Guild Wars 2

I am actually grateful that Anet is making it so easy for me to let go of GW2 in so many ways. I don´t get it why Anet wants to actually shove people away from the game from a company point of view, but ok.

The argument that people will catch up to guys with 30K in this way is both insubstantial and irrelevant in my opinion.

Insubstantial because they lack the points from earlier stuff and will so never be able to catch up, old players won´t stop playing and gain other, harder points and people who have the dedication to actually attempt to keep up with these guys would have to work for literally years to have the slightest chance of getting top 10000 or something.

It is irrelevant because the leaderboard of Anet is terribad and can´t or rather does not want to count below 90%. It is in fact one of the most terrible leaderboards I have ever seen.

If someone wanted to slave every AP of dailies in the past, I really feel sorry for you. Most of them were also terribad and took forever. I made the underwater kill AP sometimes, and that was really mindbogglingly boring. The new structure did away with these problems, so the cap should and could be raised when a substantial number of people reaches the 15K barrier or be thrown overboard compeltely.

I am glad that this amuses you guys. I am not even gonna try to sell me as a pro or just a semipro gamer, because that is why I play GW2. I never opened a metabattle site or something simliar and don´t plan to do such in the future. so I thought it was a quite fitting animal.

Edit:
So ls1 scored the lowest quartal, TheRandomGuy?

Carcharias from a random drop, around 11k played. I was thrilled

Fay.2357:

Adry.7512:

P.S. Raids arent the reason, its the fact that they solely focused on raids and nothing else.

Please, tell me more about how a 5-man team working on raids from a studio with several hundred employees is ‘solely focused on raids’.

I love it when this argument gets cooked up again. The answer is quite easy, just take a look around on the game before the arrival of the fen and tell me what was produced except for the Shatterer Revemp that was not a raid.
Anet corrected HoT because it blew hard in some instances(not talking about hard mobs, that´s a little bit funny). That is an explanation, but not an excuse. Anet runs a business, so it should be their goal to satisfy as many people as possible to keep or win them as customers. I was not very satisfied in the last year or so with GW2 (Please spare me and yourself the question why I am still here and playing, I don´t know the answer.), and numbers now tell me that many people shared my dilema.

The raid supporters are obviously not enough people to have Anet even reach the number they had before HoT and raids were released.
So indeed you can´t draw a direct direction between the decline of money and raids, only Anet can do that. But you can suggest it without saying something far fetched.

I am also pretty sure that the loyal customers in their majority did not react very well on HoT and raids. You can´t call sheep to your farm for years with your green meadows and then suddenly you begin to attract deer by putting small trees instead of meadows at your farm and expect the sheep to stay with you. Many people were looking to escape raids for a reason I guess.

In case this is not irony:

He probably is refering to the movie Titanic where a band of three musicians keep on playing until the ship sinks while chaos breaks out around them.
Before the ship goes down, one turns to the two others and says:
“Gentlemen, it was an honor playing with you.”
the two others agree, and then the ship sinks and they are swept overboard.

Anoher pun would have been shoveling coal on the titanic, accelarating the speed of the sinking ship in a futile effort to keep it over the sea.

Obtena.7952:

Oh I don’t disagree with that … Anet do want people to experience Raiding; in fact I think it’s key to future endgame content strategy. Expansions and LS are too ‘spiky’ to keep people ingame with the frequency they need to have constant revenues. If they attach rewards to raids that aren’t limited in usefulness to just raids, more people will try them out. They might not stick to it, but I bet some will like them and do it. That’s a smart move IMO.

If that happens to be true, I would have to give up on GW2 rather sooner than later. I don´t want to be pressed into making content, especially not raids. I think we both know after the last year that Anet can only make one thing at a time, and if the chosen endgame of GW2 will be raids, I am out.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

If Heart of Thorns, the expansion, caused income to drop, why weren’t Q4-2015 and Q1-2016 the lowest quarters ever?

And what will be said if the next quarter, Q3-2016 isn’t the lowest quarter ever? Will that be because of the expansion, as well? Won’t that quarter have Heart of Thorns sales in it?

The question is if we are talking about sustainability or short term gain with that.
Of course HoT brought money to the table. Anet already confirmed that it did, but they also confirmed that it did not bring in the amount they had waited for, at least in certain aspects like box sales.

And regarding the question of falling profits in any case, that is speculative. What is not speculative is that the time period where Anet first gained some money and then lost more money than in the time before it was put online falls squarely in the time HoT had its heyday. That does not mean that it is the sole culprint, but it certainly means that it did not swing the pendulum around either.

Obtena.7952:

Tyger.1637:

Because it slowly unravels the tapestry they’re trying to create.

I’m going to challenge that; so IIRC, you saying that if you don’t get something for your XP once you ‘top level’, the game offers nothing to you that makes it interesting enough to play unravel its tapestry? Well, I can only think that’s a very exceptional player that views XP in this manner; there are ALL kinds of reasons to continuing unraveling that tapestry past level 80, other than gaining XP. In fact, I think gaining XP is such an inconsequential reward in this game, it hardly goes noticed when you get it, even while leveling. It’s basically thrown at you. I click a bloodstone stalagtite and get some 5 figures XP gain … participation rewards …

So now put your tinfoil hat on with me and sit beside my campfire for a moment, Obtena-san.^^

Mind you that I don´t care in the slightest for xp or spirit shards. I have plenty of both and could go on for months without them if the need would arise.
I think that is blatantly obvious that Anet not only nudges people to play raids. They push, drag and seduce people into trying them, in an intensity I would not have thought possible from a company like this.
-It startet with the nerf for dungeons. Ok, you will say, that was because the game was fre to play and people should be nudged to buy HoT. Ok, fair enough, I can relate to that argument, but it is a rather lucky concidence for my theory.
-Legendary armor as exclusive reward. At this point things start to get ridiculous, but you can argue that Anet has already done that in the past and has finally bended over to give people more chances to get it.
-Adding more mastery points for raiders. What, you don´t want to make the stupid adventures? No problem, you just have to raid. This point was countered by the Fen, but you get the idea when it was installed.
-And now this shard thing. It is the weakest link and inconsequential, but I agree that there could be a pattern.

I would probably burn out after a week of this grind regime, and I grinded a whole lot of garbage AP no sane person would ever touch.^^

I don´t know the numbers of WOW to be honest, but WOW is a phenomemum in itself and I am not sure if you can count it as reference.
Lineage for example is going on superstrong for years now without a major dip.
It surely also is the case that WOW drops big time from time to time lately(it did not when it was new).

Can we agree on the starting point that Anet has lost people compared to last year at this time, and HoT at least did not do much to stabilize income?
I got used to the maps over time, but in general I think that it is a horrible concept for a new player when he is thrown into HoT and is walled up everywhere. Putting hurdles to just play is plain and simple a bad idea.

This brings me once again to the idea that raids were not that good of an idea for a game like GW2.

It is true that other factors probably played into the failing income too.
Maybe we should take a look at some of these things:
Someone mentioned Overwatch. It´s a really different game compared to GW2 and probably does not fish so much in the same waters. I can´t remember a blockbuster coming out in Q2 from the top of my head which has seriously challenged Gw2, but I could be wrong here. Pokemon go wasn´t available then. Legion could mean another fall for Anet in the near future.
Q2 is spring Season, a good time to go out. Bu be honest, how many people do change thier behavior in spring season who are playing GW2?^^

Things that probably drop out as reasons:
It is the number of sales, so internal costs like money for employees falls out. The same with external costs like revenue given out to investors.

Things that happened in the game:
-HoT, not receiving that warm welcome from the get go, wore off its novelty.
-Content drought. This could indeed be a major factor, maybe many people were just sick and tired of waiting for something for them instead of raids and the next glider outfit.
-The return of alpine borderland with Anet bending over and saying through the flowers that the desert BL basically sucks and they know it.
-Raids invited dedicated people to GW2. I think it is safe to assume that a dedicated gamer spends less money than a casual one because a dedicated gamer can buy more stuff with in game gold. Exceptions may apply of course.^^

Looking at last years number, the game dropped from 22 to 15, and recently it dropped from 31 to 15. That is a a very harsh drop in both cases and suggests to me that a larger number of people are so disenchanted with the current game that they stopped playing or recomending the game, with the two big patches being unable to bring people back in.

I remember having a real good laugh at the first guy who had all the colors and came on the forum to whine. Talking about finding a gift for the man who has everything. Although I kind of have a little patience with this guys, getting nothing when everyone else gets something is not so much fun.
It went even better and people who had put the dreaded electro blue on the TP lost the sorry butts with it going of for free. I did not have it up to this point because I seriously don´t want to look like my favorite fruit or a like an accident of silk and wine sauce. Anyone who takes advantage of people on the TP got exactly what he asked for.

As a little sidenote because it was broughtnup:
We don´t have a constitution in Germany in a sense. Yes, we have something you could call the constitution(The Grundgesetz) which indeed governs the other law books and overrides them if the need arives, but technically, we were long a land under allied command and did not even have a peace treaty with France despite them and us being friends again now after centuries of warfare(Karl the Great, Napoleon, WWII etc etc.. ) for decades after WWII.
That´s why it is so ridiculous when Trump sets Clinton akin to Merkel. The US president would have to loose a lot of decision power to be akin to the Chancelor. The Bundestag, Bundesrat and Bundesgerichtshof can, do and have succesfully challenged many laws of the party of the reigning chancellor, even such prominent figures as Brandt and Adenauer had to bow to their will.

Regarding the Kryta thing, this is actually the best way for a monarch to invite people to treason. Of course I would try to oust people that want to topple me if I can. I can´t just waltz in and just command it because that would indeed be the sign of a tyrant, but I could look for suitable candidates from the start and makle live hard for my enemies with special taxes for the rich or something.
Make influential people happy, because that is exactly the way Caudecus does it. He is basically the Nixon or the JFK of Kryta if he stays popular. Jenna does not seem to be very good at this matter, and I guess the influence of Anise and some independent ministers who suspect caudecus to be a traitor anyway kept her in the game against Caudecus.

Good points.

You are sadly right with Canach, I would not trust him either. He is a reformed criminal working for a shady councelor. He helped kill Mordremoth, but that does not really better his position because he is a Silvary.

Marjorys word also does not hold much weight for the reasons you stated(the disgruntled exguard), although I think that being a part of the guild of the clean pact commander and her help in defeating Mordremoth gives her some credibility back, at least more than with Canach.

And Rhytlock, Rhytlock is technically a hero as part of destinys edge. I personally don´t see him as such because of his behaviour and outright racism against humans in the first arch of GW2, but I am pretty sure that his word holds weight in a trial as Logan will step in and proclaim his confidence in his friend. Of course you can twist that too as Logan is the love interest of the queen and still feels guilty for leaving Rhytlock hang out to dry, but people love the shiny goof and Caudecus has still a lot of dirt to explain himself with his daughter and other issues, so a battle of mud hurling probably would not end well for Caudecus in this case.

I think his major problem will be the loss of bandwaggoner ministers and even more so, the loss of confidence in the ministry guard for him.
Let´s say survivors come back from the Fen and tell their families and friends:
“You know Minister Caudecus? The pact commander told us that he is a traitor and a white mantle cultist! I saw how this area is twisted by evil magic with my own eyes, saw my comrades turning mad with bloodstone magic! What if the same happened to Minister Caudecus?”
As a loyal to the ministry – ministry guard, I would ask myself some questions then:
*Where is the ministry guard that were charged to protect him? Did he dispose of them, or were they cultists too?
*Was the pact commander right all along, and I follow the bad guys here?
*What business has Caudecus in such a location?
Word will make rounds then, and I guess some ministry guard will not sleep very well after such a revelation.

The most forward solution would be that Caudecus will put all his eggs in a basket and try to conquer Divinitys reach in a full brunt assault with all his forces, aka Bandits, Separatists and white Mantle loyal to him. That would probably end in him bathing in a temporary victory until Lazarus shows up and easily kills him. The problem with this is that it would have to be a very hasty assembly of troops and several journals stating that the white mantle has no hope of defeating Divinitys reach on his own.

Caudecus could attempt to weasel his way out of being a traitor. He could even confess and say that he was looking for the good of Kryta and had no idea that Lazarus was out to destroy humanity, but that would end with him being exiled or executed.

Caudecus could retreat and basically give up his white mantle membership and be the new shadow boss of the Separatists.

I liked Scarlet. Yes, maybe she was a little bit Mary Sueish, but I liked her thinking:
*Gather the opressed and annoyed, make them offers of powers they can´t refuse or bully them into service like the aetherblades.
*Build a giant machine to kill people by stomping them. Arrogant and funny all at once.
*I also think that she was not inheritantly or unredeemably evil. There is even an item stating that Caithe will see how Tyria would have needed her for its continual survival. It was pretty hard for me to kill her.^^

@Assic
I think Caudecus and the white mantle as noble benefactors of Kryta have no chance of happening now.
Caudecus as a master politician is lost because he actively sought to kill the former pact commander, a hero without any shady secrets and the dispatcher of two elder dragons, by issuing a direct command. You can´t probably reveal yourself more, but I applaud Anet for this idea. Him just skulking around in his manor was dissatisfying at best if you thought aqbout how much potential he has. Maybe, and that is a big maybe, a civil war could break out between royalists and seperatists who support Caudecus ideas to make Kryta great again at any cost, akin to Adelbern.
I assume that the word of the commander in the Identification of Caudecus as a major bad guy and no just a lousy, elitist vice president of some sort is so solid and believable that people would rally behind the throne if he supports it.
Caudecus was clearly identifed as white mantle leader, so the organization itself was also discredited.

On a different note, Justiciar Bauer seems to be a terrible leader killing people left and right for totally bogus reasons, not even sparring his own supposed master race brethen. Kind of reminds me of a kitten concentration camp commander who also did so just because he could.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Malediktus.9250:

The raid are not hardcore, they are what dungeons are supposed to be difficultyy wise imho. If you consider these raids hardcores already you barely played other games

And yet the game is losing revenue. The game shifted away from casual to “challenging group content” in every aspect with HoT. Raids are not dungeons.

No these raids aren’t as hardcore as the other MMOs I raided in but I left all of those to play Guild Wars.

Look at the results of pandering to hardcores.

There is zero evidence that the game is suffering lower revenue because of raids. The game does not pander to hardcore players.

ANet made a mistake in how they structured the HoT maps, as we can partially see with Bloodstone Fen. It’s more challenging than core, but nothing as crazy to navigate or play as HoT is for those who don’t worry about min-maxing their DPS.

ANet made mistakes in allocating resources to the expac, at the expense of the rest of the game. The were too ambitious in the Legendary collections and couldn’t keep up with QA for the events required to complete them. They didn’t take into account people’s reaction to a dearth of new PvE content. They didn’t change direction fast enough, based on the criticism that HoT was too much new infrastructure and not enough stuff to do. They goofed on the popularity of adventures (and how many people would repeat them).

tl;dr sales went down and to the extent we have any evidence about how or why, raids probably contributed to more income, not less.

They made 99 problems, but challenging group content was not one of them — that was perhaps the only thing they got completely correct. Raiding is incredibly popular among its target audience and some people have tried it and become hooked.

I took some business courses over the time of my career, but I am always willing to learn(no sarcasm here).

I want to start with the premise that product advertisment and product planing are very fickle lovers at best and angry mothers of law at worst.
*Products are aimed at a demographic group of people most of the time if they are not crucial to survival (like penicilin or bread). GW2 was arguably targeting people that did not want to raid and play relaced, were looking for a novel MMO as alternative to WOW or who liked GW1 when it was introduced. The new target audience is not that kind of people. Why would you want to change your audience without a cause? The only solutions for that are either ego problems of the management(there are plenty of examples where giants have been toppled by stupid managers), or missing income.
*The success of a product can not be seriously predicted in advance. Good products fail and bad products prevail sometimes. HoT was in many ways a bad product, so bad that Anet actually had to alter it quickly, but it managed to gather some money for the company in my guess. Not as much as they wanted, but it was not a total bomb either.
*Products have life cycles, and old products usually don´t sell or just draw attention that good. Core vanilla is still there is therefore not a good argument to sooth the former target audience of GW2, the casual or inexperienced gamer who likes to play then and when for quick entertainment.
*If the break even point is not reached, you can either try to add stuff to your product or scrap it if you are not looking to cut taxes with it. Happened with HoT and the core game as Anet adds stuff. Anet does many things right here in my opinion, but the content vs. convenience is lacking here. It is of no use to me that my new car is very comfy if it has no motor to drive me around.
*If the number of people buying or supporting your product hass decreased, you lost market share. A loss of market share also means a loss of confidence from share holders.

So in my assumption, raids have surely done nothing to raise the income of Anet to a level higher than before their introduction. You can argue that they have stabilized Anet, and I can´t seriously debunk that theory but reasonably doubt it becaue of the controversial nature of raids where the question remains if the people who were driven away by them are more than the people it attracted or kept in the game.

I have no objection with someone providing a tag for silverwaste, i just think that it is really self explanatory. If you can be a Lemming(following the first Lemming), you can and will understand that map very fast:
1. The orange bar moves.
Oh, I was there when a fortress was liberated, and it moved? Maybe that is connected? If I am not sure, I look at it at the next fortress I liberate.
2. kitten in the ground.
Oh, there is kitten in the ground, and the map tells me that champions are set loose in the underground. Connection.
3. Keys, shovels and chests.
Oh, I have a shovel with two skills. One is the shovel itself, the other a searchlight. Not that complicated if you ask me.
4. Running, running, running.
Oh, everyone runs to the giant quest ring at the end of the map. Maybe I should too? Lane 1 is so self explaining that people go afk there.
5. Champ train.
See Lemming behavior.
6. Maze event.
See Nr. 5.

The only thing really needed in an explanatory way for SW is with legends and body parts, and the second one is a non tag thing.

AB is even more easy, there are directions where gates are attacked. If you know how a windrose works, you know how the meta event works. If you can follow an active example(aka a person shooting longbow 4 at the explsoves for example), you can soon storm any direction. And again, east is so easy that people go afk there too and the problem for them is to return to the map in time.

So in my humble opinion, you have to follow a HP train tag in a HoT map from the start because you will never figure out by yourself how to reach it when you try to catch up in the middle and you don´t know how to reach it. In such an instance, it is really needed and the commander needs to know his stuff.

Edit: H O L E is censored, really?

Djinn.9245:

What this all comes down to is Anet attempting to force players into game modes whether the players want it or not. I think its sad, really. Why does Anet want to do this? Are there not enough people who want to play these modes?

Instead of using a stick of trying to FORCE people by gating regular character progression, why not use a carrot? Make a special achievement or title for people who kill their first Raid boss. Same for PvP, WvW, Adventures, JP, etc. Stop trying to force people to play the way you want.

Exactly. I don´t even need Spirit Shards at this point, but the ignorance of Anet in this point is quite irritating for me too.
With the beginning of the ascended backpack in fractals, I always was an enemy of this practice.

I dont tag up in DS because I don´t know all the events in between. I don´t do it often enough to learn it.
I don´t tag up in Silverwaste or Auric Basin because it is plain unnecessary for the meta events. Everyone who can´t figure out how Silverwaste works after running it for 10 times in a row does not need a commander, he needs help of other kind.^^
I tag up for small events sometimes, or at events I am absolutely sure of how they work and where I think people really need the tag.
I used to tag up for WVW, but with my server being assigned to other servers now, I was relieved of that obligation.

If someone asks for help in map chat, I usually try to help if I can. Sadly that excludes most HoT maps as I don´t remember how I got to the HP the need in the first place.

So placing focus away from casual players looking for an after work entertainment with seasoned MMO veterans who know how to play the TP and how to shake a system on it´s weakest link where all the goodies fall out for free leads to less revenue?
Shocker, who would have thought that.^^

@Astralporing
To you, me and some other guys on the forum it was pretty obvious that Anet would not only miss with the stone, but have one bird return a flying no thank you at their windscreen while flying away to other, much better PvP games after taking a big dip of birdseed out of the bird house, and the other sitting all nice and smug in the backyard while demanding more raid and hardcore content without paying for the birdseed station that is the TP.

Raids as content fared far better than I expected, so I have to give Anet some credit despite my personal aversion to raids. Raids as source of income obviously not so much. It failed to replace people leaving the game with new people.

I guess it slowly gets hard to dispute that HoT at least partly bombed, failing to gather interest in the game for the veteran AND the new player. How anyone can think that placing a supermario arcade element to gate meaningful content in an MMO is absolutely beyond me, despite the many foghorn calls on the forum that they are completely optional. People just don´t want to wander around for hours and look for opportunities to get basic character stuff. The patch fixed some of that issues, but in the first version of HoT, you copuld play for hours and basically still walk out emptyhanded out of the maps.

WvW is a total mess again. It is still fully inconsequential and meaningless, with Anet having not the slightest interest in GvG or heroic action that was DAOC wvw for example.

No player would have to pass on the Zhaitan campaign if Anet would let the Tengu enter at a later point, like with the introduction of the Primordus arc in the future, there are still the other races you can bore your way through the Zhaitan campaign if you want.

If Anet wants to cut costs with the production, do for example not ask people who are expensive to get just because they have fans. I don´t know who voices any of my characters, and I also am not interested who that is. So what if Mark Hamil voiced the Joker in Arkham asylum? I am pretty sure that there are many other men who have a raunchy voice and can laugh manically, come fresh from art schools and would be glad to break into the industry.
Yes, a cut scene costs money. But designing other stuff I would not touch with a ten foot pole like adventures or raids also cost money and have many people raging over them.

According to that idea GB, USA and Hungary are racist countries with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. GB because it wants to be left alone from the EU, Hungary and the USA because it build a fence against refugees or mexicans in general.
Scottland probably wants out of the Empire because they want to stay in the EU, something you can easily do with the Tengu too.

Edit: A New character model is obviously already there, so this cost would be already covered.

Reading the forums and discussing raids let me at least know who Matthias could be. If I had not and would be completely new to GW2, the notes about Matthias are a red herring and would have let me to assume that we will meet him in the next episodes.

I am reasonably pleased how this was handled and trust the word of the people here that the raid holds no important storyline. It would have been different if you actually encountered Lazarus there and defeated him. It will be an issue again if the defeat of Lazarus is done in a raid, then Anet better barricade their headquarters because people will want to lynch them.^^

The event you linked is one of the compromise events. They were forced to backpeddle a lot of stuff, and that was the one I was most disappointed with. The other thing that scored big with me was that they had a firm no raids philosophy, but that is another story. I can not bring any statements of Anet regarding this as I don´t keep my gaming magazines for years, but I remember reading it for sure.

When you turn something into another format and do not remove it, how has it been removed then? I also have no problem with Dungeons being instanced in general, as long as they are taken out of the actual map like ls2 is, and fractals are very inclined to do that. If there was a better format, I would be all for it.
What irks me is that people are visiting the same place with different results like with Eirs homestead in general and her funeral.

The update is so small because Anet thinks they have to invent the wheel over and over again, adding new masteries, currencies and other collectible stuff instead of actual playable content. MO stating that this updates is as big as 8 or 9 ls stories from the past are just ridiculous if you look at the stuff that is playable and not made for convenience of the players, which is a major focus of Anet for years as it seems.

AliamRationem.5172:

Let’s just call it what it is. The HoT maps were too much for you. The exploration, the combat. It was too difficult and frustrating for your tastes. The complaints about masteries being a barrier are all in your head. You need only 3 masteries to explore the vast majority of locations in all of the HoT maps: gliding, bounce mushrooms, and updrafts.

Yes, you need expensive masteries like Itzel poison lore and leyline gliding to reach a handful of locations and achieve 100% map completion, among other things. But there is no reason you need to have 100% map completion the moment you enter HoT. There is no reason you need to complete every single objective from the moment you walk in. That was an expectation you had which was not met, but you were not in fact prevented from exploring these maps by the mastery system.

When I did HoT, I actually loved VB and the intro to the jungle that I just stuck around there until I had that map figured out. Then I went to AB, played around a bit, wasn’t really feeling it and went on to TD. 6 months later I have 102 mastery level, all of the more relevant masteries unlocked, 100% map completion on all maps, but I did it my way. I love VB and TD more than DS and AB, so those are the maps I spent most of my time on.

You have freedom in HoT. It sounds like you simply chose not to use it. Perhaps you listened a bit too much to the whining on the forums? A lot of the complaints here are very similar, but seem to originate from players who never liked HoT to begin with and don’t know what they’re talking about.

For the start, I have 142 points and had 133 before Bloodstone Fen. so I was in HoT quite a while, despite hating it for most of the time before I rose up to a “meh” and then to “ok” stance with it.

What you say is basically right. you can absolutely play HoT with the masteries you mention and get xp by doing events and exploration. But let´s be honest here, how funny is it to explore VB with basic gliding? Not funny at all, you fall into this and that all the time. It´s also not funny to be killed by unavoidable poison which ironically guards a way to counter said poison.

I still don´t have map completion as this is tedious and tiresome at best for me. all those walls, false ways, multilayering and hidden stuff…

1. You´re right, it makes sense if you simply refuse to alter your maps piece by piece for the lore. The strange part is that Anet often does alter its maps by implementing for example the new bandit or ley line events, creating maps that are in general stuck for years with new events that are here to stay. By the same method, I think it would be rather easy to replace some(not all) Risen at the front door of Caledon with mushroom or nightmare court people, signaling that Zhaitan´s forces are retreating after his death.
Replace the let´s say first two events in Caledons forest with nightmare court coming out of their base to contest ground where the risen were before and things would be ok. And it would be an advertisement to new players with NPCs proclaiming how the creatures crossed over from HoT and how much more dangerous they are than the risen ever were.
Anet has already done this in Brisban with Vines, I don´t see a reason they should not do that with Caledon too.

2. Yes, it does not replace it, and that is the thing I would like to see changed.
Make fractal(s) out of the Zhaitan story to free yourself from the restrain of having maps stuck in time up to a certain point, Dungeons would then have to be changed too, something many people are demanding anyway.
A new player would then today play the HoT story instead of Zhaitan.
I don´t know if it would be a technological mess, Blizzard at least managed to pull it off with WOW. It would be a better time investment than designing stupid adventures for example.

3. No, I remember pretty well how Anet was promising even home invasion when maps were not defended by players and how hyped I was. But they had to backpeddle for the sake of keeping the game running, the chain events were installed to keep it as an illusion of the idea.

4. Ok, your arguments with Zhaitan and his defense makes sense. Maybe he should have retreated instead, but as he was the first dragon to be attacked he could assume that he would crush the attackers on his own when his minions failed.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Torolan, there’s a huge difference between “story consistency” and “maps stuck in time” and half of your arguments deal with the latter.

Only the Taimi argument has merit – the Zhaitan one almost does, but consider this: what else would Zhaitan do when all he has is minions? At least he throws different kinds of minions every time, and even overwhelming odds sometimes (Battle of Fort Trinity).

And even discounting every time we see the Nightmare Court it’s based in 1325 AE not 1329 AE, the Nightmare Court was always a splintered group, not wholly united. And based on Dragon’s Stand, they already have a new leader (as most organizations do, they get a replacement instead of falling apart entirely).

You can see it this way with the maps stuck in time, but I don´t. If Anet would show that they are still majorly concerned about the consistency, maps stuck in time would be upgraded sometimes and the story would be transfered into a format akin to ls2, the newest story replacing the last one for new players. would also be akin to the idea that the world is really living and dynamic how Anet initially promised but was forced to alredy backpeddle before release. But tihs is probably a pipe dream of me you can only except to see in Eve online.
Kssex Hills is the example of a map well tended over the years in my opinion. It is also stuck now after ls2 was over, but it is miles ahead of Caledon for example where Zhaitans forces still stay in front of the home door.

If I was an evil overlord with an already contested sea border and five other dragons looking to usurp my power, I would have been a lot more interested in the little humans after my minion army was unable to reach my set goal at Claw Island. At the very least I would get more active after minions that carry my name are sent out get vanquished and the enemy literaly appears at my gates where I basically sit on the secret to restoring Orr.
If I am too vain to relocate, I could rally my best people around me in my defense or hatch a contingeny plan like Glint did in case the pesky creatures prove to be a match for me.

I like this idea.

Anyone who uses lore as an argument against the implementation of Tengu has not paid attention to how Anet handles the lore. They would likely produce some videos and implement them in the same way they did with the core races, paying no mind to how this or that would not make sense. Any notion of story consistency went out of the window with the introduction of the revenant anyway, and i am pretty sure that after the latest human villain will be vanquished, you will see him walk around where he was from day one.
Just look at how Taimi hid a portal in plain sight from a race full of curious scientists, or how Zhaitan learned absolutely nothing when combating the commander and Trahearne and just threw minion after minion in our direction, or how the nightmare court still works perfectly well without its leader.

I sure hope this is a troll post from the OP.

Some guys of the
“I slaved 10+ hours every day in GW2, I deserve respect!”
already lended him his support, so I can safely assume that the OP would also be for reducing the wvw levels to 1020 or something at the maximum or ban people from pvp tournaments after they have lagendary status.

And regarding the game being too easy, i don´t know if it really rewarding in the sense of an MMO to be good at supermario wars 2 or counter strike wars 2 and achieve gold at ridiculous stuff like the Bongo and Faren adventure or just mind numbingly boring to do it over and over again.

Looks pretty much that I was right in the discussion we had about Taimis video messages, Konig.^^

*Asura in general are vile and evil creatures that take delight in tormenting others, even their own kind. Those who are not join the orders and take on other professions. For example the female Asura that does the chain of events in Rata Novus in TD arrogantly dismisses every Golem she encounters as old and useless from the start.
*Phlunt is trying to control Taimi and her stuff but is pretty clueless and arrogant, like the rest of the Asura invading the new Rat City who basically work with a portal but don´t know all or even most of the devices the portal uses.
*Canach did not use the portal and basically walked in through the front door.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

I’m predicting a new map with the LS3 update tomorrow.

Twitter

“Are you impatient for tomorrow’s #GW2 update? Pass the time by training your gliding masteries–we think you’ll find them helpful."

Gotta be some new place we’ll need to glide in or to.

I am predicting that this comment will make me cringe in disgust when I have to navigate another walls/updraft/jumping puzzle maze like map again.
I also predict that i will be complaining in general and moan about the lack of Tengu and the instanced nature with the brutally stupid gain of equipment like in ls2 again.
Sadly I also predict that I will still be playing it…

Linken.6345:

Nozome.7853:

Judging of how succesful raids were , we should see the next raid in ~6 months or so.

Don’ t get the wrong impression about raids , the majority likes them and its just a vocal minority that started crying about raids when they realised legendary armor is comming soon.

Yea its been quite afew against it ever since they announced legendary armor would be locked behind raids…

But as some raiders say it needs to be there becouse otherwise people wouldent raid.

Cant see the big success really if you have to bribe people to play it.

+1 to you, good sir.

I already thought that hiding the ascended backpiece behind fratals was a sign of weak content. It wasn´t weak content and raids probably are not weak content, but the Intention is still dishonest and wrong. My stance on the carrot on a stick tactic has not changed since then.

Councelor Phlunt tried to take away control from her of her inventions all the time in ls2. While he is not her supervisor in a sense of a boss/apprentice relationship, he surely has a close eye on her from that point on.

Razor.9872:

Torolan.5816:

skarpak.8594:

why should there be an easy mode if the real cracks beat valeguardian with only 4 people?

i don’t think we have to do the math for you what that means right? i mean 6 people missing and in this group they only had 1 ele to do the big deeps.

So what? 4 people who know their toons in and out can speed clear it where other people fail with 10 people. How does that change anything about the niveau of raiders in general?
I am fond of playing european football, should I strive to play like and train like Christiano Ronaldo tomorrow?^^

The concept is that the boss is beatable with a 60% drop in allowable productivity. By entering the raid with 250% more power than is actually needed to beat the boss, it is conceptually easy enough as is.

That said, one should not expect to be able to run around wherever they feel like while spamming dodges and auto-attack, but at the same time, there is plenty of room for mistakes or under performance.

Uhm, no?
There is a 60% drop from a supposedly very high level of skill, not a common level of skill.

I am making the assumption that the four people in question are able bodied men or women who have trained over and over to reach that level of success, not just 4 run of the mill raiders of various ages and abilities who raid when they have the time and will to do.

Accessibility, level of commitment and skill actually do not always go hand in hand.

skarpak.8594:

why should there be an easy mode if the real cracks beat valeguardian with only 4 people?

i don’t think we have to do the math for you what that means right? i mean 6 people missing and in this group they only had 1 ele to do the big deeps.

So what? 4 people who know their toons in and out can speed clear it where other people fail with 10 people. How does that change anything about the niveau of raiders in general?
I am fond of playing european football, should I strive to play like and train like Christiano Ronaldo tomorrow?^^

Xillllix.3485:

There is just no hype at all, and that is due to the lackluster trailers.

If you have seen an ESO dlc or FF14 update trailer then it’s hard to be excited with a gw2 trailer where its just a series of still scenes fading-in with some narrator discussing a vague threat. I remember one patch update trailer for FF14 was showing almost over 5 minutes of new content.

Watching a GW2 trailer is just going to make you wonder what the game is about, it’s ok artistically but I don’t think it will bring in new players.

This. Anyone remembers the SWTOR trailers for example? Absolutely awesome.
In most GW2 trailers, there is a voice saying this and that, and nothing of importance is going to happen, that is something you know from the start.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Nero.8047:

• That mission was Buried Insight .

Shhh… it was 3 am. >.> Fixed.

Nero.8047:

• Didn’t Taimi at one point state that she learnt about the Novus Crew before? or at least read about it.

-snips-

• I don’t think a Legendary City is something she came up with on the spot.
• P.S. Just read into it again and of course it’s logical for the groups you mentioned to be the only ones to know of the location of Rata Novus besides it existence. I’m just dumb. ^^

She learned of the legend of Rata Novus. In the same manner you and I learned about the legend of Atlantis. But neither of us know where it was meant to be located.

Nero.8047:

• “All work and no rest put Taimi’s sanity to the test.” ? just kidding.

Sure, that works better. A 3 AM mind that’s been active all day isn’t the most creative.

Torolan.5816:

Asura have not much sense of decency or humility, so I agree with Konig that they would never have agreed to work for a child or leave a potential doomsday device unexperimented with. It is possible that Taimi keeps the best parts locked away from them(no humiliy and sense of decency again), maybe with the help of Caithe. I attribute this set of thought to basically all Asura, with the Inquest being just honest enough to say it outright.

How could Taimi hide a very obvious door that’s five feet away from where every Sumian is set up?

How could Taimi hide the very room the Sumians walked through upon arrival (the dragon lab is where the still working gate is – unless through unexplained events she repaired the other one).

Hmmm?

(P.S. I agree that the asura are based off of rats and other small mammals – and that that’s where the rivalry between asura and skritt comes from. Though on Rata’s meaning, there’s a simpler one: Rata Sum is latin for “I (have) verified/ratified.”)

Maybe, and that is a big maybe, the other Asura did not come into Rata Novus by the portal? The battle for the tangled depths is on, maybe they walked through the front door through the tunnels like we basically did in the story if memory does not fail me here?
And regarding the door that is in plain sight, Taimi is supposed to be a genius that is probably able to keep the door locked with a hidden device from the other Asura for the time being. Her supervisor is obviously not as brilliant as she is and more of a politician than a researcher as he is constantly surprised by her ideas and concepts and made to look like a fool.

And your latin explanation makes more sense than mine, but it will always be the new rat city for me.^^

flog.3485:

What backlash ? The pre purchase without an additional slot was one, the “cancellation” of legendaries is a minor one, the dungeons being deincentivized was also one I would say….But raids? Come on, a handful of players complaining on multiple forum threats isn’t one, it is just a a very vocal minority of players. I think you simply fail to understand that raids were never meant to be completed by everyone. As for the topic, it is hard to say, who knows maybe add at the end of this LS 3 as some closure but just a single wing

Going with your example, a volcano breaks out and shoots millions of tons of pyroclasmic smoke into the atmosphere. Dangerous? Yes.
Lava flows down the peak, threatening top swallow a nearby city. Dangerous? Ah, well, it is just one city, but that could hurt. So yes, a little maybe.
Water gets posinous and turns into sulpurous springs for miles. Dangerous? No. There is plenty of water available where the volcano is.

A little bit dramatic, ok^^

As for the topic, from a selfish perspective I sincerely hope not. And not only because I severely dislike the concept, but also because of Anet´s inability to do two things at once and offer viable alternatives for people who have no interest in their current project, no matter if it is eports, raids, open world or whatever.

Putting my dimissive Asura tinfoil hat on here, when I think of Rata Novus, I think of three things:
*Ratus(Rata) is the name of rats in biology, so I think that everything with the name of Rata could be a rat city in some way. A Novum(Novus) is something new, so for me Rata Novus is simly the new Rat City.^^
I always thought of Asura as flappy eared smurfs, but the more I think about them, they may be the other side of the coin for Skritts.
-Rats like to dig into the earth as Asura and obviously Skritts also do.
-Skritts are curious like Asura.
-As Skritt, most Asura obviously do seek the company of other Asura. Skritt do it because they have a group mind, Asura do it to ruin the day of other Asuras and steal their shinies from them.

*The defense of Rata Novus might have failed the original Asura against a maybe bigger or harder group of Chak who were determined to wipe them out attacked the city. It could simply be a problem of assembling enough Chak to wipe out the city again at this point. Or a single Asura was of no interest for the chak, but a group of them will be.

*Asura have not much sense of decency or humility, so I agree with Konig that they would never have agreed to work for a child or leave a potential doomsday device unexperimented with. It is possible that Taimi keeps the best parts locked away from them(no humiliy and sense of decency again), maybe with the help of Caithe. I attribute this set of thought to basically all Asura, with the Inquest being just honest enough to say it outright.

It is elitist because it trivialized a content many people have not reached or have trouble to reach. It´s basicaly saying:
“I am a raider and have fractal lvl 100. But only raids are viable, fractals are of no consequence for anyone, and if you are not able to faceroll lvl 90+ fractals, raids are not for you.”
That is elitist in my book. Any idea that says that people who don´t want to greatly(please note this word) invest in this or that should not play a content is kind of elitist.

Where is the point of making content that is not aimed at the majority or at least a sizeable minority of players and/or customers? What you, I or anyone taking part in this discussion wants is of not much concern if we do not represent a sizeable potion of the player base so to say. Therefore we are back at the point where I deem to see high level fractals not faceroll content for a sizeable potion of the players and you do.
Of course you can also say the same about pvp and wvw, but that would mean for me that raids are another game mode, which they are not in my opinion. A raid is pve.

Fractals have indeed all the advantages you list, low level fractals can counter your inexperience, missing equipment and a lack of time. All of these are concerns many people carry with them when it come to raids, so why not give them the story and the feeling of the raid in fractals instead of either excluding them or forcing them into stuff? Because that would cut short the supply of potential raiders, something no raider should look for probably.

UnbentMars.9126:

Torolan.5816:

I have every old school success in fractals and was lvl 50 before it was cool so to say. So no, I don´t think fractals are very hard. But still hear me out:
You, me and the rest of the 10-20% know their classes and what to do. A fractal appears only faceroll easy to you because you are a dedicated player, something you basically confirm with your answers. A T4 fractal is of course easy to someone that raids or soloed lupi or some other stuff the common player usually does not even attempt.

Why do you assume that anyone or even a large majority is on your level of dedication to the game? That surely is not the case.

1. Never soloed Lupi
2. Only beaten 1 raid boss so far
3. When you say dedicated player, what’s your criteria for that? I play less than 4 hours a week
4. My experience with fractals comes from having actually done them, and like I said they are easier when you know what to expect; per what I also said, the mechanics don’t change so if you do what I did and start at a low level and work your way up by the time you get to T4 you already know what to do. If someone is trying to do t4 with no agony resistance and no experience then not only should they expect to fail, but complaining about it just means they want instant gratification and their opinion should be discounted when discussing what people want out of fractals.
5. Maybe if the “common player” attempted to do these things then we wouldn’t have to be worrying about it.
6. Even if fractals were excessively elitist in their nature, why should someone who hasn’t bothered to put in any effort get the same rewards if they can’t beat the same challenge?
7. Finally, if fractals are that much of an impossible challenge for someone already, why are they wasting their time on something they know they can’t do? Stick to low level fractals until you get to where you need to be and stop complaining that other people have access to stuff you don’t when you don’t do the necessary things to gain access to them.

Huh?
Fractals, even at the highest level, are not elitist. The idea that basically anyone can do it with a minimum of preparation is elitist.
The points you raise depend on the stance you have if GW2 should be made for people with dedication or people that want to drop in, do stuff they like, and log off.

Maybe the common player has no interest in soloing/speedclearing content made for groups?

I have every old school success in fractals and was lvl 50 before it was cool so to say. So no, I don´t think fractals are very hard. But still hear me out:
You, me and the rest of the 10-20% know their classes and what to do. A fractal appears only faceroll easy to you because you are a dedicated player, something you basically confirm with your answers. A T4 fractal is of course easy to someone that raids or soloed lupi or some other stuff the common player usually does not even attempt.

Why do you assume that anyone or even a large majority is on your level of dedication to the game? That surely is not the case.

Chris McSwag.4683:

*Fractals, even on higher levels, are generally very easy, low pressure content. While that would make a decent environment for inexperienced players to learn, it also means that you will experience very little of the mechanics of a raid boss simply because it will be dead shortly after the fight begins.

*Spoken like a true elitist. True for maybe 10-20% of all GW2 players, complete nonsense for anyone else.

In general, I am glad for every new fractal, regardless if they recycle old stuff(but please, no Asura again! ) or make a new one.

My main reason to not play raids is that I indeed don´t like the format.
They probably are accessible and not undefeatable.

But there are indeed other reasons too:
*You can leave wvw or world events at any time with no consequences for anyone.
*The commitment to play pvp requires 15 minutes of your time maximum, then you can step away from the keyboard if you want.
*Meta. If people like it this way and the raid is designed for this meta ok, more power to you. does not mean that I have to put money in the hand to change my armor and learn the rotation. Effort vs Reward vs playing experience simply does not cut it here for me.
*Farm. Like it or not, you have to farm bosses for legendary armor, making it more of a glorified open world boss run for you and your friends if you ask me.

If the format itself would interest me, I would probably enter raids. But I personally don´t see a viable reason why I should relearn my characters just to enter another grindy collection.

Edit: Of course you can memorize a boss in and out and do it over and over again to get your collection without being stuck for hours in raids. But for tihs you must find people who are willing to rotate you out after the boss you know and invite someone else, and that seems a little bit far fetched.

I really liked how season 1 was shipped, but it was painfully obvious that Anet would not be able to keep up with that pace although I had some hope because they said they have 4 teams for it.

Sadly, Anet had to already backpeddle on some very good stuff in the past, like homeinvasion for example.

@Jamais vu
Regarding the critical part of the player base, we are talking about people who for example think that running SW and open world is boring while waiting for an hour until people show up and then wiping for three hours at the same mob is somehow not boring but preparation time well spent.
Or people who think that it is ok that you have a taxi for this and that because of the simple fact that it is possible.
Anet probably has no choice but to disappoint most of the time.

As a long time foe of RoF with Millers Sound I have massive respect for them actually and can understand how sucky that place is where they are at. As Skinnii already said, RoF is probably the weakest main server and had the bad luck to be considered as main server instead of adding server like Millers. If we had been in your position, we would have been steamrolled even worse I suppose, especially after some of the last defenders changed allegiance to Drakkar.
When we were still a main server, we used to laugh about Drakkar when they were forced to slaughter us because other silvers had given them a beating and they had to come down to us and RoF.

What you probably don´t know is that you have vast numbers of regular Soldiers/Knights/Squires/Generals whatever who can´t man siege as good as a Silver knight or something like that. GH is enjoying people of the rank of platin major and up, and I am pretty sure that AM does the same.

At times, RoF could muster considerable manpower, and the few millers that are left were probably not that much of an addition to the respective servers.

What is definitely true is that RoF drew the short straw in this whole thing. RoF was barely climbing out of the sinkhole that was bronze servers and had taken the not really coveted spot as the whipping boy of the last two real silver servers when servers were linked from Miller. And nothing against WsR players, but that server was definitely a bronze server for a very, very, very long time with only a few people left I guess.

The last time i was in this thread was 26 days ago. I easily breached the 22K barrier with dailies maybe making half of my points and putting me solidly in the top 100 players of Millers sound. The best AP guy from my guild has 28K and is gaining much more AP than me because he does every ridiculous AP he can get his hands on, even the orchestra one, and he is top 10. Still we could be at the same point of you look at the leaderboard as we both stand at 90%. So it is basically worthless for anyone not in the top 100 of all! GW2 players and makes a poor argument anyway.

Strange enough, the area where HoT is located was a sinkhole for anything remotely funny in GW1, and it pretty much stayed wickedly wrong in many ways in my opinion(although it did improve). Everywhere, and I mean really everywhere was a group of spiders or scorpions waiting to jump you, slowing and immobilizing you all the time.

I would like to see something pirate/bandit themed, or something Tengu samurai like. Or preferably both.^^