” in GW2. They specifically added the agony mechanic to create a place where there was gear progression for players that liked it that didn’t lock people out of content. Look back at the original fractal release stuff.

They’ve stated raids are tied to masteries. This means your good gear is still good, but your current L80 character with no masteries trained might not be enough. If you want a grind to complain about, I’d say to warm up for complaining about an Xp grind, but not a gear grind.

Has it occured to you that that might be a level 1 arena? You do know that upgrading buildings is a big part of the new guild hall system right?

phys.7689:

PopeUrban.2578:

It’s a kind of “choose your own adventure” difficulty scheme. Early on it’s very easy, but by the time you get to the end of the main line, do dungeons, fractals, etc. you’re going to see the challenge creep up.

Don’t try to think about it like WoW, where leveling is the core experience. Think of leveling as the tutorial that’s more about exploration than challenge, and the instances and level 80 areas, instances, world bosses, etc. as the challenge.

haha this is a funny perspective. GW2 was actually supposed to the endgame begins at level 1. Your basically saying leve 80 is when the fun starts.

Not at all!

I had tons of fun exploring the world, getting in over my head with crap gear, and walking in to upleveled areas while leveling. I had just as much fun exploring the zones I didn’t level up in for world completion once I hit level 80.

The fun doesn’t start at 80, but a lot of the difficulty ramp absolutely does. I’d actually say the GW2 leveling experience was one of the most enjoyable ways to level I’ve encountered. Some people might prefer to be directed around the map in a straight line, but I really enjoyed the event and hearts way of doing it in stead, and commonly found myself get distracted by a neat event or heart on the way to a personal story step and let hours pass before I remembered that I originally set out to do a story instance.

That said there are absolutely challenging zones and content as you level, but I wouldn’t call it particularly brutal. There are a lot of rough events and areas, but there are just as many easy ways around them as well.

I think, really, that GW2’s leveling experience is a lot more about exploring and getting to know the world than it is conquering it. The voice work and events and stuff are designed to make it a more immersive than gamey experience that slowly moves toward mechanical complexity.

I think that’s a good thing, as the leveling content we have now is all the leveling content that’s ever going to exist, and that content does a pretty good job of introducing you to the basic mechanics and lore of the world while occasionally throwing bit of a curveball at you in the form of some group event or random champ or whatever that breaks you out of your comfort zone.

dane.4638:

PopeUrban.2578:

Ghosttalon.2416:

What are you talking about? As a consumer who’s bought a product people have every right to complain. There’s no “entitlement” to be had, we paid the product and therefore we are by every means allowed to be angry when a company does makes it free to play. It de-values the game for the old players, makes them feel as if they only paid to have some extra perks rather than have exclusive access to the game. Of course A-net knows that this backlash would have been created, they are prepared to take that risk because they know not all old players will leave and even if they do, the new ones would still most likely bring them profit. They think that they can earn back a portion of their fanbase with a mediocre armor skin but unfortunatly that doesn’t cut it. Nothing A-net can do will make me regain their trust.

You do have a right to be angry. The rest of us also have just as much of a right to be annoyed with your anger.

This entire argument stems from the idea that having bought the game at release somehow makes you deserving of special treatment. That you’re worth significantly more than a new player. Dude. You’ve had a full fledged MMO to play for 3 years. You can’t sell your account. What value have you lost exactly?

You’re saying the price you paid at release wasn’t worth the live events and time you’ve been able to play the game with no additional cost? Really? It’s not like it’s been six months since release. This is three years later

It doesn’t make sense to me. Only highly prized luxury items are intended to appreciate in value over time. Every other product depreciates in value. That’s just basic economics.

Every time I see this complaint I just wonder “did these people forget they’ve been playing a subscription free game for three years with a mass of free content and updates, roughly half of which is unplayable by new players because it was all live events?”

You’re acting like you bought land, or precious metals, or something that operates on a completely different set of economic rules.

There is nothing in what was said that implies that anyone thinks theyre special and entitled to special treatment. You completely changed it up to make it sound ridiculous. Expecting to not pay the amount that people have to pay for the full core game + HoT content if they already bought the core content is not the same as wanting special treatment. In fact its the opposite as they don’t want to be the special ones that pay for the core game twice! And before you say theyre not paying for the core game again I will preempt you by simply saying when you pay what they charge for HoT + core and you already bought core, you are in fact paying for core twice. Noone wants HoT for free so please stop saying that. We just want to pay for the expansion and not for the whole game over again which means we pay LESS not nothing at all! Btw I have no problem with the ftp model. I think its good for the game with the restrictions in play. I just doent think that when you do pay for HoT that vets should have to pay what is essentially a full package when we already bought at least half of that package.

Again, core costs nothing now. It used to cost money, but now it doesn’t. You’re not paying for core twice. You’re upset that core was made free, and you feel as if you’re entitled to a discount because you bought core a while back before it was offered for free.

The economic model here is pretty clear. After three years anet decided they don’t feel like it’s reasonable to charge for core any more, so they’re not. You enjoyed the game during a time when it was locked behind a purchase price. That is what you paid for, and that is what you got.

I understand you feel like you deserve a discount based upon your previous purchase history. The thing is, you’re on even footing with everyone as of the release of HoT. There is no longer a purchase price for core. You’re paying the same for HoT as a brand new player.

I realize I can’t convince you of the reality that core no longer costs money and you are not paying for a bundle, you are paying for HoT but that’s exactly what happening.

I’m sure we’ll be having this conversation again when the next expansion releases, and some of the people that started playing around HoT release also feel they’re owed some form of discount.

Now, if the argument is HoT should cost less, that’s a different story. I think it’s a perfectly fine price point but I realize there are some who think it’s a bit high. That’s not the viewpoint I’m disputing though.

You already got massive value for your purchase price of of the core game.

Dislike:
DPS races against timers
I feel they overly emphasize the damage role in a game that already highly rewards all damage style team compositions. Going heavy DPS and very light support in a party should be a choice, but having a slower clear with a tankier party should always be an equally valid choice.

Encounter mechanics that overly reward certain types of utility
Stuff like reflectable projectile spam without an environmental counter, channeled buttons that overly reward stealth, and other such things that make a certain profession or build drastically better at a certain role than another. I’m all for interesting mechanics like that, but there should be some environmental interactions that would allow you to approach that mechanic in an alternate way.

Like
Phased fights
I feel like boss fights are at their best when the fight ramps up in difficulty as it progresses, adding mechanics at Hp breakpoints. This gives a nice progression to learning the encounters as you slowly “solve” it with your group. Stuff like the mai trin or tequatl fight with distinct phases of evasion, add smashing, and vulnerability phases encourage learning the encounter mechanics.

Encounter Roles
The dredge fractal boss and to a lesser extent tequatl are good examples of this. In stead of slotting people by profession in to roles determined by class, the fights have certain roles which must be filled to succeed. In Teq you need some players to take on the turret defender and turret use roles for the front line combat group to succeed. In the dredge fractal you need to designate a party member to run the lava buckets, etc.

Other good examples are the megadestroyer’s pre-phase or triple trouble, where you need to split off the groups to accomplish objectives which all support one another.

Or the TA aetherpath trap room and final fight, which requires everyone to work together by taking on certain roles (pull, damage, runner, etc.) to succeed.

This style of encounter design is very good for the way GW2’s soft role characters are designed. It means you still have mechanically complex fights that require coordination and teamwork, but the fight doesn’t devolve in to a thing where you simply must bring XYZ classes or builds to have a chance of finishing the encounter. I want the fights to be mechanically challenging, but achievable through skill even if you have a sub-optimal collection of actual classes present. If you can’t complete a raid (although it may be more difficult than with a more meta party) with a full party of all one class with different builds for damage, support, and CC, I feel that the raid isn’t designed well around GW2’s class systems.

Don’t you dare ruin this for me.

Jeez.

It’s a kind of “choose your own adventure” difficulty scheme. Early on it’s very easy, but by the time you get to the end of the main line, do dungeons, fractals, etc. you’re going to see the challenge creep up.

Don’t try to think about it like WoW, where leveling is the core experience. Think of leveling as the tutorial that’s more about exploration than challenge, and the instances and level 80 areas, instances, world bosses, etc. as the challenge.

You forgot access to ongoing new raid content, a new elite spec for every class, masteries for both the existing world and HoT, guild hall overhaul, a completely new set of missions in your personal story (with multiple branching paths), and access to ongoing living world content updates.

Also, those 4 maps are massive have have multiple floors, so they’re a bit larger than they seem.

There’s also no way to tell, difinitively, how many new armor/weapon skins are in the expeansion until it releases. Datamining will only ever reveal what’s in the client. Thinking they’ve added the entire HoT cache to the current client is a little naive.

Pockets.3201:

PopeUrban.2578:

Pockets.3201:

PopeUrban.2578:

What generally distinguishes bleed from burning is the duration vs. damage. Burn is a high damage low duration condition, while bleed is intended to be a high duration, lower damage DPS condition.

The way stuff has been balanced since the beginning doesn’t exactly reinforce this any more, but if you were going to give it a special mechanic I’d focus on the duration rather than the damage. like, in stead of bleed amplifying the stacks of its own damage, have bleed applications increase in duration for existing stacks, or naturally increase in duration on application if the target’s HP is lower or something.

Problem with that is, outside of bosses and champs, duration increase isn’t that useful. Most things just don’t live that long.

Would be better to have an effect that is useful no matter what you are fighting.

Which is why bleed builds are not a good choice for certain content. There’s nothing really wrong with that. Not every build is geared for every type of thing. You wouldn’t take your PvE build to PvP would you?

Not every profession has a choice. We don’t have equal access to all conditions. If we want to use conditions for damage, we work with what we have.

And really, bleeds currently don’t sound like a good choice for any content. At least on the PVE side.

That seems a bit like saying ‘not every profession has access to shatters’

Seems to me if you’re worried about meta-effectiveness or speed clearing or whatnot then you either pick the most efficient build for the profession you like, or you pick the profession that’s most efficient with the condition types you like.

Guild rename certificate.

Pockets.3201:

PopeUrban.2578:

There are lots of things that are “time sensitive” rewards. That’s what makes them special and worth having. by the next expansion they’ll probably put out another thank you skin for people that have been around since HoT.

The game needs more things that eventually leave circulation and become unobtainable, not less. Those are the skins and items that become worth cherishing and add value to having “been there”

Other people not having things them special?

Things are special to me because I want them, for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t care less if one other person or one million other people have them as well. It has no bearing of my enjoyment of them.

Actually, yeah, other people not having stuff is the very definition of what makes things special. its up to you whether you care about exclusivity or rarity or not, but scarcity is what creates value and rarity at a basic conceptual level.

Pockets.3201:

PopeUrban.2578:

What generally distinguishes bleed from burning is the duration vs. damage. Burn is a high damage low duration condition, while bleed is intended to be a high duration, lower damage DPS condition.

The way stuff has been balanced since the beginning doesn’t exactly reinforce this any more, but if you were going to give it a special mechanic I’d focus on the duration rather than the damage. like, in stead of bleed amplifying the stacks of its own damage, have bleed applications increase in duration for existing stacks, or naturally increase in duration on application if the target’s HP is lower or something.

Problem with that is, outside of bosses and champs, duration increase isn’t that useful. Most things just don’t live that long.

Would be better to have an effect that is useful no matter what you are fighting.

Which is why bleed builds are not a good choice for certain content. There’s nothing really wrong with that. Not every build is geared for every type of thing. You wouldn’t take your PvE build to PvP would you?

Ghosttalon.2416:

What are you talking about? As a consumer who’s bought a product people have every right to complain. There’s no “entitlement” to be had, we paid the product and therefore we are by every means allowed to be angry when a company does makes it free to play. It de-values the game for the old players, makes them feel as if they only paid to have some extra perks rather than have exclusive access to the game. Of course A-net knows that this backlash would have been created, they are prepared to take that risk because they know not all old players will leave and even if they do, the new ones would still most likely bring them profit. They think that they can earn back a portion of their fanbase with a mediocre armor skin but unfortunatly that doesn’t cut it. Nothing A-net can do will make me regain their trust.

You do have a right to be angry. The rest of us also have just as much of a right to be annoyed with your anger.

This entire argument stems from the idea that having bought the game at release somehow makes you deserving of special treatment. That you’re worth significantly more than a new player. Dude. You’ve had a full fledged MMO to play for 3 years. You can’t sell your account. What value have you lost exactly?

You’re saying the price you paid at release wasn’t worth the live events and time you’ve been able to play the game with no additional cost? Really? It’s not like it’s been six months since release. This is three years later

It doesn’t make sense to me. Only highly prized luxury items are intended to appreciate in value over time. Every other product depreciates in value. That’s just basic economics.

Every time I see this complaint I just wonder “did these people forget they’ve been playing a subscription free game for three years with a mass of free content and updates, roughly half of which is unplayable by new players because it was all live events?”

You’re acting like you bought land, or precious metals, or something that operates on a completely different set of economic rules.

What generally distinguishes bleed from burning is the duration vs. damage. Burn is a high damage low duration condition, while bleed is intended to be a high duration, lower damage DPS condition.

The way stuff has been balanced since the beginning doesn’t exactly reinforce this any more, but if you were going to give it a special mechanic I’d focus on the duration rather than the damage. like, in stead of bleed amplifying the stacks of its own damage, have bleed applications increase in duration for existing stacks, or naturally increase in duration on application if the target’s HP is lower or something.

There are lots of things that are “time sensitive” rewards. That’s what makes them special and worth having. by the next expansion they’ll probably put out another thank you skin for people that have been around since HoT.

The game needs more things that eventually leave circulation and become unobtainable, not less. Those are the skins and items that become worth cherishing and add value to having “been there”

Jiggawattz.2697:

Jehuty.1938:

HelloKittyZOMG.1875:

I bought the game full price, well my hubby bought it for me… to me this whole going f2p junk is bull, it’s basically a slap in my face. I think those who paid full price should get some sort of compensation, and those who disagree are probably those who’ve joined free. The economy is probably wrecked now.

I’m a veteran (not 3 years ago but close) and I have no problem whatsoever in gw2 becoming f2p. I mean it doesn’t change anything for me. I can understand the frustration of people who bought gw2 not so long ago and didn’t want to buy HoT. But for the others (I think the majority), it doesn’t change anything at all. You’ll still have to buy the expansion no matter how you jumped into the game, by paying or just downloading it for free.

Now regarding the community, we didn’t have to wait the f2p players to get toxic. Also, a lot of new players are just like me and you : people who want to have fun. The only difference is that they don’t have to pay to try the game and that’s GREAT. Just like O’Brien said, Anet is confident that new players will fall in love with the game and buy the expansion and I agree. Gw2 is an amazing and original MMO that deserves to be at least tried. The more new people try the game, the more constent players we’ll have. And in Gw2, more players mean more fun. So that’s a win-win situation honestly.

Regarding the economy, it is in fact an interesting decision. The gem store remains as it is now. New players gathering large amounts of Gold is going to be balanced by the Gold sunk into the new items HoT will provide. And for the price of the core game, it should be “re-earned” by the sales of HoT. Because indeed new players wont pay right now, but they will when they’ll eventually buy HoT or buy gems. So it is a rather good decision, at least in my opinion.

Also, ArenaNet made it clear now : everytime an expansion is available, the previous content becomes FREE. You won’t have to pay the core game + every previous expansion to be able to play. It is a great deal for newcomers and a great choice for the game in general. As for the veteran , it is how markets work. You buy something at launch and over time, its value decreases but you gained the amount of time you played the game. Sometimes I feel like people forget that buying games isn’t a “real” investment as you can’t profit by selling it later. It is something you buy to have fun, nothing more nothing less.

So the main question is : Did you have fun? If yes, then you have nothing to regret. If no, then quit the game and don’t buy HoT or wait till it comes out and see if you’re willing to make the same bet. Really it is as simple as that.

Also, the free outfit is a cool enough Thank you from Anet for us Veteran and we should be thankfull aswell for a game we spent more than a thousand hours playing and awesome people we met by doing so.

I bought the core game at full price and I don’t regret it at all. These last 2,5 years were great and I had a lot of fun, met awesome people that I may have not met if I waited for the game to be free.

This seems to be the argument they all use, its not a valid argument. Being satisfied with the product I originally purchased does not mean I have to be satisfied with all future changes or leave. As a customer I have the right to complain about my treatment by said company to the company. What they do with that complaint is up to them, but if I hear one more high school student ask me “Did you get 60 dollars worth of play out of it?” I am going to flip my kitten. That shows an ignorant, ridiculous, naive take on the real world…

I like how you’re assuming that we’re all children who don’t know the value of a dollar.

I’m 34 years old. I pay my own bills. I have a job. I pay taxes.

Nobody’s saying you don’t have a right to complain. We’re saying your complaints are unreasonable, childish, and ring of a massive entitlement complex. It reminds me a lot of the people that cried to high heaven when netflix split off its online and mail services which resulted in an 8 dollar a month price hike.

Completely reasonable from a business and consumer cost standpoint, but because you’re not being coddled or treated like a super special snowflake princess, you’re upset.

It’s not a case of a bunch of people that don’t know the value of a dollar here. Most of us who don’t have a problem with this realize both what it means for the game and for us as customers long term. We realize that the new player will always end up paying less and getting more. That’s fine. Once they’re invested they end up on the same system. It’s far more fair than asking every new player to pay an ever increasing cost as expansion after expansion are released. In your version of what’s fair, you’d be looking at getting new people in to the gamne by asking them to pay over a hundred bucks just for a basic account with all the expansions .

As an adult, doesn’t that seem unreasonable to you? Would you start playing a 3 or 6 year old MMO if it cost you more to play than something released last week?

See, it’s not that you’re dissatisfied. We all have things about that game that would be more convenient for us personally. It’s that your entire viewpoint is extremely selfish. You don’t care about new players coming in to the game, and you don’t value the service you’ve already recieved for the money you already paid. You’re asking for hand outs because you over value both your contributions and your own importance.

You are not a special snowflake. You do not deserve special treatment.

The good news is that, given this model, you can receive HoT for free and not pay a dime for it. Just wait until the next expansion releases if you feel that strongly about what “rights” you have, or what you “deserve” as a “veteran player”

As a fellow “veteran player” I’ll tell you straight up, there are things I’d like to see change in GW2, but business practices aren’t one of them. Arenanet has probably the most fair business model I’ve encountered in online gaming.

Seems to me this isn’t a question of “have to” go F2P as much as it is “Want to”

Simply put, expansions are a great way to bring returning players to your game, but an awful way to bring new players.

So what if you basically make the new player investment cost the same regardless of when they start, and not ask them to cought up an ever increasing amount of money to get involved in your game (and hopefully start buying gems)?

This is basically the “less is more” strategy that has worked very will with mobile developers (which is also where the f2p model was refined in to the version we see in modern MMOs today) in which you expect to make more money selling at a lower price, because a lower price is more enticing to potential customers.

In addition, offering customers some sort of preview or trial increases the liklihood they’ll pick up your product.

It’s really just smart economics.

Corsair M95

Hands down the best gaming mouse I’ve ever owned. Sturdy, great side button layout, easy dpi settings, software is light.

Jiggawattz.2697:

If you go to a restaurant and order a 20 dollar meal, and get everything but desert and they tell you you don’t get desert. Do you not complain because “Well I suppose I got 20 dollars worth of a meal out of it so I should be thanking them” Shut the kitten up and act like an adult. We payed for a product and are upset with our service so we are issuing complaints on the proper medium. Take that garbage somewhere where people think its okay to take kitten from companies because of your internal value of money. People like you are ignorant as all hell.

I’ll use your metaphor to illustrate my point here.

Did they advertise that the meal included dessert?

I’ve actually had a lot of 20 dollar meals that didn’t include dessert.

What you’re complaining about is ridiculous

You expected to receive dessert when none was advertised

You know what I, as an adult, do when I’m dissastified with a product or service? I stop using it, and report abuses to the proper authorities

All I see are a bunch of people who want hand outs because they have an overinflated sense of self importance. You know, like a guy who orders a 20 dollar meal at a restaraunt and then becomes furious that there’s no dessert… even when the place doesn’t serve dessert.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

BS I didn’t invest in anything. In those years that I and other players (whether they were one offs or whales) poured money into the game LONG after the initial purchase was made in part because we KNEW that the store was their main revenue stream and if we wanted those servers to stay up, if we wanted that LW content to keep flowing, those updates to the game to be made, for those lights to essentially stay on, that we would have to support the game in some way.

Make no mistake about it, if people didn’t open their wallets during those first 2 years NCsoft would never have even green lit an expansion. The proof was in their financials and in the words of those at the top at NCsoft at the time they announced that they had made enough money to justify an expansion. If that money hadn’t been made, there wouldn’t be a HoT coming soon.

No, you bought gems, and spent those gems on whatever black lion stuff you got with them.

At no point was there ever an open letter from arenanet begging for more money to help their struggling business. At no point was there ever a request for monetary investment or donation.

You can place yourself in the role of investor or philanthropist as much as you like, but the reality is that you are not that important or generous. They sold you a product, you bought it.

Why you bought it is irrelevant

As for the guy that is upset about “having to pay for six more accounts”

What did you expect here? A full blown expansion for free? A discount in recognition of money you spent three years ago, for a product you have used for three years without additional fees?

I’ll be blunt.

We all have opinions on the matter. None of them are fact. My personal opinion is that you’re both being completely unreasonable and are extremely over valuing whatever money you may have paid to arenanet for the last three years

I still have all my BLTC items (Which I paid for)
I still have GW2, and all the loot, gear, and characters I’ve spent the past three years of game play adventuring.
Heck I still have a truckload of dyes unlocked from when they dropped as loot

I feel pretty good about the money I’ve spent, and from the feature set in HoT I feel pretty good about paying for it. I think it’s awesome that they’re adopting a “most recent expansion” pay model. It makes sense. It’s a far better way to do things than the GW1 campaign model as it allows a consistant investment for new players while retaining income from existing ones.

See, here’s the thing. The people that start GW2 three years from now aren’t facing down a $200 purchase just so we can feel good about our purchase. They’re facing down a $60 or $70 purchase to get in to the game and start playing at the same amount of content we enjoy.

They have payed less because they have derived less use of the product or service

You don’t deserve a massive discount just because you bought a game three years ago and your gem purchases do not factor in to this argument because gems are itemized purchases for add-ons and hold their own intrinsic value separate from the core game

OP, I support this post.

You forgot to mention gratuitous particle effects which obscure literally everything but the UI with no functional scaling or hiding option

Anet, I really like this game.
I also really hate the lack of functional particle hiders, and basic UI stuff like a side hotbar for consumables.

That’s just it. You didn’t “invest” in anything. You Made purchases

Those purchases are not being given away to free players

The basic car is, not the aftermarket options.

You’re serious?

Note: This may be an actual forum post asking arenanet to give him ascended armor simply because he owns the game.

It also may be a really convincing prank.

PookieDaWombat.6209:

PopeUrban.2578:

To all the people complaining about this on a financial basis.

Really?

You spent at most 50 bucks for the game three years ago. That’s what these free to play people are getting.

Do you barge in to the electronics store you bought your TV in and demand a 50% refund when it goes on a 50% off sale? snipped for brevity

No, it wasn’t just a 50 dollar purchase initially. Not for many vets that I know of and not for me personally. I know I have put in over $1000 additional dollars over the years I’ve had the game (and most of that was in the first 2 years of having the game) because i wanted to support the game and the developers while they were providing all of that living world content. This was because they explicitly stated that they were (at the time) only delivering new content via living world, so I wanted to support them through that endeavor.

Then they reveal that their LW content creators were really just a skeleton crew and most of their team was working on something bigger. Expansion talk was now on the horizon, but while that was going on, they made some HORRIBLE game breaking decisions for the game that languished on for over a year and which sent many players away from the game, new and old. Over the course of the game they have increasingly done things to push veteran players away and NOW they announce raids and harder content (which we don’t know if they even will be after a month of so), but its still all locked in behind HoT, so its either buy HoT at full game price or you don’t get to take part in that content. But here, just to show you we’re thinking about you, have an outfit you’ll never wear or care about and please head to our gemstore for the latest thing we want to sell you this week.

People are tired of Anet’s BS and this thread is going to be a LONG one. Unless they find some reason to bury it.

Funny, all the people I know are actually coming back to the game because it’s better than it was when they left

You know, far less broken specs, a less annoying leveling path, more content overall, etc. etc. etc.

Okay, not 50 bucks, whatever the preorder was for the edition with the mistfire wolf then (which, hey, the offered as DLC later! Was that a slap in the face too?) $70? Honestly I don’t remeber as it was so long ago.

Then you’re what, expecting the expansion to be 30 bucks? Expecting them to keep charging people for content that was wrapped up literally years ago?

What exactly is it that you, personally are after here? A refund for five or six accounts? What makes you think you even deserve that?

What entitles you to say how much your money is worth compared to every single other user?

You payed money for gems, which you spent, and you recieved compensation for them. You payed money for the game, just like the rest of us. Heck, I was in the beta for GW1. I still remember skill rings. You think I was upset when they released a bundle of campaigns that cost me over a hundred bucks for only 20?

Why do you hate this idea of the game you love so much and have invested so much in being made more avaliable to more people?

You you feel this way toward businesses who discount merchandise you bought when it was new? If I could find your exact microwave for free on craigslist right now, would you be angry at the person who gave it to me?

I just don’t understand the logic I guess, so perhaps you could explain it to me.

How does offering a limited free version of the base game devalue your purchases and time spent over the last three years? Did you somehow expect to reclaim them for monetary value one day? Why does it matter how much it costs other people?

Free to play and the announcement of raids at the same time is like peanut butter and jelly.

Time to go recruiting for Tyria’s next batch of heroes.

I think I may begin conducting some impromptu interrogations orientations.

If you’re new, and you’re reading this, finding Mac Twinsong is the first part of your initiation. Good luck!

Votekicking was a stupid mechanism in the first place. Party leader should have always had control. It’s far easier for word of one jerk leader to get around than a nebulous and anonymous group of people that may or may not be troll kicking people with the vote system.

To all the people complaining about this on a financial basis.

Really?

You spent at most 50 bucks for the game three years ago. That’s what these free to play people are getting.

Do you barge in to the electronics store you bought your TV in and demand a 50% refund when it goes on a 50% off sale?

Get a grip, or assume that every single online game will go free to play at some point. That’s the reality of the market today.

This is in no way a “slap in the face” and all of you should be ashamed for seeing a move intended to bring now players in to the game as a slight against your personal “investment”

Fifty bucks is not an investment. It barely even covers what it cost to keep the concurrent servers you play on running for the last three years. In that time you received two seasons of living story, and a massive load of QoL fixes, updates to core systems, and a ton of other stuff.

I really do hope, if you’re that upset about “your investment” you just plain quit. Take your persecution complex elsewhere, or realize that you recieved far more than your money’s worth if you never purchased gems.

Between this and the “toxic raiders will ruin our community” nonsense it’s becoming pretty clear where the lion’s share of “toxic” behavior seeps from on these boards.

I, for one, am quite happy to have the opportunity to show the game to some people that were on the fence about it.

Honestly, I think there’s a lot they can do with raids in the GW2 mold. Look at encounters like new teq/triple wurm, dredge fractal boss, and jade fractal. These encounters create encounter roles in place of Character roles and still require coordination, practice, and knowledge of the encounter without resorting to lame mechanisms like main tank aggro and health bar whack a mole where there are advantageous builds across the fight for multiple classes.

If they keep to that style of design, I can see 10 man raids working very well.

How about placing the legendary upgrades in a SW style map token system so that there’s a unique and powerful thing for all the people currently complaining about raids?

Seems to me like different rewards for different content should be the way going forward with legendary, so to get an eventual “full set” you’d be required to master all kinds of content. Raids for armor, crafting for weapons, Map tokens/masteries for sigils/runes, and maybe wvw for jewelry or something, with a little minor cross requirement like the gift of battle for weapons.

Look, this is great news.

Legendaries have always had a major flaw in that one can acquire Legendary equipment for extremely mundane accomplishments.

Account bound, content specific legendaries are absolutely the right way to go. Furthermore they should keep making skins that are content specific outside of the legendaries, like the carapace/luminescant armor.

People who don’t like to raid should have just as many rewards. They’re just not going to be the same rewards as they’d get via raiding. Those rewards may not say “Legendary” on the tin, but let’s be real here: GW2 gear is not and has never been about the stats, and there’s is not not nor has there ever been anything particularly legendary about map completion or farming a buttload of materials.

You do not deserve access to every reward in the game if you are not willing to do every type of content in the game. I’d like the lumi skins, but I can’t be bothered to farm up all the stuff required to get them. Thus, I don’t have them. There’s nothing wrong with that.

What’s wrong is that the current system has very little reward for exceptional risk and skill and tons of reward for simply putting in time.

If you play GW2 just to put in time and aren’t interested in challenging content or learning to play will with groups of other people in a social game (as opposed to leeching off of giant mobs of solo players) that’s fine. There will undoubtedly continue to exist grind-centric rewards for you that don’t require you to do so.

People said the same amount of doooooommm when fractals were released, yet somehow fractals didn’t kill open world content at all.

Believe it or not even current content can be done with a balanced non-meta party. just like in GW1, if you tweak builds around the strengths and weaknesses of individual players and classes you’re well equipped mechanically to tackle any content in the game. You just have to be willing to build a team that wants to work as a team. Those who have had problems with rude PUGs should really just stop pugging and make some friends

My PUG experiences in GW2 have been largely positive, but I don’t end up pugging very often either.

Start by making 4 friends for dungeons, and make 5 more to try raids. Isn’t making friends what a social PvE game is supposed to be about? Isn’t the idea of “every player you meet is only a potential ally” the core of GW2’s PvE design?

If you just plain don’t want to play instances, then you obviously just plain don’t want the rewards from instances, just like I just plain don’t want to farm and collect a massive shopping list enough to get a full set of lumi armor.

Stop expecting to have all the things without doing all the things. It is what creates boring loot and lackluster rewards across the game.

I don’t think they want to give staff a field because they don’t want it to have easy stealth access for a 2s knockdown.

IMO staff shouldn’t have a smoke field for exactly that reason. I don’t want to see that stealth attack nerfed down to a shorter duration. Maybe increasing it to 5 targets, adding another condition, giving it a close range aoe pulse, or something else in stead?

More I think about it, a close range pule at the beginning of the animation seems like the most unique route. This would upgrade it to 2 staggered blinds against a melee target, or allow you to blind a ranged target and his melee buddies to help you close on targets or evade better, and wouldn’t be straight overpowered for the 4 init cost.

Overworld.9613:

PopeUrban.2578:

Disrupting daggers needs to stick around more than 15 seconds. It’s basically a mantra that throws a dodgeable projectile.

The visual effect allows the enemy to see when it is cast, and exactly how many daggers you have left, which is good for counterplay, but IMO 15s is too short to get good use out of it.

Since it tosses a counterable projectile, and the enemy can easily predict when we have the ability to use it due to the visible daggers, why doesn’t it just work like a mantra with an icon visible to the enemy? Heck, you could even greatly increase the cast time to balance that if you wanted, but 15s isn’t really enough to use it as pressure, or successfully interrupt.

15s is actually a sensible amount, it’s to stop thief players from setting up the daggers too far out of combat and not giving enough information to their opponents. Will have to wait till the BWE to see if it’s cooldown is solid, but maybe a 2/3rds cooldown if you prep the daggers and don’t use them?

It would be sensible if:

A: the enemy coudn’t tell from your buff bar and the visual effect the daggers were equipped
B: the daggers weren’t a physical projectile that can be evaded, blocked, or reflected

There is enough built in counterplay for this ability without also saddling it with an overly short duration. In its current state it’s just not all that attractive.

Kocoff.7582:

I am sure you will find plenty of mordrem and Mordrem-influenced Silvaris who have to be finished.

Tomorrow they will be talking about Challenging Content. So you will get your answer there for sure.

This. My guess is that we’ll see more enemies that need finished like we did in LS season 1 in the new content, as it’s a good place to add mechanics to fights like corpse explosions and enemy rezzing.

Maugetarr.6823:

Gray.9041:

Vavume.8065:

I will appreciate Karl when he removes death blossom from my power dagger dagger build, or at least make it useful.

this is at least a good third of my condition dagger dagger build. I’d prefer he add more conditions to the other skills.

there’s two sides to every coin bud.

Make it useful as in making the evade 0.5 seconds on a 0.75 second skill like a lot of our weapon evades.

This. I like deathblossom condi as well, but that evade needs a buff for both power and condi d/d, even if they have to up the init cost to do it.

philheat.3956:

So you can’t use Shadow refuge with DareDevil spec. because you can’t dodge in the SR? (and if you can, you land damage so u got reveal)

Take dash if you want to dodge around your SR, as dash does no damage effects.

Might also be an intended balancing effect.

Disrupting daggers needs to stick around more than 15 seconds. It’s basically a mantra that throws a dodgeable projectile.

The visual effect allows the enemy to see when it is cast, and exactly how many daggers you have left, which is good for counterplay, but IMO 15s is too short to get good use out of it.

Since it tosses a counterable projectile, and the enemy can easily predict when we have the ability to use it due to the visible daggers, why doesn’t it just work like a mantra with an icon visible to the enemy? Heck, you could even greatly increase the cast time to balance that if you wanted, but 15s isn’t really enough to use it as pressure, or successfully interrupt.

I like the sound effects for it though.

Kinda sad that they increased the cooldown of the stunbreak to 15s but even at 15s it’s still pretty hot.

I wish the last hit of the elite had a cooler animation in stead of a sped up normal stomp animation.

@mrbig

I see your point, but I don’t agree with you on the whole mandatory nature of escapists absolution when you take them.

SR is indeed powerful, but your estimation of its ability to create stealth openers is I feel a little overblown.

People aren’t as dense as they used to be, and even wvw roaming where there are a lot more places to hide it it can often be a bad pick. It’s a massive aoe magnet in about half the places you’d want to use it, and for that reason many groups in stead rely on mesmer veil and mass invis.

The only place you can reliably stealth res with it is in PvE, and I agree its still probably an auto-pick in PvE, but in pvp It’s much more situational and often used much more to distract than actually grant stealth.

Shadowstep on the other hand, for sure, very powerful, but it’s an inferior stun break to the new one even with its condition removal. The new one not only breaks the stun, it blocks the follow up and knocks the attacker flat on his butt to allow you to follow up with your own big hit, and has a traited 8s cooldown while granting end.

That doesn’t mean the core of SR, shadowstep, and withdraw aren’t good. They are and will remain VERY good picks for condi removal on stealth builds, however that combination along with SR and some sigil action is already good enough for the situations those builds are designed for, small 1v1 fights. I’d happily take a chunk of damage on interrupt and a reactive stunbreak/interrupt and finish the fight sooner than a 1 cleanse per evade, as you’re getting way less evades in 1v1 than you are in blob fights.

However, on a s/d or staff built evasion DD, I’d be far more inclined to leave one or more of those condi removals off the bar, and that’s the situation where I’d consider absolution much more viable, since less condi applications are landing on me anyway.

I guess it’s just going to take some testing to see how it pans out, and I wouldn’t be at all sad if it were moved to minor, but my fear is that moving it to minor would load it with enough ICD that it wouldn’t matter anyway.

With respect:

Shadow refuge and withdraw are the best competitive options when you are forced in to a d/p stealth spec in the current meta

HiS is still awful due to cast time no matter what

SoM is useful for blob warfare and pve (and even more useful with kitten damage on dodge and 400+heal on evade)

The venom is a venom, so it’s awful unless you’re playing vshare, and even then it’s pretty bad.

The new heal is actually quite good for stealth builds.

D/P is still going to be the best build for roaming stealth, but keep in mind the DD spec actually opens up things to do that aren’t roaming stealth.

Volrath.1473:

still… this name Daredevil, imo does not fit in the Gw2 theme at all, feels out of place.
i would love to hear the reason why this name was selected… I hope they explane this no the stream.

Edit: have you searched for the meaning of Daredevil?
here u go:
A professional daredevil performs standalone stunts for their dramatic value. He or she usually has an organized performance in which a handful of challenging tasks are displayed for the public. Daredevils may broadcast their shows on television or sell tickets for monetary gain. Making a career as a daredevil is tough and dangerous work; it requires self promotion skills as well as stunt training.

Basically a Clown! tks Karl

You know, when I look at my letter from character creation, it does say I regret i never joined the circus.

beware the grizwhorl

More beards, yes.

I’d like some less bushy full beard options for starters. it’s kind of a bummer that I have to pick between various arrangements of stubble or full on gandalf for human males.

Also, it would be cool if sylvari males got some gandalf leaf-beards the currny thorn goatees and stuff are cool, but full on fern and leaf beards would be cool too!

This elite seems designed to bypass the downed state completely if used properly. Hit 1 dazes, hit 2 launches them straight up, presumably while still dazed, and hit 3 is the finisher.

Seems like the intended use is to use hit 1 to last hit their HP, hit 2 would launch so they can’t reflexively use their downed launch/blind/etc. (as it would hit before their downed state skills spin up) and hit 3 finishes them while they’re still in the air.

This is truth. Nobody’s started this exact thread, but we’re all saying that acrobatics in particular now needs some trait options that make it worthwhile, but different than DD. Personally I’d like to see acro be reworked more around environmental exploitation like better scaling damage on back hits, revenge damage when attacks against you are obstructed, range increases, extra trap buffs, height advantage damage, jump buffs, and other such things that would make acro more about using your environment.

This would allow acro to still be a good combo with DD, but would also make it an attractive option to use with SA, or with a build geared more around positioning than evasion.