There’s two different issues here. One is the temporary transitive issue of people who will be back to normal in not too long a time, but the other is whether or not there should be a refund of points all the time for everyone.
I think the leveling is pretty fast in this game compared to most and the PvE is pretty easy. It’s probably not necessary. Not that I’d object if Anet put it in.
I just think they have other things to work on that are far more important than this.
I still have about 100 people logging in every week. The new patch brought some people back too. The new LA was pretty cool and the scavenger hunt took a while if you didn’t run to dulfy to find everything and followed the clues instead.
I still have to do the new jumping puzzle.
But yeah, it’s always like this in MMOs before an expansion.
Even from a casual point of view, most casuals wont’ care, because most people pay very little attention to builds. And the open world is easy enough even without a build.
It’s that very kind of condescending and flat out wrong statement that lead to the “no refunds, we choose your skills/specializations for you and spends HPs you don’t have” from ANET.
Claiming casual players don’t know or care about builds or are what? Unaware of skill calcs that exist in every MMO ever made? Is disingenuous at best insulting at worse.
The truth of the matter is that many of us have a problem with the way things were done, you guys don’t so you white knight ANET for a horrible decision, that’s all there is too it.
It’s not disingenuous at all, and it’s a pretty well known fact. There’s even a quote somewhere from a dev about how few people had ever even been to the trait screen. You think the truth is insulting but I don’t think many people care about it, because many people have told me they don’t care about it. They throw some points in something if they bother, and they move on.
If you really think that most people pay real attention to traits/specializations, I don’t know what to tell you but the conversation is over. Because most people who’ve been around for a while know better.
I thought it might come out then too, but really, that’s my own doing. Anet didn’t say it was coming out then.
But then, we just got one of the biggest expansions we’ve seen to date. That expansion was huge. Fixes to the LS, QoL fixes, like the wallet, the whole new skill/specialization system and even a way to transform ascended armor and weapons to other stat sets.
Anet shifted gears when they went from a living world to an expansion, which fans insisted on. It’s going to take some time..because they had to switch gears.
Wait… so that post HoT additions should not be taken into consideration but at the same time the OP includes post Nightfall additions in the comparison?
The only post addition from Nightfall that I took into account, was Domain of Anguish. Because it was released almost immediately after the release of Nightfall.
And that would make the Fractals part of Guild Wars 2, because that was released only 2 months after the game launched, right?
That’s the point. You don’t know what you’re getting. You included something 2 months after launch, and yet you’re comparing it to a game and we don’t even know what is in at launch yet. Don’t you think that’s a bit disingenuous?
May I ask how many actual MMOs you’ve played before you purchased Guild Wars 2?
-GW1 for years
-DDO, still do
-Age of Bonan, for mere minutes, till I realized what an awful boring piece of consumer exploitation it was. Incompetently designed, boring and cliche.I’m relatively certain, no matter what reason you may have personally bought Guild Wars 2, that if Anet had said straight up, you’re getting only what’s in the box and that’s it, most people would not have bought it, or at least would have had second thoughts about buying it.
To clarify, I bought GW2 because of what it would contain, plus Anet advertized that they would keep supporting the game, adding more things to it eventually. They didn’t say what, and I didn’t pay for those things either. I paid for the core game, while knowing that there may eventually be new things added.
So when/if I buy HOT, I do not pay for future content. I pay for the expansion, and may or may not feel encouraged to buy it if they also say they’ll keep adding things. But I’m not paying for that future content, because it doesn’t exist yet.
Okay. That’s fine.
I wouldn’t buy HoT if I didn’t think it was going to get more content besides that’s in the box. I mean I wouldn’t buy it at all.
I have the belief, due to long experience with Anet, that the game will entertain me for a period of time that is well worth $50. I don’t care if it’s in the box at launch or it gets added after.
Because to me, being there at the beginning means something. Being at the beginning of anything. I always regretted that I found Guild Wars 1 late, and wasn’t there at the beginning.
You don’t have to pay if you don’t feel what’s in the box is worth it. What you miss is being there. To some of us, MMOs aren’t a game, they’re an experience. That’s how I play them.
So the value of Guild Wars 2 is only the value of the box. Fractals don’t add to the value. They weren’t there at launch. Guild missions don’t add to the value. Three new zones don’t add to the value.
They didn’t add value when I bought GW2, because they didn’t exist. I bought GW2 because of what it contained.
It is the same for HOT.
May I ask how many actual MMOs you’ve played before you purchased Guild Wars 2? Just because you personally bought something for the box and didn’t think of anything else, doesn’t mean the value of the MMO isn’t dependent on what comes next.
Most MMOs get better over time. You buy the box, but you expect a lot of trouble in the early going. For example, a huge number of dynamic events didn’t work at all in the early days. People found ways to knock skill point NPCs out of bounds so you couldn’t get those skill points and we all had to wait around like vultures at reset. There wasn’t even an item preview in the auction house at launch. Guesting wasn’t in place yet.
As time goes on, MMOs evolve and change, which is why people tend to play them. To be a part of that evolution Not just to play a boxed game. Because I assure you MMOs tend to be inferior to boxed games in most particulars. They can’t have graphics as good, because lag with too many people. They tend not to have the best stories, because no one person can be the hero. They tend to have balancing issues you never really question in a single player game. But they evolve. They change. They grow. And some of us feel a part of that. It’s a badge of honor to remember some stuff.
I’m relatively certain, no matter what reason you may have personally bought Guild Wars 2, that if Anet had said straight up, you’re getting only what’s in the box and that’s it, most people would not have bought it, or at least would have had second thoughts about buying it.
It’s okay for you to buy it for whatever reason you buy it or don’t, but make no mistake about it. MMOs are not boxed games and thinking about them as boxed games is a mistake.
What stops you from playing as you want now?
Actually, the issue is far more complicated than that. Whether we should have hard roles or not isn’t just a matter of player preference, but a business decision. People like having hard roles, and they like having their playstyle reinforced by the game’s design. So, the question is if the game can be more interesting, entertaining, and appealing to the public at large if there were hard roles.
It isn’t a stupid thought. Since beta, one of the biggest legitimate complaints about GW2 is that the PVE combat is samey. From an outside perspective, watching everyone in the team do the exact same stack and smack routine with every encounter ever is both unpleasant to look at and unappealing in general. Hard roles appear to be dynamic and unique, with each player’s singular contribution being noticeable.
From the diversity standpoint no one “loses out” if tanking and healing become requirements. DPS preference players still get to DPS, but now the other two legs get to do their thing, too. The problem is that players who build bulky or healy, or heck even conditiony face not gratitude, but ire from their teammates. Telling these minority preference players to just go and hang out with each other is like telling racial minorities to do the same thing to avoid racism. It isn’t a fix, at all. The hate is still there, you’re just trying to hide yourself away from it.
While it is a community problem, it is also a design problem. So, facing the unreasonable wrath of selfish teenagers on the internet, the only reasonable solution would be to modify the game in such a way that the stat combinations that Anet put into the game are useful in that game.
Personally I think the solution to this problem is just to make the game harder, but in specific ways to encourage more than just corner pulling and bursting. You’ll still get full zerk groups, but hopefully the skill of the average player would mean that running a bunch of unaffiliated full zerkers is no longer completely superior to 4 zerks + 1 zealot.
Well the whole design is apparently leaning away from group content to – on one hand solo, and on other hand ‘world events’. Dungeons are relic of the past, and fractals don’t seem to get a huge amount of attention either. So I don’t know if this is really even very relevant to the game as it is right now.
I suspect we’ll see something happening with fractals in the expansion because there’s a fractal mastery coming. No point in doing that if there’s nothing coming for fractals.
Yes. It should not be factored into the price. I pay for what I get now, not for what I maybe get later.
So the value of Guild Wars 2 is only the value of the box. Fractals don’t add to the value. They weren’t there at launch. Guild missions don’t add to the value. Three new zones don’t add to the value.
You’re not buying a racing game, you’re buying an MMO and that’s substantially different. With an MMO, even according to the license, you’re not really paying for a game, you’re paying for access. Access which can be terminated at any time. It’s like buying an annual pass to a theme park, in a way. If they add new rides, the value of what you’ve bought goes up.
I know I wouldn’t buy an MMO that only contained what was in the box and nothing else, and I don’t think most people would either.
Make sure you’re using your half damage from falls. It makes it a lot easier. It’s a specialization that all professions have access to.
@Seera (not scerevisiae)
The Personal Story only takes place on the existing Tyria map in zones that came with the base game. I don’t think it has ever been mentioned that there would be new personal stories that take place in HoT zones, so it’s pretty unlikely that anyone would encounter an issue of not having access to a map where a Personal Story step takes place.Eh… there is a new personal story coming with HoT. And it is about the fight against Mordremoth. And it does take place in Heart of Maguuma.
Are you sure you do not mean Living Story and the fight against Mordremoth, which is what the story for HoT is about?
Where was this mentioned please?
If it actually is a new Personal Story, does it require the completion of the initial Personal Story to kill Zhaitan? Is this information mentioned someplace? I’ve not seen anything, anywhere, in all of the materials released where it is stated that there is a new “Personal Story” – “Living Story” has been consistently used. I would appreciate a source for this statement please, if you have a moment. I’ll go back and review all of the official materials released to see if I missed it explicitly stating a new HoT-ONLY “Personal Story”.
The Living Story is the continuation of the personal story now. It’s been like that for a while. It’s the story of your character. One runs into another.
The story starts with you defeating Zhaitan. You’re part of the pact then. Then the pact goes off to take on Mordremoth and we all know what happpens (or should by this point anyway).
So the pact storyline which started in the personal story continues in the living world. They’re now one and the same thing.
The problem I have is how much is enough. That’s really the issue here. The question is can Anet produce enough hard core content to satisfy even a portion of the hard core crowd. I’m skeptical that they can, but I hope I’m wrong.
The hard core crowd finds ways through stuff. They find easy mode. They find efficient strategies. Which is fine. But it means that stuff that was once hard enough becomes easy as they do it.
The hard core crowd seems to be asking Anet to throw them a bone, and I understand that completely. But it’s not likely to change the nature of the game. It’s not going to be 12 new dungeons.
So unless it’s something huge, like the Underworld from GW1, the playerbase will play it and get tired of it. They’ll ask for more.
If Anet can keep both the hardcore crowd and casual crowd happy, I’m all for it. If creating the hard core stuff makes it so the casual crowd isn’t happy, I’m not.
I’d do all the hardcore stuff once, like I did in Guild Wars 1. Maybe again if a guildie needs help. But that’s pretty much my limit.
I actually hope there’s enough development staff at Anet to make everyone happy.
I think the new LA is beautiful. I had a more solid feel, which I’d expect if my last city was burned to the ground.
DPS is broken. They know about it. They’ll fix it. I’ve been though stuff like this in every MMO I’ve ever played.
And masteries, and the continuation of the story of Guild Wars 2.
It’s also been said they won’t have access to future living stories either.
Noone has said this. just like every game there ill be a significant proportion of people who don’t buy the expansion, and locking these people out of the new story would also preclude these people from buying from the store, so not something they are likely to do.
Not that I’d be bothered either way, LS has been crap.
Actually this has been said. The story of the Living Story continues in the new zone in HoT. If you don’t have HoT you can NOT continue the story.
How could you? It’s all in the new zones. Even in the beta, you can see the story starting there. So how could you continue it, if you can’t get there to start it?
Have a link to where that’s written or said? All the stuff I’ve read/watched thus far has not said anything about HOT-exclusive anything, except for revenant, the extra traitline + a handful of skills, and of course the HOT-specific zones.
If you saw the last video of the Living Story and you played the beta it’s obvious. And yes, it was said directly, but I don’t have a link, because it was in one of a dozen or so interviews….but it was said.
The story continues as you move deeper and deeper in the Heart of Thorns, toward Mordremoth’s strong hold. The story continues in the new zone. The new zones come with the expansion. You can’t get to the new zones to access the story unless you have HoT.
And THAT is why there is no refund. You give a refund if it’s not possible to buy everything. If you will run out of points before you run out of things to spend points on then a refund makes sense. If you run out of things to buy long before you run out of points, then there is no point.
Tell that to ESO, the devs there went the extra mile to make it possible to reset skills while giving your more skill points then you could possible need.
The devs went the extra mile and ESO are hardly ever said together in the same sentence. What you’re saying is ESO does one thing right and launched with pretty much everything done wrong. I could say the same about DDO. DDO last I looked had 2 people on their reddit.
Picking one thing that Anet did that you don’t like and trying to say this other company did it so it’s good is fine. But it’s misleading.
You have a problem so you’re trying to justify that it doesn’t have to be that way. But in this game it’s always been that way. You buy a skill and if you made a mistake you wait till you have points to buy a different skill. Because they’re all unlocked fairly quickly.
In DDO, you’re leveling to level 20 over a month or two. People level to 80 here in 3 days. Sure I agree if it was a long term problem, it might be worth putting resources into.
Even from a casual point of view, most casuals wont’ care, because most people pay very little attention to builds. And the open world is easy enough even without a build.
Right now, I would -not- list this game as one to try for a new person. Not because it’s overly complicated, but because you are so crippled in your early choices that if you make a choice that makes a character utterly unfun to play, it ruins the entire game and experience for you. I wouldn’t be able to convince any friend of mine who feels that way to give another class a try, and I really wouldn’t ever want to say ‘well start over again on another of the same class and spend all that time leveling again and just choose something else’, because who in their right mind would really feel like that was a good choice and not a ‘waste of time’.
‘Level to 80’ or ‘Go into PvP and experiment there’ are not options. One means hours of unsatisfactory gameplay to possibly find out at the end that a class just isn’t something you want to play at all leaving you with an overall terrible taste for the game, and the other is forcing people into a playmode that they may not want to ever engage in. They took the PvP zones out of world explorer for a reason, not everyone wants to touch that. This really feels like ANet entirely dropping the ball and not considering all of their players.
Do you not realize that a new person wouldn’t have this problem at all. Not even a little. That is, a new person would be able to put the points wherever they want.
You missed the part where he points out your can’t try different builds while lvling, since with no way to get HP refunded you’re stuck with a particular build for a long while before you have enough HP to try a new one.
You have NEVER been able to try different builds while leveling. And since the open world is relatively easy, you don’t have to worry about them much until you’re 80. I never did.
From launch, you didn’t get traits unlocked fast enough to test any build unless you want to PvP.
That’s life in the big city.
I agree that is life in the cough “Big City” what he’s saying is that it didn’t have to be this way, if they has implemented a refund system not only would me and others not be in the current predicament but the game would have being better for new players.
Which ironically is one of the reasons they gave for not allowing any type of refund.
Once you have traits unlocked, you can change them out of combat whenever you want. Because you unlock them all by 80 anyway, there’s no reason to offer the refund and in most MMOs I’ve played you can’t buy a skill and go back and say I want a different one. You can change builds, but not unlocks.
I played Rift. I picked skills as I leveled. If I made a mistake, Id’ have to wait to have more points to buy more skills. Do you know a lot of MMOs that don’t work this way?
SWTOR = You don’t like your path or want to change your utilities? It’s refundable.
TERA = glyphs that affect your skills no longer good enough? Changeable on the fly.
DDO = Feats dragging you down? Consult your friendly Mindflayer Fred (no seriously, I’m not making that up)And so on, the majority of MMOs allow the refund of customization points.
But if all that is not enough, or not close enough to GW2.
ESO = you get more skills points, thanks to quests, leveling up and sky shards then you’ll ever need for your build, still they have a refund option for skills purchased with said skill points.
Hmm I don’t remember DDO being quite so friendly. There were things I unlocked there that I couldn’t change. I could change the build, but not the unlocks.
That’s what we’re’ talking about here, unlocks, not builds.
If you really love hardcore go do high level dungeons in FFXIV. Personally, I game to relax.
so if we like a challenge we’re not even allowed to play this game anymore? if you don’t want a challenge then ignore the challenging content and i’ll ignore the easy content
They’re adding challenging content in HoT. They haven’t talked about it specifically yet.
that’s a shame, i just uninstalled gw2 and now i’m playing FFXIV
Okay. I thought the game sucked. If you like it, by all means, play it. Have fun.
i can’t tell if you’re messing with me or if you didn’t get the joke
He is messing with you.
Me? Blinks innocently.
If you really love hardcore go do high level dungeons in FFXIV. Personally, I game to relax.
so if we like a challenge we’re not even allowed to play this game anymore? if you don’t want a challenge then ignore the challenging content and i’ll ignore the easy content
They’re adding challenging content in HoT. They haven’t talked about it specifically yet.
that’s a shame, i just uninstalled gw2 and now i’m playing FFXIV
Okay. I thought the game sucked. If you like it, by all means, play it. Have fun.
There’s no difficult content in this game that I particularly enjoy. I can do it. I HAVE done it. I’m not lazy. I’m not interested in what you’re interested in. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just means that’s not my thing.
ok its not your thing and thats completely fine. no problem with that.
but why are people like you against something that wouldnt affect them at all?!im not interested in the stuff that you enjoy, but do you see me on forums saying that i am against content for players like you? no.
Did you see the part where I said I agree we need more challenging content? Because I said it, in the first post you replied to me with.
I’m not against more challenging content being added to the game. I just think that most of the challenging content tends to get ignored. It always has in this game.
People ran CoF path 1 over and over again, not CoF path 3, which is definitely harder.
once a carbine dev said something like “players will always do the most efficient thing, its the developers job to make sure challenging content is fun and rewarding at the same time”.
That’s true, of course. However, I think there’s a percentage of people who work opposite to that. You make something challenging and give it a great reward and people will do stuff they don’t find fun in order to get that reward. I’ve done it, myself. Played content I didn’t enjoy to get something out of it.
So making that content rewarding enough to force people to do it, if there’s enough of it, could drive people from the game.
but if there is no higher tier of gear, the rewards will always be optional. so i dont really see that happen in gw2.
This is where it gets tricky. The rewards are optional depending on what you hold valuable. As an argument, suppose your game is to collect minis. It’s what you do. And if that hard content offers a mini, you’re going to feel compelled to do that content. I’m that way with achievements. I didn’t enjoy many of the achievements in the Living World Season 2, but I got them all. And no, I didn’t enjoy getting most of them.
If you really love hardcore go do high level dungeons in FFXIV. Personally, I game to relax.
so if we like a challenge we’re not even allowed to play this game anymore? if you don’t want a challenge then ignore the challenging content and i’ll ignore the easy content
They’re adding challenging content in HoT. They haven’t talked about it specifically yet.
There’s no difficult content in this game that I particularly enjoy. I can do it. I HAVE done it. I’m not lazy. I’m not interested in what you’re interested in. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just means that’s not my thing.
ok its not your thing and thats completely fine. no problem with that.
but why are people like you against something that wouldnt affect them at all?!im not interested in the stuff that you enjoy, but do you see me on forums saying that i am against content for players like you? no.
Did you see the part where I said I agree we need more challenging content? Because I said it, in the first post you replied to me with.
I’m not against more challenging content being added to the game. I just think that most of the challenging content tends to get ignored. It always has in this game.
People ran CoF path 1 over and over again, not CoF path 3, which is definitely harder.
CoF path 3 isn’t harder, actually it’s easy. It’s takes longer because people are inexperienced with the path so time does not equal “harder” content. Same goes for SE path 2, it’s very simple and easy just takes a lot more time and isn’t worth it. (There are of course exceptions with super tryhard speed clearing guilds that can do each path in minutes, but I’m talking about the general population).
I actually find path 3 harder. One example is the three torches that all have to be lit at the same time. That means at least someone has to be able to solo and stay alive long enough to do that. I’m talking about the corridor you have to run up with the bombs. That takes practice and skill. I like that btw. Actually path 3 is my favorite path of CoF…but I still find it harder.
Right now, I would -not- list this game as one to try for a new person. Not because it’s overly complicated, but because you are so crippled in your early choices that if you make a choice that makes a character utterly unfun to play, it ruins the entire game and experience for you. I wouldn’t be able to convince any friend of mine who feels that way to give another class a try, and I really wouldn’t ever want to say ‘well start over again on another of the same class and spend all that time leveling again and just choose something else’, because who in their right mind would really feel like that was a good choice and not a ‘waste of time’.
‘Level to 80’ or ‘Go into PvP and experiment there’ are not options. One means hours of unsatisfactory gameplay to possibly find out at the end that a class just isn’t something you want to play at all leaving you with an overall terrible taste for the game, and the other is forcing people into a playmode that they may not want to ever engage in. They took the PvP zones out of world explorer for a reason, not everyone wants to touch that. This really feels like ANet entirely dropping the ball and not considering all of their players.
Do you not realize that a new person wouldn’t have this problem at all. Not even a little. That is, a new person would be able to put the points wherever they want.
You missed the part where he points out your can’t try different builds while lvling, since with no way to get HP refunded you’re stuck with a particular build for a long while before you have enough HP to try a new one.
You have NEVER been able to try different builds while leveling. And since the open world is relatively easy, you don’t have to worry about them much until you’re 80. I never did.
From launch, you didn’t get traits unlocked fast enough to test any build unless you want to PvP.
That’s life in the big city.
I agree that is life in the cough “Big City” what he’s saying is that it didn’t have to be this way, if they has implemented a refund system not only would me and others not be in the current predicament but the game would have being better for new players.
Which ironically is one of the reasons they gave for not allowing any type of refund.
Once you have traits unlocked, you can change them out of combat whenever you want. Because you unlock them all by 80 anyway, there’s no reason to offer the refund and in most MMOs I’ve played you can’t buy a skill and go back and say I want a different one. You can change builds, but not unlocks.
I played Rift. I picked skills as I leveled. If I made a mistake, Id’ have to wait to have more points to buy more skills. Do you know a lot of MMOs that don’t work this way?
There’s no difficult content in this game that I particularly enjoy. I can do it. I HAVE done it. I’m not lazy. I’m not interested in what you’re interested in. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just means that’s not my thing.
ok its not your thing and thats completely fine. no problem with that.
but why are people like you against something that wouldnt affect them at all?!im not interested in the stuff that you enjoy, but do you see me on forums saying that i am against content for players like you? no.
Did you see the part where I said I agree we need more challenging content? Because I said it, in the first post you replied to me with.
I’m not against more challenging content being added to the game. I just think that most of the challenging content tends to get ignored. It always has in this game.
People ran CoF path 1 over and over again, not CoF path 3, which is definitely harder.
once a carbine dev said something like “players will always do the most efficient thing, its the developers job to make sure challenging content is fun and rewarding at the same time”.
That’s true, of course. However, I think there’s a percentage of people who work opposite to that. You make something challenging and give it a great reward and people will do stuff they don’t find fun in order to get that reward. I’ve done it, myself. Played content I didn’t enjoy to get something out of it.
So making that content rewarding enough to force people to do it, if there’s enough of it, could drive people from the game.
There’s no difficult content in this game that I particularly enjoy. I can do it. I HAVE done it. I’m not lazy. I’m not interested in what you’re interested in. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just means that’s not my thing.
ok its not your thing and thats completely fine. no problem with that.
but why are people like you against something that wouldnt affect them at all?!im not interested in the stuff that you enjoy, but do you see me on forums saying that i am against content for players like you? no.
Did you see the part where I said I agree we need more challenging content? Because I said it, in the first post you replied to me with.
I’m not against more challenging content being added to the game. I just think that most of the challenging content tends to get ignored. It always has in this game.
People ran CoF path 1 over and over again, not CoF path 3, which is definitely harder.
Right now, I would -not- list this game as one to try for a new person. Not because it’s overly complicated, but because you are so crippled in your early choices that if you make a choice that makes a character utterly unfun to play, it ruins the entire game and experience for you. I wouldn’t be able to convince any friend of mine who feels that way to give another class a try, and I really wouldn’t ever want to say ‘well start over again on another of the same class and spend all that time leveling again and just choose something else’, because who in their right mind would really feel like that was a good choice and not a ‘waste of time’.
‘Level to 80’ or ‘Go into PvP and experiment there’ are not options. One means hours of unsatisfactory gameplay to possibly find out at the end that a class just isn’t something you want to play at all leaving you with an overall terrible taste for the game, and the other is forcing people into a playmode that they may not want to ever engage in. They took the PvP zones out of world explorer for a reason, not everyone wants to touch that. This really feels like ANet entirely dropping the ball and not considering all of their players.
Do you not realize that a new person wouldn’t have this problem at all. Not even a little. That is, a new person would be able to put the points wherever they want.
You missed the part where he points out your can’t try different builds while lvling, since with no way to get HP refunded you’re stuck with a particular build for a long while before you have enough HP to try a new one.
You have NEVER been able to try different builds while leveling. And since the open world is relatively easy, you don’t have to worry about them much until you’re 80. I never did.
From launch, you didn’t get traits unlocked fast enough to test any build unless you want to PvP.
That’s life in the big city.
Contrary to the belief of some people, some people play the game JUST to have fun. Not to get better. Not to play a meta build. Not to learn how to do things better.
implying that trying to become as good as possible cant be fun. kek
just fyi, the people you are describing here are people who dont care at all.
That’s incorrect. You can want to play around and still care, but care about different stuff.
If you care about say, making your character look the way you want it to look, or about role-playing, or about exploring the whole map and nothing else, it’s not that you don’t care. It’s like this guy doesn’t care about what I care about, so this guy doesn’t care.
I’ve done everything in this game except Liadri. I’ve done every dungeon. I’ve done fractals up to level 34 (my personal reward level is 27). I’ve done SPvP. I’ve done WvW.
There’s no difficult content in this game that I particularly enjoy. I can do it. I HAVE done it. I’m not lazy. I’m not interested in what you’re interested in. That doesn’t mean I don’t care. It just means that’s not my thing.
Instead of trying to deride people who think differently from you, you should just accept it. After all, I’m not saying anything bad about you for wanting challenging content.
It’s the same client. If you added the code correctly, you’ll see a beta character slot on your character select page.
there is a difference between casual players (who simply cant invest a lot of time) and players who are lazy and refuse to get better and want everything for free. for the most part its the second group of players who doesnt want any challenging content. just saying.
and i dont think im part of the majority. i dont want to be part of the majority. but if there werent enough people who ask for more challenging content to justify it, anet wouldnt be doing it. thats all i have to say.
Ah, how casually we throw around words like lazy, or refuse to get better. What is this, the olympics? Should we all be in training?
Contrary to the belief of some people, some people play the game JUST to have fun. Not to get better. Not to play a meta build. Not to learn how to do things better.
Sometimes those people are working hard all day and just want to relax. That makes them somehow lazy. Some people play games to unwind or relax. Some people play games to be competitive.
I’ve spent my whole life being competitive. I don’t need a game to prove something. I think you need to stop judging people who play differently than you do.
Right now, I would -not- list this game as one to try for a new person. Not because it’s overly complicated, but because you are so crippled in your early choices that if you make a choice that makes a character utterly unfun to play, it ruins the entire game and experience for you. I wouldn’t be able to convince any friend of mine who feels that way to give another class a try, and I really wouldn’t ever want to say ‘well start over again on another of the same class and spend all that time leveling again and just choose something else’, because who in their right mind would really feel like that was a good choice and not a ‘waste of time’.
‘Level to 80’ or ‘Go into PvP and experiment there’ are not options. One means hours of unsatisfactory gameplay to possibly find out at the end that a class just isn’t something you want to play at all leaving you with an overall terrible taste for the game, and the other is forcing people into a playmode that they may not want to ever engage in. They took the PvP zones out of world explorer for a reason, not everyone wants to touch that. This really feels like ANet entirely dropping the ball and not considering all of their players.
Do you not realize that a new person wouldn’t have this problem at all. Not even a little. That is, a new person would be able to put the points wherever they want.
I think the personal story could have been better. It was hamstrung by the need to keep all the races on the same pace. So that you had installments in chapters of 10. Had it been one continuous story, it would have made for a better story.
It’s also been said they won’t have access to future living stories either.
Noone has said this. just like every game there ill be a significant proportion of people who don’t buy the expansion, and locking these people out of the new story would also preclude these people from buying from the store, so not something they are likely to do.
Not that I’d be bothered either way, LS has been crap.
Actually this has been said. The story of the Living Story continues in the new zone in HoT. If you don’t have HoT you can NOT continue the story.
How could you? It’s all in the new zones. Even in the beta, you can see the story starting there. So how could you continue it, if you can’t get there to start it?
For every player that wants difficult content or challenges, there’s another 100 that want to just play casually(and of those 100, probably 50% will be dedicated casual players)…which market would you go after?
i would like to see your metrics and statistics please.
if there werent enough players who want difficult content and challenges, anet wouldnt have announced it for the expansion.
so obviously you are wrong.While I agree more challenging content is needed, the logic on which you base your conclusion is wrong. Adding something to an expansion as one feature of many, means some people want it. It doesn’t mean that most want it. THey’re trying to fill gaps. But the reason for the gap is that they didn’t consider it that important in the first place…for a reason I suspect.
if it wasnt important and if not enough people asked for it, they wouldnt be doing it. its simple.
the devs even said in multiple interviews that many people said there isnt enough challenging content and asked for it.also the reason that this “gap” exists is simple. at launch anet believed the dungeon would be extremely challenging. they were wrong. they even admitted, that the instanced PvE content in this game is too easy in the raid cdi.
you can try to find excuses and keep your eyes closed. thats ok. fact is, if there wasnt enough interest in that type of content, anet wouldnt have announced it.
I’m not keeping my eyes closed. But you might be.
Talk to any dev of any game, and you’ll find out that the casual player makes up most of the playerbase. It’s why games keep getting dumbed down. This is a problem with pretty much every MMO. The longer it goes, the more dumbed down they get. And I’m pretty sure it’s not because the bulk of the playerbase is asking for harder content. However, the loudest portion of the playerbase is, and that’s why it behooves a company to do it.
The most recent comment I’ve seen on it is from a Lotro dev who said, in response to a big outcry that they wouldn’t be making more raids, that only 10% of the population of Lotro raids or EVER raided. 10%. That same dev said that 10% accounted for about 50% of the forum comments.
So it makes sense to include it. It doesn’t mean you have some sort of majority.
Back in the day, the lead WoW dev (forget his name offhand), said that only 5% of the population of WoW completed the hardest content.
You may believe that you’re in some sort of majority because the forum viewers are largely in favor (though not completely) of more challenging content.
But since only about 15% of a game’s population ever posts to the forums, you have a decent percentage of 15% or so…which is hardly conclusive.
And even in this thread, you see a lot of people telling you otherwise. It’s not as cut and tried as you think.
For every player that wants difficult content or challenges, there’s another 100 that want to just play casually(and of those 100, probably 50% will be dedicated casual players)…which market would you go after?
i would like to see your metrics and statistics please.
if there werent enough players who want difficult content and challenges, anet wouldnt have announced it for the expansion.
so obviously you are wrong.
While I agree more challenging content is needed, the logic on which you base your conclusion is wrong. Adding something to an expansion as one feature of many, means some people want it. It doesn’t mean that most want it. THey’re trying to fill gaps. But the reason for the gap is that they didn’t consider it that important in the first place…for a reason I suspect.
ANet considered their options and made a decision with the best of intentions.
Unfortunately it was a poor decision.
Yes, it doesn’t affect you if you’re 80.
Yes, the problem will diminish the more you level.
Yes, levelling is easy in this game.Ergo, it’s not a big problem.
But it did create a problem for some players, and really it’s more about the principle of the thing. They spent a non-refundable in-game currency, that had been accrued by the player through time invested, without permission. Added to which, the automated decision making process turned up some absurd and utterly unwelcome results. And anyway, the process of deciding how to spend a currency on unlocking things is one of the fun areas of the game. In what universe did it seem like a great idea to deny players the opportunity to enjoy spending their own points in pursuit of desirable stuff?
Bizarre choice by ANet and one I hope they don’t repeat.
At best it was absurdly condescending to players. It might have been a bit easier to forgive if it had been well executed. But it wasn’t.
Shame.
~TG
Pretty much what I feel, the choice is so bizarre and unlike what any MMO out there would make that it just leave me with no trust for the dev team.
The fact they claimed it was to help new players seem kind of adding insult to injury, there was a specialization calc available the day the patch was released and I had my build ready only to find out I don,t get a say in it… not for many lvls.
Most players don’t even pay attention to traits/specializations. You’re in the minority even there.
“You guys know how every MMO we have ever played or even heard of refunds skill tree points when they make a major overhaul or sometimes even a small change to a skill within a tree?”
“Yeah well GW2 devs went the other route and spend them for you at seemingly random”
Once again, don’t blame the devs blame gd people who cried about losing their skills. Those people are the reason you are stuck with your temporary problem.
P.S. I have gained 5 lvls since the patch, not one Hero Point earned…
You only gain them on odd levels, and yes if you had more skills unlocked than you would have had in this system so you have a bit of a deficit. Still doesn’t change your problem is a temporary one.
Also still doesn’t change that my problem is being forced to play a character the way the devs want, not how I want…
I don’t care how temporary my problem is, when the only way to get around it is to play something I dislike.
This has nothing to do with the devs. The Devs didn’t go through each individual character and choose their build. They made an algorithm that weighed values of things. This method is invariably flawed for this precise reason. The flaw is just minor enough to not matter in the long run.
It has everything to do with the devs, they are the ones who opted for the algorithm rather then obvious solution.
The are also the ones who chose to not add a refund option and ultimately the ones who could fix that.
If the obvious solution takes more programming time, then it’s neither obvious nor a solution. All major projects have timetables and budgets.
MMORPG 101, never, ever remove the “player” part of the equation, which is what auto spending the Hero Points did.
So… you think that because the company did something that it felt was a respectable approach to a MINOR issue – that you thus far have been the only person that I’ve seen complain about it- that it removed the player agency from the game entirely?
Pretty faulty logic there.
And yes, leveling up -is- an out for it because it takes very little time to level up, with tomes and writs and alts and so on. Your reasons for being upset fall into illogical territory.
“I refuse to level up or play the game for 2-5 more hours to obtain more points, and since I refuse to be logical and do the natural, fastest thing to rectify a MINOR oversight, I demand anet to code in multiple facets to fit my wants.”
And then you used hyper exaggerated things like "If they dropped the drop rate by 1000000% , you’d “Eventually” still get it."
Wheras leveling takes so little time that like most people have said, you can practically and literally hit level 80 without leaving Queensdale.
If you’re level 1-10, the issue doesn’t effect you.
If you’re level 20-30, it’s a minor setback.
If you’re level 40-60, it’s a hassle, but you should have enough Hero points and skills to make a viable, if not optimal play-kit.
if you’re level 70-80, you already HAVE everything, so it doesn’t effect you.
1st of all learn to read, the drop rate comparison wasn’t even advanced by me.
2nd it was my 1st and only character that got screwed, I played since the patch and only just got 6 new lvls with no end in sight for when I can I start customizing my own kitten character, because hey to force this specialization they “really” had to put me deep in HP debt…
No game I have ever played, specially not an MMO, has ever done something like take my character and all but play it for me and asked “keep playing it and eventually you get to customize it”.
So yeah my opinion of the game is not good, certainly not a game I would recommend to my friends and if by the time 29 days since I bought I still can’t play how I want I’ll ask for a refund and make sure no one I know plays this.
So don’t recommend the game to your friends and get a refund. Some people will. And the loss will be acceptable, because it’s an unreasonable position you’re taking.
I want this because this affects me.
But it doesn’t affect many people.
But it affects me.
But it doesn’t affect most people.
But it affects me.
Okay, so go find a game where you get the same value and be happy. I haven’t found a game where I’ve gotten this value. Leaving a game for a temporary transitional thing is absolutely your prerogative.
I’m just not sure why you think you have a reasonable position.
No, Anet should devote thousands of dollars of dev time because of a temporary situation that won’t affect the bulk of the population at all. Good call.6
“You guys know how every MMO we have ever played or even heard of refunds skill tree points when they make a major overhaul or sometimes even a small change to a skill within a tree?”
“Yeah well GW2 devs went the other route and spend them for you at seemingly random”
Once again, don’t blame the devs blame gd people who cried about losing their skills. Those people are the reason you are stuck with your temporary problem.
P.S. I have gained 5 lvls since the patch, not one Hero Point earned…
You only gain them on odd levels, and yes if you had more skills unlocked than you would have had in this system so you have a bit of a deficit. Still doesn’t change your problem is a temporary one.
Also still doesn’t change that my problem is being forced to play a character the way the devs want, not how I want…
I don’t care how temporary my problem is, when the only way to get around it is to play something I dislike.
Or delete the character and start again. Or PvP and save up tomes to get to level 80. Or create a new character, start that, save the tomes of knowledge from daily log in rewards and level that character that way.
And if you don’t care how temporary the problem is, that’s fair enough. But it’s not going to be fixed, because it’s not worth the development time. Go out, get some hero challenges, gain a few levels, it’s not like you even have to wait till you’re 80.
They lose all their meaning when everyone and their mum got it
players want prestige gear which is expensive or time consuming no bullkitten
They don’t lose meaning because there are so many outfits and you can only wear one of at time. So while a lot of people may where the newest outfit, people like me can swap in and out of older outfits.
This isn’t like a huge deal or anything, but everyone saying “oh you unlock it anyway by 80 it is no big deal” is wrong.
1)I am not getting to 80 anytime soon. GW2 is supposed to be casual friendly, I thought, and I enjoy the game. I am new. I have 3-4 alts, from 15-45 that I alternate through to enjoy different professions and see different parts of the game. I play casually, an hour here and there on some weeknights, maybe a good few hours on one weekend day. 80 is far away for me, and even further away if I play “my way.” If I wanted to only focus on one character it would come sooner but that’s not as enjoyable, and would still take a while for me.
2) ANet changed the way skill points, traits, and all of that worked. They were already putting work in to changing it and took time to change over your “points” into what they thought you would have picked. They chose poorly. If they were changing everything and resetting everyone’s points, seems pretty easy to throw a one-time reset option in there as well since it isn’t like the system was already locked-in for all our characters – they rewrote the system!
Is it a huge problem, am I frothing at the mouth? No. Can I not advance because the spec I want isn’t possible and I can’t kill anything? Nope! But does it hurt my enjoyment of the game because the points I earned got shunted into choices I wouldn’t have made, and I am stuck with those for quite a long time due to my casual playstyle. Now I’ve got a Necro with a fully unlocked Death trait that never bought a minion skill and no interest in buying them still. And so on. I’m playing a little kitten. It’s not a huge problem but it does kind of suck.
Your alts won’t have this problem. They’ll unlock what they want. This is only a transitional problem. It goes away by itelf with time. New characters choose their stuff.
27 80s so far.
I’m not ok with the game getting more casualized, but ANet wont change their mind on this one.
They will have to someday. Casuals come and go very fast and their supply is not infinite.
Casuals don’t come and go very fast. I’m casual and I’m here since launch. Most of my guild is casual. You’re assuming casual doesn’t necessarily mean dedicated. But hard core gamers often game hop, more than casuals do, because casuals don’t necessary want to buy/learn a bunch of different games.
I tend to buy one game and stay with it, until there’s nothing left to do in it. But I play casually and don’t really care about difficult content.
I thought the cash shop was supposed to subsidize content creation? So far it has, but most of it’s bee temporary. Remember the Marionette? Battle for LA? The tower event in Kessex? Aetherblade attacks?
I think a better solution would be going back to their roots. New permanent content. Dungeons. Fractals. Open world events that are permanent. Evolving quest chains. Redesigns of Temple events that reward successful defenses. There are so many more options.
Sure, we have gotten content over the years but a ton of it has been temporary or is instanced and drops no loot. Where’s the incentive to replay season 2 instances? There isn’t any. It took a ton of man hours to make that content and it offers little to zero incentive to be repeated. It makes mistakes in its designs that GW1 thrived on and their solution with the x-pac is to hide content I want to complete(battling boss Mordrem)behind a mastery gate meaning I have to do content I may not want to do to earn mastery points in order to do the content I want to complete because said content can’t even be attempted without a certain “Mastery Rating”?
No thanks
You’re living in the past mate. That ship has long sailed. It’s been way over a year since the last temporary content has been added to the game, as far as the Living World stuff goes. When Anet announced season 2 they said it would be repeatable and it is. They moved away from that, said they moved away from it, but people still bring it up, like it’s some kind of current game direction.
Let it go.
Anyone who claims they aren’t aware that doing the abnormal amount of damage using one particular skill isn’t a bug/exploit is full of it. Yes I am shocked they have neither fixed or acknowledged such a ridiculous bug.
Nah, most people who play the game are literally clueless. They walk around killing stuff. They don’t think about efficiency. They don’t think about tactics. Some of them have never been to the traits page.
The people who come here, are definitely aware. But there are people in my guild who just log in, kill some stuff and log off. And they really don’t know.
I’d rather compare it to Guild Wars Factions: small ‘in dept’ content (meaning closed gates which you had to play open). HoT is also small, and from an article in a Belgium magazine I understand that you also have to unlock content by doing special actions (jumping and fractal alike puzzels). I skipped Factions and was delighted with Nightfall. Sincerely hope that the next expansion will be like Nightfall (meaning a huge map and lots of fighting content).
I think you’re judging it too early. There’s still more detail to come, particularly in the challenging content area. Not to mention how many zones we get, and how big they are. But we do know there is new AI and new technology being employed, that might very well make for some very challenging fights.
I’m not trying to convince you to change your mind, I’m just saying keep it open for when that info is revealed.
It’s only for characters while leveling and in a few levels, you can unlock what you want. It’s an inconvenience at best.
Anet could have written the code to make those points refundable, except they’re not refundable in any other part of the game, as when you buy skills. You can’t unbuy them. New characters don’t have this problem. 80s, don’t have this problem. Characters under 20 aren’t really affected by this, because as they level and do hero challenges they unlock what they want anyway.
So if you fall into the category of people who are affected, it’s a transitional change which would have cost more dev time than it was worth…particularly when you consider that once you level those characters, no new characters will ever been in that shape again.
Didn’t work because the games were kittenty, lacked quality, or basic business ethics when being run.
Wildstar had horrid optimization to point of being unplayable for many at launch despite having reasonably specced machines.
ESO was an abomination at launch, angry joe’s review says it all.
SWTOR didn’t provide enough new content for P2P standard for what i heard.Any model with cash shop at front, suffers from basic contradiction – do developers focus their powers on cash shop stuff, or the actual game. And even once that reaches a healthy balance there’s still the questions how much content goes into the game and how many gets gated with $$ in cash shop. This is empoverishing the game, and opening a door for many abusive practices.
With P2P deal is simple. You pay, every month. But you know what you pay for – a full game, with no parts cut out due to monetizing policy. Least in 95% of game’s content, assuming real life is not that pretty. If they fail to uhold that rule and quality service you walk, and they drop into the real of F2P.
Pay 2 Play is a screaming seal of quality if a game survives over 2 years on that model. That or really really rabid fanbase. And as much as like Final Fantasy, i’m no rabid fanboy to overlook shady dealings when i see them.
I don’t overlook shady dealings either. But for my playstyle, Final Fantasy sucks and you can’t discount the popularity of the series, even if you say it has no affect. I believe it does. STWoR has Star Wars and Bioware behind it, and it still couldn’t maintain it. In order for a P2P game to come out NOW, it would have to be able to compete contentwise with WoW and FF. I’m not seeing. it. MMOs take too long to produce, so older ones have advantage over newer ones.
I play it just fine, though it is a very different game, that lacks where GW2 thrives, and thrives where GW2 lacks.
But this isn’t about one game vs another, this is about one payment model vs another. P2P is in many ways superior to B2P if it is done honestly (like FF XiV and not like SWTOR).
Devs get steady stream of revenue, players get quality service, frequent content drops and no cool stuff getting locked behind cash shop paywall.
If devs/publishers try to breach that model, they take a nose dive and go bankrupt, because if you introduce cash shop and start milking it in a P2P then there’s no reason to just grab a F2P or B2P games that have that too.Failure to understand that you need quality game, with quality service, and be wary of cash shops is the reason so many P2P took a hard nose dive. It had nothing to do with payment model being bad, it had everything to do with their failure to understand how it works.
P2P hasn’t worked in game, after game after game., particularly here in the west. It may well work well in the East however. Saying it’s better doesn’t make it better. I’ve never liked any of the pay to play games, so I don’t know how it makes games better.