Guild Wars 2

With the introduction of the Revenant, all arguments about “Anet would not do this, it does not fit the lore” are hopefully off the table. If the cry of tengu supporters is loud enough, Anet will listen.

Regarding the personal story, it is also pretty obvious now after 2 installations of ls that Anet does not design around logic. Most of their story is copy, alter and paste anyway. I don´t know about how much work it is to replace for example a norn with a tengu in the cutscenes, but if people have the time and ressources to implent arcade games in their expansion, I am pretty positive that it could be reasonably done.

“GW2 is western styled, it does not fit”
Tengu are already there, and they have been there from launch. So it does fit. And we celebrate the Chinese new year right now…

Flappy eared scientist smurfs have found their way into the world of GW2. I just hope thier next design decision is a little bit better, I want a tengu samurai.^^

An easy way to make ls1 replayable is to turn them into fractals.

Maybe the personal story could be replaced with the then current living story? I know, people like to level in the PS and collect their key there, but it is not really necessary for level progression. If you can´t level in GW2 without grinding or the use of scrolls, you should not be playing at all, XP basically just stand around the next corner waiting to be farmed by you.

Now, this super old story holds GW2 in the chains of the Zhaitan arch on most maps, which is very disappointing for me. Turn the key elements into fractals and move on on the maps to have the resemblance of a living world.

So we can conclude something from that then I suppose?
-Anet stated through Mr. Smith that they not only do not support dungeons anymore, they nerf them for raids and fractals. Classic shoehorning tactic in my mind, with the audacity to even proclaim this here.

I still fail to see the long term wisdom in this move, especially with raids not being more than a band aid probably. Maybe Anet finally gave in to the raid gamer mentality because they blew it with the horrible ls2 and had to bring some good numbers to stay afloat?

@Coulter
I usually don´t share but can respect your arguments, but I think you´re wrong here. Everyone who posts on a forum is a hardcore player? I have some posts on a soccer forum but have not visited it for years to post something, i would be a hardcore soccer fan with your idea but i wasn´t in a stadium or watched a full game for years.

And even if that really were the case, the marks who have no clue would be vastly outnumbers by the smarks who at least read forums and blogs. Only because companies and governments want to believe that people who look for and create information on the internet are still stupid and clueless, it is not necessarily true in some cases.
I know this sounds a little bit like tinfoil hatery,, but whistleblowing came a long way around the goverment and companies to bite them between the legs.^^

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Sykper.6583:

Manasa Devi.7958:

maddoctor.2738:

There are only 4 zones, with events on a constant, unchanging schedule. This gets old very fast.

And searching for an event and if you actually need it for a collection, praying that is on, is so much better? Ever tried doing a legendary precursor collection?

That’s absolutely not better. I did the tier 1 collection for Dawn. It was horrible, easily one of the most boring things I did in this game.

Another mark against HoT.

Because a feature years in the making is the fault of the expansion. Legendary Collections are independent of HoT with the exception of the actual HoT Legendaries.

Except they aren’t independent, because one must purchase HoT to access Masteries. Not connected to magus Falls != not connected to the XPac.

This is a fine hair to split. You’re factually right. But I strongly suspect the precursor hunt we received was being worked on before it was going to be delivered as part of the expansion.

For example people blame the dungeon nerf on the expansion. I say it’s due to free to play.

A lot of people demanded an expansion and Anet took what they were working on and made it into an expansion. It’s entirely likely that even without Heart of Thorns, the precursor crafting we got would be the precursor crafting we were going to get anyway.

I am one of the people who blame the dungeon nerf on HoT, raids to be precise. Free to play came in handy as a sidewalk explanation, I gladly give that.

A content that is designed for the top 10% (pulling that out of thin air) of players needs massive carrots to let the other 90% at least try it and give the designers ammunition for the shareholder meeting. Running a company with shareholders is based on numbers and passing the evaluation of the board of directors and the shareholder meeting.

Nobody cares where these numbers come from if they are presented well:
“Our company has designed this feature called raid. It was visited by X% of all our customers at the first week of it going online. Good numbers, ladeis and getleman.”
A CEO is as much an actor and hype train driver as he is a business man. You can expect that a large majority of shareholders have never set foot in a GW2 raid or just in the form of a very carefully constructed attempt with safety breaks everywhere.
So they see that people have raided for some weeks and are happy with the results until the next meeting where the situation maybe is totally different and the managers have to beg for their jobs because raids lack sustainability by nature. Or the hype train manages to jump onto new tracks and the raid issue is kept in the closed basket with the other lemons. Some shareholders don´t even know they are shareholders and the NcSoft share is just one in a large list of shares and they trust their voices to banks and companies who may or maybe not like the numbers and sell/keep their shares. Everyone who has a combined fixed money/shares with his bank trusts the bank to invest on the stock market for him. You could basically hold shares of a wool manufacture in the darkest backwater corner of India and not even know it.

Nerfing content on the other hand is probably not spoken on in such a meeting if it is basically for free or does not lose massive amount of fixed costs.

So if the shareholder is not a fan, he will probably never see the whole product and the question if this and that makes sense never is asked.

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

Where I disagree is with the idea that there is nothing wrong with a game taking people out of their comfort zone. I think there is plenty of wrong with that idea.
If I can´t have a comfort zone in a game, where then?

It depends on how low that “comfort zone” is. Remember that the game needs to appeal to all kinds of people, while also staying in the open world. I don’t want an instanced based game with the entire community hidden inside instances, because they can have varied difficulty levels. I want a game with meta events where everyone can join up, a game based on cooperation without strict requirements for parties and builds.

And you are really wrong about the comfort zone. A game trying to get players out of what they are already doing and presenting the players with new and unique challenges is a good game, not a bad one. A game that keeps players inside their comfort zone all the time and never tries something new is a boring/stale game. Even a game like Solitaire or Minesweeper (really really casual games) changed over the years and the latest Windows versions have challenges for different types of players.

That’s not a bad thing despite how you try to make it.

I don´t want to advocate facepalm easy design as presently Orr is. I won´t argue against someone who says that a mob of the quality of a karka veteran is fine. Most HoT mobs are fun to play against.
Toxic alliance events were perfectly fine for my personal comfort zone.

Compared to ls2 or HoT, none of these events where the mobs appeared were massively game changing. Alliances among monsters are a brilliant idea to be honest, to bad that this idea was so quickly abandoned.

HoT breaks the borders of my personal comfort zone because it adds too much stuff I dislike or perceive as filler material and gates if you want to achieve HP and MP within it. Scratch adventures for example, my fun in HoT would be doubled instantly. I don´t want to play an arcade game within my MMO. I would not want to RPG in my shooter either. for me, my mind sweeper game has been crossbred with super mario bros. How can that be funny or reasonable?

Vayne.8563:

The game has been getting harder all along though. Silverwastes is harder than most of core Tyria. The living story and the achievements are harder. Triple threat is probably as hard as anything in HoT.

People have been given the opportunity to play harder content. Anet has spoken about giving people more challenge in the past. This hardly should come as a surprise.

And HoT isn’t really that much more difficult. It has a learning curve, but lots of people who said they couldn’t do it and it was impossible are now playing. One guy made a thread about his issues and I whispered him in game, asking if he needed help. He said, he was getting it now and it was much better.

There’s really nothing wrong with a game taking people out of their comfort zone….particularly because it really isn’t as hard as a lot of people make it out to be. No, I don’t consider I have to use a different weapon to a be a legit grievance.

It´s true that the difficulty always went up. And how went that on? The Alliances of evil races are long gone, Soutsun is deserted most of the time. The only success from that perspective is SW.

Where I disagree is with the idea that there is nothing wrong with a game taking people out of their comfort zone. I think there is plenty of wrong with that idea.
If I can´t have a comfort zone in a game, where then?
I play characters because I like the effects or the idea behind them, not because they are awesome in game.
My Guardian carries for example his ascended soldier gear because that is the way I see him, a stalwart defender of his people and a Soldier. And even if Dragonhunter is superior to other options, I´d never use that for him because it is inaproppriate for a Soldier/Knight.
On the other hand, I like the torch effect of Guardian and often thought about making another guardian zealot.

Vayne.8563:

Torolan.5816:

Of course it has not happened out of spite. There are surely some companies that are led by megalomanial dynasties or billionaires who would do something like this just to flex their muscles, but Anet has not the muscles to flex in that way.
It is also viable that they follow their business strategy, I just don´t get it or overlook a significant piece in that strategy.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to me what they did with the nerfs of Dungeons and the priorisation of HoT maps. But I guess it is also hard to deny that this did not sit well with many people who either did not have HoT but bought the core game and now were left hang out to dry.
And this already has and probably will cost them customers in the future. Goodwill can´t be counted or drawn in circles, but it tends to turn into anger and bad propaganda when it is not petted.

I’m going to say this is not true. That is to say I don’t know anyone who plays MMOs that doesn’t expect to buy expansions, even subscription MMOs. That is to say if you don’t buy the sub you don’t get the new cool stuff in every MMO on the planet. That even included Guild Wars 1, even though it wasn’t an MMO. You want the new cool Rit, you have to buy the new game. You want the new skills, you buy the new game. You want to glide, you buy the game.

People who play buy to play games should expect to have to buy expansions. If they are free to play players, in most others free to play games, you are treated worse than here. And no one bought the first WoW, didn’t buy the expansion and expected to hit level cap, because you can’t. Here you can.

This whole we are forced to buy the expansion or we don’t get cool stuff is normal for the genre and outside of a handful of people who didn’t expect it, it will be treated as every MMO on the planet. The core constituency is going to buy the expansion. Do you know the percentage of people in my guild who didn’t buy the expansion? Zero percent. If they were playing the game they bought the expansion.

The only people who didn’t are free to play players we recruited after the expansion released, and most of those people are saving for the expansion and want to buy it.

I know several people who have not bought HoT and still play core Tyria, but that is not the point.
Where did I say I think that asking for money for HoT as it is an expansion is not legit?
I am not talking about cool new stuff in HoT that is only available for buyers of said HoT. That is perfectly legit.

I am talking about delivering a more hardcore environment in a world full of pampered berserker newbies who fall in droves against any halfway acceptable mobs when they are new. Southsun Grove for example was a bloodbath when it was introduced, you could not walk around without stumbling over a berserker ele whose 11K life had shrunk as rapidly as a snowball in the mojave desert when facing a karka veteran. People hate these mobs until today because they have good counters against damage dealers who can´t dodge or remove boons.
Sure, they learn these mechanics someday because some math geek gamer tells them so with building sites and his fancy youtube channel, but I guess the group of people who want to be challenged in their free time is rather small. I conclude this because I don´t see many people extreme skiing or base jump, but rather go out to watch sport, go into a movie or just hang out with friends or at home. It´s a matter of disposition, and most people are simply not wired to be adrenaline junkies.

Of course it has not happened out of spite. There are surely some companies that are led by megalomanial dynasties or billionaires who would do something like this just to flex their muscles, but Anet has not the muscles to flex in that way.
It is also viable that they follow their business strategy, I just don´t get it or overlook a significant piece in that strategy.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to me what they did with the nerfs of Dungeons and the priorisation of HoT maps. But I guess it is also hard to deny that this did not sit well with many people who either did not have HoT but bought the core game and now were left hang out to dry.
And this already has and probably will cost them customers in the future. Goodwill can´t be counted or drawn in circles, but it tends to turn into anger and bad propaganda when it is not petted.

The funny thing is, I actually assume that the expansion was a financial success for the next shareholder meeting. People with my mindset preordered it last minute in the belief that Anet would deliver content they would like. Others bought it weeks or even months before its release without looking what they were actually buying. If that assumption is true is up to anyone individually, but for the present this means that Anet can drum on it´s chest with a good result. Future results may not be so good, but that is indeed speculation an probably part of the risky game they played.

Controversial does not mean bad. HoT has it´s strong points if you just wander around in it like I do. If I was bent on playing it for success, I would probably go nuts with it.
I was merely interested in the thought process of that decision.

It would have been a witchhunt if I had accused the devs that they just wanted to implant the vision of the game they like and told anybody else to love it or get lost.

And do you really believe that Anet had HoT already in the drawer when they announced an expansion would come? They probably had some concept art and some codes, but it has so much filler that I am hard pressed to see it as anything but rushed.

Just my take of common sense:
I have a product. I have customers. I have numbers who show me if my game draws people and keeps people.
Then numbers for my game begin to fall. So my advertising strategy either fails, or my product is not good enough anymore or it is outdated because of the hype train driving elsewhere (I´ll leave the more shady stuff like greed and management failure out of this) .

What would the common person probably do?
My product holds still some customers in it´s old state, so lets keep it that way.
Then add something to make it more interesting, but it has to be so appealing that the largest majority of my players can make it for a long time until I am ready to bring out a new product again. The new addition has to be at least as good or even better than the old product or I will just make a quick buck until people realize that the addition is garbage. In my mind, it makes sense to cater to the largest base of players first and foremost, but maybe I get it all wrong?

What did Anet do?
Nerfed some content of core Tyria to officially battle a perceived problem of said core Tyria, inflation. Then they quickly assembled the few patches that were left of the last campaign with ls only and put out a product that is controversal to say the very least.

I can assume that Anet knows much better than me what this means:
You alienate the content core players to maybe/maybe not gain a piece of the raid and difficulty crowd cake. Of course it makes sense business wise with GW2 going F2P that core Tyria will be nerfed to give an incentive to buy HoT. But the shoehorning is so blatantly obvious that Anet should be ashamed of themselves for perceiving people to be such morons and trust that the competition is so weak that they won´t lose many players.

I have no problem with HoT open world mobs. Some are terrible, but not because they are hard, but of their mechanics. But that is also an issue in core tyria.
The new set of maps have a lot of other, grave problems that have put my patience to the test. And patience is one of the few things that I don´t want to have tested when playing games.

Pay raiders in heaps of gold, exclusiv skins and titles only, then they can have as much instanced content as they like in my view. Hiding something substantial behind them creates a divided playerbase, elitism and a market for sellers. I know that this is not against the rules, and there are even mercenary companies the sell out for money in RL. Only because it is not forbidden, it is neither moral or fair by default too.

Coulter.2315:

Torolan.5816:

*There was very few exclusive gear in GW2 until HoT. I think nobody denies that.

I deny it A LOT, want Heroic Weapons go WvW, want Dungeon Armour go PvP or Dungeon, want Tequatl weapons do Tequatl, want Crafted Armour do Crafting, want Fractal Weapons do Fractals, want Living Story items do Living Story..

I hope thats enough to prove you’re wrong beyond belief..

I guess it depends if you played Fashion Wars 2 or not up until HoT. I am a collector until the game does not offer me APs for it anymore, therefore my interest in skins sank rapidly when I reached the AP barrier for them. I guess I am a pretty bad Pawlow dog.^^
Heroic Weapons: Just a skin, irrelevant for the playing experience itself and an exotic item that is easily replaceable. It´s not even convenience. There is no substance hidden beneath it.
Dungeon Armor: Irrelavent too because 1.
Festival item: Probably the worst offender of irrelevancy. Speaking of server population as a whole, nobody cares if you have the ghastly grininng shield or not. If you buy it for 1000+ gold on the TP, you reap what you sow in my opinion.
Tequatl weapons: Can be built statwise, irrelevant in my opinion. I have about 3 of them, all they spared me was time and effort to build them, the skin is ok but I could live very well without it. The same goes for triple headed worm.
Crafted Armor: Ok, here is a barrier you have to break since ascended armor appeared. Still open world offers you multiple chances to aquire them, or at least it did offer them until patches. Many people I know equipped thier alts with ascended armor from fractal drops, some had even chests left.
Living story items: Here I fully agree. Things started to go down rapidly with the living story items, and that is something I always critizise in posts when the topic is around. This is just as wrong as hiding the ascended backpack behind fractals was wrong when it was new, or the hiding the legendary backpack behind PvP. From all people that play PvP I personally know, casuals hate it because it is not something they want to play excesively, more hardcore hate it because they have to share the game with PvE newbies they don´t want in their teams. It´s an epic lose-lose situation everyone is facing here.

Of course there is also the factor that my perception of relevancy probably vastly differs from yours, so I should have worded this probably more carefully.^^

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

*There was very few exclusive gear in GW2 until HoT. I think nobody denies that.

There was exclusive gear in GW2 pre-HoT. Dungeon armors and Ascended Rings are examples. Over time they made them available through other types of content, but they stayed exclusive as long as the content that awarded them was new.

I don´t want to improve in games. I see no necessity to improve in games. It´s fun time, not play time.

And here is the main problem with gaming in general, not just Guild Wars 2. Players not wanting to use brain power to get better at playing them, leading to more and more dumbed down games. And now the only way to find a worthy game is through a kickstarter campaign, an indie developer or some miracle. Most of them devolve into a bazillion cutscenes with a few interactive moments in-between and QTEs. If I want to watch a movie, I’d watch a movie, there is no necessity to play a video game for a similar experience with far worse graphics.

In GW2 you don’t have cutscenes in most content, but it has the same difficulty as watching a cutscene in other video games. It’s a “watch this bar move until you get your loot” kind of experience. I can understand how for the “newer” generation of gamers who want to watch their game and not play it, HoT would be frustrating because you can’t put it on auto-pilot like in Core Tyria. But is “watching” really “playing”? I’d say not. You’d probably disagree.

I sometimes wonder if my point of view makes sense myself, but it is the way I feel.

I thought for example that the new player experience was stupid and pointless. Anyone with half a brain will see people dodge and attempt to duplicate it at some point.
I also agree when someone says that Karka Queen is facepalm easy.
I liked how Tequatl was when it first came out. It was a fifteen minutes attempt. You got it, great. You did not make it, ok, forget it.
I regularly ran lvl 40+ fractals before HoT.
Drytop was just stupid and RNG is king there, but it is not overly challenging.
I never made one way of Arah, keeping my away from the dungeon master title. I did not want to buy it, and nobody wanted to make it. There is nothing substantial behind Arah, so I basically ignore it.
I won´t make ls2 completely because it is just a lesson in coordination and anger management for me, despite the collector in my head who is heavily protesting because victory is near there.^^
My gripe with HoT is not that mobs are hard. My gripe is that I have to constantly do things I loathe, like jumping or waiting in front of and behind walls to find a HP of all things.

In the past, I did not play casually. But I think I am a casual by hearth.

I think I just hit my personal firewall with raids where I feel there is too much effort required for the reward involved. Maybe when there are more ways to get legendary, I will look at my opinion and laugh for being a defeatist and grumpy, but right now, probably not.

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

So, in the end, one or both of those groups will be unhappy and there’s no way around that.

The point still stands. Even if they add something that casuals want behind hardcore content, how is that making the game (as a whole) not casual friendly?

Basically, you are right. If you add something that is more hardcore to something that is basically casual, it does not make the whole product switch from casual to hardcore over night.

But:
*There was very few exclusive gear in GW2 until HoT. I think nobody denies that. The usefulness of legendary armor can be challenged, but the exclusivity can´t. In my opinion, you can´t justify a move like that when you also add the fact that core Tyria was nerfed. The core message to me from Anet was:
Play raids if you want to advance your equipment. You can´t grind or farm it, play it. We don´t care if you don´t like it.
I hope you understand that i don´t like being a second class citizen because I don´t want to play along in the raid experience. You don´t have to support my opinion, I know you don´t, just understand it please.

*I want to improve in a lot of things. I want to be a better human being, a better employee, a better friend etc etc…
I don´t want to improve in games. I see no necessity to improve in games. It´s fun time, not play time. Ask any modern child educator about free play, and they will answer you that free play is the best thing since the invention of the wheel. I already have to function as effective as possible on work, I don´t want to function in my spare time, I want fun and entertainment. I found only a few entertaining and funny things in HoT, although they are also there. As much as a chore the third map is, the first one is actually ok if you get used to it. Tarir map would be nice if it were not for the walls to reach HP everywhere.

So what I am saying is that you can´t expect people like me to weather out HoT and wait for something we lazy types of gamers really enjoy with the argument that core Tyria is still there for us to play. That is like throwing a dog a bone that is already majorily chewed down not only from overuse but also from the owner cutting peces out of it and expect him to chew it until he runs off someday because he is hungry. People will look for alternatives. I have 19610 AP right now, and for the first time in 3+ years, I am really looking for another game I could like as much as GW2 when ls1 was around.

BellatorDeus.2310:

I think that HoT has a lot of content. The 3D (adding the vertical dimension) world is pretty revolutionary for MMORPG and will be the future of these games. As for masteries they are just a way to add leveling without increasing the level cap.

Jump and run is not new in any way, Giana Sisters and Turrican are jump and run games that are probably older than the majortiy of people here, not to speak of arcade Donkey Kong. Maybe it is not new in MMOs, but that does not make it more bearable.

If HoT is the future of MMOs everywhere, this future will have to take place without me.

It is not that I actually don´t like people that like raids and jumping. I know that tastes are different, and I tolerate different opinions and directions even if I finds them stupid, shortsighted, boring, unsustainable, unattractive or a combination of these attributes.

I have yet to find a game that I would find hospitable enough for me when leaving GW2, therefore I stay here until that chance arises. I am truly sick and tired of the direction GW2 has taken and the people that tell others to go back into their ghetto which is vanilla GW2 and leave the rest to them, and so I don´t have the endurance and will to really play it except for forays into SW or rarely into HoT anymore. I also stopped recommending it to my friends who were very casual players and asked me for my opinion to buy HoT or not. It is the best option from a list of miserable alternatives if you want so. Maybe this will change again when the next expansion arrives and is more to my taste, I just don´t know if it will turn back the tide.

I of course got a little grumpy and bitter when the tide turned against me and the game I nearly exclusively played for 3 years turned its back on me, but I hope that this is at least understandable for the fans that like the jumping aspect of HoT and raids.

Altair.8402:

Torolan.5816:

Not sure if I lack the skill, i did not try long and hard enough in Anet´s raids to say yes or no to that. We know for sure that I lack the resolve.
And to tell you another truth, I honestly don´t care for legendary armor anymore, Anet won in making me meh about GW2 right now. Curiousity drove me into this thread, I am probably more addicted to threads like this as I like to admit.^^

If you don’t want to raid in the first place, why do you care how accessible it is?

I honestly don´t know if I think about it. Maybe because I was quite active here and in the game while raids were new or we did not know if they would be a thing in GW2. I guess I am still a little bit agitated when I read things that I deem as unreasonable with raids. But you are right, I should not care anymore.

Not sure if I lack the skill, i did not try long and hard enough in Anet´s raids to say yes or no to that. We know for sure that I lack the resolve.
And to tell you another truth, I honestly don´t care for legendary armor anymore, Anet won in making me meh about GW2 right now. Curiousity drove me into this thread, I am probably more addicted to threads like this as I like to admit.^^

I am not struggling with anything personally, I quit raids long ago. I was lured in this thread by what the OP called Final Thought in his opening post which is the only thing to lure me back into raiding.

If you don´t see a difference between how a middle aged woman on one side and Messi kicks a ball on the other side and you don´t see who the superior football player between the two if they go for the same goal without a timelimit, we can´t have a conversation together I guess.

I was quite baffled about the decision of Anet to make raids from the get go to be honest. Your description is perfectly validating my opinion that a raid should be beaten in general, not in the best fashion.
For me that reads like :
beat it once – forget about it – wait for the next raid
I think it is not by chance that Anet put legendary armor behind it. In any other scenario it is just not sustainable enough.

So if a team of 10 middle aged woman plays football on the same place as you do with the mission to score 1000 goals as fast as possible, your kick kitten team of Messi, C. Ronaldo, Bale, Neuer, Müller, Neymar, Lahm, de Bruyne, Klose and yourself would suddenly not be challenged by a beat the clock challenge that shows how vastly superior you are to the middle aged women?

Ok.

So if Anet opens raids tomorrow for the public in an announcement, you would stand corrected?

If you want to gather 9 other glass cannons and beat the clock, more power to you. It is just that I don´t understand how it affects you if 10 nomad guiards can also do it? I heard the common reasoning of reward vs effort or exclusivity should show already in other threads, but simply did not find them convincing.

I am ot the OP, but let me give a try why Equipment should not be a liability. We had this already before, but I just want to not let this simply pass by:
A Raid in its current form is a reflex and skill test first, then a lesson in memory as a second trait. It is not a human, it can´t act independently and call for reinforcements or nail you with a surprise female dog slap. It is a lesson in patience and resolve over an extended period of time, plain and simple. Of course it shares this trait with every other activity that does not involve other living beings an your brain can handle all at once. The exception is that it is artificially pimped and you can´t just go without letting other people down in the middle of it.
If you would make it this way that the raid bosses lost HP over time if you did action X and were immune to physical damage, you would just change the priority so that memory would come first and damage from players was neglected.

To take an example from RL, this would replace choreographed sparring with chess. For the first, you need special helmets and gloves, for the second just your brain. But it stays a glorified memory game.

I believe that almost everyone could raid in a specific role if he realyl yearns for it and is not disabled or his reflexes don´t cut it anymore. For me personally it is the question if I am willing to change my equpiment, wipe repeatedly for the sake of optimizing and listen to hours over hours of strategizing. My answer to any of these three conditions is no, so I don´t raid.

The whole argument of it´s challenging because we are glass cannons simply blows and is of no consequence to Joe Gamer who just wants to get over with it instead of beating the clock of the last attempt. If Anet manages to find enough Hardcore Hanses to keep raids relevant, good for them I guess. I also did not understand, don´t understand and probably will never understand how it can affect a glass cannon player if a nomad cleric can make the raid or not. Challenge yourself if you want, but don´t force challenge on those that don´t want to be challenged. I simply don´t understand this kind of reasoning.

I bought my copy of HoT 2 days before it went online. I was thinking hard about if I should purchase, I really did. I would not say that I was cheated, but that I bought a game with the vague hope of a good story and an engaging open world, both things I count as barely qualified and nothing to look forward to if it continues this way.

I enter HoT because I want to have all the recipes there, not because I find it majorly interesting or engaging. Again, partly Anet did their job. I move within the expansion, but I am not exactly happy with it.

I majorly bought it because the said that Fractals would get a huge, quality grade update. Again, partly true. It was upgraded, but it´s not a high quality upgrade.

I also bought it because I thought wvw would be even better. That definitely did not happen, I am still rank 95X since basically months and don´t even want to enter wvw most of the time.

So speaking of today, i am pretty sad about the state of HoT. I have bought it, but if the next expansion is the same super mario like drivel of a map as for example VB, I am not sure that I will be able to buy it then. And that is a feeling many people probably share with me.

Cedric Ambidexter.9174:

Pandaman.4758:

Cedric Ambidexter.9174:

In the constant zones I would allow pc characters to versus one another (this could maybe be done by clicking on a player nearby and asking if he wants to combat). There could also be rewards for this, or restrictions imposed if you do it without permission. I don’t believe in ‘not allowing’ these things to happen, because that isn’t realistic.

Whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait.

One of your first threads (now deleted) on this forum was complaining about virtual animal rights, how wrong it was that we can kill the innocent animals and they should all be marked green. Now you turn around and say we should be able to gank other players without their permission because it would be realistic?

Ok,

So, say for example you are in a town and I come in and hit you with my sword. Before I am allowed to initiate a second attack, you will be given two choices (perhaps more?) by the computer:

1. Engage in combat. Earn points for each successful hit and for a win.

2. Refuse to engage in combat. You do not earn any points. I am notified of your choice. If I ignore it and attack you again Ascalon guards would come and arrest me and I will be put in jail for a period of time. Perhaps I could also lose some money, who knows. But you won’t be killed or affected by my second hit. Or if you are capable of being killed that would be really funny… I’m sure there’s ways around this to make everyone happy.

3. Complain to the army that you are being hassled. If you were in ‘combat’ mode and you choose this option, you may lose points. I am notified of your choice and delivered a warning from the guards which I had better follow.

Sound good?

Eve online uses this bait and switch system, it´s called ninja ganking there and is made with cans where goods are dropped in. The attacker attempts to steal the can and gets flaged as attackable. A newbie does not know about this and attacks the attacker because he sees that he steals from him and believes that law is on his side. but the veteran ganker can gank him effortlessly and within the law because he shot at the other guy first. An utterly disgusting tactic if you ask me, but people love it there because most of them are frankly no lifers and maybe RL morons too who have issues they can only give it out in a computer game.

Your idea is still much more reasonable than everything I have ever heard from gankers, OP. Most just want to gank untouched by police forces, but you would at least go to jail for your actions.

Throw in a flag that would show that I am not interested in open PvP which warrants an instant visit to jail once you hit me, and this could actually work.^^

Khisanth.2948:

On the one hand gliding is nice. On the other hand gliding messes with jumping. >_<

So people who want to jump can jump. All others will be relieved when they are finally free from the:
Step, step, jump too short, fall, start all over or waypoint routine.

Nice, you get really used to gliding if you have done it a few times.

On a sidenote:
If this turns out to be true, please remember it when you say the next time that Dev W told case X would be so because Y and it was unshakable firm policy Z.

That reverse engineering!

But ok, let´s assume for a moment that it would be true, why is HoT such a mess then? Short story, badly planned, full of stretcher content like minigames. you could think that 4+ years would be enough to iron out the worst garbage.

Aedelric.1287:

The Super Adventure Box expansion, ten new levels and countless retro mini games.

I can but dream, get on it Arena Net!

I bought HoT despite knowing better, but there is no way that I would pay money for that. HoT is more than arcade enough, so no thanks.^^

TheLastNobody.8319:

Ashen.2907:

Remains to be seen whether HoT has failed. I simultaneously hope that it has and that it has not. I don’t want to see more of this kind of content design but I do want robust development to continue.

Honestly I’m just not even sure anymore what I think. I loved original HoT difficulty but they seem to keep nerfing stuff back and making it easier and easier and I’m currently taking a break because of it. I’m not even sure if GW2 is the right game for me right now as I enjoy a difficulty curve in my games were I’m gradually taught new tactics and ways to fight. The open world of GW doesn’t do that and so its more like a stair step with open world, dungeons, fractals, raids. Add in the pace they balance things and it’s just….idk. I want to like GW2 but I’m just going to have to wait to see where they take HoT.

This learning curve thing does not work anyway, sorry. An expansion is, from the point that you learn something which you will always be able to use in future expansions and that will always be build on, doomed to fail. Because new content will replace old content in terms of must have. It´s basically the same with raids. What is the have to go place today is the sinkhole of tomorrow.

To clarify what I mean, let´s take a look at warfare:
A chain armor is very useful against simple stabbing weapons like forks if you don´t raise your arms. It stays useful against more advanced bludgeoning weapons. It is so so against an english lonbow. It is totally useless against a gun. When it reaches the gun stage, people will discard it.

And for the original question, I don´t know if HoT failed economy wise. I feel that it is not the shinning success Anet probably hoped it to be. Really good numbers would have probably been shouted from the rooftops already. I know for sure that is feels rushed and is filled with stuff that is either a time sink like adventures or gated like some HP from meta events.

I think the aproach of Primordus is a clever one. No talking, action. If you make minions out of people with friends and relatives, there surely will be people coming to kill you to revenge them or spit into your soup in general. If you send you selfmade minions and keep your backside safe at home, avoid to gloat like Zhaitan did all the time through his minions and let them collect magic in an In-Out fashion, your profile will be much lower.

It´s even more clever when he saw how two of his fellow elder dragons were defeated. Brute force is obviously not sufficient to take the lesser folks down, so I hope the next dragon we face is a clever one who does not rely on shock moments to break morale, this never works.

To be honest, I could not care less about Rhytlock. We already have enough xenophobic warmongers in RL, I am not interested in following the path of a virtual one. I am probably even less interested in what happens to his love struck buddy Logan, traitorous Caithe and in every instance very pale Zojja if that is possible. My interest and loyality for this group has sunk to 0 with the death of the only righteous character in that hero group. Sure they will meet again for tihs and that, but the hero days of these people are over.
Luckily, Anet decided that they could just introduce Revenant into the character story like he already had been there all the time. It has hopefully killed the argument that it would not be use of good ressorces for new races like the Tengu or that it is not possible to introduce them in a reasonable manner. Anet has shown that they do not care for such details, they just did not want too.

So what stands on my wishlist?
*Tengu
*Something good that makes sense and is not just an exercise in patience and grind like ls2. I don´t even care what it is.
*Pick up all the plots that are strewn in Tyria. Will not happen, but still…^^

Fractals would be a simple solutions for this. Make it temporary once and then build a fractal from it if it worked with the players. Two flies with one swipe.

But no, Anet insisted on hunting us through the garbage they called ls2. It was a first time experiment, so everyone can make a mistake. The story of HoT is slightly better, although it is basically a rehash of the original story with an additional casualty.

At the present state, Tyria is not as frozen as many other MMO worlds, but it could be so much better than it actually is. They have proven that they can do it, so I am sad they don´t want to do it anymore.

Zok.4956:

Ayrilana.1396:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Ayrilana.1396:

mulzi.8273:

Well, for people with real jobs, this sounds a like a heck of alot of ‘scheduling’. What every happened to spontaneous fun? I wouldn’t be surprised if Anet implemented a punch clock..so people can just punch their little play cards, play the predefined x amount of hours and get their precious wage, err, loot.

Well except for DS, you can do any map at any time. The times I listed were simply when the maps transitioned between phases.

That’s our point, we don’t want to play to a clock, so technically you can’t do any map at any time. Otherwise you could jump on a TD map and do grenth at any time, but you can’t. These maps should have been player driven like SW. Sadly timers seem to be ANets thing. Which is….. Well you know what I think.

Can you jump onto any map and do a world boss at any time? How about an Orr temple?

Yes, we could do that. Not at any time, but at a lot of times. It was player/event driven, but not on fixed timers.

Only with the implementation of the megaservers a lot of world bosses were pulled out of their event chains and were put on a fixed time schedule.

Sadly, this kind of timers seems to be A-Nets thing.

P.S. Not all timers are bad. I liked the timer of “Escape from LA”. You had a 45 minute event and a 15 minute break (or 50/10? maybe) and the timer was part of the story and does not felt arbitrary.

+1 for the content, and another symbolic +1 for the Escape from L.A reference^^

The problem with the GW2 story is in my opinion this:
The whole march to battle Zhaitan has a strong start. We learn that the Risen are threatening the whole world and march against Lion´s Arch. Then things begin to go downhill rapidly. On a global scale, Zhaitan never accomplishes anything and is as dangerous to Tyria as Caudecus is for Jenna. His champions are lackluster and interchangeable. And the story narrative is really weak on top of that.
Big Monster – Mentor- Mentor killed – bigger Mentor everyone hates because the first mentor is always as good as the invention of the wheel – Alliance of unlikely candidates- traitors and allies turned into smaller monsters – Big monster killed.
Still that is kind of understandable. It is the first arch which is either a massive success like GW1, or a total bomb like GW2. Happens.
Then ls1 starts, and it is at least a novel concept, probably even for those who hated to have to fill their day with commanding pugs.
Megalomaniac that shows wisdom sometimes – Unlikely alliance of evil types – Plans thwarted – New plans- Lions Arch takes damage – Megalomanial dies while you ask yourself if she was probably right that she would be needed in the future.
Ls2 is sadly a poor rehash of the first story with the exception that you loose someone you don´t particulary care about because you barely knew her and that you hunt a guy you also barely know to find a guy that you always thought was a kind of circus director. I remember how one of the authors was sent out to freeze in the cold sarcasm of players worldwide because she promised that the story woudl be fresh and exciting. I personally was only excited that it came to an end rather soon.
And the third part with HoT, well I guess I don´t spoiler anyone when I say that the grade of novelty has not exactly risen to the highest level and kept me awoke at night when I played it. It had one shocking moment I sadly saw coming and one moment where the large majority of all the arm chair commanders in chief broke out in celebrations. Sadly, this last moment was Anet not even worth a video, just a simple text message.

Manthas.6234:

mauried.5608:

I dont understand the “I am being forced to do something” line thats seems to be common in complaints on this forum.
In an MMO you are NOT forced to do anything.
There seems to be a mentality that if I want XXX and I am required to do YYY to get it then I am forced to do YYY.
Not everyone can have everything, unless you are prepared to meet all the criteria needed to get everything.
In all reward based MMOs , in order to get a reward of some type you will be required to do something to get it.
But you are not being forced too, as getting the reward isnt mandatory.

OP, probably just like me, chose GW2 because you could achieve everything without spending massive amounts of time being online. For example, you could always take a break after a dungeon, which required about 15 min, go spend time with your family and then go back online with no loss. Now, you can’t do that: either spend at least 1h+ in one map or no shinnies for you.

Yes, I can still achieve a lot of things in GW2 after HoT without huge time commitment, but not everything. And why I chose GW2 in the first place? Because I could have EVERYTHING. No I can’t. Has the HoT failed me? Yes.

Getting the rewards is not mandatory, yes. Playing GW2 is not mandatory too. While I’m there, could anyone recommend another MMO, which still meets my time criteria?

This guy gets it. I also still play GW2, but plese understand that HoT is leading the game into a direction where people like me can only scavenge for various reasons. And would you continue a game where you can only scavenge and are plothammered in everything else?
Just as an example, I suck at adventures. And still there is a mandatory adventure in almost every collection, something which I find very funny to do in general. So what, you might say, suck it up and do it. But I say no. I won´t do anything in a game that is not fun for me and where I fail for various reasons over and over. If I wanted to do something frustrating, I would do my taxes. Or would anyone of you do something he dislikes voluntarilly in his free time?
I would not even mind that if this were only the case with single things, but adventures are basically everywhere in HoT.

The main point of logging for me right now is nostalgia, guild chat and the faint hope that Anet will steer the wheel around some day.

Luckily, I have all my Tyria MPs but I can feel your pain, OP-

I grinded the ascended armor. Over the course of when they apeared until the end of the last year. Not the most exciting thing I have ever done, but something that can be done on the sidelines.
I tried to grind ambrite and luminescent. Both are horrible to aquire and see you do either PvP which I loathe or hope for the slim chance one drops in Super Mario T… ehm Drytop, or a far worse fate, do the ls2 again…
Kill the bosses is RNG at it´s best, but is still considerably faster than choice 1 or 2.
Agree on TT and cultural armor.

Vayne.8563:

The reason why later zones have to be more dense, or should be more dense, is because there are no hearts. There’s nothing more annoying than trying to level a mastery and not finding any events at all. Events have to be everywhere, or you’re going to feel like you can’t play.

The HoT maps offer an experience which is like the Silverwastes on steroids. They take longer to understand and get into. By the same token, the more time you spend on them, the more they begin to make some kind of sense.

Just about everyone is disoriented on HoT maps, but I believe the amount of content and the difficulty of the content is very much intentional. But yes, there’s quite a bit of culture shock if you’re not ready for it.

Sadly, it is Dry Top on roids. If it were SW on roids, I´d be a happy customer.

The sad part of this, OP, is that the mob is already a 2.0 version. There was a time in GW2 when you had to really hurry to get a reward for hitting him. If you arrived at the waypoint and he was still at 3/4 health, you could as well stop and turn around.^^

Amineo.8951:

Final boss of final Raid is Colin himself.

With the following attacks:
Soon: Continual slow debuff.
When it´s ready: Every action you want to make is interrupted except for one.
We are so hyped! : Other devs appear, Soon and When it´s ready are applied to anyone in the raid and on the map sitting next to it.
Every WvW player is also a PvE player: Can only be used after we are so hyped was triggered. A sidetreck adventure is triggered where you have to take a keep on the desert borderland.
ESports: You have to win an inpromtu game of PvP to advance to the next stage with the equipment you´re wearing.

OP, i agree with you on many points, but SW is really easy to understand. You have to be just there and wait for a commander or mentor lamp to go on. If the orange bar reaches the end, you jump into the closest hole in a fortress and battle the boss there to get a key. Then you rush along with everyone, beat 3 champs, get a key. Collect chest, rush along with anyone else, kill 4 champs, teleport to the waypoint in the south, transform yourself and rush to the middle where your keys opens the chest twice. SW in a nutshell.

What any HoT map differentiates from SW is that it is Drytop on speed, utterly despicable jumping and riddle stuff. If you like that, HoT, is the map for you. If not, you´re screwed and have to weather it out until you got all you HP and recipes you need to never go to any of the maps ever again.

Nobody knew about how to get mastery points either, and I remember the outrage when you had to get 400 points for the elite spec, most people did not even expect that you had to free play them if I remember well. So much for communication.

So yes, HoT is a massive upgrade to SW and Southsun in terms of jumping, not so much in the quality of mobs. I remember people getting rolled over in the first days of Southsun in droves or killed by their mighty combo of doom because of retalitation, that was poetry in motion for me. too bad that the map itself has not much to offer beside Karka Shells.

Keiel.7489:

I guess this is what you get when you try to server something a bit more challenging to a casual crowd. Rather than slowing down and go over that speed bump, lets all just stop and turn around.

Are you really, honestly surprised by that? We´re not talking about penicilin, shelter, electricity, bread, water or to get more casual a car here, we are talking about a computer game.

All I see is one guy that wants to raid while a lot of friends of him don´t want to raid but he want them to stay in GW2 and asks Anet for content to reach his goal. Pretty sure Anet agrees more with me than you, at least I hope that.^^

You are right, OP. The horse has made things more uncomplicated, no doubt about it. After the horse, came the steam engine, then fossil engines, now solar engines.

If you are like me, you see a a pattern in this. In case that you don´t see it, here it comes:
A teleportation device make a mount obsolete if teleportation devices are readily available. And if it does not make it obsolete in every sense, it makes it something that is used by people who explore the wildnerness to set up teleportation circles or where said teleport does not work for whatever reason.

Of course you could argue that a reasonable humanoid would still employ horses for day to day activity like patrolling within the reach of said teleportation devices for rapid responde, or to help with farming. But for all things heroic, I simply don´t see much use for it.

Argon.1563:

For the rest of what I want, I think DeceiverX has hit the nail on the head with this one, but theres a few extra things I have to add.

The Manifesto – Once again, DecieverX is on-point with this, but i’d like to point out that the game is going dangerously in the direction of a “traditional” MMO, which is the fundamental philosophy that GuildWars2 was designed to destroy, and it’s being driven that way by an ultra-loud minority who run around saying “GW2 is too easy, give me ultra-hard mode. I want time-intensive goals.” for the audience that GW2 is intended for (parents, people with careers and high-maintenance lives) GW2 has always had the right balance, but its just that 1% minority who won’t shut up about how “easy” everything is that gets it their way, and now the game is turning into another WorldOfWarfraft/Everquest clone with unreasonable time goals and generic systems like the introduction of traditional “raids”.

Insight – If nothing is off the table, what is ON the table? – Most developers who ive watched for long periods of time generally hype their updates for weeks in advance, whereas with GW2, we don’t know when the updates are coming until they’re basically due. I get most of my news from That_Shaman, because his posts on Reddit and Twitter are more insightful than the official posts because devs are so cagey and silent about development. How’s Jon Peters? That Revenant Devstream he did was the most insightful thing we had all year. That man is a role-model.

Lore – Ill be honest, the story in this game is the main reason why I play, but the way lore was handled with Heart of Thorns was a flaming wreckage (a bit like the Pact Fleet was.). I can see the very heavy foreshadowing going on that suggests LS3 will be about Revenants and Elite Specializations, which is 100% fine, but im more freaked out over the whole miss-match that happened at the very end with the whole “Enter my mind” business (no spoilers). Also, Who in the name of the Khan-Ur is Crysanthea?! Who is she?! Where did you find her?! This overwhelmingly charismatic Sylvari with no prior quarrel decides she wants to wreck a dragon with me…okay?

On an unrelated note, i’d like to see the return of the short-stories, and just other general lore-nuggets that were being thrown around during and shortly after Launch. I’d love to see short stories explaining thinks like, who is Crysanthea? Rytlock’s adventure in The Mists, or accounts of what happened during the Pact Fleet crash, since the player-character wasn’t actually there to witness it. I’d love to hear about Skybreaker. What happened to her during the crash? How did she lose her squad? Did she ever find them? How many of them died? I also feel like theres a whole plethora of unsung heroes who don’t get heard of during the Modremoth arc. Its always about “The Pact this, Pact members did that.”, when a lot of people who went to Maguuma are Seraph, Charr Legion troops, independent contractors and volunteers. We saw a lot of characters like this in Orr such as Snarl Backdraft, Galina Edgecrusher and Elli, so why don’t characters of similar background appears in Maguuma? We saw plenty in The Silverwastes who seemingly vanished.

Time – Expanding on the lore bit, I get that Maguuma will eternally have to be locked into 1328AE’s timeline to keep HoT content relevant, but can we please fix Fort Salma, Scalecatch and Concorde? Those 3 areas do not need to be time-warped like Orr currently is. Speaking of areas that don’t need to be time-warped, since dungeons are now redundant on a mechanical level after the rewards nerf, can we know what happened to those areas after 1325AE? For example, what happened in Fireheart Rise after the events of Citadel of Flames? Or what about Path of Starry Skies in Frostgorge Sound? Surely that city is quite built-up by now since it’s construction started in 1325AE. Its been 3 years.

May 2016 be a good one. I won’t sleep until I know exactly what Revenants are.

All of this. But please, LORE and a breathing world!!!
I can barely walk into Orr without being reminded that the fight with Zhaitan was long ago and nothing has changed in Orr. I am asking for some minor cosmetics here, Anet, not your redesign of Orr into a landscape with flowery grass and bunnies everywhere. If you can not live with yourself when you do that, at least let the risen be pushed back on the beginner map of the sylvary and replace them with different opponents, maybe easy going Mushrooms. It´s just that what I ask for, some visible success that is neither a skin or an achievement. You could do it in lions arch, without players haunting you for it I might add, why can´t you do it in other places? Because of F2P? Because changing maps failed in the past? I don´t know, but Tyria feels as lifeless as any other MMO after you have seen it all. It even has a progressing story, why is it so blatantly ignored?
Nightmare Court! Inquestur! Tengu! Dredge! What are these guys doing except getting slaughtered over and over again?
Turn dungeons into fractals and dungeons into raids if you are so keen of having them. Imagine for example a dredge military action in sorrows embrace that sweps out into the open world with the introduction of the raid to present it to the players.
Or the nightmare court is looking for a new direction.
An inquestur scientist is searching for a doomsday weapon left behind by Scarlet.

It is a sad state the dungeons are in except for them to pose as role model for failed content.

You also miss out when you for example have not seen the Freezer saga, but you can still enjoy DBZ when you start with the Boo saga. I don´t think that is the main probem with ls1. The main problem was probably crying and output of content.

Crying because the 1%ers(google it if you don´t know what this really means instead of looking at the actual number) wete suddenly forced to play with Joe gamer. And as the 1%ers too, Joe Gamer makes mistakes but they are more obvious. I loved every second of crying, accusing and name calling in the chat because the average joe did not give a flying squirrel about angry elitists.
Output because it is probably hard to keep up with a two week schedule. It´s also the only concern I thought was valid with ls 1 from the top of my head.^^

And as we write here, ls2 and HoT is as if it never happened. You can still visit a certain person in Hoelbrak like nothing has happened despite stuff happening in HoT. The world is as frozen and comatose as every MMO. That is really sad, I had high hope for GW2 and it´s concept of LS1 that changed boring Kessex Hills and also put a momumentum ehere Marionette danced.

Farewell, living world.

I can understand ODB. But when I read the OP right, he wants to play with all of his firends instead of just the friends that want to raid. And he does not want to do this in open world but in a relaxed environment that is still instanced.

Maybe you can settle for lower fractals instead, Skittles? The reward is not that brilliant, but the effort is also more than manageable. Everyone with two hands can make low level fracs and if not, you can carry them through easily if you are experienced in fractals.

Maybe we could have both? The first appearance is like ls1, then after a time, you can replay content in instances. Of course videos will have to replace some actual stuff, but it is possible.

Raiding is not my cup of tea, but it people have fun with it, all the better.
Adventures are tiring and boring for me.
Jumping is also not my favorite stuff, but I got used to it.
I am actually enjoying the mobs of HoT in general. There are actual fights where you have to run for it or perish if an add comes in. That only happens to you in Orr when you are super squishy or super not paying attention.
Gliding is nice. Dropping in a bottomless chasm to be greeted by tendrils is not.
i don´t like to look for things behind walls.

The open world content does not have to be faceroll easy. It should be accessible and achievable on a reasonable level.
I don´t have that feeling with raids(and Anet basically said that too), therefore and for some other reasons I lobby against them having rewards except for titles, massive gold and more ascended stuff dropping. I don´t lobby against the raid itself. I also lobbied against fractals being the only place for ascended backpacks long time ago for the same reason, despite playing them very often.

It would probably be useful in some instances, I won´t even deny that. But as it is not mandatory, I indeed choose to ignore it.

My fractal toon has enough AR.
My open world toons have exotic armor at least, or ascended most of the time.
I led wvw until it became a chore to play. With a ranger. No complains.
I follow orders and join squads and TS.

If this is not sufficient for you to stand with me in open world, then I can´t help you.^^