Guild Wars 2

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Good. LFR killed wow. We already have dumbed down raids that any bear bow spamming kid can complete before bed time. Time for something new!

Don’t like it, don’t do it. There is content for everyone, not just for you your class.

Could become a thing.

Once we hit legendary stats, we’re not going anywhere. Skins is where it’s at with end game progression, so putting stuff in the gem store makes perfect sense from a business stand point.

Dahkeus.8243:

Good. There’s a reason I left WoW at Cataclysm.

Pug raids are miserable. They’re either an organizational disaster or they’re pitted against content that’s made easy enough for a pug clear.

The latter of those two options is the worst.

Here’s the moment I decided to quit raiding:

I was entering the Deatwing’s Lair raid with a Raid LFG. We breezed through every boss, downing them without a wipe. I defeated Deathwing by doing almost nothing but tab targetting and following the mob of pugs. When the great and legendary Deatwing died to this group…I realized that there was nothing to be proud of.

Deathwing suddenly felt like a pushover schmuck and there was nothing any challenging hard mode could do to fix his ruined reputation.

Please ArenaNet. Please, please, keep this content challenging and don’t ever build out a group finder. Don’t just cater to casual content and don’t just cater to hardcore content. Provide both and embrace a complex and diverse playerbase!

Your problem has nothing to do with using an LFG to get into a group quick and easy.

You would have encountered the same thing had you joined them buy spamming “LFG Deathwing Paladin GS 2billion etc etc etc” They were simply a competent group with gear high enough to do it.

LFG doesn’t make the game harder or easier, it makes it more accessible to people and allows them to get into the content easier, this is simply an extension of not having a Dungeon Finder. Anet didn’t want to do it then, they’re not doing it now.

Gimli.9461:

There’s a balance Anet have to strike between challenging and too challenging. They are trying for engaging combat that feels risky and challenging and yet it mustn’t be impossible to do, I guess we’ll see how it will be.

Hopefully they also keep in mind that all professions would like to be viable, let’s not see this turn into 2 Guards, 2 Warriors, Mesmer and 5 Ele’s.

We were told pets are the staple of our class, we were also told they don’t intend to fix them. Should tell you all you need to know about how Anet feel about us.

I’m thinking it needed to be reworked quite a bit, they’ve started to realise how broken the foundation is, then how they couldn’t do what they originally intended and then once they finally got an idea they run with, they couldn’t get that down either.

Now there will be one test and pushed live. This is going to be hilarious.

I also wonder whether or not they had a go at separating mob AI from pet AI, that would push our development back if there were major re-writings going on, which would knock us out of the original intended reveal slot and into last, I find it a stretch that the reveals came in perfect profession order on their page by coincidence.

“A new build is available” will haunt you in your sleep after seeing it 400 times the day before.

Content is a retention mechanism, those games content wasn’t enough for said leaving players.

Just like how the content is delivered regardless of how or whether it is meaty or “fluffy” as much of GW2s content was referred to.

The same reason there is 1 raid now, not even on release. The same reason we get these new pieces each week. It’s so it’s not dumped in front of us we consume it and move on. It’s all about trying to keep you as long as possible, regardless of how good and how much. We can bullet point most of the announcements over the years, yet it would go over weeks tiny tiny nothing articles, all trying to fluff up and keep us going regardless of how good it was.

They want players to pop in every so often so often, not to blow through it and leave. They have a store they want people to potentially buy from each week as well.

Mirta.5029:

I understand trying to keep everyone on an even ground, but I don’t think that rewarding trust and money spent would insult anyone. As it stands a veteran player that made multiple gem purchases is only worth as much as a new player that just decided to buy HoTs. That’s not really encouraging people to spend money in my opinion.

Actually the veteran player is worth less.

For many the veteran player is saturated in terms of expense. For every new thing in the gem store a veteran can buy a new player can buy it and the entire back catalog a veteran player has already bought.

Not to mention you can also buy missed story elements you weren’t actively in game to receive, which again the veteran will most likely have been there to receive free.

In terms of value, a new player is potentially worth a lot more to them than a veteran, yes you have whales who will buy everything and anything, a new player isn’t guaranteed to spend, but the potential for more money is ever present.

Forge if there is a reveal.

Raids are dungeons, or instanced content, we already have that in the game, do we not like having this?

Allow 5 more people in, increase health of mobs, bang I’ve made a Raid.

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Sicarius.4639:

Once we hit this point, where do we go from there? I’m very curious to see what incentive a player has once they have everything.

For the content. I have always said this special snowflake syndrome is just pandering to elitism simple as that. It makes no sense to pigeon hold any advantage to one style of content because it just creates divides in your player base and compounds elitist behavior. There is no reason to do this, if you want raids you got them why do you need to have any advantage to complete them? Make the gear available everywhere and those who prefer to do this content get them that way and those who don’t get them the way they like…hence “play the way you want”.

This has nothing to do with my question, so I’ll clarify. Once we have Legendary gear and we can change stats at will and need nothing else, what do we then reward a player with in any part of the game? I feel like you’re “complete” is it just skins after that? I guess it could be seeing as that is currently the end-game / source of income for Anet via the store.

But as for what you’re saying, if you can get Legendary gear doing whatever you like (which I have no problem with) then ascended will become void (particularly with crafting) why go through all those hoops when you can go get Legendary instead?

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Having Legendary gear that can transform stats at will is a major advantage, and anyone who doesn’t think so is fooling themselves. The fact of the matter is once you have the set you are covered for gear in any possible scenario so having this will be an advantage over other players who don’t raid, simple as that.

Once we hit this point, where do we go from there? I’m very curious to see what incentive a player has once they have everything.

MikaHR.1978:

Sicarius.4639:

Player retention probably, harder content that takes longer to get through, keep pushing out said content over the space of months so people don’t walk away. Like bringing the raid out 2 weeks later than the actual expansion, no one will blow through it Day 1.

So why are all games that used to bet on raids to retain players moving away form them?

What is this metric? Where are the statistics? What about games that don’t have raids? How many people have moved from them? Given raiding is a rather small part of 90% of all games, I’d say people moved away from more games without raids than those with.

Palador.2170:

From the statement, I kind of got the impression that not only will they allow it, they intend for you to NEED to do it at some points.

Why?

Well, imagine a raider with good celestial gear. Average all around. But boss X here requires lots of burst damage to take down, so you need a good set of Berserker gear for him. And then you enter area Y, where it’s all condition damage time. So, you need a third set of gear. And you’re going to have to earn ALL of them if you want to be at your best in this raid.

Changing your traits is easy. But when you need to change your gear as well, then you’re looking at a time sink. A big one if you want ascended gear. Gold sink, too. This will slow down raiders and make it harder without requiring bosses far stronger than anything GW2 should have. It’s a way to turn two hours of content into dozens of hours of focused play.

Alternatively lock it and then you’ll need to bring more classes than just Ele.

Player retention probably, harder content that takes longer to get through, keep pushing out said content over the space of months so people don’t walk away. Like bringing the raid out 2 weeks later than the actual expansion, no one will blow through it Day 1.

It has always been there, just the content hasn’t been there to provoke it in people.

I don’t buy the “we’re so nice” talk, given the right prod (as we’ve seen) we soon eat ourselves.

Swiftly.2385:

Wuselknusel.4082:

jcbroe.4329:

The problem I have with seeing a melee staff is that at this point with thief and Rev both getting a melee staff, it might start to be an overused concept. For thief and rev, it’s unique in a sense because they lack 2 handed melee weapons without staff.

Ranger, on the other hand, has greatsword already. So what would a melee staff that’s different from thief and revenant act without overlapping with Ranger GS at all? That would be my question/concern from a design point of view.

A caster staff for the druid on the other hand has tons of design potential that isn’t present on either the ranger class or in the theme/function of other classes. It doesn’t even have to necessarily be a “ranged” weapon, it just has to avoid being a martial weapon (aka it could be similar to guardians staff and have shorter ranges or even no range, but still thematically use magic to attack).

I doubt that anything will be revealed until after the next BWE though ANet is cutting it close

But I want to beat up bad guys with a stick. Also, having a melee staff does increase the chance of the staff being a damage focussed weapon, something I want to see. I don’t the first elite specialization to be some sort of tank or support centered specialization, I want to play through HoT with my Druid and I want to be able to kill stuff, as fast as the Berserker or the Daredavil can at best.

Good Luck with that…I hope the spec is amazing but I am not holding my breath, it looks like Ranger and Engi are only going to get one Beta weekend for feedback. The two most bugged classes in the game and they get the least amount of attention…

Starting to see a pattern…

Think we can all agree all classes are not made equal, therefore if this content is the hardest content in the game, some classes may get left out.

Anet won’t want that, therefore it will accommodate the lowest common denominator, either everyone [classes] can do it or only some [classes].

Best returns seemed to be on fluff themes, that way you can shift gem store items in different flavours.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Test.8734:

Aramil.9503:

Is it true that people are boycotting this because it is overpriced?

No, people are simply not buying because it’s overpriced.

I think you mean some people aren’t willing to shell out US$50 for an expansion. There’s no objective way to determine if something is “overpriced” — by definition, if an item sells in the marketplace, it’s not overpriced and HoT is selling.

Test.8734:

Really, it’s DLC-worth content. The kind of thing people would pay at most $10 for.

That’s because your entire assessment rests on how many of this, how many of that. I don’t care about how many skins or zones. I care about whether the expansion will add 100s of hours of entertainment for me. And the only metrics we have available are how well they have done with other games, campaigns, and expacs. Their track record on that is stellar: GW1: popular and entertaining for 100s of hours. GW1 x3 campaigns individually entertaining for 100s of hours. GW1 single expac, ditto. GW2 even more so.

Using those metrics, the going rate of US$50 for expac is worth it to me.

Test.8734:

Don’t buy it right now. Wait, and, considering how starved for money ArenaNet is (free to play game, rushing to release an obviously unfinished “expansion”), they will reduce the price as soon as the poor reviews start pouring in.

There’s almost no chance they will reduce the price in the first 3 months after launch, so if you wait, you’ll miss the excitement of joining all the veterans (and new players) tackling the new content. After that intense period, there’s a very good chance that, regardless of reviews, the game will be discounted by retailers and by ANet — that’s because every gaming firm does that, in order to keep the peak sales period running a bit longer and thus being able to claim “x copies” sold, which helps sell more games down the road.

tl;dr if you like ANet’s track record on entertainment, this is a good deal.
(and of course, if you are like “Test,” and judge a game based on how many skins or maps it has, it looks more anemic).

edit: kitten filter doesn’t think we should use “- – - ess” as a synonym for ‘judge’ because of the first three letters.

You can buy it right now £10 off the sticker price. It will go down, maybe Anet won’t be the ones doing it but other companies will want to shift it.

We are worried.

LughLongArm.5460:

Sicarius.4639:

LughLongArm.5460:

Levetty.1279:

And people still claim they don’t play favourites with the classes.

I dont think its got anything to do with favouritism. If A.net could have it their way, I’m sure all specializations would had been revealed by now. Its simple, specializations increase the pre-order sales and A.net wants ppl to pre-order ASAP. I guess the dealy is based to real timeline issues.

They could do BWE with all classes done, then balance them in BWE waves.

Getting 1 BWE is terrible, so what if we give feedback, there is no room to test ANY changes Anet choose to make / not make. It will go live as they want it, we know how much love they’ve shown us in the past…

Dont think its just about balance, i think i realy wasnt ready. And engi is on the same boat with us, do u think a.net also “hate” engis?

Then wait until they are? Do they think leaving them to lag behind in polish is a good idea?

Killyox.3950:

Just your friends. They are either broke or scrooge. Many people spend more on a single night-out.

Or they enjoy having consumer power? You know not giving money to promises, buying into an ever growing industry wide problem of preorders? They don’t have to be tight / poor to not want to spend their money on something they’re not happy with.

LughLongArm.5460:

Levetty.1279:

And people still claim they don’t play favourites with the classes.

I dont think its got anything to do with favouritism. If A.net could have it their way, I’m sure all specializations would had been revealed by now. Its simple, specializations increase the pre-order sales and A.net wants ppl to pre-order ASAP. I guess the dealy is based to real timeline issues.

They could do BWE with all classes done, then balance them in BWE waves.

Getting 1 BWE is terrible, so what if we give feedback, there is no room to test ANY changes Anet choose to make / not make. It will go live as they want it, we know how much love they’ve shown us in the past…

Hence the meta.

mrstealth.6701:

Some are inherently easier or more challenging to play, and there are differences in survivability, support, and damage ouput. Two classes that bring fairly even DPS, can have huge differences in the amount of support or survivability they have available. The class that brings the that DPS, but also brings valuable support is definitely not balanced with a class that only matches the DPS.

And when you tweak the content to be very hard, it gets to a point where you just choose the class that provides the better option.

This is why despite the need for “hard content” in a game that is absolutely unbalanced, Anet will need to accommodate the lowest common denominator as to not alienate a portion of the player base.

latinkuro.7304:

excpet raiding in wow is all about following a pretty hard set rotation and waiting for specifically scripted things to happen " the lich king is casting defile" OMFG

The combat system in gw2 lets you defeat content in several different ways.
in wow if you do not follow the rotations and such you never beat that content period.

that to me is what was boring when I played such mmo’s, fully scripted BS

Several different ways? Do you use every ability when its CD is up? If not, you have a rotation, you have an optimal output. There is no difference between the buttons you push and those attending a raid in another game. Where the difference lies is what it does in retaliation, here it usually stands and takes it, we stack and nuke. Other places it has a ruleset of mechanics, yes hardcoded, we’re not at extremely high AI awareness levels of coding in a video game, but they at least have mechanics. Something GW2 is slowly picking up on.

Fluffball.8307:

LughLongArm.5460:

Honestly, ATM thieves are very underwhelming. Since the trait changes, I havnt lost 1v1 vs a thief, even sruvived 1vs2 thives(which was the ultimate combo for fast killing) so I realy think they needed the power creep. For old builds you can look at the DD as better acrobatics, which will bring back the goold old S/D play. For new builds we’ll have to see.

I have not been playing much lately because I’m annoyed at GW2, but unless something has changed, thieves are required for a PvP team to be competitive. It’s literally the only profession you can’t do without.

Ay, we’re going to make 5 ele’s work even if it kills us!

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

jcbroe.4329:

Don’t know how long these will be up but leaving this here, some artwork for druid is shown: https://marius.im/u/202sH4.jpg

There is no pet in that artwork…

Shaman confirmed.

There is always the gem store.

Morfedel.4165:

Sicarius.4639:

Speaking of which, when will we hear reviews, are they likely to be from a broad range of sources?

sure, but the formal release is still 2 months away.

Have we heard anything about embargo times etc?

Speaking of which, when will we hear reviews, are they likely to be from a broad range of sources?

latinkuro.7304:

wow example, bunch of people standing around following rotations OMFG can you say LAME and BORING.

Following a rotation is just optimisation, the most optimal output for said class. You know what to do and when to do it, as it has certain mechanics you learn and adjust to. Now on the other hand when it’s a health sponge, you could argue 5 Ele’s taking a boss down is boring and lame but it is the most optimal because the mechanic here is stack and blitz.

Business as usual then?

Weren’t we telling ourselves how nice we all are about 10mins ago? You know to keep out the F2P scum?

SPESHAL.9106:

This is more than just embarrassing for Anet…it’s embarrassing for players that choose Ele.

Most players don’t mind being OP, but, when it’s this absurd, the tide turns to shame for even playing the profession.

How is it possible that Anet was able to do quick “balance” changes to Ranger and Necro 30pt traits soon after the recent patch…eventually got to Engineer and Mesmer exploits…but STILL has done NOTHING to Ele???

Same reason you don’t pee in your own cornflakes. It’s ok to take toys away from things that annoy the class your playing, who gives a kitten when you don’t play it?

drgast.1469:

I’m all for the new restrictions on free accounts for map chat, but at the same time….I’ve already seen one hiccup in this. If you’re a new player and maybe you have some questions when you first join the game…it’s not easy to do that. Even people trying to help new players have an awkward time starting a dialogue.

My suggestion is to add another map-wide chat channel clearly designed for help or something of that sort that is available to all, but with a timed limit similar to the whispers. Also make it clear to people when they log on their accounts that it’s quite easy to simply turn the chat channel off if you dont want to see it, but give the new people a way of not just getting their questions answered, but also feeling perhaps more involved in the community.

I’m sure other people can come up with better suggestions as well, but I see this as a possible issue in the current plan to mitigate unwanted chat traffic from free accounts.

I thought this would be an issue for new players, just like taking away the ability to ask questions on the forum, it’s quite funny actually for a community that loves to pat itself on the back for being friendly, we’d much rather shun newcomers because there may be a possible inconvenience to ourselves.

Zhou.3605:

Okay, I paid $120 for my GW2 with HoT and they will pay $75 for their HoT if they want the LS. I still paid way more for the same product.

I take it everything you’ve ever bought was on release? Car, DVDs, Mobile Phone, Other video games etc.? Many things go down in value after release, I mean fine, if you want to buy Titanfall for £40 go for it, but you know you can get it for about £5 now?

It will most likely echo the dungeon meta, making things harder will push this meta to it’s limit. There will most likely be little wiggle room and you’ll end up with a hard comp where certain situations arise and some classes are just better than others at dealing with them. Which the game current gives us.

neilug hyuga.5634:

The sad truth, is that with that release, no matter how big will be the 4 maps, we will never get more than Tyria.

Cantha and Elona (and others continents) needs far way more continent, and with that specific of doing maps, it is not that good.

I am kinda sad tho, our dream is getting far away. I would rather see the Lore explode, a whole new world to explore, that will be SO big !

Well, we will see. We will judge when we will see the expension

They might pull a Blizzard doing a huge fan service expansion when they really bombed on the previous one. Who knows, if they’re not rewarded financially enough from this expansion then we may see something truly great in the future. If enough people are satisfied, then maybe not.

If you must have it day 1 you can already get it elsewhere for £10 cheaper, otherwise hold off on it, no one is forcing you despite how developers can’t wait to get your money.

Vox Hollow.2736:

I’m sure we’ll have plenty of time for this kind of conversation after we get a bit more informed?

We know about as much about Raids now, as we did during the IGN leak.

We know a bit more especially with the trailer. It’s an 1 instance, 10-man and the mechanics it seems of one of the WoW bosses (jump off the platform and back on when the ability has finished) and will be available 2 weeks after HoT is live.

Demented Yak.6105:

How about one of every class + one random extra?

According to the trailer that’s 1 more Ranger than you need =P

Wondrouswall.7169:

I’m not surprised a Ranger/Druid was absent from the Raid trailer. I didn’t play a Ranger in the last BWE in the new map, so I’m unfamiliar with how pets functioned when you leaped off to glide.

Would suck in that one part where the kill-shot ground stomp if you glided away and your pet was left behind on the land, dies, and your pet cd was on full 48/60 because… well, oversight?

Also pets insta-dying has been in the game for a while when it comes to big encounters or WvW… might of been an oversight back then, now it’s just sad.

Wonder if it keeps you in combat, stops you gliding maybe? Rangers falling to their death in the trailer would be funny.

Funnily enough I went and did that myself! At the time we were Page 13 for a red post.

Actually don’t feature in the Raid trailer either.

Plenty of online retailers will have discount codes to get more of the key price.

You can already get the game £10 cheaper today on many sites.

lol they knew what they were doing.

Zeidrich.8435:

This is from the article about the addition of free accounts to the game:
Will existing players who bought the base game be getting any bonuses?

Earlier this year, right after we introduced our pre-purchase program for Heart of Thorns, we gave a free character slot to all existing players. This week we also have a special anniversary gift for all of our existing players [following up on this].

I do not remember a free slot for everyone? Was it a special event?

PR speak for you got one when your bought the HoT expansion after the uproar. Then it was “given” for “free”.