Guild Wars 2

You indeed can´t force people to play there. Maybe incentives would work, but I am not sure about that. Once a server is branded as loser/hacker/moron community, it´s basically branded until it can somehow redeem itself (like probably Blacktide a the moment). Holding up the illusion is not an option if Anet does not activelly hire people to play in the bronze tier.

The solution to abandon the lower servers is just bad for wvw in general, not just the new users. I see your point in this of course, a kind of “let´s all swim in the deeper waters until the storm blows off” approach, but if there are less and less fish to swim with even when the pond gets better, isn´t that also bad for the remaining fishes?

If American people are like the people where I live, they can clearly use every history lesson they are forced into even if it given from a Mongolian, Brazilian or even a Martian scholar.^^

It is in any way a pretty bad marketing campaign, incompetence or not.

You try to sell a product nobody knows what is in it. I find that strange. This works with the fan crowd, but probably not with the more reasonable or more tight people.
Of course for this to be a success, this fan crowd must be big enough to create a buzz on it´s own, like it was the case with Star Wars. People literally fell over each other to see Phantom Menace, despite it´s overall horrible plot, laughable figures and G rating, just because it was from Star Wars. Obviously, this is not the case with GW2.

Anet was caught with their pants around their ankles and had nothing to show for in the first months after they were forced to change their business model, I don´t doubt that. Now they have something to show, but probably not enough for the more hardcore, price sensible people to be satisfied with.

Dawdler.8521:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

So why does everybody feel anet included that its just not ok to make tier 8 low pop like they actually are and let some people transfer there for free. How could that do anything but help these dead servers in tier 8. Nobody is ever gonna pay money/gems to trasnfer to the lowest servers.

You are right which is why T8-9 peeps should move to the highest ranked available server instead. Just let low tier die already. Anet wont merge servers and no one want to go there even if its free. Players can fix this themselves. The only proper way for an exodus is up, not down.

But how would that remove the problem for WvW in general, that less people seem to play it?
Lets say a new player that does not look into a GW2 forum before, joins a T9 server because he likes the name and it is labeled as medium, which does not sound so bad, suggesting that it is not an empty wasteland, but just not filled with all kinds of people. I personally like that idea and would probably rather join a medium server called Fissure of Woe instead of a rather common sounding server named after a sea or a glade like Drakkar Lake or Aurora Glade if I did not know what medium really means.
Should he pay 1000+ gems for a mistake he did not even make because he did not know better? Does not sound like the best of advertising arguments to stay with GW2 for me.
The only help can come from GW2 itself, not a player exodus. Either change the system how people are grouped or bundle servers that are medium, so basically you would get rid of the bronze tier.

maddoctor.2738:

What about people being frustrated by how the game ALREADY is then? Players that still stay with the game because they love the mechanics, community and WvW/PvP aspect of it but STILL wait patiently for something more challenging to come for the game.

Don´t get me wrong:
*I am ok with challenging content as long as you are not getting nothing for valiant effort, like it was in ls2.
*I am not complaining that I do not get the armor. My friendly fellow guild members indeed dragged me through what for me was an ordeal after doing it already once in the course of the story and there doing fairly well, but not largely flawless as the lumi getting repetition of the ls2 demanded. I have repaid that (unasked) favor with helping other members and this especially helpful guy with making Wvw and Fractal runs with them. If I would really be the pushy, lazy type, I would ask the friendly people to walk me trough the last piece of ordeal that I am missing too. But that will never happen as long as it is me in control of the characters.

And btw, I personally suck at everything that involves jumping (had a trip back to wibbly wobbly high pedestral land with the Harpy Fractal at first, thank you very much Anet!), so I found LS2 to be both grindy, boring, repetive and not my taste in general, not even storywise. I have both every success of triple worm and Tequatl, so I don´t consider myself a lazy person, just someone that does not want to make the same stuff multiple times for sometimes no reward at all, like in ls2.

And for being carried by the guy that has “carried” me, it´s my Fractal level that opens our fractal runs, not his. He helps me again when I need to make JP for some terrible reason, I help other people with crafting or WVW. In my guild, we don´t see stuff like this as leeching on someones success and being carried by others, we see it as helping our fellow members and online friends to help them achieve success in fields they personally are not good in.

Boring, repetive and grindy stuff stays boring, repetive and grindy, despite it being hardcore or not. It´s the quality of the things you do, not how hard it is, at least for me.

SkiTz.4590:

Sounds like a personal problem… Its not anets problem or anyone else that you are too stubborn and give up easily and rely on others to carry you… You give up but you still want the reward….sounds reasonable…

Uhm, yes? Of course it is a personal problem, but how does that invalidate the idea that people like me are the majority? I don´t see many people run around in Lumi armor, and not just because it is ugly…

SkiTz.4590:

Where do you get your assumptions from?
harder means less ppl doing it? what The ppl wanting hardcore pve content either quit the game LONG time ago OR moved into spvp/wvw where its usually not a braindead auto attack spam game like you have now…
less ppl do it because they FIND IT BORING.. thats why anet is bringing in endgame progression/content…. because of evident it was that this game was lacking it…

I don´t really understand how this can be even in question? Even if that probably baffles you, most people don´t want to spend their game time in the same dungeon, the adrenaline rush gets very quickly replaced by the feeling of being tired of failing at the same spot, or a variety of different spots.
I am a fairly stubborn player, but simply gave up at some point to obtain Lumi Armor because of the grindy and unforgiven nature of LS2 .Yes, stuff can both be grindy and unforgiven at once. If I did not luckily have a “pro player” in my guild, I would probably only have a few of them instead of at least a majority of them because I could not be kitten d to enter them again.

Tired of doing several world bosses because I have done them over and over? Yes.
Tired of the concept in general? No.
And as this is the logical consequence of this thread:
Tired of asking for raids or raids in general? Y E S

Galen Grey.4709:

thats like arguing Youtube isnt free because you’re paying electricity, internet connection and potentially adverts you’re buying off google themselves. Thats wrong the content itself is 100% free. if you decide to donate / buy stuff you want off the gemshop its your choice and a good one at that but in no way shape or form would that be a fee you’re paying for the content.

What year long content drought are you talking about? this is the longest drought we had and if you exclude the trait changes its 8 months not a year. besides I hope you dont think the expansion has only been in development for the last 8 months cause i think thats pretty clearly not the case. Living story ended right when expansion beings that kinda tied them up. They can release a festival or SAB ofcourse but does it make sense to reallocate resources for that at this point?

Actually, I agree with you on the part of free content only, I was baffled to hear that players wanted to pay for content instead of getting it for free in the ls. If you want to see a game that allows you to play(not to win!) when you buy something, look at eve online. If you don´t buy, steal or work for a plex, you can´t play and have to pay with real money.

On the second part, I really think that Anet was like a sitting duck when they changed business models reluctantly, and being forced to rush out content they wanted to present in the course of a year.
Why do I believe this?
“Soon.”
That is not a marketing term, that is the message of a naked man that has no pockets to hide something.
“When it is ready.”
The message of a man who has something, but knows he would be lynched for it if he already showed it because it is in such an early state that people would grab their pitchforks if they knew.
“The core game is included and does not raise the price of the expansion.”
Although surely true, the shenaningans around this message proved me that the marketing and accounting departments either don´t know what they have, or they don´t care what the customers want and would want to pay, but still don´t want to go off their idea even after it has kicked them hard in the balls. That is no new trend in town, sad enough. There are countless companies, even giant ones, that are successful despite being themselves.

I don´t know how it was in the SAB, that event sucked the life out of me and I had to quit it really early.

Monsters could keep their usual drop table of course. I see the token solution more as a safety net to not get only garbage out of a longer run or when you are new and barely manage to do the dungeon instead of the jaded, bitter farmer dungeoeneers we probably are.

I don´t know about your special feeling regarding this, but why should it not be there? Maybe you will luck out in your third try, maybe you have to go all the way. Why could you not feel giddy when you think “will it drop in this run?” instead of “will it ever drop?”.

Galen Grey.4709:

And thats not considering they actually wanted to give us all of this for free through the living story but no people insisted it had to be an expansion. They obliged and now its a whole story cause its $10 more expensive then the average.

QFT, even when I think the expansion doesn´t really look too exciting at the moment.

Devata.6589:

Torolan.5816:

Devata.6589:

That however brings us back to how RNG works. Yes you could end up with nothing. nonetheless, if it’s token base, it’s nice to see you got token 1 of the 100 you need, but as long as you don’t have 100 tokens that 1 token is completely useless. And it will be useless until you get the 100th token. Would the drop-rate be 1/100 then on average you would have the reward in 100 runs.

The RNG way would take away some exact progress, you could get it after 1 run it could also take you 100 (while the average will be 100.. so there still is a form of progress, just invisible and less exact).

But it would add the rush of “will it drop”.

The token way removes the rush but gives the exact progress. Personally I prefer the rush because that has an effect on every run, because it can drop every run, with the token system only becomes interesting when you are nearing the required number of tokens, before that all you see is the wall of missing tokens. (token can be replaced by any type of currency here).

That is not to say that there could not also be an items you simply get for completing it the first time.

Couldn´t the issue of getting a boring token solution that is individually worthless instead of junk be avoided with making the token currency tradeable to a merchant who gives out stuff, quality depending on how many tokens you want to invest, like it is done in SW?

Lets make an example:
Say you have collected 46 tokens, then your item drops. You have a reasonably number of tokens then: not enough to be angry because you invested so dearly in them, but proud enogh to maybe tell it in guild once or twice. You give them to the merchant for something that is nice but you wouldn´t really put a thought in else wise.
I see only winners in this scenario:
*The Person who got the item dropped early won because he won the item and has escaped early from the grind.
*The token collector that got lucky won because he got the item and some stuff for his effort.
*The poor soul who had to collect 100 tokens is rewarded with the item and can be proud for his persistance and stubborness, making him a winner of hearts.^^

That could possible work. The way I would however design it would be a little different.

I would put in one reward simply for completing it. 1 or more rewards behind RNG, this should be the rewards people are really after, so the ‘best looking ones’. (that is of course somewhat personal)

In addition I would put in tokens to earn something along the way, much like the dungeon armor, however this should really be a nice addition, not something people would really want to go for or would always want to collect (from all dungeons).

But your solution would also work I think. The question just is.. what is the ‘stuff’ you talk about.. and the guy who needs to do 10 runs does then only get the main reward but none of the stuff. Not sure how that would work out.

I like the idea for the completion. Staying through with a group of relative newbies for example should be awarded.

I am not sure how the rewards could look. Maybe like this:
5 medium sacks for 1 token(linen anyone?)
1 T6 mat for 1 token
1 lodestone of your choice for 5 tokens
1 tradeable miniature(not always the same to not make it wortless quick) for 50 tokens
1 Quaggan femaledogslap deathblow for 80 tokens
1 Dungeon Exklusive Item for 100 tokens

And for the guy who lucked out early but still wants the stuff, who says that he cant come in again to farm?

Devata.6589:

That however brings us back to how RNG works. Yes you could end up with nothing. nonetheless, if it’s token base, it’s nice to see you got token 1 of the 100 you need, but as long as you don’t have 100 tokens that 1 token is completely useless. And it will be useless until you get the 100th token. Would the drop-rate be 1/100 then on average you would have the reward in 100 runs.

The RNG way would take away some exact progress, you could get it after 1 run it could also take you 100 (while the average will be 100.. so there still is a form of progress, just invisible and less exact).

But it would add the rush of “will it drop”.

The token way removes the rush but gives the exact progress. Personally I prefer the rush because that has an effect on every run, because it can drop every run, with the token system only becomes interesting when you are nearing the required number of tokens, before that all you see is the wall of missing tokens. (token can be replaced by any type of currency here).

That is not to say that there could not also be an items you simply get for completing it the first time.

Couldn´t the issue of getting a boring token solution that is individually worthless instead of junk be avoided with making the token currency tradeable to a merchant who gives out stuff, quality depending on how many tokens you want to invest, like it is done in SW?

Lets make an example:
Say you have collected 46 tokens, then your item drops. You have a reasonably number of tokens then: not enough to be angry because you invested so dearly in them, but proud enogh to maybe tell it in guild once or twice. You give them to the merchant for something that is nice but you wouldn´t really put a thought in else wise.
I see only winners in this scenario:
*The Person who got the item dropped early won because he won the item and has escaped early from the grind.
*The token collector that got lucky won because he got the item and some stuff for his effort.
*The poor soul who had to collect 100 tokens is rewarded with the item and can be proud for his persistance and stubborness, making him a winner of hearts.^^

Devata.6589:

Yeah, but when the reward you are interested in is in the dungeon, there is always the drive to get the item and the rush of ‘will it drop’ making it an overall more fun experience. When done right the reward is also linked to the content, again something MC got completely right, dropping the backpack and the mini form the boss.

When a currency becomes the means of getting something, people will do whatever gets them the currency the fastest (and then for all the rewards they want). So it becomes a completely different experience. But indeed, after a few runs it will almost always be reward driven.

That is true. But what if it does not drop and you do not get anything halfway good?
I am usually not a Nr.1 is best and 2nd place is the first looser type of person.
But even I am angry when the first price is a trip to lets say Barbados all inclusive(Dungeon only exclusive item), the second place is a cyrstal penguin I can sell to a collector(random collectors item) for a good sum of money, and the third place and down gets the looser stuff like a set of spoons(Spoons, really Anet? How is Tequatl going to eat his soup now?).

Something that particularly agitated me, although it was a long time ago, was when I took part in raids in DAOC, Realm Dragon or whatever and got absolutely nothing for your effort. If I remember well, the game had a kind of feature that collected items with the raidleader or something like that, and I found myself playing in the player driven lottery more than once to distribute loot. If your number did not win, you had wasted hours of game time for the same kind of loot you would have got by slaying random monsters.

Devata.6589:

Torolan.5816:

Devata.6589:

It also adds to the value of the content itself. See for example the Molten Core dungeon. Everybody asked for it to be put back into the game, and after they did nobody seem to care about it anymore.. It’s not one of the favorite fractals or something like that.. Why? Well partly because it was put in as a fractal and not as a dungeon, but another major reason is imho the fact that the unique rewards (backpack and mini) where taken out. Much of the fun of the dungeon went with it. Many people did the dungeon for those rewards and every run there was the rush if it would drop.

I can only speak for myself and my groups of Fractal runners of course, but from what I know, most people prefer the Molten Core fractal over Maw or Mai Trin. Why? For hardcore reasons. It is short and comparatively quick if you know how to do it. Sadly for the real hardcore guys, you have to watch the entrance of the two bozzos all the time.^^

For hardcore reasons. It is short and comparatively quick if you know how to do it." So not because it’s fun, but because it’s easy to farm when grinding away in fractals.

People ask for it to come back because it was supposed to be fun, and indeed I myself had a lot of fun with it back when it was in the LS, but after the first 2 / 3 runs all other runs where completely reward driven.

Basically, yes. People don´t particulary enjoy it because there is not much to enjoy. It´s exactly the same with Mai Trin. It´s funny and exciting for the first, second or even a fifth time, but once you know how it is done, the fun stops and work begins. Most people probably did fractals because they wanted the skins, or just to see them for a few times, not for the relatively meager gold reward you get at the end.

That is also the reason many people did Dungeons. Once you know how it is done, you will want to skip this and that. I don´t see how this would be different in a hardcore dungeon, it would just take longer for it to happen. The only way to avoid that would be randomly created dungeons with random goals and random types of opponents I suppose.

Devata.6589:

It also adds to the value of the content itself. See for example the Molten Core dungeon. Everybody asked for it to be put back into the game, and after they did nobody seem to care about it anymore.. It’s not one of the favorite fractals or something like that.. Why? Well partly because it was put in as a fractal and not as a dungeon, but another major reason is imho the fact that the unique rewards (backpack and mini) where taken out. Much of the fun of the dungeon went with it. Many people did the dungeon for those rewards and every run there was the rush if it would drop.

I can only speak for myself and my groups of Fractal runners of course, but from what I know, most people prefer the Molten Core fractal over Maw or Mai Trin. Why? For hardcore reasons. It is short and comparatively quick if you know how to do it. Sadly for the real hardcore guys, you have to watch the entrance of the two bozzos all the time.^^

I would have bought HoT anyway because I like the base game and would have given them the “innocent until proven guilty” doubt. On the other hand, I am pretty sure that the development team of Anet stood there with their trousers around the ankles when management told them they have to work on a traditional expansion instead of dribbling out mostly rushed, grindy, unimaginative and horrible content like in LS2. Either that or their marketing and PR division is a complete joke that banks on the antique and completely failing “we don´t say what we have because it is awesome and we want for you to excitedly wait” tactic as you are dealing with gamers, a group of the most jaded and salty online warriors, especially in the PvP division.

Until the release that Fractals would get a boost too, I could not have cared less for HoT, everything I heard about I was either indifferent to(Legendary Items, Guild Halls, Revenant, Elite skills) or I would have even passed upon(new PvE map disguised as WVW map, horrible glide jump feature on a maze like new map) and never bought it if it were DLC contents.

Serious Thought.5394:

For anyone that is not charr? I did not see a petition of insecurity from those guys >.> THIS IS A CRY OF HELP FROM TYRIA!

inb4 zero responses (currently imagining the terror of asura’s with tails running around and looking like massive, scary rat monsters…or how funny sylvari would look XD)

I hate Asura with a passion, but could never resist playing a giant rat called Ratman, Ratboy, Cheeseburglar or something like that, that would be awesome!^^

Yeah, crafting a legendary weapons is really, well legendary if you bought it with gold.

I can see two heroes sitting at the campfire after a long day of looking heroic in Lions Arch, both decorated like a christmas tree, when a young warrior approaches them to look at their legendary weapons, and one says:
“Jeah Joe, do you remember how you totally fell that random undead krill in the lands of Orr, who spat out the precursor you needed? That was heroic, with a capital H dude!”
“Yeah, thanks Bill, that was awesome to get the precursor while other people squanderer their time with beating the undead Wizard over there that guarded some portal to something while getting a chest full of glass baubles for their effort. By the way, did you know that my uncle Carl has a legendary weapon too right now? His reflexes are low because he is old, but luckily, he is filthy rich and just bought it from a common vendor…”

gitflap.9031:

We’ve never been the best at defending…dolly escorts, sieging, scouting…all the unrewarding but necessary stuff that keeps home borderland and, to a lesser extent, EB scores ticking over. The golem week seems to have diluted our patchy defensive instincts even further. Seems to be guilds on our home border who’re only there for teh fights, harking back to the dark days of early 2014 when we dropped to last place in Silver league and got pumped by the likes of Fort Ranik.

I would like to say that Miller is still lurking there and waiting for you, but you probably would not recognize the likes of Miller, Ranik Dzagonur, Arborfstone or RoF these days, we are alle mere shadows compared to the time Gandara was also in that region

I give you two examples where this actually worked out, although it was not a computer game but interactive events:
Warhammer 40K, both the third battle for Armageddon or the Black Crusade of Cadia.
At the Battle of Armageddon, humankind barely managed to push the waaghboss Ghazkgkull back into space with one of humankinds greates heroes pursuing him.
The black Crusade of Cadia was a massive Chaos fleet pushing against the Empires borders to finally exact their revenge on the Emperor that started 10000 years ago with the uprising of Horus. Chaos actually won that Battle and pushed against Terra.

Sadly Games workshop did not pull through and stopped their timeline after the Crusade for marketing issues and booking themself in a corner lorewise, losing me both as a customer of the figurines and the lore books at the same time then. Still both events were entirely player driven and went on for months, and that even without the help of a managing, quickly reacting computer network, but by collecting results from matches all over the world.

Zok.4956:

“Living World” means, that the story that is told and the events that happen really change the world of the game, as it would be in a real, living world. No “reset button”. And in part that is true. As an example: Tyria has changed and is different before and after the LS1 and LS2 happened.

It indeed has. But the status quo was never in danger, there was no chance that Scarlet could have triumphed over Lions Arch for example.

1. I would love to have politics really affect the world. I had a very fun exchange with another player in the forum if Legat Minister Caudecus could actually manage to overthrow Jenna if he plays his cards right or why Jenna can´t take immediate and swift Justice against him. Stuff like that is what makes these types of worlds great, and i had the highest of hopes for GW2 when they announced that sites could permanently change owners and monsters could spit into your virtual soup.
How disappointed I was to see what that really means for Anet, a of chain events leading to a sad and unsatisfying end event. But that is ok on a second glance, even the real sandbox MMO like Eve Online will never allow a home base invasion scenario of empire room.
I also realize that which I seek is hard to implement, but it was something that lured me here, beside the strong effect of GW1 too.
2. My characters live on the road, in a tavern or on the battlefield. If I wanted them to settle down, I´d retire them^^.
3. I already have a RL job and don´t need another, thank you very much.^^
4. The most unfunny thing in the whole of GW2 is the boxes o´fun(are they Irish?^^). True story. For me personally, JP come a really close second and the SaB comes third, but thereby you see how people find these things differently good. I can live with the soutshun events and halloween, hate contest drinking, dislike the winterland, can tolerate the runnning event and massively dislike the dragonball stuff.
5. Fully support this.
6. Also support this. Why torture a horse with carrying around a heavy guy in heavy armor while you can teleport the same way?

bladex.9502:

Torolan.5816:

1) Sorrows Embrace 1. Everyone who owns the game, has hands and can press the w button on his keyboard can run this dungeon and complete it in short time.
2) City of Flame 1
3) Avalon City 3.

Where can I find this “Avalon City” place?

You know what I mean. Memory from DAOC struck me here, sry.^^

People don´t want circular and boring content, repetition of ingame stuff is bad because grind.
-
Demand two year old content back.

That´s either a sign of total desperation or my meager trust in humankind is still vastly bloated^^

1) Sorrows Embrace 1. Everyone who owns the game, has hands and can press the w button on his keyboard can run this dungeon and complete it in short time.
2) City of Flame 1
3) Avalon City 3.

I have close over 17K AP right now, and I don´t have dungeon master either. I have every path beside one of the Arah paths, don´t know which one(Good work Anet by the way, please make it visible which one you did already run!), will not ask my more casual guild for help in such a nerve wracking dungeon and probably won´t sink deep enough to buy it except from people who would have done it anyway and I know for years now.

Most people I know did not actually run them, they bought them too.

Thinking about LS2 and the system it followed, that was pure, utter garbage:
*It started really low with a madness like Explosive avoidance in part I.
*Fell even further with On Swift Wings in part II.
*Further down with Don´t knock yourself out and can´t knock me out in parts III and IV.
*To reach it´s crash and burn with Shrubsplosives.

As you will probably see the pattern here, my issue is with avoidance over a period of 10+ minutes. If you are not good with jumping or avoidance in general, you will fail these things multiple times even when you are in groups, and that is something that I can fully understand making people quit by putting in effort and time to get jack squat out of it.

Of course there are probably smart ways to avoid making these successes as intended, by why then ask for hard content?

Patou.9356:

Now the most important point of all, and no one mentionned it: OPEN THE BAGS ON A LVL 53!!! That’s where the money come from.

This probably nails it best. At the heighdays of linen, you could make out like a bandit if you could be bothered to farm it hard.

And on a sidenote, I am always baffled about the comment of the hard working guy type, or even worse the slick manager type responses about getting a job in the fast food industry instead of farming in the SW if you want the gold, thereby answering a question no one has ever asked here and completely missing the point if this or that farm method is possible. I am pretty sure that the large majority of people that wonder if the claim of farmers is plausible have jobs to sustain themselves and are just curious. So it is just Ivory Tower snobery at it´s finest in Marie Antoinette style here:
“So they have no bread? Why don´t they eat cake?”.

SenorMoody.5908:

Maybe someone that works in marketing / sales can tell me. Does a product sell more when the consumer knows less about what they’re buying or more about what they’re buying?

Sadly, that is a question that can´t be answered with a yes or a no from the outside of a given company, it´s goals and the data it has collected.

Marketing is not a science like statistical mathematics where proof is king, but a wild perception and basically a bloated but educated guess, depending on how you collect your data(active passive), what your competition does in the mean time, your market share and therefore your market power, the time you are willing on spending watching the market, and how flexible the attention and desire for your product is(penicilin or screwdriver? BIG difference) for your product is, your brand power and a multitude of other factors.

From my point of view, Anet drives a very slow campaign building on anticipation which is bound to fail miserably because the large majority of players are casuals, who quickly loose interest of the product to wait for is neither shiny or without competition

I have to admit, good points.^^

On the other hand, I am quite sure that there is no united front of ministers Jenna would have to fend off. Most of them seem to be rather apathetic and yes men, fully living up to the cliche of people that intermarried in their own family much too often. The more integer ones or those in trouble already suspect that Caudecus is not the beneficial minister he seems to be if you listen into the ls and personal story even, and the clever ones surely will have made arrangements with their respective ministrial guard captain for emergencies or have asked Anise or the Seraph for help.
Example for such people would be Minister Arton(loyal to the queen but gullible), Minister Merula(likes Faren) Minister Rachel(comes from a poor background and sees that the ministry hides behind taxes and stuff to not be forced to help the refugees), Minister Wi(fatherly friend of the queen)and Minister Etham(no help at all for Nebo Terrace from the ministry).

Caudecus position is additionally weakened by Demmi Bettlestone, his estranged daughter. Her accusation could not give unattackable evidence that he is guilty of treason, but an estranged, and on top legal daugher speaking badly about her own father is surely highly poisonous for a prime minister, especially when she is under the protection of the orders of whispers.

The only way I see for Caudecus to oust the queen without outside help like from Scarlet or another major power block would be a full blown military revolution aimed right in the face of humanity if the Seraph are too far stretched and the shinning blade are too few to stop his part of the ministry guard from disabling or killing Jenna. And even that is highly complicated as the forced suicide of Nero shows. Despite making the Senate feel that he should be quickly killed to restore order, he remained untouchable until his own pretorians gave up on him too.

I agree with the idea that Caudecus should never be King, and the Palpatine comparison may even be spot on with him. He´s without a doubt a blueblooded bankster type of scum looking for the interests of nobility and the rich only. His vision of Divinity´s Reach is probably much more empire like than rebel like to stay with this comparison too.
But Jenna is making it pretty easy for him most of the time, with it getting rather worse for her position than better over time(No king selected as a young queen so no heir, the mechanical guard incident, the so-so position of Divinity´s Reach in terms of a full out war against the dragons, pressing evidence collected against Caudecus at the ld2 festival).

And regarding that Jenna can clearly point out the culprint and does not take open action against him despite being the monarch, is that a pro or con Jenna argument?
I am pretty sure that the Jedi and the Senate would have taken immediate action against Palpatine if they would have already suspected that he is the bad guy in Phantom Menace.^^
Nobles can be ousted without much evidence it seems when you look at how the father of Kashmeer fell from grace.

Still, I think this can be a really great and big side story if Anet gives it some effort.

rotten.9753:

Torolan.5816:

???
How is that not elitism? That´s basically like ousting the middlefield players from a soccer club because they neither defend or are out to make goals, that being the respective jobs of defenders and attackers.

It’s because players are not excluded based on their qualities but based on their profession which can be easily changed. Switch to e.g. ele and you are no longer excluded yet your intrinsic qualities as a player have not changed.

So if I play good as a Ranger or Necro, I am not welcome into the party.
If I change on my Mesmer or Ele and then bring a so-so performance with it because of a lack of practice, that do neither hinder nor help people in the group very much, I can join.

You´re right. Not elitist at all and absolutely reasonable, probably even justifying the time you wait for a suitable member.^^

rotten.9753:

That’s not elitism but professions exclusion. Change the title to more appropriate.

???
How is that not elitism? That´s basically like ousting the middlefield players from a soccer club because they neither defend or are out to make goals, that being the respective jobs of defenders and attackers.

To tell you the truth, I´d immediately begin to climb the mountain of mindless grind if it would only free me from the obligation to make the LS2 garbage again for lumi armor.

I am pretty sure that Anet did never intend to bring out an expansion in the classic way.

The gem store pay model is actually a really nice idea. It´s a really, really low entrance point to join the game and works on the seduction of the weak-willed and lazy impulse buyers who don´t care if their privacy went straight out of the window with faceroll, ehm, facebook and such stuff. It is a demography which is growing leaps and bounds in western civilization. If you are a gritty, down to earth gaming veteran aiming for efficiency that does not care if your character has a blue or a red bandana, you´re not the main target of such a plattform anyway. But a long thought over dollar still can be expected from you for game stuff that is useful.

For whatever reason, Anet wants to jump on the Esport hypetrain, but that will never ever happen. If a game is branded as flawed, it will have a hard time to reemege again in that special kind of playground.

Probably everyone with an internet connection had an offer from the provider with the red/pinkish logo with a white T in it. Did you notice that the best offers there go also just to new customers and not to the ones they already have? Customer relationship is a tricky web of bunking on lazyness, functionality and hype. If you really think about an eyephone, it is just a really modern stone with some moss on it. Some neanderthal points it finger on the screen to feel the surface and to see how the moss on the stone moves in the wind or under his fingers. Or imagine an ape fishing for insects with a stick…

ProtoGunner.4953:

Ambush.3251:

If that’s not the biggest BS I’ve ever seen..

Try at least to counter-argue. If you can’t just don’t try.

Let me give it a try.

First and foremost, I could not care less if there are 1, 6 or 6^6 new legies in HoT.
Do I, after over 7K hours without a precursor drop, think it is a good idea to make them more accessible for those that want them and don´t want to spend all their gold or RL money on them? Sure!

As someone quoted, it was promised in 2013, so players can be rightfully mad it did not make it´s way into the game 2013, 2014 or up to 08/2015. That does not mean that they have a legal right to sue Anet for the lack of promised content, but a moral one for staying along with the game for so long, creating veteran players to give new players a sense that GW2 is not a sinking ship. If we don´t buy anymore, the company gets ousted from the market and goes out of business if it was it´s only market. This is a lesson many companies had to learn the hard way, for example when the age of ship building and respective the age of steel mills was over and they did not notice it early enough.

But wait, can i hear you say, it is just a game that did cost 60 Dollar, Euro or whatever coinage and made you play for a rather long time per buck if you choose to stay along, every sense of entitlement to new stuff is off then as you got what you paid for!
True? No, not exactly. You have a point up until the average playability of games that don´t get DLCd, expanded or whatever. These average times which are measured by communities, bloggers and gaming magazines, have long, long been reached by most of us. If you still enjoy the content after that time is irrelevant from a business perspective. After that time is over, you either have to deliver new stuff for your customer to keep him with your product or watch it reach it´s peak and then vanish after it´s cycle is over. And that is not a moral idea, that is a lesson from marketing 101.

Another approach, this time from accounting but blowing in the same horn:
Assume you buy a feeless antivirus programm(GW2). If it is written off taxes after 2 years and you still use it, it´s worth is is only symbolic after the last year went off into the tax sunset, usually measured with a lofty 1 € symbolic worth.

Tl:Dr Products are writen off after a time if they are not adequately supplemented, improved or absolutley necessary to live on like food/drink/a place to sleep/medicine, and the clock of GW2 is ticking quite loud right now.

It may be cool to play Rambo when you are, well, Rambo. But it´s not cool for the Soldiers falling to his bow without even knowing what hit them most of the time.^^

Coming from Miller, one of the silver servers that should be bronze server in all regards, I can at least confirm that we are fighting an asymatric battle for months now, with our last remnants clinging grimly to the shred of fights that is left in us. We qued once every two weeks maximum when a certain commander entered the field, but I guess this is over now too. As a proof, just look at the results from the last month.

T6 is the point of rest for a server like Drakkar, Aurora or Gunnar that should by all means not have to battle against Miller, Dzago, Vaabi, Ring of Fire or Aborstone right now.

That is actually a great ideea, Tenrai Senshi. I am not a big fan of their steam tank appearance and stalling combat tactics, but the aetherblades idea itselsf is quite iconic. I am not sure if Mai Trin should have a leading role with them, pirates are not exactly known to react kindly to failures.

Strange enough, the faction that should be divided the most are the only ones really left in the core game, without being in a dungeon, is the Toxic Alliance. Both have indeed no love for anyone, and the krait are on top of that also xenophibic isolationists.

I don´t see the Molten Alliance too far from each other. The dredge can only benefit from a strong, hand to hand experienced ally like the Charr helping them navigate on the surface, and the value of an ally with digging, infantry carrying tanks seems out of question for me.

It´s really a shame that Scarlets constructs have vanished. They were fun to fight against and had class, the steam creatures left behind are sadly not worth the effort hunting them down, clearly showing why they appear to be only prototypes in ls2 lore if you can believe the writings of Scarlet.

December 31, 23:00, somewhere near the northpole:
A selected few people that all consistently wore their tinfoild hats all year long will get a chance to do battle for the first and only HoT box that has already been stamped then.

Weapons and tournment content! will include:
*Debatte if Logan Thackery is a traitor or just a fool, with a dev being the referee and judge of the argument.
*Debatte if Kashmeer is only a 4/10 for some minor reasons. A circle of supermodels act as judges.
*Quaggan circle dance, with Quaggan hand waving and synchronity getting measured at. Also Quaggan dance noises will be put against the real noises of Quaggans that are held in a basin under the headquarters of Anet.
*Tengu flight run battle, teams in Tengu costumes battle it out in a west side story fashion. Again synchronity is key, and only GW1 jaded veterans are allowed.

Wow, no more gathering boosters, how can people live on without them? rolls eyes ^^

Etien.4601:

I wonder which one will be harder to do. Implementing S1 episodes as journal chapters or as fractal levels. As a veteran player I’m willing to accept them as fractal levels more. Obviously both ways will be simplified of course especially for the journal. Most of the episodes were group content so fractals sounds good to me. Can’t wait to replay The Tower of Nightmares, The Battle of LA and few others.

Tower of Nightmares was really nice graphically, and an ok type of dungeon too. The battle of LA would probably be a little like the AScalon fractal. The real seller for me would be a marionette fractal, maybe an ending one like Maw or Mai Trin, that event was all kinds of awesome and well implemented.

Insults, accusations, shadow operations, ambushes, betrayal, HTFU speeches and a shmug impression are actually the trademarks of experienced eve players. I´ve encountered and played together with these kind of people as a low sec and 0.0 drifter and trader, most are still decent folk in RL.

Speaking of toxic, Eve is probably the most toxic environment ever if you don´t know how people like the whole of CFC or the russians operate. Although I don´t play it anymore, I see the reasons it never broke the 1 million active accounts barrier. Hard mode PvP/PvE people are a minority, probably even a tiny one compared to the numbers of subscribers of behemoths of MMOs where more or less casual, risk free PvE is king.

On a sidenote, I find it a kind of poetic, even karmic justice that things are even turning around in Eve online against them. The remaining powerblocks are all about to find how how much it whitles at your resolve when you are forced to defend something rather valuable like a system against something relatively wortless like a cloaked interceptor with an entosis module. Âs a maybe even better example, Eve lost a good portion of players who lost their freighters to groups of people in basically worthless griefer ships, and although that never happened to me, I am really glad to see them get a taste of their own medicine. Hardcore elitism does not pay out enough for server costs I am afraid.^^

Trahearne is the classic Eisenhower impostor. Chosen over much more qualified people to lead his respective army, through diplomacy and sheer will he manages to combine forces that look down on the other with cold disdain for a decisive victory.

Logan Thackery reminds me of one version of Lancelot. Forming a bond with Arthur as his first knight and best friend(Rhytlock), he also comes around to think with his lower head and beds the queen. This enables Mordred(who has a halfway good claim on becoming King of Britannia one day anyway if mostly through force) to contest the role of Arthur over Camelot by forcing him to choose between being the noble King and his best friend and loved one.
I don´t doubt for one second that Logan would let his hometown burn to the ground too to save Jenna, which absolutely disqualifies him from any position except bodyguard, a maximum leutnant position with a much higher rank able to cancel out his field decisions immediately if necessary or as champion for the queen.

A character that really earned my disdain early on is Evon, the money grabing, power hungry corporate bankster scum. I thought it wa a great idea to force him to pay up for reparations instead of helping him to make even more profit out of the misery of people

And despite a significant loss in theoreticaly possible combinations,the large majority of people play the same tired combos again and again, making even 100 combinations per class much too much… ^^

T stands for the time I would spend on a new character
E stands for the Energy I would bring to the table equiping him
N stands for the negclect all my other characters would probably get
G stands for the gold I would invest in him
U stands for unhappy if I don´t get one

…

Playing mainly a Sylvari Ranger, I will probably send him into hiding when HoT is out until the blame rests squarely where it belongs again and should have never been shifted from, on the Asura.

#Nosmurfasuraallowedhere
#Tenguinsteadofasurasmurfs2016

Basaltface.2786:

He had 20 years to figure that one out himself… just sayin, in 20 years he maaaaaybe should have gone into the tomb and check if there might be the place where he needs to do his job and if there isnt he should have taken more time to research. Also… why not a member of the destinys edge? Those guys almost took down a dragon and had at that point in the story the most experience in that stuff. You have the blood legion tribune rytlock and the commander of the seraphs logan there… two military leaders with experience (as much as i hate to give logan any good words) who are not bound to any order and know what they do…given their miliary rank…even if i question logan with his boot licking attitude to the queen… but she could have said “yo logs, get yer kitten over there and break the dragon´s face off” and that would have most likely fixed it. Also zoijja who is pretty darn smart and she would most likely fill that role perfectly aswell. Eir.. well she was the leader of the edge before everything went into the crapper but still.. there would be place for an awesome storyline where she finds her spirit (not norn spirit) again with the help of the player char and leads the pact to defeat zhaitan and then the other dragons till eventually facing kralkatorrik and getting revenge for snaff and glint, there is so much potential for a pact leader i could care about and actually like…or learn to like… but nooo lets add trahearne to the mix who replaces your awesome mentor and leads an army without any experience just cause the mother tree said so. I hate that guy so much..

Why not choose one of Destiny´s Edge?
Logan is a horrible battle companion with no sense of loyality at all to anyone outside of his queen, close on being a traitor and is neither very bright or intuitive. I found myself siding with minister Caudecus regarding that Queen Jenna is a horrible choice for a queen with only the blind loyality of her subjects keeping her on the throne. I would have severed ties with him long ago if I were the rest of Destinys Edge.
Rhytlock is a hotblooded risk taker, making no doubt that he distrusts anything non-charr, and was obviously completely unaware that Logan could not be trusted, despite his knowledge of his true colors. If it were not for the dragon´s threatening all of Tyria, he surely would be an enemy or at best neutral. 2 out of 3 orders would not follow this guy.
Eir has two convincing, ehm, arguments, but that´s basically it. She seems to have the necessary skills to knit people together, but gives in too easy to be a good commander.
Zojja is an asura smurf and a scientist. Both kinds of people I would never trust my people too if I were either one of the leaders of any race. One half of the troops, mainly Charr and Norn, would be caught laughing when ordered around by a smurf, while the other one would ask itself if the scientist in Zojja would not sacrifice them for a weird experiment.