Guild Wars 2

In my opinion you are white knighting too much, regardless of any of the other glaring issues with the marketing, it is overpriced for what we are told to expect.

The content has already been described as feature-driven which woodenpotatoes quite rightly states is not something the average player will measure this expansion by. They will measure it by content.

With this whole fiasco killing the hype train and the odds that the content amount won’t match the price tag, HoT has a serious chance to fail as an expansion and the blame does really fall in Anet’s court due to;

- Shady marketing
– Overpriced
– Poor communication with players and pretty much straight up ignoring the complaints
– Grandfathering on the first expansion
– Killed their hype at the launch of pre-purchase

Only one in my guild has pre-purchased and they typically purchase large amounts of gems so the £80 ultimate is nothing to them, he sees it as a bargain version of the deluxe because he would have purchased those gems anyway.

Everyone else has literally boycotted at least prepurchasing pending a reply from Anet and more info. We don’t even have a release date yet we are asked to fork out £35…..

Yeh, I kinda put money into the gem store, enough to consider it a sub, your free argument has no power here.

Gray.9041:

Note, just ran the maths on tax difference.

assuming that HoT is sold with the average US sales tax of 5.45%, then we can calculate the base price of the game before taxes
Standard: $47.41
Deluxe: $71.12
Ultimate: $94.82
adding the 5.45% brings them up to their listed totals
if we instead use other tax rates, the prices go up. I don’t know the Value Added Tax rates for all euro countries, but it’s somewhere between 15 and 27%.
I’m going to use the UK value, 20%, to do some calculations
with the 20% tax, we get the following values:
Standard: $56
Deluxe: $85
Ultimate: $113
so if we assume an average 20% VAT rate, the european prices are about right.
the british values are a bit off though, but less than it would appear.

I think in general the pricing just being as high as it is considering how much we don’t know and how much we do know, that seems to be more of a problem.

What would be more accurate to what we are actually paying for the product would be to take the original US prices as they typically aren’t published with tax added to them, and put them next to UK prices converted to $ and take off the 20% vat.

That would make them;

UK: $44 for the standard, $75 for the deluxe, $100 for the Ultimate.

I made the same mistake in an earlier post before remembering tax comes into the UK’s high prices in general.

To be honest, throwing in a character slot for those who already have the base game would likely solve a lot of the issues including issues with pricing.

Basically, under all of this there seems to be underhanded marketing tactics and grandfathering. This has annoyed a lot of people and sowed the seeds of distrust thus making people scrutinise what they usually wouldn’t bat an eyelid at.

Tbf as it stands I am going to farm gold to transfer to gems to get a character slot. I am not actually putting money in for now. I won’t be pre-purchasing unless Anet give me a good reason to. Beta access and a title? Meh. I’m waiting until release, the first few days are always a shambles anyway.

I’m pretty sure americans pay an unpublished sales tax.

They need to get their currency conversions proper, especially for the gems as well.

Btw 50 euros is $56.

Though UK prices also include VAT @ 20% which US and Europe do not pay (Europe has it’s own taxes depending on country).

Arkblue.6129:

yanipheonu.5798:

Largest flaw in this whole theory: it’s not an equivalent value. It doesn’t cost Anet ten dollars to give a new player an account. It just costs whatever it does to activate the account and keep them on them on the servers.

The $50 will go to the same places it usually does: development time, advertisement, the usual business. GW2 vanilla does not cost 20 percent of HoT’s budget. That’s absurd.

This in all likelyhood costs very little for Anet at this point, and as such, even if GW2 vanilla was not included with the expansion, we would not see much if any impact on the final price.

This expansion would cost the same, with or without new players getting a GW2 account.

And seriously, if the worst thing they do is favour new players a bit, you really gotta see how bad it gets in the really scummy MMOs out there. This ain’t a mobile cash grab, this is just people getting worked up over nothing.

Hell, I wish more companies let new players the vanilla game for buying the expansion.

I’ll explain why it’s not that simple. I understant that new players should be attracted somehow, but this shouldn’t happen at the expenses of older customers.

When this kind of thing went down with other services, such as phone line contracts, cable contracts, it spawned the “boomerang” effect. Which meant, customer lost any loyalty with the service provider.

“Well, I could stay here and pay more for the same service that new users are getting cheaper OR I could switch to another similar provider that offers me more for that same price.”
It happened a lot in the past, because of that companies started to cater more to their longtime customers.

I do wonder if Anet and other gaming companies should take a leaf out of internet/mobile phone/tv provider’s books in regards to customer retention being just as important as new customers.

OP, very well put and constructive. Nice post.

Tbf if they just threw in a character slot it should sort a lot of the complaints, as the price tag will feel more worth it and it is a nod to veterans.

Thanks for posting this

As far as I am concerned Anet’s excuse for this is not good enough. I will not be buying the expansion until a full official word from Anet on this issue that offers a decent reason for this beyond a desperate player grab at the expense of the veterans or a decent solution that justifies the high price beyond minis and skins.

I pre-purchased the digital deluxe originally as well as spent enough on gems to basically equal some form of sub. This feels really underhanded that there isn’t even the common courtesy of a character slot, especially in regards to the price. Anet has messed up, please stop with the guilt tripping arguments too, the player base spends enough on the gem store to shut down the ‘well there’s no sub so shut up’ argument.

Players should give it time though, company responses take longer than a few hours to release.

yeh agree with others here, the problem with the shield is it’s skills, not the cooldowns. For defence the focus is just the way to go in terms of offhand. Ironically the focus has blocks, but the guard shield does not despite the warrior and engi shield having blocks.

1. Make it standalone like the original stance of Anet on the issue of “Can I play HoT without GW2”.

This was issue number one with the playerbase as they felt cheated to be asked to pay for what includes all these benefits for new players that veterans just don’t get despite their loyalty to GW2. Thus they feel they are paying for something they don’t need and there is no option to cut that payment away from the pure expansion.

2. Bundle a character slot with the basic pack:

Everyone wants to make a revenant, it is a main selling point. However for a veteran who has filled their character slots, they will have to either get a character slot in-game and purchase the basic expansion, or purchase the £60 expansion (€80, $90). Again it is people who are the current player base who will be irritated at that.

3. Don’t ignore the forums

I get that it can get toxic and that it is something most Anet staff would love to avoid on a daily basis, but half the reason so many people get more and more angry is because Anet staff tend to either ignore the issue or keep their involvement to merging the thread to die in it’s own corner despite thousands of replies. This makes the player base feel ignored and pushed aside, thus they complain more. Customer services Anet, come on.

4. Change business strategy somewhat

The “no sub” model works it seems, gems support quite a lot and people buy them often. This does not warrant seemingly desperate player grabs at the cost of the current player base. One of the main reasons other MMO’s rise and fall is how they interact with their own player base.

In PvE the guard will be fine. The changes are not devastating as you would put it. We will still put out impressive damage, and we will still survive longer than others in the thick of the fight.

Like Marcel said, we have the symbols dps boost, the aegis dps boost, boon dps boost and fiery wrath dps boost and the GS trait is still where it always has been and has been buffed with the 20% recharge reduction.

Again, with the specialisation changes we will also have 3 full lines to play with, though we cannot go part way into trait lines anymore after the change. So the meta will change somewhat but the greatsword is still in the main dps line with no real other contenders for that trait. It is far from ruined or dead.

It is a little annoying that there are changes, some good some bad, but that has apparently RUINED this class etc etc etc. The world still turns and guards will still be effective.

I play GS in PvE and PvP and it works really well for GS. Just use the Medi variant. The only reason hammer is meta over GS is because Tage uses it. I don’t like it’s feel, not at all, GS just feels a lot more fluid and well rounded and a little more aggressive.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Meditation_DPS_Variant

Try that.

I use traveller runes too cus I like to move at more than a snails pace and like the extra boon duration with a small cele-like stat boost. I won’t swap those out till guards at least get a 25% trait movement buff.

Hammer is just too predictable now.

“Oh he switched with a focus shield on, incoming burst with sigil of intelligence, dodge/blind/block in 3, 2, 1.”

The new specialisation changes mean the hammer trait is moved to the Virtues line….next to the trait that makes virtue of resolve remove 3 conditions AoE on activation.

With all that you have to take the whole line too, you won’t be able to go 1 into a line, you have to go full in, but you will be able to go in 3 full lines. Effectively getting 2 more trait points.

What will come from this? I’d say a bunkier meditation guard with greatsword.

Contemplation of Purity…….converts all conditions into boons…..gimmie stacks please

It does seem the honor line is more PvP based nowadays.

I dislike pugs because of the elitism, spvp is whatever as they cannot kick and they are surprisingly less toxic than some of the pve groups.

I joined a guild to do my dungeon runs and it is nice to help out other people who are new. I’ve played since launch and my one and only PvE pug involved a guy who was straight up abusive because I didn’t want to continue on the 3rd hour of an explorable AC run.

Scepter orbs are able to be avoided by someone moving quickly side to side on the spot. Seriously why?

I used judge’s intervention, sword + focus / greatsword for another teleport and leap. Then filled in the last 2 utilities with whatever I needed for the situation.

Speed sigils are what give you most of your swiftness uptime.

Mounts are interesting and have appeared in the lore, same with horses.

E.g. In GW2 there are rocking horses, the dreamer bow shoots unicorns and a place called Iron Horse mine.

There are also horses in Guild Wars with the Necrid Horsemen.

It stands to a few questions;

1) If they did exist, why did the humans and other sentient races allow such a handy animal to go extinct?

“Maybe we should protect the horses, captain , they could all die!”

“What?! And miss all the wonderful scenery on foot?!”

“But sir, we are prone to fatigue, injury and disease if we march everywhere on foot!”

“…….but look at that waterfall design!!! The Devs spend months on that!!!”

“What Devs sir? Are you ok?”

2) If they did exist, what would have such a vendetta that it would only attack the entire population of horses (which humans seemed to have bred a lot of them for war purposes, see Necrid Horsemen)? Was their horsemeat scandal way worse than Europe’s 2013 horsemeat scandal?

Anywho,

Perhaps the usage of any mount would be to traverse a specific area and you would just have different skins.

Ele with fiery dragon sword? Yes please.

In response to the ‘original poster’ comments, please read my other comments on this thread, it will explain that it isn’t in regards to me not liking outfits. It is the sheer chasm between how many skins have been in the gemstore since launch and skins in-game since launch. My main gripe is the fact that these skins are being used up as RNG/Real money skins when they would have been much better as part of in-game content (Chaos, Zodiac, Tormented weps being a good example). I.e. it is likely draining creative resources and wasting potential better use of skins.

Centurion.7296:

All in all, some of the best armors in the game are armors that you need to work for like tier 3s, achi armor, pvp glorious armor, lumi, etc. In any case if you really want them to stop or make less then that means they would need to make money somewhere else, mmmmhhhh how does monthly subscriptions sound to you OP?

I refer you to my post about 3 posts up from yours.

The shatterer does need an update, there is an entire gun battery sitting there doing nothing as people stand at one of his legs and bash away. They will undoubtedly to a Teq to it at some point but likely not until after HoT. Some cool encounters like everyone else is saying is the following;

- Claw of Jormag
– Tequatl the Sunless
– Triple Headed Jungle Wurm
– Vinewrath

My point for less time on the gemstore is that it may retain higher player bases that are likely to spend on the gemstore anyway. Don’t get me wrong, there have been skin released that can be earned since launch (obviously), however the difference in what is available for cash since launch and what is available in-game since launch is staggering.

The secondary point is that a lot of these outfits would make brilliant armor sets for newer content, but by throwing out almost weekly skins via cash, they are using up creative resource faster than they should be and before you know it they will run out of ideas for new content to be earned in game.

I like the gemstore and do purchase from it. I just feel that a lot of resource is spent on beating the gemstore for more and more easy cash when a little more time can be spent on meaningful content that will retain a higher player base thus increase general purchases for the ‘sundry’ gemstore items.

I would not expect Anet to cancel the gemstore entirely at all, they have to make money somehow, though the seemingly obsessive way that Anet shove it full of skins seems to go against a lot of the ‘horizontal progression’ they were talking about, as well as taking resources away from creative in-game content.

I aint after shutting down the gemstore, but so many of the items could have been better placed in content where they can be earned. The Chaos Axe for example was a prestigious weapon in GW1, then the BLC set comes out and it is easily bought with cash and not particularly hard to get if you have the gems.

Gemstore skins are basically getting extremely annoying, all I see is “Here is some armor that we could have put in game for you to earn via achievements and/or new content but no, we are being lazy and just wanna milk the cash cow a little more each week.”

Outfits themselves are a strange option in a game where prestige is ‘cosmetic’ as there is no real customisation to outfits and there are plenty of sets being wasted. Imagine if the Chaos weapons could be earned by a new dungeon-esque Fissure of Woe?

I get some might be saved for HoT but there have been the following in the gem store;

- 22 Gemstore outfits
– 21 Weapon sets (multiple weapons in each set, average 11)
– 21 Full armor skins
– 55 Standalone helmet/weapon/armor skins

If that isn’t a drain on creative resources, I don’t know what is.

In comparison via typical updates since launch we have got;

– 1 Outfit (Hexed)
– 5 Full Armor Skins – 6 more are simply variants, not unique sets (Luminescent and Glorious Hero’s)
– 4 full weapon set (one for each wep and colour/particle variants not included e.g. SAB and ascended)
– 34 Individual weapon skins as random Champion Bag drops.
– 13 Standalone armor pieces (colour/particle variants are not included)

This is one of the reasons the game is getting stagnant. Would it be so terrible to spend less time on the gemstore and more time on new content that might keep the player base around?

nathanjameson.3542:

just the word “raid” itself completely turned me off to this thread

Then why comment?

Anyways in regards to the original question.

Atm it feels like you are either solo or in a gigantic group in regards to PvE. Apart from Teq (not so much recently but when it first came out), level 40+ fractals and Triple Trouble, there isn’t much ‘challenging’ PvE content. Dungeons themselves got largely ignored from launch outside of the difficulty nerf and reward increase.

I hope there are more dungeon-esque things going to be added as I don’t like open world that much, I prefer grouping with my guild and doing hard fractals and full dungeon runs. Even just a hard-mode for explorable would be good (if they made the hard mode follow the story versions that would be EPIC).

They have had ‘Raids’ in the CDI forum so it at least was on the cards at some point, did it make it into HoT? I hope so.

Always people trying to get stuff for free even though EVERY other decent MMO requires payment for expansions, regardless, at least it isn’t like WoW where you get left behind in levels and gear too.

Wade Samuelsson himself is not directly in line from Barradin or Adelbern. (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Tyrian_royalty_family_tree)

If you look at real life cases such as Emperor Charlemagne and how his descendants are basically the European population (http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/07/charlemagnes-dna-and-our-universal-royalty/)

So chances are there were other kings, queens, princes and princesses.

Altheas Ashes are an ascended item in GW2 if that helps. She was killed by the Charr as a sacrifice to their ‘fire god’. Hence altheas ashes. You meet her ghost in the quest ‘A Dukes Daughter’.

She was captured after the Searing and you would likely think she would mention something before disappearing as a ghost if she did have a child.

As far as I know isn’t there a title called ‘Veteran’? Problem solved.

I bet HoT pre-patch, only for it to be destroyed again by Mordremoth and rebuilt another year or two after.

scerevisiae.1972:

Pyriel.4370:

How I see it is that they are disencouraging play styles where blobs capture the point and move on without defending it or upgrading it. It also means those poor dolyaks wont be so ignored either.

The proposed changes will achieve the opposite – no need to waste supp/gold upgrading, just blob the objective and leave to blob the next objective, the keeps/towers upgrade themselves.

Whereas in live, if you spend supp/gold upgrading, you’re more likely to want to defend it.

Apart from that isn’t really a major objective at the moment.

The winning play style is thus:

- Have 100% coverage all hours of the day.

- Blob around and capture points

- If you get beaten during prime time, don’t worry, the off peak blobs will just recapture everything and rack the points up.

People aren’t really defending much atm anyways.

Tbf Land Trident/Spear, Survival skills that deal with leaps, moving in and out of battle.

You got yourself a dragoon.

Gadget Belt! I wanna make batman with shark repellent in my toolkit and a greatsword to ‘administer’ it with!

How I see it is that they are discouraging play styles where blobs capture the point and move on without defending it or upgrading it. It also means those poor dolyaks wont be so ignored either.

Expansions wise I can see this happening.

Elder Dragon based ones like Heart of Thorns. Which may open up Cantha and Elona, no one says that the Dragons have to stick around in Tyria, Kralkatorrik as far as I know is hanging around the Crystal Desert, which leads to Elona.

There is also the old storyline in which I have in a quote from the GW2 wiki;

“Dragons were not always the main antagonists of Guild Wars 2. According to The Making of Guild Wars 2 book, original drafts for story included demons and angelic beings descending to the world to judge it.”

So they will probably go past the Elder Dragons, and as we have seen in GW1, storylines can be driven with smaller threats leading to a greater threat.

You could look at welsh tree names. A lot of the names take from Welsh names and phonetics. You will want to be careful though, a lot of words may be contextual. For example my warriors name:

Caerdu, split it up and you get Caer Du. Literally meaning in context Black Fort or Black Stronghold. On their own though, Caer nowadays is the Welsh name for the City of Chester which mostly is inside a castle. Du still means black though.

My rangers name is Daffydd. A mix between the Welsh name Dafydd (welsh for david) and the national Welsh flower, the Daffodil.

Rules wise if you want to be authentic, do research around older names from Welsh/Celtic religions as the names are already in their proper context, rather than taking it from google translate and thesaurus books.

If authenticity isn’t a big deal, just go with what sounds right to you.

http://www.druidry.org/library/trees

There is a good site with some tree lore and the names in the celtic languages.

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgIBrANoBuw~

What I can see the Dragonhunter medi variant becoming similar to.

GS + Longbow

Zerker/Knights (stat uncouple means medi guards lose 300 extra toughness).

Signet of Resolve/Shelter, Judge’s Intervention, Smite Condition, Contemplation of Purity, Renewed Focus.

I really doubt many will use the traps. All guards really needed was a viable ranged option and traps are way to situational, you don’t see rangers using them much for good reason and necros get a wep full without using up utilities.

Your build relying on the stupidity of your enemy to stand on your traps is WAY to situational for a big payoff. Relying on traps means relying on others to trigger them, the pacing alone is terrible.

I know this part may sound strange but also traps are completely unusable underwater. So the moment I enter water I ain’t even able to use 2/3 of what makes a dragonhunter a dragonhunter. So….those traps are even more situational than shouts, meditations and two consecrations. They have given me 0 reason to invest in traps at all.

Congratulations! You officially have one of the most fricken coolest Specialisations yet!

ronpierce.2760:

Knighthonor.4061:

ronpierce.2760:

While traps might be underwhelming. I think people are undeeeestimatng the significance of the virtue changes. That extra leap could make for a pretty good addition to LB/GS, Hambow or even more standard set ups. Remember not all parts of specializations are required.

that aim based spear may have problems like Flame Thrower kit does. thats my concern.

Also is that leap ground target or not?

I believe it said it was ground targeted. And they seem to get the mist wall shield from revanant hammer on their courage virtue. I could see the new stuff being pretty useful, honestly. Just avoid traps if you don’t like them, just like any other build. People still get 3 trait lines… Meditation Dragonhunters with more mobility and blocks? I cant imagine that not being successful. Especially if the new trait that makes the courage leap also deal damage when you land, the burst potential could be real.

Then all that work developing those traits etc is wasted and they shouldn’t really be on the guardians trait lines. Traps are majorly flawed for rangers and guardians are not the type to hang around in the background at all, that’s why we have all the blocks.

I wanna know who thought this would be a good idea. I get they tried to solve the guardian lacking a ranged wep and condi spec in one go but they didn’t need to, seriously, most guardians really only wanted a viable ranged wep while not really caring much about condi as condi sees very limited use outside of sPvP. I would have figured the guardian would have gone down the route of more shouts and chants (old paragon skill type, think channeled shout).

They had it right there, the paragon, right there, fully thematically designed with obvious paths.

They seem to have given us the stuff that should be given to rangers to fix them.

Seriously? A light magic ranger? With Traps? What the hell?

Tonn and Ceera are another straight relationship, as well as Doxxa and Kazz from the M.I.G Asura story.

Tybalt and Norgal from the Orders are male characters. Not to mention the upper echelons of the orders having a nice mix of male:female.

There is also the personal story from the Sylvari side, Gairwen and Evart, and also Tiachren and Ysvelta.

I am inclined to think that people are not noticing a lot because you are used to seeing hetero relationships in society and are zoning in on the unfamiliar same sex relationships in terms of same sex relationships vs hetero relationships.

Braham and Rox likely have a very close platonic relationship, almost brother and sister in arms forged by war and ‘rejection’ by their own respected races (at least how they probably see it). Similar to other games like Tifa and Barrett from FF7.

A viable sword and shield build that isn’t niché.

I’m aching to have bolt with flameseeker and feel like I am not compromising anything.

Also how would you obtain a bloodstone or any of the skill point currency items from Miyani/Class Trainers.

narwhalsbend.7059:

Pyriel.4370:

There already are many Asuran gates to the Fractal of the Mists, WvW (set in the mists) and sPvP (set in the mists).

And those gates are still just game elements that have been forced into lore through the ever-popular “Asura technology” excuse.

Your point being? The gates is still there to use in terms of reaching locations within the mists.

Diovid.9506:

narwhalsbend.7059:

We could only get to the UW and FoW through the Gods’ avatars. With them not likely to show up, how do we get there now?

Asura magitech a.k.a. deus ex machina?

There already are many Asuran gates to the Fractal of the Mists, WvW (set in the mists) and sPvP (set in the mists).

They even have the tech to teleport you in and out of different ‘fractals’.

What would be good is if the FoW and UW became GW2’s answer to raiding. They could do the same with Urgoz’s Warren, The Deep, the Realm of Torment explorable leading to the Domain of Anguish, Ring of fire (with explorable area leading to it), Tomb of the Primeval Kings, etc.

There is so much content for them to use and I don’t get why dungeons/raiding has been swept aside in favour of 100% open world content.

The raids could be large non-linear dungeon maps with linear optional quest chains that lead to the final boss.