Guild Wars 2

Iason Evan.3806:

When you design the majority of your so called content around gold sinks and the cash shop that’s a problem.

They charged a premium price for the expansion and put little to no earnable rewards in the game. Day one outfits though? Outfits and cash shop stuff galore! I have no problem with a 50 dollar price point if it feels like I’m getting my money’s worth. I didn’t buy HoT precisely because it felt really light in the earnable armor, weapon, backpiece and glider department. There’s barely anything to actually earn.

When I am charged a premium price for an expansion, it better come with all the bells and whistles. This x-pac didn’t. It came with a double portion of cash shop though. That’s double dipping in my book and it’s terrible.

Throw the terrible communication in the mix and it’s a recipe for disaster. 2016 is going to be an interesting year of doing daily logins and seeing if they change up their game plan to be more player friendly. If you want my money make a game that is fun and has long term playability. Until then, I’ll just collect T6 mats on my multiple paid GW2 core games.

Just a quick mention; I too was peeved by the guild changes. Especially for gating all guild progress, banners, etc behind HoT (which i refuse to buy for that, among other reasons).

The first three comments in this thread are great. Thanks to all of you for providing your insight and analysis.

Gaile Gray.6029:

If I recall correctly, this was a hot topic a few months ago, but the consensus was that 2 of 5 was too few, 4 of 5 was considered too many, and 3 of 5 would be just right. (Why does “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” come to mind here? )

Are you guys remembering the player input differently? Or do you feel that what was stated would be happening did not get implemented? I’m happy to follow up, but I believe the current number represents the figure that both devs and players felt would be appropriate.

You also need to add a feature that prevents kicking once the last boss is engaged. We are getting premades of three pals who boot folks right as the boss is almost dead. At least give folks who worked through the dungeon their chest.

Labjax.2465:

Ideally, you want to be able to market features to new players to draw them in. Problem is, if Anet goes out of their way at all to cater to micro guilds, that’s not really something they can market to potential new customers. “Come play a guild solo or with only a couple friends.” It goes against one of their core design philosophies; the idea that players can group together and interact with each other in a meaningful way, with ease, and are encouraged to do so. Running a micro guild isn’t much of a cooperative experience.

Ultimately, I think the decisions concerning the future of guilds were branding/marketing. Their game is called Guild Wars 2 and they wanted to push that aspect of it.

That is my theory anyway. I have a 1-man guild that I created so people would stop trying to invite me to their guilds. Which, over time, turned into a guild with a bank and a few low level upgrades. I wish I could make a Guild Hall and do missions as one person, just for the extra content of it and the challenge to see what all I could build on my own.

But as the saying goes, if Dwayna’s Wishes were Centaurs, then Street Rats would ride.

How is allowing scribe training in LA “catering” to anyone?

Drow.2081:

Are we arguing that all size guilds’ advancements, no matter the size, should not be gated behind HoT achievements?

Or are we asking Anet to define what they believe a guild is and within that definition how many members constitute a guild?

I personally think 1 member constitutes a guild because it takes 1 member to make a guild. In other games you have to get the signature of 10 people to even create a guild charter. I am a member of a 1 man guild and I would be more than happy to be presented with solo activities that advanced my 1 man guild. I would not mind if they locked these behind HoT even tho I don’t have the expansion and if it is never sold over the counter at Walmart/GameStop etc I might never get HoT (matter of personal principle – I pay cashiers to have a job so they don’t come to my door bumming for money for college).

I agree with this. In fact, I just want access to the same things I had built before. If they allowed scribe trainers in LA, it would solve the problem so far as I am concerned (assuming we have some way to earn the new credits outside HoT).

Edit: And no; I couldn’t care less about having a guild hall.

Yeah – cant have any fun farming stuff in GW2!

PopeUrban.2578:

I fail to see how the new system removed anything. It changed the means of progression while leaving intact access to anything you already unlocked, and in the case of guild missions actually granted several things you didn’t unlock.

Any consumables you could build in the old system, you can still build in the new system by paying favor. You can’t build a bunch of banners and whatever without doing guild missions, and that is also true of the new system. Consumables have simply been made harder to come by across the board, for everyone.

Guild banks you had before are still available.

The only “hard lock” on the system for what you call “micro guilds” is the guild hall claim, a thing you only have to do one time. You can do this, as we did, by just teaming up with a few other guilds for one day. You literally only need four people to complete it, and you never have to do it ever again. From there micro guilds have the same options to progress at a slower rate than everyone.

In fact, the new system is actually better for such guilds as guild missions have been made easier to complete across the board now that they’re not all locked behind bounties, don’t cost anything to run, and are commonly full of other guilds doing them.

“Micro guilds” were not treated more unfairly. They can actually advance faster relative to huge guilds than before due to the caps on favor and aetherium, and more reliably complete guild missions since it costs nothing to fail and retry them now.

Small guilds cannot build anything they had access to before unless they buy HoT, get a hall, then train scribe.

SelenaDread.2814:

Spook.5847:

Wildkitten.3872:

KrewGorilla.6491:

Wildkitten.3872:

You can get your guild hall with only 2 to 4 people.

Have you tried getting a guild hall with 2 to 4 people O_o? Ive done it with 4 people and ive also gotten another with 5 people. but 2 people….really? makes me wonder if u even know what your talking about

With 3 yes, and it could have been done with just 2.

Way to miss the point. A small guild of “low level” (ours got rated a 2) without HoT cannot use ANY of their stuff other than banks, because even the new Scribe skill is untrainable outside of Maguma. Now tell me how that’s not a deliberate shafting of the players? And we had 5.4K influence built up, but the minimum to trade for the new guild currency is 10K? Way to get a slap along with your shafting.

Thanks, Anet!

I actually think your missing the point of this thread. This thread is a discussion how small guilds with HoT are having a hard time participating in guild events, and building guild halls. There is already another thread in the forum regardsing the removal of guild functions for core players. I believe your point is more suited there.

Perhaps; but a reply to snark – wherever one may find it – is always appropriate. Besides, it’s obviously part of the big picture Anet has painted for controlling people and driving forced sales of HoT, as has been mentioned herein. Also, ripping out core functions of the guild system (regardless of particulars) is the same insofar as negative effects being felt.

Try not to be so narrow in your viewpoint.

Wildkitten.3872:

KrewGorilla.6491:

Wildkitten.3872:

You can get your guild hall with only 2 to 4 people.

Have you tried getting a guild hall with 2 to 4 people O_o? Ive done it with 4 people and ive also gotten another with 5 people. but 2 people….really? makes me wonder if u even know what your talking about

With 3 yes, and it could have been done with just 2.

Way to miss the point. A small guild of “low level” (ours got rated a 2) without HoT cannot use ANY of their stuff other than banks, because even the new Scribe skill is untrainable outside of Maguma. Now tell me how that’s not a deliberate shafting of the players? And we had 5.4K influence built up, but the minimum to trade for the new guild currency is 10K? Way to get a slap along with your shafting.

Thanks, Anet!

TheGuy.3568:

Look if you didn’t pump major time into a small guild you will not understand the gripe. If you have unlimited time to play and a large group of friends you will not understand the gripe. You do not even have to care. But for some players this is a kittenty situation where time and effort put in over years went poof over night. You expect some people not to feel kittened off about that?

It was SOOOO nice of them to stick us by gating the scribe skill behind HOT, too. Now we cant even use the banners we worked so hard to upgrade to (my guild is my wife and I).

SeriousSituation.3462:

Honestly? People have posted about how easy this game is for years. Heart of Thorns has given opportunity for increased difficulty in nearly every respect. You don’t have to spend the time and effort to make these skins. No one is forcing you.

[Sarcasm]Hey, I want a Ferrari, it should be cheaper so I can buy it. No? Well that’s just unfair! [/Sarcarm]

There is no comparison between an artisan mechanical device like a car produced by literally thousands of people, and a pixel image on a screen in a “game” that’s supposed to be about “fun” for the players. Instead, we are being treated, thanks to marketing and cynical use of social psychology, to endless manipulation in the name of profiteering. Also, Anet – unlike Ferrari – cares not a whit what we think, and has this clear contempt for customers because they plan on folding up this game and simply cash-cowing it forever; just like WoW is (but not as successfully).

Distaste.4801:

Carighan.6758:

Thagyr.4136:

Blame the TP flippers for the price. They have been pouncing on everything desirable in the past 2 weeks and jacking the price up. Endless bat tonic went from 80 to 278 gold.

You mean the people removing gold from the economy are responsible? For inflation? Really? o.o

The gold is not removed from the economy, it is then being used to flip more stuff on the TP. ArenaNet allowed people to gain control of the market that now have so much gold that they can buy up pretty much anything in the game and resell at whatever price they see fit. It simply isn’t healthy for the economy and they should have stepped in to correct it, but to this very day haven’t. ArenaNet makes things every worse by sticking to anti-farming, which means a normal person can’t expect to even farm for their item in a timely manner. The salt on the wound is that ArenaNet then makes 250 of certain items required in the recipe.

What ArenaNet need to do is implement code that “sets” a certain price on an item and when the price on the TP is above that the drop rates increase by the same amount. So if something skyrockets 100x then the droprate will also increase by 100×. It might be able to be manipulated, but I’d assume that at that level it would be fairly detectable by ArenaNet and they could dole out some punishments. At least with this system the normal players could compete with the trading post bots.

Good assessment; and unhappily their answer to this is to make it impossible for regular folks to farm gold on their own even so much as they could before. Honestly, I dont understand why Anet think their game is fun in regards to PvE at all.

xBrutalityx.3507:

Should know by now that anet’s main concern in this game is money. Why do you think they reduced dungeon rewards and sw to hell? They made obtaining gold helpless without purchasing HoT. I lost respect for Anet and refuse to buy HoT because of this reason. They couldn’t even throw in a special gift for the veterans who has been playing since launch when purchasing the expansion, instead they throw the deal in for newcomers getting the core game for free at the price of expansion..

^This. Don’t forget their reworking/shafting of the guild system and all the small guilds, then gating the new “must have” scribe skill behind HOT also.

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

Miliko.5480:

Menadena.7482:

People have told me there are differences in how the populations of the EU and NA servers are different for some reason. For example, organizing Teq most of the time (unless it is a guild-organized map) can be like pulling teeth. That never happens on EU servers, defenses and turrets fill up fast without anyone pleading for people to fill those roles.

After a few days of trying, this is definitely the case. In NA there’s much more people disrupting trains and starting events on their own. Most of the people that actually follow are amazed at how well it works when it works. Somewhat the same applies to EotM, people just run ahead and take whatever they can instead of joining with a commander for an optimal train. You even notice it in lfg, people not reading the description are way more common, as are misplaced ads, people that join and don’t reply at all and don’t know what to do, etc. I haven’t tried map meta bosses but I can imagine it’s the same.
What makes it so much worse? Is it just bad luck? Is it that there are more organized guilds and the pugs left are worse?

As an American, I can tell you why that is; it’s because Americans are dumb. They are just flat out, unarguably dumb. Seriously, I WISH I was EU, because sometimes it’s embarrassing how dumb Americans are. Sometimes I feel all alone, the only intelligent creature, surrounded by a sea of dumb. Not to say there aren’t smart Americans, but the point is your average American is just, say it with me now, dumb.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0RH0cYs4lw

Absolutely the reason my wife and I always sign up for EU servers on any game we play. Sucks to be us that so many game companies are American, IMO, as it is clear they are not immune from the problem.

Thangore.2935:

Could this be a case study on what not to do? For half this house it certainly is, the other half is not even playing anymore.

Now as a bit of background, I am time poor. Like most professionals in this world, I spend ludicrous time in the office, as well as stuck in traffic to and from the office. What should be an 8 hour work day often ends up 10 or so hours. Being a parent as well, well the kids are far more important than some computer pixels swirling about on screen. Then there is time for the other half. All in all, very time poor. That’s not to say I don’t have time to waste. Just that is very very precious. So what I do waste it on has to be the best entertainment option I can get.

Right now, Guild Wars 2 is approaching rock bottom.

(…….)
And that mastery to jump on mushrooms, maybe there is a hidden message there…

Every time I see something like this, I pat myself on the back for paying the $600 to have my wife’s tubes tied (and after a year of fighting doctors trying to convince her she REALLY wanted kids) right after we got married.

Other than that, you are spot on, bro.

SirDrygan.1823:

darkace.8925:

At this point, is there any doubt – any at all – that every single decision ArenaNet makes is designed very specifically to drive cash shop purchases? In this case, they quite clearly want to make the purchase of gems to be converted to gold to buy the materials required to obtain a precursor a far less painful route than earning one in-game.

Yup, that’s why not going to give ANET anymore money. I will still play the base game and stop when something better comes along.

Yep.

Look at what they did to the small guilds to make them so much less viable; and also, now you can’t even make banners, etc without buying the expansion to train “scribe”! Seriously – who would do business with a company that treats folks like that? Not me.

Small guilds got a huge shafting. Essentially the changes are in large part an attempt to force people to buy the expansion.

Kal Spiro.9745:

ANet doesn’t want you to farm. ANet doesn’t want you to drone mindlessly, they want you to explore and experience their world.

I understand that for some reason some people can only be happy in a game if they’re earning resources and don’t care about anything else. That the actual activity and interaction with the game is meaningless to them, but that’s what ANet actually wants you to be enjoying.

This isn’t meant to hurt anyone, and honestly it’s not hurting anyone in this virtual world that has no significant impact on your actual lives, it’s just meant to try and shift your priorities.

And it is successful in that regard; people have quit in droves, or gone on auto.

Michaels Vessel.9364:

ReaverKane.7598:

Why did anyone think it was a good idea to artificially shift the economy?

Seriously, why does extremely inflated prices seem like a good idea?
I mean Arena Net should make up their mind, you can’t say you’re all about getting new players by offering the game for free with expac, and moving to Free to play trial, and then make it harder and harder for them to catch up due to ridiculous inflation.

Sure the hardcore people able to spend 6-8h or more will make it, but then you’ll lose all the more casual people.

And why for the love of god must you give us LESS reasons to do dungeons?
They are already farmed, and instead of making them better you make the less appealing? Do you realize its faster now to just do a few PvP matches with dungeon tracks to unlock stuff than to ACTUALLY run the dungeons? Why do you think they need that big a nerf?

Having an economist as a game designer, awesome idea… I mean, look at how great economists do in the real world, everything is doing so great isn’kitten

Loved the last coment lol its just one more to add the the huge pile of arenanet bad decisions someone really needs to teach them how to manage a game

Yep; reminds me of EQ and “The Vision™” that ruined that game for everybody. These folks have gutted all the fun stuff people did together – champ trains, world tours, etc, and put in tons of lamo changes like the “megaserver” homogenization, along with blase CS (like not returning hacked/stolen stuff from guild banks, and no coin locks like in Rift, etc).

I especially resent being essentially forced to new content – hence I wont be buying HOT. Or much of anything else it looks like :/

VaLee.5102:

It’s been reported for over an year now, Anet just doesn’t care, like dozens other issues.

But please buy more gems!

/agree

(IBT fanboi kitten response!)

Stochastic.1398:

Phy.2913:

“To continue playing the game after HOT launches – existing players would need to pay a nominal expansion fee of around $15 or there account would be suspended.”

Ya, no. That would be a kitten storm to end all kitten storms.

With the release of the expansion they are effectively doing that, but making everyone pay 50 instead of 15. I have no doubt the new specializations will be OP.

Not “everyone” will bother to buy the expansion. There’s been a great number of fumbles and bad policy decisions by Anet that has alienated a lot of folks, and a high-priced expansion isnt what they were looking for to make them come back.

I recently had my account hacked. I and my wife play this game together, and we have a two-person guild. Needless to say, all the guild bank stuff (which was upgraded to deep cave, etc) – mostly mats, sigils, halloween bags, snowflakes, toymaker tonics, ho-ho-trons, and stuff like that is gone. The guild bank log (why do they even have this if they don’t use it for anything?) clearly shows my account logging in on one day and taking all the stuff.

While the characters were rolled back (over a month, by the way, when the account access was last week or so), no other items were replaced.

As a bit of googling and other searches show, people have been telling Anet to institute simple account coinlocks and guild bank security (including good ideas like passwords, etc) for at least two years, nothing has happened.

Moreover, it is Anet’s data – our personal and account info – that is the high-value target, and which Anet is responsible for safeguarding.

The game is punishing in the amount of mats needed for any crafting, and yet gameplay punishes you more now for trying to collect mats. We used to have the fun “champ trains” and “world tours”, but game changes; the majority of which are clearly designed to eliminate costs to Anet, rather than to boost player satisfaction, have taken those and other options away from us – reducing the acquisition of materials (especially event-related ones) to a horrific hell of a grind.

Although I have never had an account in any game hacked before, I have been in touch with folks who have since the days of EverQuest 1. In ALL of those games, personal attention by a CS rep resulted in careful, personal investigation of the events, and, if properly authenticated, complete restoration of lost items, and/or alternative appropriate compensation. Unhappily, that was not my experience here.

I am now simply convinced that the lack of action, and general attitude by the company in regards to gameplay, inaction towards player-driven direction, and lackadaisical response to player concerns is institutionalized at Anet, and that it is futile to expect any positive changes.

On the other hand, some game companies recognize this sort of fault, and endeavor to make improvements. It is those innovative folks who will be receiving my game dollars.

Hylgeriak.8250:

Just to let you know: Blizzard realized how flying mounts devaluate a game exploration wise so that flying won’t be available at all anymore from WoD onwards. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/17597939626#5

Interesting move, ofc the WoW community is raging about this. But imo they’re right and I hope flying won’t ever be possible in GW2. But I can imagine it must be hard to take away their candy they were used to lol

Bliz screwed WoW up horribly long ago, and is just continuing the trend. It’s just a milk cow at this point. Saying that flying can’t be in a game because of “X” is just a demonstration of the speaker’s lack of imagination.

Fact is, though, that game companies are – like almost every other corp nowdays – just cheap, lazy, sloppy, and kitten; out solely for profit, and with no sense of value to the customer.

Tiffany.8576:

As I said elsewhere, XP is a 13 year old OS which isn’t even supported by Microsoft anymore. I wouldn’t even expect ANet to keep supporting it. It’s long past time to upgrade your systems if you wanna run modern software.

Windows any version after 98SE is a flat POS. all they had to do was keep the ease of use and simple menus, then make improvements; but what it’s really about is onion coding, cheapness, and fluffing the consumers. Pretending to reinvent the wheel every couple of years is just tiresome, and most people dont want to bother. I know I wont be giving them more money ever again, and if games wont run on my system, then I guess I will just find something else to do.

Galphar.3901:

The only Info I want is about the “new” Traits system. It’s been almost a year since they f***ed up Traits and over a month since they said they were fixing them.

Who cares what they push out if you cant log into, or play the game at all? The Euro servers are FUBAR so far as I can tell, and have been for months. The idiotic “mega server”, and getting randomly shuffled off to empty maps, etc also killed the fun of this game – well, what was left after taking out champ/world trains and screwing traits up royally.

Sadly, I think this game is done. I certainly wont be spending any more cash on it.

For the Euro players literally hundreds of traces show the frankfurt server being the start of the issue, and then all anet all the way.

Been going on for months, and the lack of solution/service is a disgrace.

You also need to be pretty much lag-free, which on the euro servers is seemingly impossible for Anet to get handled, even after months. I am in the US, too.

GM Awesomeness.8619:

I just wanted to let you guys know we haven’t forgotten about this issue.

We have several teams working on improving the things we have control over, and we’re collecting data to figure out which external network factors are contributing to the problem. While we can’t directly fix the latter, we hope that with your help we can gather enough information to work with ISPs to reduce the packet loss that’s happening between your computers and our servers. We’ve already started working with some of them, and appreciate whatever patience you can muster while we try to get the game playable again for you.

I’m waiting to hear back from a couple colleagues regarding our next steps. When I do, I’ll update this thread with more information on the status of the problems and anything else you guys can do to help us get this solved. Thanks again.

I have to say that your mashing of players together into the ill-conceived “mega-server”, particularly coupled with the inability to traverse instances manually and the added density of players trying to do the daily completions, is making a bad situation much worse.

You took alot of the fun things that players liked in the game (such as champ trains, and world farming runs) and forced them to paly a much-stifled, timered version, while also failing to technically support your imposed limits so that players could continue to have fun.

This entire debacle is unfortunately demonstrative of an overarching problem with corporations in the US, and that’s the idea that profits are the primary concern of any endeavor., but which actually ends up killing the golden goose.

Rich Fuel.7253:

4 month each day doing tequatl (almost) i opened 114 exotic Dragon chest that tequatl drops and i didnt get the 1 thing i want in this game Tequatls Hoard this system is redicoules, 90% of the players think its kitten, how is it now GRIND if ive beeng changing my schedule for over a year to kill teq at 1 specific time.
114 chestS IM SO MAD!

Yep, the total junk loot drops, and severe lack of creativity with items here is one of the main reasons I will gladly leave when a decent game comes out. If EQ Next is anything like the original, only with modern graphics and systems, I will go there – even if it is sub only.

Beldin.5498:

So .. new system :
- Traits can now be earned starting at level 80
- people wanted more challenges, so traits are now only awarded for beating special
challenges like beeing the best dungeon / fractal speedrunners
- you can also win some traits if you win in an E-Sports tournament

Is that the reason of this new thread to speculate how you can change the traits
to make them even worse than now ?

Lots of people despise fractals, dungeons, and WvW in this game.

Maybe the Devs should address those issues. WvW is one thing, but you’d think core PVE players would like dungeons, at least… Points to design and mechanic flaws.

The Mastery system will do nothing to address that, or any of the other numerous issues that Players have been pointing to for some time.

Seriously – this game is way overpopulated with mobs with insane aggro radius. Too many on the maps, and they repop much too quickly. Constant combat with trash does not equal content, folks.
While we are at that, it would be nice if we got the same dither as players that NPCs do – totally sick of getting snagged on every step, rock, branch, etc that I come across.

This game seems fine for sightseeing, crafting (other than too many mats for what you make), enjoying the cut scenes and whatnot, but the combat system is horribly limited, and the lack of buffing/debuffing and cures/heals classes really knocks it down a few pegs quality-wise. Real shame, too. Changes to the traiting system just made that worse.

Randulf.7614:

I know what you mean and I like them too, but would it really fit? This is an area almost completely taken over by Mordrem and we are going there with a sole purpose to take on his forces. I guess in the same way as Orr, where everything revolved around Zhaitan.

And Orr stinks. It’s horribly annoying to play in, the spawn rates are too fast, the aggro radius way too large, it’s generally unimaginative and uninspiring, and the rewards (especially after the loot nerf!) are poor. More of that theme will not be welcome…but at least I dont have to play it if it’s in a buy-to-play expansion!

Bernie.8674:

Gulesave.5073:

The current system was touted as an improvement, yes, but they made the mistake of only looking at the perspective of a new player running their first character. Also, it came from CDI ideas about horizontal progression that the community never intended to be applied to pre-existing abilities.

I still don’t understand how the current system would be considered a good idea, even from that perspective. I played GW1 extensively from beta until 2009, but I was pretty late to the game for GW2 and didn’t come in until after the new traits were added. I still thought it was a mess. Here was my experience as a brand new player to GW2:

• I bought a trait book from a vendor for a couple of gold, only to discover that those trait books weren’t even useful for anything anymore. The game still let me buy and consume it, but imagine my surprise when I opened my trait panel only to find the next tier still locked.
• After looking on the wiki (because I could find nothing in-game explaining how traits work) I discovered that trait tiers automatically unlock.
• I couldn’t figure out how to unlock individual traits. I finally happened to glance at the tooltip dialog that popped up as my cursor was hovering past the telescope.
• Most of the level 30 traits involved areas that were nowhere near the places my story had taken me.
• I didn’t even know how to fulfill most of those unlock conditions. I had no clue as to where the ogre camp was until I joined a guild mate in WvW.
• I didn’t even need traits to level to 80. I have several level 80 characters now. Some of them got there with only 2-3 traits unlocked. My wife, who started playing a couple of months ago, levelled her character without any traits whatsoever.

For these reasons I seriously doubt they even considered the trait system from that perspective. Honestly, I have no idea how they came up with this. Historically ArenaNet’s systems have been well-designed and thoughtful. Every time they made a change in the pre-EotN days I could understand and agree with their reasoning. I don’t know what happened to change that. After hearing their ideas for the new mastery system and their intent to make traits consistent with it, I’m hopeful we’ll see this system fixed soon.

Yep, they really ruined their trait system, and the game story has been woefully unsupportive too – while the huge grind for mats is unplayable for anyone with a real life. The last straw for me has been destroying the capital city and not bothering to rebuild it before Christmas.

I absolutely will not pay for more poorly-executed, grindy, “shiny” content, while so many unadressed issues remain. I love the voice acting and other features in this game, but the altered mechanics, beginning with the dumbing-down called “New Player Experience”, and recently culminating in the absolutely medocrity-inducing change to the dailies, has been a huge bag of suck (the one improvement I do like is the “stacking” feature of the crafting recipies now that allows you to make components while on the same page, etc).

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Your topic is misleading. They are not getting rid of the skill point acquisition, they are simply changing the source from where you can get them.

They can also remove/change the skill point cost for the recipe.

At this point, anything is possible until we hear more concrete information.

Simple solution would be a toggle to let us choose where to put XP. This is not a new concept, as the original version was set forth in EQ1 as the “AA” system. I have no interest whatever in their proposed Mastery system, particularly since they did such a poor job on revamping the skills, or any more of the grinding for mats-type mechanics that they have infested this game with.

Lazaar.9123:

Have you heard of the expansion called Heart of Thorns?

Yeah I heard about it. I also see that Anet has been borking the skill sets, and lots of other things, so I will not be bothering to participate in the expansion until I am convinced that it isn’t another clusterkitten like they’ve been dishing out for the past year or so.

Subdue.5479:

Elden Arnaas.4870:

So zone is map, and region is region. Then that’s 9 needlessly specific choices. Which is one of our major arguments – too much specificity. And why can’t all game modes have more choices?(than 4)

One of the goals of the revamp is to encourage players to try different game modes and activities. If all the game modes have a bunch of easy stuff to complete, people just default to the easy stuff. In the current setup, there’s 2 easy, 2 time consuming dailies in each mode, which means you can stick to your own game mode if you like and complete the dailies but take longer, or you can explore a different game mode and finish faster. Choice.

Not choice; cattle chute. Learn when you are being herded/controlled, please.

Astral Projections.7320:

I realize I miss one aspect in particular about the old dailies. The reason to stay in one map and do more than one task. I also miss the more relaxed feelings they had.

Before there would be something like: rez, kill 50, harvest, variety, recycler and leveler. I could go to my favorite dead NPC map and do rez. While rezzing I kill local mobs and harvest any nearby nodes. Once rez was done I would stay on the map and finish killing 50, variety and harvest. Recycler and leveler was done as I played. Now there is no reason to stay on a map after you’ve done that task. Do your 4 events. Wp out. Harvest your nodes. Wp out. See a vista. Wp out. It feels forced.

And now the zerg during events. OMG the zerg.

Find an event on the map. Get there as fast as you can. Join the thundering herd struggling to tag the few, weak mobs that appear. Get credit. Wp to next event. Rinse and repeat. Not fun. It’s not fun ANet,

With the events it puts me in an unpleasant position, with fully traited level 80s with a mix of exotics and ascended, where I’m racing to get to events and tag the mobs while at the same time I’m trying to be nice and hold back and not do to much damage so others can get credit also. I’m not immersed in the events. I don’t care what the event is about. I’m just trying to tag. Not fun. Not fun ANet.

Before I would do events and a couple others would join me. That was fun. This ^ This version is not. I’m fighting the crowd and not happy to see them there.

Exactly so. The zergs now in the target zones do a lot to break the fun of the game, particularly for low-level folks. This design was beyond poor planning and passes into abject stupidity. If it was a planned function, then I would also claim sadism.

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

LA GW.6753:

Olvendred.3027:

LA GW.6753:

Perfect example of less choice: Merry Christmas PvE Players, you can today do Fractals or you can do Fractals if you only do PvE for your daily AP. Cos TWO CHOICES FOR PVE TODAY, CHRISTMAS DAY, ARE FRACTALS!

While that is a bit odd, it also means you can get both those dailies for doing only one thing.

And —>Point

-->Your Head

This is a perfect example of restricted choice, the whole reason behind this thread. It’s not a feature. This is ANet trying to force people to do moldy old content many people have no interest in doing to inflate metrics and say ‘see? see? people play all our content!’

I agree with this, There are only 3 PvE dailies today and one of them is fractals. Frankly I take issue with that, even though I personally got my daily in WvW today.

This is wrong. You can’t expect people who PvE to do fractals. You need 3 that are attainable each day without grouping.

In a way, I think this is the point of the new dailies. It’s a way to get people to branch out and do stuff they normally wouldn’t do. People that solely play open world pvp are now more inclined to try out WvW, SPvP and/or dungeons.

Do you have any support (as in hard data) to back up this claim? Why is it more likely people will do this other content in response to being essentially forced to do so? Is it not also possible it will simply irritate people into not participating, or even simply quitting the game?

Gaile Gray.6029:

The conversation can continue IF each person participating will step back just a tad and make sure he or she is not slipping into insults. Making generalizations or sweeping statements about people with whom you disagree isn’t accurate, it’s not fair, it doesn’t aid the conversation, and it doesn’t, in any sense, prove your point.

Have something to say? Go ahead and make your point, but please do it in a respectful manner… even if you totally and completely disagree with the person posting above you. Disagree, by all means, but don’t be disagreeable.

Thanks for understanding.

Put up a poll on this issue.

Be sure to also poll the players on whether or not they feel you and Anet in general are responsive to their concerns :/

Bilacus.6104:

Today you have to do fractals for the PvE daily. That’s the first time in the history of this game I won’t be completing my daily.
I fail to see how fractals or killing the triple-headed wurm on a Wednesday evening is easier, or “more in line with what players are already doing” than killing ambients, veterans or dodging.

Same here (that is, for those days I have had the game, and played it).

Forcing us to do fractals for PVE is grossly unfair, but forcing it on us TWICE on the same day goes beyond that into plain stupidity.

I tried doing that fractal junk exactly ONCE. Hated every second of it, and wont ever do that, or WvW again.

Just looks like they are gating and gating and gating with every change (although I really DO like the change in crafting menus).

I cant wait for something even remotely acceptable to come out so I can leave. The fanbois can play this sucker till the servers shut down.

Mr Snotty Pants.3980:

What I get from this post is that lots of players were doing (or not doing) dailies for a bunch of different reasons. Depending on why you did them, this change shifted your enjoyment (or lack of).

What I don’t get, what I never get with ANet changes… why not leave the old option when adding a new one? Let the PVE track have as many picks as it use to have, with the extras coming from the old mix. If you want to do the 3 quick specific ones – go do those. If you likes the slower, more generic ones – continue to do those.

Everyone happy!

Recent ANet changes always seem to needlessly rip out old stuff folks were enjoying. Traits, Greatest Fear… they all follow this pattern…

Most top-level decisions are made by non-gamers. Until that changes, games will suck, period.

Andred.1087:

I was hoping this thread would be addressed to all the naysayers of the Living Story, or the new dailies, or pick your favorite popular thing to hate on, but it turned out to be so much worse. Mounts? Seriously? I’m impressed you even got me to type that word again after this topic has been discussed so much.

Mounts are nothing but clutter in a world with the ease of travel of waypoints, and if you didn’t notice, mounts are pretty clearly not in the interest of the developers. I’m a little glad you brought it up, though, because it’s the perfect example of something that a lot of people asked for on the forums, but will absolutely never happen, because it’s just objectively a bad idea to put mounts in GW2. Can you imagine the backlash? If mounts were added to this game, it would essentially look no different than any other generic WoW clone MMO from the last decade, and severely decrease the appeal of the game to people who want something different than that, which is exactly what GW2 has been marketed as this whole time.

It’s looking like that already. Another game ruined by the “Vision”™ of the shills in suits who only want to pump and dump the company. Mounts have nothing to do with the poor decisions being made, and the lack of features/investment in the game.

Frankly, I find the skills, traits, and a lot else with this game extremely limited, and when a half-decent game with spellbooks, consistent speed buffs, flying mounts, etc becomes available (and sure, I’d play WoW if it was FTP model and they’d quit screwing with the class trees all the time) I will most certainly dump this turkey.

There’s a lot of good ideas in this game, and the voice acting is stupendous – but the level of commitment has clearly dropped off, and they are just milking it now.

Lishtenbird.2814:

Ironically, “I don’t want it here because it won’t be cool” is as valid as “I want it here because it will be cool”.

Requested merge with https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mounts-14

Except the difference in affirmatively wanting something doesnt deprive you of not having to have it. You and your ilk, on the other hand, want to dictate how other people enjoy their game, and the features they might have available to them.

By all means, dont buy a mount if they become available – then you will have gotten exactly what you want. meantime, try not to be such a jerk to people asking for what THEY want.

Eirdyne.9843:

I think we’ve reached the end of where this game can go.
- Anet disregards its player base as if it were the company mission statement.
- We have A+ Plus cooperate manipulation of the player by using Carrots on a Stick… Blow up LA, then do this whole story with the Zephyrites to say it will be fixed. Blow up the Zephyrites with expectation that is coming back. Give us Super Adventure Box. Take away Super Adventure Box, but say it will be coming back. Give us a perfectly working LS and trait system, then break the first and make the other outlandishly expensive (where it was not before). Cripple new characters. Do absolutely no new content for years in terms of dungeons . Where a new world boss is added copy and paste the same static timer based content under the veil of it being ‘dynamic’ and an ‘event’. …blah blah blah blah. It is coming to the point where we enjoy the game because it still responds the same way it used to when we press WASD and buttons 1 through 8 are still functioning. Nothing else is going on. They just employed this new person from Disney to the team, but Disney is the one that employed J. J. Abrams. Abrams butchered Star Trek and is now heading out to give rending what’s left of Star Wars apart. I wouldn’t want anything connected with Disney without a hazmat suit. Anet’s plan seems to be to push the plane into a steam spiraling nose dive gradually while informing everyone everything’s just fine because it’s gradual.

Good example of why the existence of corporations needs to be reexamined by society, and changes forced upon them.

These people are sociopaths.

My guardian and mesmer are painful to get anywhere due to no speed boost,a nd I hate playing them for that reason. I would welcome mounts. That said, I played a druid in EQ1, so in my opinion ALL games nowdays suck completely and totally when it comes to speed and movement. In my view, the tele points are a weak copy of druid port abilities.

Along with significantly less choice for daily activities is the issue of impact on the environment. Massive lag and other problems induced by forcing people to one zone to complete specific tasks, for instance. Very poorly thought out!

Lothirieth.3408:

Luckily one doesn’t have to do every one of the achievements to get the meta done. One can pick and chose.

“Pick and choose” from an ever-shrinking number, and means of completion, you mean? Yeah – bully for that. Simply letting people rack up the meta points doing what they want would be fine, wouldn’kitten Why do they have to play content that they think sucks? What skin is it off of your nose, besides?

Guhracie.3419:

C’mon, guys. Ms. Gray is just relaying the information she’s given in the most positive light she can. That’s her job. Let’s not be nasty to her.

Why not? She can relay the response to the folks that feed her the lines to give us.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Gaile just announced this as being a “good thing”.

Yes, I believe it is a good thing. Here’s why:

• The items needed to make the recipe from prior years no longer are fully available. This means that that players could have been locked out of highly-sought-after items (unless someone happened to retain items from previous years).
• With the new recipe, those who choose to do so may try for the popular tonics and other rewards. As you can see in this thread, both tonics are confirmed as available and forge-able.
• As with everything, this is a voluntary activity. Nothing requires a player to do this. No one “needs” one of these tonics to play. But if they want one, they now have a means to get it.

In the end, this recipe is voluntary. The item is desirable but not essential. Players may decide for themselves if going for a particular item is right for them. In the end, I believe that it really is that simple.

If you think really remote RNG is a good thing, then you are out of touch. If I want a poor RNG game, I will go blow my money on the junk coming out of Korea.

Seriously – you folks are really piling up the bad decisions.

Along with the stupidity of making sure all bosses are on timers, so that you almost never get to do them unless you organize your playtime around AN’s schedule, the game does not even give you a timer of some sort in the game itself to track such things.

This makes just playing – much less doing a daily requiring a timered event – simply not worth it to me.

I take it as the same “vision” idiocy I have witnessed since EQ1; a successful game run into the ground by the hubris and greed of the operators.

It’s to the point with this last patch that I am embarrassed I ever even recommended this game to anyone :/