6. Tangled Paths: nothing really worth discussing here. The boss fight in “Tracking the Aspect Masters” again relies a lot on stuns, but that’s ArenaNet for you. The best thing in this chapter is probably the loading screen for “Into the Labyrinth”.
7. Seeds of Truth: the Caithe chapter. Considering how long we have been stuck with the same skills, it’s refreshing to have different skills to play with, even if the cost is losing the ability to play how we want (but hey, that’s a recurrent theme in GW2).
8. Point of No Return: talking about recycling content… As much as I enjoy nostalgia, ArenaNet could have at least used a desert environment for the Turai Ossa’s segment. They could also have used the original voice – all dialogue spoken by Ossa was copied from the original game, so they wouldn’t even need to record something new, just using the old recordings from the original Guild Wars would have worked.
The battle in the Pact camp only highlighted how we have spent the entire Season 2 fighting basically the same enemies over and over. I wouldn’t be sad if I never see a Jungle Tendril again.
The last boss battle again relied heavily on stuns, but of course that was to be expected. It had a few interesting mechanics, at least.
The Story: this time it was better than in the Season 1. It would have been hard to make something as kittencarlet, but at least this time the writing team went in a better direction – they used the lore already within the game since release (Sohothin, Ogden, all the previous hints that the Sylvari were dragon minions, etc), instead of pulling stuff out of nowhere (Scarlett, the Aetherblades, and so on). All the lore bits in the Priory library were great, and the ambient dialogue in the Pact camp is also great. In the original release of GW2, the ambient and dynamic events dialogue was amazing, leagues better than the dialogue from the personal storyline, and it’s nice to see a return to form in this aspect.
Conclusion: story improvements, the soundtrack wasn’t bad either. Mechanically, a nightmare. Most of the new mechanics introduced are ill-conceived and clumsily implemented, the new maps have clearly been conceived as a grinder’s paradise, and the idea of elaborate and meaningful dynamic events has been thrown away in favor of small, repetitive tasks for people to farm.
Next to zero polish as well. The game added new currencies, but didn’t we already have enough of those? Don’t we have a wallet system exactly to store currencies? So why haven’t geodes and bandit crests been added to the wallet? Couldn’t the user interface for the Aspects be improved, since we are now expected to use them in the middle of combat (and in the middle of a boss fight, even)? Honestly, who thought it was a good idea to display the huge yellow notifications in the middle of a screen for each farming bag in Dry Top and for each time there’s a new attack in the Silverwastes? If two new maps have been added, why don’t they count for map completition, and why don’t they give anything when you complete them, contrary to every map the game had on release? This has created a situation in which we have “real” maps, and “second-tier” maps like Silverwaste and Southsun Cove, a division that new players are not going to understand. And so on.
It’s very hard to trust ArenaNet to make high quality content in the coming expansion, based on Season 2. While I can believe they will give us a decent story, it looks like the new maps will be basically more farming grounds with shallow dynamic events and very little polish.
3. The Dragon’s Reach – Part 1: now ArenaNet is trying to be cute. They ask players to do dynamic events in order to progress through the storyline. There’s no way this could work. Either players would have to really be part of the dynamic event, and thus risk having to wait in the map for God knows how long until the event actually begins; or, talking to the NPCs while the event is not active counts as having done the event. This leads to nonsensical dialogue, such as a NPC telling our characters “You’ve got a talent for this” despite how our characters haven’t done a single thing.
I got to play through a single event in the Iron Marches, the “Rescue the captured workers” one. Vine chambers randomly capture players, and there’s nothing you can do to avoid that (no, the pheromones are for a different event, not this one). Remember how I talked about developers using stuns as a lazy technique to make combat more interesting? Here it’s even worse – you get randomly stuck among enemies using ground effects, without being able to move away from them. I’m happy I didn’t need to do the other events, considering how so much “fun” this one was.
In Frostgorge Sound, it’s even worse. Players actually need to participate in the (old…) group-based event there in order to progress the storyline. Even ignoring how it’s very cheap of ArenaNet to make players redo old content in the middle of a new storyline, and how it’s nonsensical to add a group-only activity in the middle of something that has every other piece of content focused on solo play (again, for the records – see the final mission in the original GW2 release’s personal storyline)… Not only players need to stay in the map and wait God knows how long for the event to start, but it’s also one event in which players may decide to focus on champion-farming instead of on finishing the event itself, leading to failure because farming is more profitable than winning the event. This was a very predictable issue (hello, didn’t we see the same thing over and over already, beginning with the Scarlet invasions all the way back in 2013?), that ArenaNet could easily have fixed, but they have chosen to not do so.
The chapter ends again recycling old content, this time the Charr starting instance. I realize ArenaNet has said that few people play as Charr, so most players had likely never seen the fight against Barradin, but still, reusing the same scenery just looks bad.
4. The Dragon’s Reach – Part 2: in the Party Politics instance, guess who returns? Canach, one of the annoying NPCs that ArenaNet insists on pushing on us? No! Well, he too, but we see one place where we can use the old Personality system. Remember? That division between Charm, Dignity and Ferocity that ArenaNet stealthy removed from the game without ever bothering to tell us why they did so, or if it would ever come back? There’s one dialogue in this instance that allows us to pick a choice based on our character’s personality.
The boss fight, against the Shadow of the Dragon, shows the biggest improvement ever to the Guild Wars 2 combat system: now we not only have red circles to avoid, but also… Red triangles!!! OMG!!!!1111 ArenaNet never really managed to advance the GW2 combat system. Even after all those years, this battle could be resumed as: avoid the red (or orange, in the more garish version) circles/triangles/whatever, attack everything you can attack until it dies, and you win. You don’t even have to look at the dragon in order to win, just keep looking at the ground and that’s it.
5. Echoes of the Past: there’s a lot to hate here (as well). The Silverwastes, much like Dry Top, are basically a grinding park – repetitive and shallow events over and over in a very small time frame, lots and lots of farming (the extraction system to take organs from the Mordrem is ridiculous), focus on reward and not on the experience itself (and speaking about rewards, the Luminescent Armor is incredibly cheap; it’s an armor that cannoy be dyed, and it’s just a dye over the Carapace Armor…), and so on and on and on.
…However, I actually like this release a bit. The Pact camp in the Silverwastes has all the attention to detail that we rarely see from ArenaNet these days. The huge amount of ambient dialogue, all the nods to previous events, the decent dialogue during the “Reunion with the Pact” instance… That was actually great. All the lore nods through the books in Hidden Arcana were very interesting, and it’s great that ArenaNet bothered with all those things. The fights in Glint’s Lair at least tried to be different, even if the environment itself was disappointing – it looked far more diverse when we saw it in the original Guild Wars, with the ambient of each aspect having a different color.
…Because I was expecting very little. Very little AT ALL. It was still rather poor, though. Here’s my opinion, chapter by chapter:
1. Gates of Maguuma: in which we first enter Dry Top. In the original release of Guild Wars 2, the meta events were aiming to be epic – the meta event in Frostgorge Sound builds to a multi-staged dragon fight, for example. In Dry Top, the meta event builds to… Loot. It cycles like a clock, with the same few events repeating over and over, without any kind of branch or any progression between each other, between champions appearing here and there and the sandstorm that is basically a moment to farm champions and chests.
In other words, it’s basically a box made for grind. Repetitive, shallow content focused on rewards with little to no polish – and there are few things less polished in this game than the incredibly immersion-breaking yellow announcements in the middle of the screen saying, “champion X is up, go farm it”. Looks like ArenaNet knows how much of their playerbase is made of grinders, but it’s interesting to contrast this with how the enemies in the storyline instances don’t drop any loot. The developers want people to farm Dry Top, not the instances, it appears.
It’s also worth noting how ArenaNet took a fun mechanic – the Zephrite Aspects from the Labyrinthine Cliffs – and made them into something annoying by both adding a timer (while keeping the limit of uses, because having two handicaps is great) and by using them in the middle of combat. The mechanic of entering and leaving a transformation is not smooth in GW2 – often, clicking on the skill to remove the transformation, or in this case leaving the aspects, simply doesn’t do anything. That wasn’t an issue in the Labyrinthine Cliffs since there were very few enemies there, but in Dry Top, well…
Speaking about annoying, one way to judge the quality of encounter designs in a MMORPG is how much the designers rely on stuns (as in, knock backs, launches, daze, stun, and everything that prevents players from doing anything). It’s a very simple mechanic, often with few counters (Stability is not readily available, and stun breakers have long recharges), that is often used by developers when they want to make combat more than just receiving damage, but can’t think of something with some actual degree of complexity.
The fight with Aerin is ALL about stuns. Worse, it’s knock backs from platforms, highlighting how the NPCs can knock our characters from highs but we cannot do the same to them. This fight also uses very clumsy the aspects in combat, often with bugged results. It’s as if ArenaNet tried to design a fight to show us the flaws in their game.
2. Entaglement: this chapter begins with our characters saying “Oh no, Mordremoth did this!”… But from the point of view of someone who’s playing the Living Story now, there is no “this” – the village was already destroyed in the previous chapter, so there’s no change to actually show us the attack. Worse, Mordremoth’s identity comes out of thin air – he’s not mentioned once in the previous chapter, it’s not said how our characters learn that the dragon’s name is Mordremoth, or how it has been learned that the dragon Mordremoth is the source of the attacks. For the records, when the NPCs begin talking about the Mordrem, they never mention that it’s how they have decided to call Mordremoth’s minions.
In other words, the identity of the main villain is said as if it were already known. This is very poor storytelling, considering how important this plot point is.
The boss fight of this chapter, against the Mordrem Thrasher, has some issues as well. Kasmeer’s shield is somewhat useless, considering how it’s far more effective to avoid the red circles and keep defending the explosive bone minions than hide in the shield and allow the minions to die. That’s actually a great thing – considering how this fight is bugged and the NPCs can simply not be there, if the shield were required, this fight would become impossible to be won.
Truth be said, this kind of feature was far more useful in GW1 than in GW2.
In the original Guild Wars, gear did little to define your stats. In GW2, in other hand, most of your stats and half your skills are defined by gear. So being able to change your trait points and skills around wouldn’t make as much difference as changing your equipment around.
Maybe Anet can make a server just for them. That way they won’t have to deal with us at all.
Brilliant! Add a different economy (with its own TP and different prices between one and the other) and the inability to move between servers, and I would pay for that. Does anyone else feel like opening a Kickstarter?
There is a far more elegant solution to this.
The issue isn’t the gear. It’s the players.
In one hand, you have players who run a dungeon 15 times per hour, 20 hours per day, and are focused on maximizing performance per minute, yet lack the knowledge to programe a bot (since they are doing it to get the reward and don’t really care about the experience). Those are the ones who claim everyone with a different mentality is “lazy”, “incompetent”, etc.
In other hand, we have players who just want to have fun, and if they get to win, also get some stuff.
The first group of players don’t want to play with the second, nor the second with the first one. So let’s just split them.
Players get an option to tick a box saying they’re “Just berseker” players (“jerker” for short). Once a “jerker” has identified himself, he can only join party with other “jerkers”, and not with anyone else. Party search won’t even show, much less allow common players to join “jerker” parties, or the other way around.
This way, everyone is happy – the “jerkers” go play by themselves, and the common players go play by themselves. No need to add fancy new user interface for gear check or anything.
Warrior – Berserker (Dagger/Dagger)
I think the warrior will get a specialization called “Exploiter”. Its weapon will be the staff, and its skills will be:
1) Tag: do an AoE attack that tags all nearby enemies, so you get credit for the kill when they die.
2) Skip: as long as you are running, you are invulnerable to damage and to conditions, and cannot be stunned.
3) Stack: as long as you are within melee range of 4 other Exploiters and everyone is wearing a full set of Ascended Berseker gear, you do 10 times more damage.
4) Wall Dodge: as long as you are within melee range 4 other Exploiters and everyone is wearing a full set of Ascended Berseker gear and next to a wall (or something similar that prevents you from moving), the invulnerability from dodging lasts 30 seconds after the dodge itself.
5) Win: after using all the previous skills, using this one makes you win the instance and/or event you are in, with all loot going directly into your inventory. Each time this skill is used, all prices in the Trading Post increase by 1 gold.
We know ArenaNet keeps making new weapons for the Gem Store, and once in a while new armor/outfit skins. Considering how many new skins they add to the Store, it’s likely those skins are a significant source of income for them. And so, between releasing those skins “for free” as part of other content or charging for each individual skin, it would be much more profitable for ArenaNet to release skins only through the Gem Store.
We know ArenaNet likes to throw us a bone once in a while, though. Many of the new armor skins we got “for free” since release may be reskins (Luminescent is an almost identical reskin of Carapace, Glorious Hero’s Armor is a very similar reskin of Glorious Armor), but we do get “free” stuff here and there.
My question is, how many new skins are we going to get? In the original Guild Wars, when Factions was released it came with A LOT of new armor skins (especially considering how each profession had its own skins) and many new weapon skins.
I somehow doubt we will get many in HoT. With ArenaNet’s art team busy making weapons, armor and outfits for the Gem Store, it’s likely we will get very few skins in the game, and most will be sold through the Gem Store, since that’s far more profitable for ArenaNet.
What do you people think?
(edited by Test.8734)
I’d love to hear other people’s opinions on this. Like I said, I’m not a huge lore-junkie (though I’m working on it), so perhaps this has already been addressed and I’ve simply missed it? If so, fill me in! The curiosity is overwhelming.
This is something that caught my attention, too.
I think the simplest explanation is the one we will get: the Dragons absorb magic, so without them we risk magic becoming too much for the world, and setting it out of balance.
It would be interesting if the answer is a bit more complex than that. We are told that each Dragon has two domains. I wonder if the magic that comes from a given Dragon’s dead body is linked to said domains. So, for example, Zhaitan’s magic bleeding to the world would increase specifically the power of death and shadow magic (and, since the other Dragons absorb everything, it could even give them minor death and magic attributes).
Therefore, the death of Mordremoth would increase the power of plant magic in the entire world, making the Pale Tree a lot stronger (since she – it? – is the main user of plant magic in Tyria). But it could also mean that, if say, Primordius is left as the last Dragon, he could be still the master of fire and earth, but also have minor powers in death, shadow, plants, minds, crystals, air, water and secrets.
That’s more fanfiction than speculation – again, I think the explanation we will get will be a lot simpler than that.
…But, if we can get carried away, I wonder if it isn’t A LOT more complex than this. The Elder Dragons appear in the map of All as big as Tyria itself. If they are only regulatory systems to keep the world balanced, why are they being shown as being individually as important as the world itself?
I wonder if the Elder Dragons aren’t just part of a whole. If each Dragon isn’t just a regulatory system, but actually a doorway to entire realms based on their domains. Zhaitan, for example, would drain magic from Tyria and send it to the Realm (or planet) of death and shadow, in which the raw magic of Tyria would be transformed and released back as shadow and death magic. The same for the other dragons. Zhaitan would be not the name of the Dragon itself, rather the name of the entire Realm. And the 6 Realms would exist around Tyria, feeding from it but also nurturing it.
This would open some interesting story possibilities – now that the Realm of Zhaitan lacks its power source, its inhabitants are going to need to do something to get magic back. But, again, this is more fanfiction than speculation, and the truth will likely be far, far simpler.
During the recent PoI, when talking about map design, it was said (see notes here, courtesy of Dulfy): “In Queensdale for example only half the events were Queensdale themed (humans vs centaurs). Our new maps have events themed with the map more”.
Yeah… That’s not a good thing.
Enemies in the same army (the centaur army, the Risen army, the Inquest army, etc) usually have similar mechanics and look similar, too. Fighting a bunch of them soon becomes repetitive if that’s all you do.
One of the reasons why Queensdale is one of the best maps in the game is exactly due to the variety within it – you are not just fighting centaurs over and over. You have centaurs here, bandits there, wild creatures on that corner, domestic disputes to settle on that house, and so on. Not only this makes gameplay more diverse (you are fighting different enemies all the time, instead of a single enemy type everywhere), but it also gives the developer freedom to make more diverse and tonally different events.
This changes as the game goes on, and we have maps in which basically all the events are themed with the map – like Orr. Where we fight basically the same few enemies in the entire map.
Now, I have never seen someone saying, “You know, I wish the Risen were part of more of the events we have in Orr”. What I have seen are complaints about how Orr is repetitive and lacks diversity within its enemies and events.
It concerns and worries me to see that ArenaNet (still!) doesn’t grasp this aspect. Saying that they think Queensdale would have been better if it had more “human vs centaurs” and less of all the different things it has is very bad. It hints that the expansion maps will consist of fights against the Mordrem over and over, with little to no variety.
In other words, the expansion will be a lot like Orr. Instead of being as great as Queensdale.
Season 2, “The Dragon’s Reach – Part 1”, “Summit Invitations”. As part of the so-called “new content”, in order to progress through the storyline we have to complete an old event, the “Breaking the Ice” chain in Frostgorge Sound.
Which is not going to happen.
Why? Because the grinders have the event as part of their champion farming rotation. Since the event has a timer, and since the farmers focus on killing the champions instead of focusing on killing the enemies that need to be killed for the event to progress, and the more farmers there are the higher the enemies’ HP, well… That event is not going to be done.
Therefore, in order to advance through the storyline, not only we have to wait until the event begins, we also have to hope that there aren’t too many grinders nearby to inflate the bosses’ HP (while they focus on killing the champions). It’s the Scarlet invasions all over again.
Trying to finish an event knowing you’re surrounded by grinders who are only getting on your way, while you try to kill massive damage sponges that do zero damage but have a million HP… That’s Guild Wars 2.
You’re not recognizing how MMO’s appeal to different players and I’ve already explained this to you. I’m not sure how your lack of comprehension makes me wrong but to be clear
See, you are so stuck on your preconceived notions that you cannot see the answer right in front of you. MMOs don’t appeal to so many different players because they are very similar to each other; and they always cater to the players with a “let’s work in a game, that shows effort!” mentality, hence why they always have grind.
If you want MMORPGs to expand their appeal to other players, a way to do so is to remove or reduce the grind. Is this clear enough for you?
Well, their original plan was to not have levels at all. That changed in development. Then we got to watch a slow trainwreck as they released the game about six months early based on the fixes which had to be shoved into place.
Remember the “we will have infinite levels” phase? I’m glad that idea didn’t stick.
Wrong again … the game breaks many conventions. Whatever your angle here, it still doesn’t make what I said any less relevant or wrong.
That the only reason why grinding is part of all MMOs is because no one has made a MMO without the grind, not because one design is inherent to another? That pretty much makes what you said wrong. Claiming “the game must be like this because that’s how all games in this genre are” is short sighted. Under this kind of reasoning, someone asking for FPS to have a good story, back when all we had was Doom, would have been told that “it’s not how FPS are”. Until we got Half Life and Bioshock, and people realized you could have a good story in that kind of game. Same with MMORPGs and grind – the current games have a lot of grind. Yet they would still be massive, be multiplayer, be online and be RPGs if you removed, or at least reduced significantly, the grind.
It’s not ONLY used by people that like to grind. It’s also used by people that understand that working for something is part of the reward system in any MMO.
In other words, people who want more of the same instead of wanting a MMO that breaks conventions.
Just because gold is needed for a small portion of some of it, doesn’t mean you can buy it with gold. If you had nothing but gold, you couldn’t get it.
You need to make your arguments better. Saying you can get something without gold (which you said) is different from saying you cannot get something using gold (which you also said, and in which you were wrong).
You also get them for doing the Living Story parts. I got all of mine doing that, plus the one guaranteed Coat box for beating the Vinewrath.
So . . . do you even play this game anymore, yourself?
Yep. I never said there isn’t a way to get them without gold; only that it’s not true that you cannot use gold to get them, as Vayne said.
You can’t get them with gold alone. And the amount of gold you need to get them is neglible. Also many of them aren’t sold.
Excuses (again), so you won’t admit you are wrong (again)?
That is to say you can get ambrite weapons without gold. You can get carapace armor without gold. You can get luminencent armor without gold. you can get the new PvP armor without gold.
(…)
So the last three armor sets added to this game you can actually get without spending gold, but yes, you have to farm for them. In fact, there’s no way to get them with gold.
Uh… Caparace armor boxes are sold for crests and, guess what, gold. So yep, there is a way to get them with gold.
Do you even play this game anymore?
I guess you have a problem with context then. You’ve assumed I enjoy the grind. That’s an incorrect premise, so your statement is false.
The “people who are complaining want everything handed to them” speech is used by those who like the grind. Because everyone else can clearly see the difference between playing a game to have fun and working in a game.
(edited by Test.8734)
Always would not be reasonable; a persisting theme in this thread.
“Not reasonable” does not mean “something I would not enjoy”.
No, it means “not reasonable”. As in “it’s unreasonable to demand or expect such”.
Which is actually being used, in this discussion, to mean “that would mean removing something I like and I don’t want that to happen, so I’ll say it’s unreasonable to ask for it”.
Always would not be reasonable; a persisting theme in this thread.
“Not reasonable” does not mean “something I would not enjoy”.
I don’t see what YOU enjoy has to do with it. Anet develops the game with certain concepts in mind. You decide to pay them to experience it. Is this just a case of you misunderstanding the client/vendor relationship? Sounds like it.
Ironically, I was talking about how you enjoy the current grind and you were claiming asking for its removal would be unreasonable because you would not enjoy seeing it removed. Your most recent post is a nice reply to yourself.
If they do not have anything more to add now this would be the most crappy xpac in gaming history.
They have already mentioned in more than one interview that yes, this is everything.
Always would not be reasonable; a persisting theme in this thread.
“Not reasonable” does not mean “something I would not enjoy”.
In the majority of situations, Anet does not make it’s players work for the things that allow you to succeed and compete.
“Majority” is not “always”.
And today I learned that players don’t want to work towards anything and have everything handed to them on silver platter, grind or no grind.
http://swz.salary.com/SalaryWizard/Aerospace-Engineer-V-Job-Description.aspx
Can’t speak for anyone else, though that’s on the order of what I’m willing to work at.
These games? Pff. Not so much. There’s a certain wisdom in knowing what’s good and useful to work hard at, and to me, these games are so far from making the list as to render such comments as this downright comical.
My commitment to sparkle motion should not merely be doubted, but known far and wide s being non-existent.
And before some smug little part time burger flipper tried to tell me how lazy that must mean I am, I make craft beers, do my own custom cabinetry and woodworking, am a hobbyist electrical engineer when it comes to messing around with my own tweaking of computer hardware, a frequent world traveler for both work and leisure, a once-a-week member of a local church’s choral group and a regular volunteer down at my local food shelter.
More? I’m also a full time husband of a wife that firmly believes that going mountain biking and hiking on everything is the perfect way to spend a weekend. Consequently, we do a lot of those, as well as going to beaches with friends and having regular once or twice weekly barbecue cook outs on our patio.
I’m not willing to sacrifice any of that to ‘work harder’ at a game. Frankly, I feel it to be a giant joke to work at these things at all. Defeat the point much? It certainly would for me, to them this into yet another laborious task in my life.
So hers your sign. I’ll take all the silver platter service. You can try to, I dunno, pretend you’re the Michael Phelps of achievement point hunting or something.
Whatever it is that motivated people to try so hard to work at these games harder than they might well work at anything else at all fails entirely to grab me. I don’t get it and I don’t rightly care to start trying now.
I’ve been saying to posts like this ’ get a real job and accomplish something in your life. Then come back and tell us how lazy we are for not being interested in working super hard in video game land’ for years. Consider it implied here too.
That one is a post that could end with a /thread
If we had a new race I wouldn’t doubt that we would get another slot, but since we are not, it is unlikely. Maybe if they add a digital deluxe or something that comes with a slot (and other goodies).
Indeed. I also think we will not get a character slot. ArenaNet is likely desperate like that to milk their players any way they can, so I expect them to want players to buy a character slot.
Anyone that thinks exotic gear is a grind in this game shouldn’t be playing any MMO, period.
You weren’t around here by the time of release, were you? By then people still had the illusion that GW2 was not going to lower itself to the level of other MMOs.
I’m not going to explain to you why the relationship between grind and BiS exists in MMOs but if you can’t acknowledge how easy it is to get exotic gear, you’re going to have a hard time getting anyone to take you seriously, including Anet.
In the original Guild Wars, BiS was earned basically as soon as you left the tutorial. “It wasn’t a MMORPG!”, you could say. Irrelevant. People still kept playing it for years, and there are still people playing it despite a lack of support from ArenaNet.
In all MMORPGs, you need to grind for BiS. You claim that’s a good thing. I say it’s not. Just like in the original Guild Wars the goal was to have fun and not to endure a grind, the same could have been true in GW2.
(edited by Test.8734)
That’s pretty ridiculous. Why don’t you just argue that Anet just mail us whatever gear was want for nothing and see what happens? It seems that if anything requires any effort at all, people will just label it grind and think it’s a reason to QQ about it.
Claiming that people who want to remove grind just want everything handled to them is the same as claiming that people who want grind are failures who cannot achieve anything in real life and, being both incompetent and useless, have nothing else to do other than try to use time spent in MMORPGs instead of using talent and skill to achieve something. In other words, both are just straw maws.
Grind doesn’t really keep people interested in the game. Content keeps people interested in the game. Grind may make people endure the game, but it’s far from being the same thing.
To have fun. That’s becoming harder and harder.
So their teams, which were responsible for the living world content, can all focus now on other projects, while the team(s), which was all the time in background working on oT can continue on that
Assuming that there has been a team working on HoT for a very long time now. As far as we know, HoT development could have started relatively recently, and what the “background team” was working on was the stuff we have seen in Gem Store.
I already know that updates will be coming out until the expansion is released, so don’t worry, that’s not one of them.
Remember that last year ArenaNet slowed update release significantly because they were busy with the preparations for releasing GW2 in China. It’s likely that they will be even more busy now, so I would expect even less than what we got back then.
(Ergo, nothing.)
Lord knows it is tough enough to get ahead in the game financially as it is.
That statement is enough proof to why ArenaNet should not add personal trading to the game.
I can’t believe I just read someone complain about the cost of exotic gear ><.
Arguably, if the community as a whole had complained enough about exotic gear, maybe we would not have had ascended gear at all. And GW2 would have been considerably less grindy than it is today.
This is a really fantastic example. I guess the only question I’d ask about it is what’s the speed at which Arena Net could have introduced enough new content to make a difference, compared with the speed at which they could have implemented ascended gear?
Considering how three years after the release of Guild Wars they had already released Factions, which was nearly as big as the original game, plus another chapter in Nightfall, plus some other content such as the Bonus Mission Pack and Sorrow’s Furnace, plus one expansion, and had already began working on GW2…
If they wanted, they could have released far more than the couple new maps we have right now.
I have seen some people posting about the feasibility of adding the Tengu to the current Personal Story line and cant help but make the observation that they already make an appearance in the Concordia (Lvl 70) step.
I guess my question is how does this one appearance of an otherwise elusive race factor into HoT and the Personal Story? Also their introduction as a playable race in the existing personal story line?
They will never add a new race.
ArenaNet failed massively in how they built the story. Adding different voice actors per race plus a lot of voiced content (most of it in poor-looking cutscenes) means that, if they were to add a new race, they would have to record a massive amount of dialogue for it to be able to play through the current storyline. Considering how voice actors are expensive, that’s not going to happen any time soon.
Plus, ArenaNet already said that they won’t fix Charr and Asura armor because few players play as them. So don’t expect to see anything that doesn’t look a lot like human beings any time soon.
Have a great night. I won’t be responding again.
C’mon. We both know that, sooner or later, yes you will. In fact, the post following yours is a great example:
Alright, I’m going to ask everyone in this thread a very simple question.
Say ascended armor was made much easier to obtain. Say it only took a month to complete “challenging content” to fully deck out your character.
With nothing else to work towards, yes or no – would you get bored with the game?
No. Having all my guys in the best available gear would not make me bored with the game. What will make me bored with the game, and has has made me bored with the game previously, is the lack of new things to do with my characters. I want more quests/missions/stories (and big, sprawling, fully-decked out zones in which to experience them). Those things will keep me going indefinitely. Especially if there’s enough of it so that there’s some variety along the way for each new character.
Imagine it’s 2012. Guild Wars 2 was released a few months ago, but now the number of players is falling. ArenaNet is discussing it at their offices, and they ask: “Players are leaving! What should we do?”.
Stark’s reply would have been: “Players are leaving because they don’t have enough to grind! Let’s give them more stuff to grind for!”. That’s what we got in GW2: ascended gear and Fractals.
Tachenon’s reply would have been: “Players are leaving because they don’t have enough things to do! Let’s give them more stuff to do and more ways to do it!”. That’s what we got in the original Guild Wars: a brand new chapter, nearly as big as the original game, without new gear tiers but with more professions, maps, missions and skills.
ArenaNet said they will never do something like ascended gear again. They have not been adding much to Fractals. Meanwhile, the original Guild Wars was successful enough for ArenaNet to grow massively and be able to make Guild Wars 2.
I guess it’s easy to see which one was the right answer, and which one was the wrong one.
The combination of what people were saying on the forums at that time and people not logging in makes it hard to assume anything else though…and it’s a good bet that at least part of those people, including both my sons, left after they got max level gear.
See, you are doing the exact same thing you did in your previous post. You are asking us to rely only on your interpretation and on the opinion of people who you just allude to (be it when you say " I’m not the only one who came to this conclusion either" or your “sons”). Meanwhile we have already seen flaws in your interpretation (see the Manifesto), and we can’t rely merely on people you mention (just like I could say my guild of 1.000 players left because of ascended, without that being true).
What were people saying? A lot of things. Some that they didn’t like the high level content. Some that they didn’t have content enough. Some that they wanted more gear to grind for. Some that they wished the game had fewer levels.
Your assumption – that people stopped playing because ascended gear didn’t exist – is a guess. Which was also ArenaNet’s guess at the time, since you are basically (and unsurprisingly) agreeing with them. In other hand, the outcry following ascended erupted this forum at least as much as the discussions we had from people saying they had nothing to do before. So was ascended the right decision? Doesn’t look so.
And you’ve yet to give me any other reason why that change would have been made.
I did. Because ArenaNet made a mistake.
How about we stop attacking each other for having our own opinions and get back on topic?
The more a thread goes off topic the less interest the devs will have in it. They don’t care about what you think of each other, they care about what you think of their game or about the topic at hand. They do not want to have to filter through hundreds of posts that are off topic.
I agree. I think ascended gear was a mistake since it was first introduced, and since ArenaNet believes ascended gear is the kind of thing we should be able to get without grind, the current system needs a massive rework.
I wouldn’t be sad if the rest of the content that feels grindy also were reworked. More things like Liandra and less rewards for spamming 1 20 hours per day would be nice.
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Again, if you think you know how many people were playing and logging in better than Anet did back in November when ascended gear came out, there’s not much to talk about.
You’re making the same mistake that ArenaNet did. You are assuming that knowing how many people were playing is the same as knowing why those people were playing, and why everyone else wasn’t.
Are you going to claim ArenaNet has some miraculous mind reading device that allowed them to know exactly how everyone who stopped playing the game did so because they felt they needed one extra gear tier?
Because, without that device, all ArenaNet could do is take a guess. Just like you. They guessed that adding a new gear tier would keep more people playing than they would lose by announcing said gear tier. What we do know is that said new gear tier caused a massive uproar in the community, at least as loud as (if not louder) than the complain that players had nothing to do at max level.
I’m working on a hypothesis that the company didn’t just make this change to kitten people off. Taken in combination with the mood on the forum at that time, I can put two and two together and get four. I’m not the only one who came to this conclusion either.
You are relying on your interpretation, assuming that’s something reliable at all. We know that at least about the Manifesto, you were wrong. You’re also relying on the vague other people who reached the same conclusion, without presenting any kind of reliable evidence that they can be believed in. So nope, that’s not a great argument.
Spamming posts does not help. Just because a thread has an overwhelming number of complaints does not indicate it’s more of an issue to players than one that does not. The fact that ANet has replied with their position on this is pretty much a /thread right there.
In other hand, a topic that has an overwhelming number of clomplaints is more likely to be more of an issue to players than one that does not have more than five posts. Ideally ArenaNet would read the topics to see which is which, but having a very big topic is surely a way to get their attention.
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Would be awesome to see a bunch of missions and dungeons from gw1 incorporated into fractals for GW2.
It’s a nice idea to relieve some of the best GW1 moments in the GW1 engine, but Fractals aren’t a good way of doing that. Sure, lore-wise it fits the game (what with Fractals being a door to anywhere), but the Fractals themselves… Are very much meh. They don’t appear to be that popular (see how little content ArenaNet has added to them lately; wasn’t the last thing the Scarlet fractal in 2013?), they are randomized so people who want to play through the GW1 content would have to rely on luck to experience it, it’s dungeon content (so we have all the “meta” stuff to deal with), and so on.
I would rather have another way to access that content, true GW1-style: missions you can play whenever you want with whoever you want, alone (with AI) or in a group of players.
Frankly, this topic should be locked:
1. Anet replied to the concern
2. I think everyone has covered both sides of the topic thoroughlyNot much left. The only reason anyone would want to have it left open is because they are campaigning.
To be honest, the amount of posts help. The circular discussions don’t do anything, but it’s different for ArenaNet to see, “Look, there are 4 THOUSAND posts complaining about traits!” than “Look, there are 8 posts talking about how Defiance sucks”.
Just see Vayne’s post a bit above mine – he claims that he knew a lot of people felt they didn’t have anything do to at max level because a lot of people were complaining on the forum about it. If we see a lot of people complaining about grind on the forum (and better to do that in a single topic than have dozen topics about the same thing), maybe ArenaNet will do something about it.
Have the community really accepted Defiance as a working game mechanic in PvE?
Mostly people have given up on discussing each and every feature that makes PvE poor, and decided to leave the game.
The thing with Defiance is that it doesn’t really matter. Even if it did not exist, there would be no point in using interrupt because there is no situation in which using an interrupt would be better than just dodging. Unlike in the original Guild Wars, interrupts are mostly useless here. That flaw should be adressed and then Defiant reworked, but we all know that ArenaNet won’t do either.
The entire purpose of this conversation is not to debate the merits of paying for dungeons, but rather to find a community-derived price if they were to implement a system like that.
The “community-derived price” is zero, because it’s a bad idea that the “community” doesn’t appear to be in support of.
So wait if the Stronghold map fails then they might even take Stronghold out of the game?( moba style gw1 esque gvg hope it doesn’t fail it could be the new Esport setting!) I mean they already did take out one map. Raid on the Capricorn which IMO was a great looking map!
The original Guild Wars introduced a new kind of PvP called “hero versus hero”. It was such a massive failure that it was eventually removed from the game. So yep, it’s possible that, if Stronghold is another massive failure, ArenaNet would remove it.
Please. I think it’s pretty obvious this expansion has been in the works for some time. I sincerely doubt this was a “oh crap we gotta make money somehow!”
We won’t know until we actually see the quality and polish (or lack of) in the expansion itself. The ZAM interview had some troubling comments, though:
“‘That is often the strategy that a lot of games use when they grow into an expansion,’ Colin said. ‘Our focus is instead on a smaller number of maps that have an incredible amount of deep replay value.’”
…So, expect 3 maps at most with “replay value” meaning “a lot of stuff to grind for”.
“For the launch of HoT, ArenaNet is focused on making one fantastic map for the game mode that lives up to the promise of what Stronghold can be. It is once they have that and love the map, Colin says, that they will start thinking and worrying about other maps. Right now it is about delivering one perfect map that defines Stronghold.”
…So the new game mode will have only one map.
“As for guilds overall, Colin said that they are staying really high level and will fill in the details about guilds down the road.”
…So ArenaNet likely doesn’t know itself how the guild hall system will work.
And so on. The result will tell us whether this was a rushed product as a last resource, or something carefully planned years in advance.
Actually in an interview by Eurogamer the devs said they won’t be doing Living Story anymore…..
Wow, so ArenaNet is actually willing to admit that the Living Story was a failure?
SO basically what anet wants to do is do free living story all the way up to the climax and then put the end behind a pay wall.
Brilliant.
That’s not really what happened, I think.
The Living Story pretty much failed. ArenaNet focused a lot on the China release but it was worse than expected. The number of players has been falling, they have made changes to their business model (selling Living World chapters) yet profit has not risen; in other words, the future doesn’t look bright for ArenaNet.
They probably decided to make an expansion simply because they have no idea what to do now. This is nearing a desperate move. And it remains to be seen how well planned and how well implemented the promised features for the expansion will be.
…fix some of the armor-clippings from the base-game at last?
Nope.
While we’re at asuran chars: Will the trend of monogendered asuran armor and toe-clipping boots continue, or will there finally be some love for our long-eared scientists?
No love.
ArenaNet mentioned soon after release that yes, the Charr and the Asura have a lot of clipping issues with their armors. On the Charrs, there are many armors in which the textures look rather ugly, because clearly they have just been stretched from the more humanoid armor.
And ArenaNet mentioned they are not going to fix those issues.
That, because very few people play as Charr and Asura. So it would be basically a waste of their time to improve something for a small group of players.
(Regardless of how many players don’t actually play as Charr or Asura because their armors have clipping issues and often look ugly. And how many changes to the game – ascended – were by demand of a vocal minority.)
My suggestion? Don’t play as Charr, or as Asura. Those are seen by ArenaNet as second-rate races.
Some of us looked at the entire paragraph and figured out what it meant from that context. Some of us took a pre-existing definition in our heads and ignored the context.
Yep. You did the latter, by assuming that ArenaNet was taking about level grind despite how they have didn’t mention level in association with grind in the Manifesto, and despite how they have already clarified what they meant at least twice.
When are you going to stop ignoring context and ArenaNet’s clarifications, and admit you were wrong?
With nothing else to work towards, yes or no – would you get bored with the game?
Are you talking about playing a game to have fun, or about work?
I don’t know about you, but I don’t work for free. I work in something I enjoy and I’m paid for it. In a game, I’m not going to work – I’m going to have fun. If there’s not enough content for me to have fun, just a lot of grind, I’m not going to play at all.
I think this is a matter of age. Children have a lot of free time and so don’t value enough the time they have to spend; it’s common to see them doing something mindless just to pass time. Adults, in other hand, realize how productive and lucrative their time is, and focus on having good experiences with the time they have; they are less likely to spend their free time doing something boring over and over (aka grind) and more likely to only invest their time when they enjoy doing so.
The manifesto was a statement of intent made long before the game got out. It was a way to give an idea of where they wanted to go.
Yep. They said they didn’t want players to grind, and made it clear they meant grind in a broad meaning. It was something very easily understood, that didn’t really need laywers to define its terms, despite how a very small number of players never understood it and still refuse to understand it even with multiple clarifications from ArenaNet. They have said then, just as they have said now, that “grind” means far more than level grind. Trying to change the subject won’t change this fact.
Let me know when you can prove Colin wrote the manifesto, k thanks.
Do you really think the Game Director, who spoke the paragraph we are discussing, didn’t have a say on those lines? K thanks.
You are gasping at straws instead of admiting you were wrong, and have been wrong all this time. ArenaNet’s definition of grind (and do notice it’s not “Colin’s definition”) has always been different from “level grind”. As has always been obvious.
No, I’m looking at the evidence of the original manifesto. That’s all I’ve done for years. The evidence of the original manifesto and what was said not only in it, but to clarify it in the months immediately after.
…All of which have never even come close to saying that “grind” means only “level grind”. The Manifesto said something different, the clarification released concurrently said differently, and now Colin is saying differently.
For years, you have been wrong. That has easily been proved a few times now.
Sorry about I’m a writer and an editor. Colin is responding to an ever-changing industry, to specific complaints. I’m looking at the original manifesto. The words in it, period. Nothing else.
It’s irrelevant what you are (or were). You have are trying to ignore ArenaNet’s clarification, both from right now and from 4 years ago. In both of those times, and in the Manifesto itself, it has been made clear that you are wrong, and that your interpretation is flawed.
Unfortunatelly, the grind is real, and ascended gear is its proof.
If you don’t agree, it doesn’t change anything. There’s not a single word in that paragraph about gear. Not one.
And? There’s not a single word about levelling. Not one.
In fact, in the document from four years ago, ArenaNet said “Our games aren’t about preparing to have fun, or about grinding for a future fun reward”.
Not to mention how Colin confirmed in this topic that they never meant grind as just levelling.
Which has always been obvious, really. It’s good to have confirmation so those saying otherwise can be proved wrong.
You don’t get to define grind your way. You don’t get to make up your own definitions. In any statement using a word with multiple definitions, it’s the speaker who defines how he’s using the word.
Exactly. The definition that “grind = levelling” has always been part of Vayne’s little world and little else. ArenaNet has never meant grind in such a way, as Colin described in this topic. Ergo, since the speaker on the Manifesto was ArenaNet, not Vayne… Your own definition of grind is irrelevant (not to mention flawed).
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