Guild Wars 2

http://www.arena.net/blog/the-golden-rules-of-guild-wars-2

Respect the player

We respect you—as a player, as a human being. This game we’re making may end up competing with your real life. It might fight for your free time alongside your friends, your family, your work, and whatever else you might be doing.

ANET’s advertising disagrees with the concept of one time events.

Rhyse.8176:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Remove the town clothes from the gem store and what cosmetic items do you have left ?

Here’s some they could add with way less effort then designing a new dungeon takes:

How about a $60 monocle ?

Thinking of stuff they could add is easy. Problem is, the stuff isn’t there.

monepipi.5160:

You are just hating for no reason. And your bullet points actually sounds like you’re selling FOTM. They sound awesome. FOTM is the most fun dungeon in GW2 by far.

If it wasn’t for Ascended gear, the worst most people would be saying about the Flavor Of The Month dungeon is that they don’t like it, so they won’t play it. But with Ascended gear, they are forced to play it for the stats, so they will complain more.

The golden rules of Guild Wars 2

We respect you—as a player, as a human being. This game we’re making may end up competing with your real life. It might fight for your free time alongside your friends, your family, your work, and whatever else you might be doing.

How do one time events fit with this ?

Why should we stop complaining about ANET lying to us ?

showatt.9413:

marianitten.1247:

glad to see that more than a half of the things you post here.. are absolutly objetive and what is “bad” for you, is good for another.
Don’t waste time explaining why you don’t like this game. Play the game you enjoy and move on.

lmao yeah completely agree.
It also confuses me why people as such feel the need to announce on the forum that they are leaving.

For hugs?

Because they still have hope that the problems they see will be fixed, which would cause them to return.

Stego.3148:

All these fears go directly against firm quotes of A-net’s agenda pre launch. A lot of people put these quotes in their signatures here out of irony if you want to read some.

Lets just quote them here:

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

– Colin Johanson

Finally, since combat is such a core part of the gameplay of any MMO, we’ve put a lot of emphasis into rethinking combat. So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear. After a while it starts to feel like you’re playing a spreadsheet. Combat needs to be about making creative choices, and it needs to feel immediate, active, and visceral.

-Mike O’Brien

Ascended items make these lies. Specifically bait and switch advertising.

Some more quotes:

Respect the player

We respect you—as a player, as a human being. This game we’re making may end up competing with your real life. It might fight for your free time alongside your friends, your family, your work, and whatever else you might be doing. Because of that, we want to give you a meaningful experience, not one that is a vapid waste of your time. Whatever your reasons for spending time in Tyria, we don’t want to waste it by doing stuff that isn’t fun.

…

Purpose: To keep us honest.

Forcing people to repeat the same dungeon until they get the gear they want is not fun for a lot of people.
Come to think of it, one time events don’t respect players either.

If ANET hadn’t promised that there wouldn’t be a gear grind, I wouldn’t have purchased GW2. They lied.
How do you respond to when you find out someone lied to you ?

On an internet forum, anger is the only response you will see quickly. Other options (large number of players leaving, summoning lawyers, etc) take time to be noticed.

John Smith.4610:

Think of the trading post as a whole. These restrictions aren’t made to inconvenience you.

Are the restrictions there for performance reasons, to reduce manipulation, or both ?

Crater.1625:

Absolute best case scenario, the update improves the average number of players logged into the game at any given time, as everybody grinds for Ascended equipment. But the game doesn’t make money directly from time played or from how many people are logged on at one time – so what’s the motivation?

In a typical F2P game, the longer someone is online, the more likely they are to buy a cosmetic item from the store. Problem is, they buy them so that the cosmetic item is seen. Town clothes don’t get seen often enough to count. Remove the town clothes from the gem store and what cosmetic items do you have left ?
– Transmutation stones. But we get more than enough of the level 80 stones via PvE
– Random dyes. When you can get specific dyes through the trading post.
– Random Minipets. Which turn off randomly, go to your collectable tab should you deposit them all. I don’t know if you can still trade specific minis or not.
– 1 armor skin. I find them ugly
– Cow finisher. The only thing that might be worth the asking price. But I don’t sPvP, and I just DPS people down in WvW.

They don’t even have the standard appearance changer that everyone else has.

Falcon Night.4653:

Guys ANET had to make money, even if they had to throw out their manifesto to do it. I’m a casual player with a lvl 80 character without any exotic gear. The new update is not for me.

Problem is, I don’t see how Ascended gear makes them money. There is nothing in the gem store worth buying.

Cosmetic options are always a good money earner (just look at TF2). The problem with the gem store options is that they are almost all town clothes. Which means you don’t get to see them most of the time.
Appearance changers are another good option. ANET put them on the store for less than a day, then pulled them due to unspecified bugs.

So all Ascended gear does is get people to be online for longer than normal, costing ANET money.

Lets imagine someone who is playing the GW2 trial. Then the person who gave them a trial key, the person who was pushing them to try GW2. tells them about how the manifesto is a lie. How many sales has that cost ANET ?

Oh and the people wanting vertical progression ?
They’ll be going back to WoW soon, as everything I’ve heard (having never played WoW myself) says WoW does it better. So they were never going to become GW2’s core audience.

Marithia.2063:

And now the drops are ruining the market. I heard from my fiance that there’s a server where the Dusk went down to like 40 gold.

Wtf.

The trading post is global. So it will be the same price everywhere.

Zid.4196:

GW1 being imperfect is why GW2 held so much promise, so many things that could have been improved.

Turns out GW2 was so busy becoming a wow-clone the only improvement that was nailed was jumping.

How many WoW clones have we seen fail horribly ?

Have you seen any succeed ?

I’m thinking there is one very important thing all MMO developers need to realize: If you try to take customers from WoW you will fail. If you want to succeed, find your customers somewhere else.

Eucyon.3479:

haaaaaaaaaaa by fotm i meant flavor of the month like whats most common right now sorry about that

At least nobody thought you were swearing when you asked for the forwards/up path of TA

Nageth.5648:

They increased the rate of acquiring pretty much all the materials. While I agree that legendaries should be difficult to get, they were encouraging rather obsessive behavior as far as acquiring the materials. What this shows is that they’re willing to allow progression from more play styles. I bet ascended gear will not be limited to the extreme end of the fractal grind. That doesn’t fix the current problem with fractals, though (and hopefully they will fix the fractured player base sooner rather than later).

Tell me, how did any of their changes to Legendary acquisition change the number of ways the components could be acquired ?
All I see is that you can get them quicker. I don’t see any new methods to acquire them.

But I also see that Ascended gear was launched with exactly one way to get it. Thus closing off all other paths from getting max stat gear. A major reduction in options.

So I see this as a net reduction in options.

NaughtyProwler.8653:

Rangle.2539:

The game is naturally progressing to appeal to all spectrum of gaming. Everyone can have their slice of pie. There is no one stopping you if you want to play around with cosmetic items. Or if you want to progress your characters to become better and more skillful. Tolerance toward different spectrum of gaming is a good thing.

Although your goal is noble, it just isn’t practical and I have yet to see it work out in an MMO since you can’t please everyone. At some point you end up alienating different playstyles if you try to do so, much like this current patch has already done.

So it’s best to alienate the WoW players, because they are unlikely to leave WoW.
While the players who don’t like grind should be easier customers, since there isn’t any competition for them.

Just look at Eve Online. It’s doing well because CCP know what niche of players they are aiming at.

Sondergaard.8469:

You assume that ArenaNet won’t continue with listening to their community (as they have proven many times over that they do and will) and look at ways of implementing alternative methods to acquiring Ascended gear. I refer you to the changes made to acquiring precursors for Legendaries, and the planned future changes.

Like I said in my post, I have every faith that they will address these concerns and expand on the current system to allow additional methods to acquire Ascended gear.

Why should them making Legendary weapons, which were always meant to be something that takes ages to get, quicker to acquire as proof of anything good ?
How was precursors being too hard to obtain even a problem ?

As for faith in ANET, I had that right up until the point they introduced Ascended gear and made their own advertising a lie. Then they made it worse when their solution to the precursor ‘problem’ was a reward at the end of a one time only event, to show everyone that they think real life issues like sleep and work should be of lesser important than attending ANET’s ‘epic’ events.

Maybe they will fix it. But I no longer have any faith that they will do the right thing, so I’ll be complaining till they fix it or I give up and go play something else. Though ANET saying something about this mess they caused might soften my attitude.

BabelFish.7234:

Unless they changed it legendaries are still marginally better (by marginal I mean the difference isn’t worth the investment from a numbers perspective).

I’d like to see some proof of that. I thought their stats were identical to Exotics.

Remember these parts of the manifesto ?

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games — we leave the grind to other MMOs.”

-Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

Fun impacts loot collection. The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”

– Colin Johanson

Finally, since combat is such a core part of the gameplay of any MMO, we’ve put a lot of emphasis into rethinking combat. So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear. After a while it starts to feel like you’re playing a spreadsheet. Combat needs to be about making creative choices, and it needs to feel immediate, active, and visceral.

-Mike O’Brien

Turns out they were lies. Ascended items are rarer that exotics, but have greater stats than exotics with upgrades. Then you can stick infusions in them to upgrade their stats even further. By stats I’m talking about your regular stats (toughness, power, etc), not Agony resistance which they also have.
Oh, and to get Ascended items you need the RNG to make one component drop. A component that is bound to you on pickup, so you can’t trade it. A component that only drops in FOTM. Then you need 250 T6 mats, 50 ecto, and a lot of items that cost skill points to purchase. Throw them all in the Mystic forge and you get your Ascended back piece.

goldpimpwang.9371:

I don’t know how people became such big fans of ArenaNet in the first place. They’ve never been the sort of outstanding company that reaches out to the community for game design decisions or anything. The two games they’ve made are good but making a good game is not a trait unique to ArenaNet. I urge you not to undeservedly put ArenaNet on some sort of pedestal because, frankly, they don’t belong there. It will save you grief in the future.

It’s mainly because GW1 offered something MMOs of the time didn’t: No grinding for stats. That, not the overall quality of GW1, is what got them on the pedestal.

Slay For Bank.5462:

Yeah, the fact that some people got precursors from the one time event really disheartened me. I personally got a couple trash exotics. I really think having precursors drop from the one time event was a pretty big mistake.

At least you were allowed to make the loot roll. Unlike Australia.

Sondergaard.8469:

I find it rather funny that people whine and moan about hitting 80 and not having anything to do, no gear progression, no progressive dungeons, etc. So ArenaNet decides to add ONE DUNGEON for these people that wanted to pursue that, and now people piss and moan that they added content for a group of people that were lacking that content.

Why are you assuming that the people wanting gear progression are the same people that are whining about it ?

Get over it people. It’s one dungeon.

One dungeon that we are forced to do if we want the stats that only it provides. Before FOTM, we had multiple ways to get whichever max stat item we wanted.

Also, the biggest problem is that ANET lied to us with the manifesto.

Oh, and btw? Did you check stats on Ascended gear? It’s not that big of a gap to complain about. +2 over the stats of an 80 exotic?

How much of a difference will that be over the full set of Ascended gear that ANET has promised ?

Not to mention that infusion ONLY effects Agony,

You are wrong. Infusions come with stats other than agony resistance.

AcidicVision.5498:

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

But there is one very important difference: Essence is bind on pickup, everything else you mention is not. That means that for Essence you have to keep going till the RNG spits it out. For everything else, even if the RNG doesn’t spit out what you want, you are still making progress towards being able to buy the items on the trading post

Even if you don’t run the area the item drops you are still making progress towards being able to buy the items on the trading post by earning coin.

You might want to try an elementalist. Their attunement switching means they basically have 4 weapons, not 2.

Though I have to ask: Of the games with lots of options, how many of the options were something you held back till you needed it, and how many were ones you spammed ?
Because utilities in GW2 are mainly things you hold back until you need them. Especially elites.

Then you need to consider your position. In GW2, if you’re standing still your either casting something which requires you to be stationary, you have enemies preventing you moving, or you’re doing it wrong.

Zid.4196:

As a long-time mmo player (started on a diku mud) I can confirm the existence of the model now best known as the “WoW” model.

Apart from WoW, how many MMOs using the WoW model are doing well ?

Note that if they switched from subscription to F2P, I’d consider that a failure. Ones that started F2P are a different story.

Ostra.3927:

They have already made it a point that they want the WoW market and that those are the “dedicated” gamers they are going to go after.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

How many MMOs have gone after the WoW market ?
Are any of them still doing well ?

Gear matters, and it will matter more and more. Deal with it, get on the treadmill or go play something else.

People will. Then ANET will lose the one group of people they might have been able to keep: The people who don’t want to play WoW.

Zid.4196:

Leveling your character to a new cap will be the easy part.

Replacing all your lvl 80 exotic sets with a new cap…well, that’s going to be some grind…and I won’t even mention higher item levels for ascendant or legendary gear.

That depends on how long ANET decides to make those grinds for max stats. They could decide to follow their manifesto and make as easy to acquire to people at the new cap as rares are for people at 80 today.

Or they could keep trying to grab WoW players, who have a long history of going back to WoW, and make the grind as long as they like.

lorazcyk.8927:

People would grind for the looks, even farming so much so they could have Obsidian on all their characters.

Then throw that armor away when Factions came out because the cheap factions armors looked much better.
At least, that’s what I did on my monk.

AliceKaye.1903:

I think a lot of games don’t know how to add content without raising the level cap, because most games are built on a scale that makes content harder and harder, whereas GW2 is built on the foundation of almost a flat line in terms of content difficulty.

How does raising the level cap fit with harder content ?
If anything, if you want the content to become harder, you would keep the level cap the same. Not raise it to make everything easier.

Then again, another 10 levels wouldn’t be bad, and it would allow ANET to produce exotics that have better stats than Ascended items, killing that gear treadmill.

Seera.5916:

They picked the time that the highest concurrence. If that time had been a time that was better suited for Oceanic players they would have done that time and not 12 pm PST.

The problem is not when they schedule the one time event. Someone is always going to miss out.

The problem is that they thought that a one time event was a good idea, despite the fact that people would be forced to miss out. Then, to compound things, they added a reward.

Arsenal.2601:

Question: if someone were to run a number of fractals with a number of characters and lose count, where would the “fractal level” information be found, if anywhere?

When you chose the level by stepping through the portal to Mistlock.

Nithoggr.5284:

Because they said it was going to be a one-time event. Why do they need to justify this?

Depotboy.6204:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Depotboy.6204:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

We all know why the events you list won’t be repeated: They are too expensive to run again.

Why can’t ANET repeat one time events ?

Because they wouldn’t be one time events then would they?

And the justification for them being one time events in the first place is ?

Because it was an event that changed the game’s world by opening up a new part of the map. Wouldn’t make sense to keep repeating it. Anet wanted to make a one time dynamic event to introduce a new zone, and used this weekend to do so. People have known about it for weeks now. If real life got in the way, oh well, it’s just a game.

Because ANET should have known that a large portion of GW2 players would have been unable to attend. Thus writing a one time only event is a stupid idea, because there is no possible way to do it that doesn’t divide the community into the people that can attend and the people that can’t.

Then, to make things worse, they added a significant reward. Since we all paid the same amount for GW2, lets use slot machines as an analogy:
A one time event with a reward is similar to a slot machine that takes the money, lets you pull the leaver, then analyses the person who pulled the leave. Then, based on some aspect of the person that can’t be changed it decides if it should take a spin or throw up a sign telling them they aren’t allowed to play this machine. Also, no rewards.

Anyone defending one time event rewards is the equivalent of someone, other than a lawyer, trying to tell the police and courts that the slot machine owner shouldn’t be prosecuted under gambling laws.

elsbeth.3567:

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Hey all,

I am starting to get a little frustrated, and I love the game, but I’m feeling completely left behind. Because of my work and school schedule as well as being married I do t have as much time to play as others. GW2 actually made me completely happy to play because I could do all the content without being required certain items or gear to meet a min requirement.

Anyways because of my schedule I haven’t been able to log on at all this weekend, but I finally got a chance this morning for about 2 hours before I got into work. I wanted to try some of the Fractals dungeon stuff today, but I got turned down from multiple groups because they were all working on Tier5+ (whatever that means). I was completely frustrated as this is the first time in this game that I realized I might not be able to do any of the newer content for a while because of my schedule.

Does anyone know how the fractal things work? Am I going to be able to get into a group running the first few levels?

I mean it is what it is and I understand that since I am a casual I will always be behind the hardcore players, but the reason I loved this game is because I never have felt like that yet. I love this game but if I can’t play the content because I can’t dedicate my life to a video game I will move on.

Is it going to continue with this design philosophy?

Welcome to gear grinds, gated content and raids. Like drug dealers, they clearly don’t care if they lose casual users because they believe the money is in the hardcore addicts. You’re a second-class citizen of Tyria, my friend, and they’re only going to get worse in their treatment of you.

Thing is, ANET wants to make money via the gem store. Which means they need people with disposable incomes. Who are most likely employed. Meaning they don’t have the time to be hardcore users.

Depotboy.6204:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

We all know why the events you list won’t be repeated: They are too expensive to run again.

Why can’t ANET repeat one time events ?

Because they wouldn’t be one time events then would they?

And the justification for them being one time events in the first place is ?

We all know why the events you list won’t be repeated: They are too expensive to run again.

Why can’t ANET repeat one time events ?

Take the resources that would normally be used to create one time events. Then use them to do something that benefits the entire community. Some examples:
– Bug fixes
– Making the rest of the Lost Shores weekend better.

Ganzo.5079:

P2W its not a solution to grind, its even worse then grind.

With the old sistem, there was no problem.

same stats

• you love to grind for a skin?…then grind it!
• you have no time to grind? then pay for the skin!
• you have no time and no money?… ok you have a crappy skin, but you can play like all the others.

The old system was the best. But lets look at the current Ascended gear system:
– If you don’t mind running FOTM, you can get your Ascended items.
– If you can’t stand FOTM, you can’t.

Pay to win is only better because it would allow players who can’t stand FOTM to still get Ascended items. Pay to win is still terrible, all I’m saying is that the current Ascended gear system is worse.

Clerigo.9475:

Jermoe Morrow.9501:

An excellent idea replicated by a transmute stone…

Not sure i understand what you mean there Can you elaborate plz?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Transmutation_Stone

They let you create items with the appearance of one, but the stats of another. Given your stated goal of this suggestion is:

Add a mechanic component that allows players to constantly upgrade their exotic/legendary gear to be at par with every new gear added to the game in terms of number stats.

They fill it exactly, because when you upgrade to Ascended gear, you want to replace all the stats on your exotic with the Ascended stats. Only the look will remain.

Valtameri.2075:

I don’t particularly agree nor disagree, but i gotta voice out my opinion that personally i think removing “holy trinity” is mistake in the end.
Or then they did something wrong, i don’t know.
For now i wouldn’t mind getting trinity back.

The holy trinity has one big problem: If the ratio of players able to take the roles for any specific thing is different to the ratio that players decide is optimal, some people will spend much longer waiting for groups than others.
With the trinity gone, people just fill up the group with the first available people. Meaning less of a wait time for most players, still a quick wait time for people playing the less common roles.

That is why removing the trinity is a good thing. Nobody has to spend ages finding a group just because they are playing a popular class.

Alicse.9854:

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Pay 2 win would be an improvement over the current system. At least then you could avoid FOTM if you don’t like it and still get the best stats.

Also, it’s not pay to win unless paying is the only way to acquire the stats. If they can be acquired with reasonable effort by non-paying players, it’s only buying time to reach the end quicker.

You can craft the items with 150 + gold per item or start farming a dungeon over and over again for more than 300 hours (only for 1 item). Well you either spend thousend of hours grinding or lots of real cash in order to buy the requirements. Its pay to win, even when its hidden

My point is that if you don’t like FOTM, then the current system still forces you to play to get them. Pay 2 win is therefore better because players who don’t like FOTM can still get the better stats.

I know how bad Pay 2 Win is. I’m just saying that the current grind is worse.

Forget word of mouth. Go research your local consumer protection laws. If there is anything ANET has done to break your local laws, file a complaint.

Pay 2 win would be an improvement over the current system. At least then you could avoid FOTM if you don’t like it and still get the best stats.

Also, it’s not pay to win unless paying is the only way to acquire the stats. If they can be acquired with reasonable effort by non-paying players, it’s only buying time to reach the end quicker.

Survivability is not as simple as your chart implies. Mainly because you can’t increase one stat without increasing other things. For gear, each piece comes with three attributes. For traits, increasing one attribute increases another and gives access to trait slots.

Unless you consider the other things you get with the attributes you boost, you aren’t going to be producing good builds.

Ragman.1690:

wmtyrance.3571:

Anet won’t reply to anything because as long as they are not collecting a monthly fee they can do what they want to the game. They can change their mind about everything that was the selling point of the game. We just got suckered by the hope of change in mmo’s.

Not quite right, there is always a lever. In this case it is the Gem Shop, the only revenue from the game they have after the initial game purchase (btw looking at the recent changes for mats and setting the bars up for getting items it begins to look like a f2p game for which I paid €55). Ignore the Gem Shop and they will start to feel it.

By the way now it is clear why they were so eager to get rid of bots. Prices for rare mats go up, at the same time they lower drop rates and introduce new recipes with very high material costs = buy gold with gems to get what you want or grind for months. At the same time introduce gear vertical progression, meaning you’ve only a time window where it makes sense to get the items = buy gems to get the items in time.

….nothing more to say

How does that theory fit with some of the Ascended components being bind on pickup ?
You can’t buy them. Instead you have to grind them.

Nox Aeterna.2965:

If anyone got any MMO coming up im listening.

I suggest avoiding the new MMOs. Go for an MMO that has been around a while with a consistent vision throughout. That gives you less chance of a nasty surprise.
If you can find one you like where the developers have made a major stumble and recovered, even better. They won’t want to do it again.

Here is how ANET should handle one time events: Fire the person who suggests it, hire someone who will work on something that everyone can take part in.

cesmode.4257:

Ive played the game, I know what Id be getting into

That’s the main reason I’m considering going back to Eve Online. I know what I’ll be getting into. I know what CCPs vision for it is.

I’ll be moving on. My plan is to try Planetside 2 then, if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be going back to Eve Online.

Calms.9318:

Here’s to hoping that would be the case but for large chain events, that may be difficult to fit in – EU/US players wouldn’t want to miss the opening events if they started on Thursday either.

There is a simple solution: Repeat the event every three hours. Why three hours ?

Because that’s what GW1 did.

I’d do two things:
1 – Make everything relating to ascended gear tradeable. That way gold can purchase it.
2 – Design WvW to be GW2’s main gold faucet. Other areas may be more profitable if your selling stuff to players, but only till most players have the gear and demand falls. But WvW will always be profitable, so it will keep attracting players.

What about the people who lived in the wrong timezones ?
The people who would have missed out even if there weren’t any bugs.