Guild Wars 2

There’s stuff to complain about in all games, including this one. Forums for most MMOs are overwhelmingly negative because people often don’t see the big picture.

If you nerf a build to a particular profession even if everyone saw it coming a mile away, and even if it’s the right thing to do, people of that profession will complain. Not all the people, but those that complain will complain loudly.

There are certain changes to the game that didn’t work and are being changed again in the near future. But this isn’t particularly uncommon with MMOs either. If you keep putting more stuff in the game and trying stuff, some people are going to be disenfranchised.

I play this game a lot. I enjoy the game a lot. I have over 200 people in my guild. over a hundred of which log in every week, and most of us, the vast majority of us, are having a great time.

Forums are forums. They’re not reality.

New things often seem more fun. We’ve been playing with the same basics specs and weapons for 2.5 years. Of course the new stuff will intrigue.

What often ends up happening is that everyone will play new stuff…the revenant, elite specializations, etc and then gradually some will swing back, each for his own reasons.

New is fun. But some people don’t love change, some will go back for nostalgia, some will not like the new stuff, some will find it too hard to time to get the best effect.

I play a lot of builds as more fire and forget builds due to latency in Australia. I’m not sure how effective I’d be as a Chronomancer, but it looks like a lot of fun on paper.

GuzziHero.2467:

But can you imagine a group of catholic cardinals saying “Just popping down to VC to chill with the guy guy”.

It just sounds a little casual when the Reach is the last bastion of Kryta’s civilisation. I don’t find it an issue but I can see the point he is making.

The reach is the last bastion of Kryta’s civilization, but to people that live there, it’s not what they’d think about. There’s always a small percentage of people that are politically aware and a bunch of people that are just born and live. Not everyone takes a long view of history.

Do you have any idea how many people who live in NYC have never been to the Statue of Liberty? They don’t think about NY as being the melting pot, or the gateway to America, they think about the fact that rents are too high and they work too many hours.

Most people who live in most places take those places for granted.

McNinja.5417:

Reverence.6915:

There’s absolutely 0 grind in this game. People confuse farming with grinding. I’ll probably keep repeating that across multiple threads until people get that into their heads

Farming is grinding.

Saying something is so doesn’t make it so. At least in the past, the two had quite different definitions.

But at least in Guild Wars 2 there are ways to farm without doing something repetitive. For example, doing the world boss train and running dungeons will give you gold. You can call it grinding for gold, but you’re actually always doing something different. The fire elemental isn’t anything like the Claw of Jormag or Tequatl.

Karma is something you farm, because you get it from doing everything. Again, you may not acknowledge that difference, but it doesn’t mean that difference doesn’t exist.

People have come to use the words interchangeably but they originally meant different things.

53 here, and both my wife and I play. At least 2 people in my guild are over 60.

I did the PvP reward track to get mine, and ended up getting the medium armor one when I should have gotten the heavy armor. lol

I like the new system as outlined. Of course, until I play it, I’m just guessing.

A lot of people seem to forget that we always had level gating for some things, and that many of the things people claim to be level gated really aren’t.

For example, weapon swapping used to unlock at level 7. It unlocks at a higher level now but it was always gated.

However, most people who complain about this, also neglect the fact that leveling is a lot faster now from levels 1-15. According to Anet things unlock about when they used to time wise, not level wise.

The trait system is absolutely a shambles and Anet knows it, but it’s changing. The rest of the NPE isn’t really that bad.

And it’s only your first character for some of those changes. For example, after you level one character through the NPE, on the second character, a lot of things are already unlocked like skill point challenges.

You can do them from level 2, once you’ve unlocked them on your first character.

People who think the Silverwastes and Dry Top are about zerging understand neither map. You CAN zerg on both of them, but you certainly don’t “win” the map by doing it that way.

Try to get to Tier 6 in Dry Top by zerging, see how that goes for you.

FunnyBunny.3782:

Vayne.8563:

PistolWhip.2697:

Vayne.8563:

Computer gaming is still steadily on the decline even with steam. It’s irrelevant what people say.
.

I am surprised by this genuinely. Never than in this year and the year before have I had people in my environment and in the communities I follow online turn to heavily into building their own gaming PC’s for the first time and gaming on PCs…

Not saying it is wrong, but it goes completely against everything I have experienced personally which is mind blowing.

This is one article:

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/goinglopsided/the-decline-in-pc-gaming-202762.phtml

Have you noticed how so many “PC” games now come out optimized for controllers instead of keyboards.

I know before Skyrim launched they expected to get most of their sales, the vast majority, from console sales.

I know that at least one game has gotten in trouble by limiting the graphic expansion on the PC, to keep in in line with console versions.

Consoles are generally cheaper than PCs, but more importantly they’re mindless. You don’t have to decide what video card you want. And most people are mentally lazy.

Consoles have taken a lot of gamers away from PCs.

So controllers for PC’s mean that the amount of people playing computer games is… declining? I don’t see the logic in this at all. If anything it’s they way how people are playing computer games overall. If I’ve missed something please inform me as it would be beneficial to my understanding in this argument.

Even if it was the case, I’d totally be fine with loosing these “mindless” people to consoles. Less morons to worry about on the internet if you ask me chuckles

Controllers for PCs automatically means dumbing down of games. It’s much harder to play something like Guild Wars 2 on a controller, because we have more commands than can comfortably fit on a controller, which means that new games optimized for consoles lowers the quality of PC games.

More to the point, there was more to the article than just stuff being used on controllers. There’s companies telling us more of their game sales are on consoles and that they only expect that to increase.

It actually goes in cycles. As the end of a console hardware cycle gets close, some people will start moving toward computers short term, because those people will be playing much better games…until the new consoles come out and gradually it shifts back.

But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to people about Guild Wars 2 and they ask if it’s out on console.

It’s all very nice to say who cares about people who won’t play computer games. We’ll all care when less and less people start making them or optimizing them for computers, which is already happening.

PistolWhip.2697:

Vayne.8563:

Computer gaming is still steadily on the decline even with steam. It’s irrelevant what people say.
.

I am surprised by this genuinely. Never than in this year and the year before have I had people in my environment and in the communities I follow online turn to heavily into building their own gaming PC’s for the first time and gaming on PCs…

Not saying it is wrong, but it goes completely against everything I have experienced personally which is mind blowing.

This is one article:

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/goinglopsided/the-decline-in-pc-gaming-202762.phtml

Have you noticed how so many “PC” games now come out optimized for controllers instead of keyboards.

I know before Skyrim launched they expected to get most of their sales, the vast majority, from console sales.

I know that at least one game has gotten in trouble by limiting the graphic expansion on the PC, to keep in in line with console versions.

Consoles are generally cheaper than PCs, but more importantly they’re mindless. You don’t have to decide what video card you want. And most people are mentally lazy.

Consoles have taken a lot of gamers away from PCs.

Edit: I should mention steadily on the decline doesn’t mean a steep decline. PC gaming has gradually been losing people for a long long time. The only thing that’s boyed it up is Facebook games, which a lot of people play, but it’s hard to think of that as computer games.

The biggest growing industry is actually cell phone games now. That bubble has to burst at some point soon too.

Steam is like big brother. Everything in one place. Everything tracked. Everything regulated and they get a cut of everything.

It is true they’ve made more game sales, but at the expense of game companies. People still say computer gaming is dead, and steam shows that’s it not, but it’s never been dead. Computer gaming is still steadily on the decline even with steam. It’s irrelevant what people say.

You can think steam is the best thing to happen to PC gaming because it’s popular, just like you can think that WOW is the best thing to happen to MMOs because it’s popular.

I think steam has changed the direction of PC gaming and I’m not sure it’s for the better.

xarallei.4279:

This system just doesn’t feel alt friendly at all. Which is very surprising considering the direction that HoT has been taking with making things alt friendly (such as the way masteries will work). Anet, PLEASE take alts into consideration when you think about how you want this system to work. I do not want to be running around on every single character doing hero challenges over and over again for skills I already unlocked.

Not sure how it’s not alt friendly. Assuming you’re leveling your alts to 80 (and if you’re not going into higher level zones not sure why you need traits anyway), you’ll get most of the hero points you need just from that. You can fill in what you want by doing skill point challenges, now call hero point challenges.

Are you saying going and getting some skill points is a big deal.

And if you’re only PvPing it’s all unlocked anyway so in theory the only people for whom it wouldn’t be alt friendly are WvWer’s who don’t PvE at all.

I get that it’s annoying that we kept getting left out of things, but it’s not really the fault of companies that that happens, as frustrating as it is.

The complexity of our laws, the cost of doing business, even the distance from things always seems to work against us.

On the upside, we have a better medical system and a higher minimum wage. lol

Knighthonor.4061:

Nike.2631:

Knighthonor.4061:

Can somebody clearly explain how they work?

I am confused right now and trying to find some good answers and info.

I’m not sure how far back towards the basics we need to go, but basically they’ve renamed the existing trait lines “specializations”.

Now when you’re 80th level instead of having 14 points to distribute among the 5 lines you will choose 3 of the five and they all are automatically maxed out (as if you had spent 6 points in that line under the current system).

Instead of having 6 adept traits, 6 master traits, and 3 grand master traits there will be 3 at each tier. You also will no longer be able to put lower tier traits in a higher tier slot — you will always have 1 adept, 1 master, and 1 grandmaster trait for your specialization.

A lot of the missing traits have been folded into other traits to make stronger/more desirable options. Some effects have been moved to other lines. Some have been moved down in tier. The goal being to preserve styles while reducing the number of bad/ineffective combinations.

What we’ve being thinking of as sub-classes/specializations up to this point is now called “Elite Specializations”. Each class will have 1 at launch and its another specialization that can only be put in the third slot, unlocks a new weapon, a new heal, a new elite, and 4 new utility skills. The Revenant elite specialization unlocks only 3 utilities because of the way legends are structured.

Hope this helps.

Sounds like we get less options now..

also does Revenant get a new legend with their elite specialization?

Also what about all that talk about mechanics of classes changing with the specialization? Was that scrapped?

I don’t know if it’s less options. We certainly get to use more traits at the same time with the new system. Including an extra grandmaster trait.

I’d say we’d have to play it to see if there are less options.

OP keep in mind, while it’s not true in EotM so much, in WvW some people follow the zerg and some people go out in small havoc groups to help their side.

Havoc groups present a completely different and more challenging experience than running around with a zerg. It’s certainly my preference most of the time.

This game has a lot of things you can do that make the game harder and therefore more challenging. There are people for example who solo dungeons and that’s their end game.

Running with a zerg is a choice. Running around solo or with a small group is end game to me.

One of the major complaints about this game is that you don’t have the feeling of progression after max level. Anet set about to fix it.

I’m not so sure there was a good way to do it without changing core systems. But I’ve seen lots of major changes in MMOs over the years and they’ve someitmes been quite good. Sometimes bad too.

I’m not so worried about relearning the game if the game ends up better than it was.

I think the OP is laboring under the assumption that you need to switch armor for a fight because it might take 30 seconds longer if you don’t.

The min/maxers and speedrunners will be affected by these changes. Pretty sure they represent a very small percentage of the population. I think most people don’t carry around multiple sets of armor now, and they won’t in the future either.

I never once, ever, chose a trait line based on stat points. They were just there. I chose trait lines based on the traits they offered.

Sometimes this meant getting stats I neither needed nor wanted. The right thing to do was to separate the traits from stats.

That said, for min maxers it’s going to be tough. For guys like me, not so much. I don’t think I have to squeeze every point out of a stat to be successful in this game. It’s still more about technique than stats.

Quote please? I don’t remember Anet ever saying that and I follow this game pretty closely.

I should also mention the new trait system is going to be changed, but we’re not sure how yet. The trait system, by far, is my least favorite of all the updates to the game. It’s going to go but no one can tell you what will replace it.

There have been a ton of positive additions to the game to, including an account wallet for most currencies, a wardrobe which makes it easier to get the right look for your character, dyes have become account bound, and the camera has new view options including a POV slider.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

This would be far far ;more of an issue if there weren’t a daily cap for achievement points. Let’s say in the course of three years you get this a dozen times. It means it’ll take a dozen extra dailies at some point to MAX OUT your dailies anyway.

There’s no real reason to assume you NEED to do dailies every day since at some point they’ll stop counting anyway.

There are also PvP rooms set up for people who don’t like to PvP to get dailies fast WITHOUT PVPING.

That is to say the players in those rooms cooperate instead of compete so everyone gets the daily. It’s faster to do that for a single daily or even two than to do even the simplest fractal on the lowest level.

You may not enjoy doing it, but if you’re that uptight about getting those ten achievement points immediately there is another option.

Well actually, it currently occurs once every 10 days, so in 3 years that about 109 extra days to max out the dailies, not a dozen, for those unwilling to step outside general PvE. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily/Table

Okay so in that case it will take you an extra few months to max it out.

if you’re no longer playing it won’t matter and if you aren’t playing you’ll have it. It’s not like those points are going to do anything except get you to goals faster. It’s all long term goals anyway.

How many of those days during the ten is there not a big spender, btw, because you can do that without PvPing at all?

How many people that are in this situation weren’t a good way into the daily cap before the dailies changed?

What you’re really saying is that you don’t like the daily selection in PvE, you refuse to do any PvP daily even though it’s faster and easier, and that you will eventually catch up but that’s not good enough for you.

Okay, I can see that.

I don’t love PvP either, but I get between 1 and 2 PvP dailies almost every day without PvPing. It’s faster than the PvE daily, just about always.

It would be different if there were no cap but there is one.

I’m not saying all that about myself as I do go outside the PvE dailies (not fractals though). However there it seems there are a fair number of people who have an almost visceral dislike of anything that has the slightest touch of PvP to it, including the WvW big spender. If it means that much to them, then maybe the system shouldn’t be set up so they have to chose between not getting the daily achieve points or doing something that is so distasteful to them. All the game has to do is remove the double fractal daily to make them happy.

I disagree with the big spender thing, since you literally don’t have to PvP to get it. There are always going to be complaints in every game. Companies have to decide which complaints are reasonable.

With big spender,. since zero PvP is required, you can literally do it without risking having to PvP at all, I don’t see the problem. If someone is so stuck on the words PvP that they can’t go buy an item to get their daily, I’m thinking the issue is theirs.

I didn’t bother bringing up days when there’s daily ruins for example because in that case you might have to PvP. For big spender you do not.

You’re being logical. The problem is that the reasons behind their refusal is emotions. Trying to argue with logical reasons against another person’s emotional reasons means that the argument quickly becomes circular because neither of you is hearing the other side. You can discuss the PvE version of the PvP daily or how the big spender isn’t WvW, but if they can’t “hear” your logic because of their emotions then logical arguments are a waste of time.

People who are arguing that it’s impossible to do the daily on the double fractal days are telling you that their emotions are not letting them do it.

And I’m asking if they don’t do it, what’s the actual penalty? What are they really missing out on?

All I can see is that it will take them longer to reach the cap. They’ll still reach it if they keep playing. Once they reach it it truly becomes a non issue.

It’s simply a long term goal becoming a slightly longer long term goal.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

I know people left Guild Wars 1 when Ursan was nerfed even though Ursan desperately needed to be nerfed. That was a much bigger change for those people than this one is.

Oh, please, let’s not act as if that double fractal daily is something as important to the game as game balance (or that keeping it is important at all). For some reason i get the feeling that you are defending it now just for defending’s sake, not because you think it’s worth defending. Again, by the way – you seem to do that a lot.

I’m not implying it’s important to the game, you’re reading what I wrote wrong. I’m saying a non issue is a nonissue even if some people think it’s an issue.

I don’t know how much work would be involved in changing this, and I’m not sure it’s worth changing. I think anyone who would have left over it has already left.

But you still haven’t answered my question. If you refuse, adamantly refuse to do ANY dailies other than PvE, what are you actually losing by skipping the day this comes up?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

This would be far far ;more of an issue if there weren’t a daily cap for achievement points. Let’s say in the course of three years you get this a dozen times. It means it’ll take a dozen extra dailies at some point to MAX OUT your dailies anyway.

There’s no real reason to assume you NEED to do dailies every day since at some point they’ll stop counting anyway.

There are also PvP rooms set up for people who don’t like to PvP to get dailies fast WITHOUT PVPING.

That is to say the players in those rooms cooperate instead of compete so everyone gets the daily. It’s faster to do that for a single daily or even two than to do even the simplest fractal on the lowest level.

You may not enjoy doing it, but if you’re that uptight about getting those ten achievement points immediately there is another option.

Well actually, it currently occurs once every 10 days, so in 3 years that about 109 extra days to max out the dailies, not a dozen, for those unwilling to step outside general PvE. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily/Table

Okay so in that case it will take you an extra few months to max it out.

if you’re no longer playing it won’t matter and if you aren’t playing you’ll have it. It’s not like those points are going to do anything except get you to goals faster. It’s all long term goals anyway.

How many of those days during the ten is there not a big spender, btw, because you can do that without PvPing at all?

How many people that are in this situation weren’t a good way into the daily cap before the dailies changed?

What you’re really saying is that you don’t like the daily selection in PvE, you refuse to do any PvP daily even though it’s faster and easier, and that you will eventually catch up but that’s not good enough for you.

Okay, I can see that.

I don’t love PvP either, but I get between 1 and 2 PvP dailies almost every day without PvPing. It’s faster than the PvE daily, just about always.

It would be different if there were no cap but there is one.

I’m not saying all that about myself as I do go outside the PvE dailies (not fractals though). However there it seems there are a fair number of people who have an almost visceral dislike of anything that has the slightest touch of PvP to it, including the WvW big spender. If it means that much to them, then maybe the system shouldn’t be set up so they have to chose between not getting the daily achieve points or doing something that is so distasteful to them. All the game has to do is remove the double fractal daily to make them happy.

I disagree with the big spender thing, since you literally don’t have to PvP to get it. There are always going to be complaints in every game. Companies have to decide which complaints are reasonable.

With big spender,. since zero PvP is required, you can literally do it without risking having to PvP at all, I don’t see the problem. If someone is so stuck on the words PvP that they can’t go buy an item to get their daily, I’m thinking the issue is theirs.

I didn’t bother bringing up days when there’s daily ruins for example because in that case you might have to PvP. For big spender you do not.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

It only really matters in your head.

So, it matters where it matters the most.

Not from my point of view.

Within the context of this came you’re denied nothing. You’ll simply get to a reward more slowly. You’ll eventually end up with the same reward.

Unless it will end up being one of the “minor”, annoyances that end up in me stopping enjoying this game. And there are a lot of those in the daily system alone already.

Also, to me it seems it is an annoyance for annoyance’s sake – there’s nor eason why it couldn’t be fixed overnight by Anet, if they actually paid attention for once.

People stop enjoying the game for all sorts of reasons, not just this game, but every game. At some point I’ve stopped enjoying every MMO I’ve ever been in. Every MMO has myriad annoyances. I’ve never met an exception.

I’m pretty sure most changes to MMOs cause people to leave the MMO. It happens all the time. People get stuff in their head that becomes to them a hot button topic and depending on how many people are affected, it may or may not be a big deal.

I know people left Guild Wars 1 when Ursan was nerfed even though Ursan desperately needed to be nerfed. That was a much bigger change for those people than this one is.

I’m pretty sure most people who were going to leave the game over this have already left. I’m pretty sure anyone can jump into one of the PvP daily rooms, not PvP and still get their daily faster than doing four events in ANY zone.

Yes there will be people who refuse to do that. But what are those people being denied? That’s the real question here.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

It only really matters in your head.

So, it matters where it matters the most.

Not from my point of view.

Within the context of this came you’re denied nothing. You’ll simply get to a reward more slowly. You’ll eventually end up with the same reward.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

This would be far far ;more of an issue if there weren’t a daily cap for achievement points. Let’s say in the course of three years you get this a dozen times. It means it’ll take a dozen extra dailies at some point to MAX OUT your dailies anyway.

There’s no real reason to assume you NEED to do dailies every day since at some point they’ll stop counting anyway.

There are also PvP rooms set up for people who don’t like to PvP to get dailies fast WITHOUT PVPING.

That is to say the players in those rooms cooperate instead of compete so everyone gets the daily. It’s faster to do that for a single daily or even two than to do even the simplest fractal on the lowest level.

You may not enjoy doing it, but if you’re that uptight about getting those ten achievement points immediately there is another option.

Well actually, it currently occurs once every 10 days, so in 3 years that about 109 extra days to max out the dailies, not a dozen, for those unwilling to step outside general PvE. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Daily/Table

Okay so in that case it will take you an extra few months to max it out.

if you’re no longer playing it won’t matter and if you aren’t playing you’ll have it. It’s not like those points are going to do anything except get you to goals faster. It’s all long term goals anyway.

How many of those days during the ten is there not a big spender, btw, because you can do that without PvPing at all?

How many people that are in this situation weren’t a good way into the daily cap before the dailies changed?

What you’re really saying is that you don’t like the daily selection in PvE, you refuse to do any PvP daily even though it’s faster and easier, and that you will eventually catch up but that’s not good enough for you.

Okay, I can see that.

I don’t love PvP either, but I get between 1 and 2 PvP dailies almost every day without PvPing. It’s faster than the PvE daily, just about always.

It would be different if there were no cap but there is one.

Coldtart.4785:

Vayne.8563:

This would be far far ;more of an issue if there weren’t a daily cap for achievement points. Let’s say in the course of three years you get this a dozen times. It means it’ll take a dozen extra dailies at some point to MAX OUT your dailies anyway.

There’s no real reason to assume you NEED to do dailies every day since at some point they’ll stop counting anyway.

There are also PvP rooms set up for people who don’t like to PvP to get dailies fast WITHOUT PVPING.

That is to say the players in those rooms cooperate instead of compete so everyone gets the daily. It’s faster to do that for a single daily or even two than to do even the simplest fractal on the lowest level.

You may not enjoy doing it, but if you’re that uptight about getting those ten achievement points immediately there is another option.

So I have to choose between making progress or having fun? Why should I have to make that choice?

This is a game. Having fun is literally the only thing that matters. If a system requires me to choose between progress or fun, that system is bad.

My point is that’s always the choice. You always have had that choice even in the old days.

In fact, with the old dailies, doing five dailies a day you’d only have five points a day. Even skipping days you get points faster this way.

In other words, eventually it won’t matter. It only really matters in your head.

This would be far far ;more of an issue if there weren’t a daily cap for achievement points. Let’s say in the course of three years you get this a dozen times. It means it’ll take a dozen extra dailies at some point to MAX OUT your dailies anyway.

There’s no real reason to assume you NEED to do dailies every day since at some point they’ll stop counting anyway.

There are also PvP rooms set up for people who don’t like to PvP to get dailies fast WITHOUT PVPING.

That is to say the players in those rooms cooperate instead of compete so everyone gets the daily. It’s faster to do that for a single daily or even two than to do even the simplest fractal on the lowest level.

You may not enjoy doing it, but if you’re that uptight about getting those ten achievement points immediately there is another option.

I don’t really get these kinds of posts. People talk about hype like it’s some sort of good thing. It’s not. The only thing that really matters is if the game is fun when the expansion drops. Prior to it dropping whether there is hype or not is largely irrelevant.

People want to be kept in a constant state of excitement and it’s not reasonable.

Orochimaru.4730:

Yes, but look at how much content they do get when an expansion is released!

Also the monthly sub also allows improving the game, servers etc.

Of course I would not recommend a sub structure now, many would not pay especially due to the anet’s history with this game.

A good game makes people play more, and spend more, even if it is free to play.
GW2 is more of a mediocre game, anet have not improved it much, taking forever to release fixes, ignoring a third of the game and player-base.

Basically you get what you pay for, and you are paid for what you give. If anet want more revenue, they need to do better, listen to the community and be more productive with better content which most do not find boring.

But they charge you for the expansion as well as the $15 a month. By the time that expansion comes around, you’ve paid $200 for it. That’s at least a year at $15 a month and $50ish for the expansion.

And then you say look at how much comes out. Really, how much?

Because I know people that played the new expansion for WoW for 2-3 months and they were done with it.

Ashendale.2165:

Paul.4081:

Just made a new Charr to experience the game again with FoV max and a bit of 1st person.

My Opinion after 5 minutes. Mind numbingly dull. No unlocking skills, nothing, just 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1,1 afk, just a why am I playing this feeling

Anet, when you do free and reduction weekends do you honestly think new players will rejoice at this mundanity?

NPE is an example of how the proud can’t admit they are wrong.

They’re too busy giving off shows that state, mostly, redundant and vague information. It’s almost as if they gave up on the game to make a different one, that they don’t even bother to try and answer these concerns and pleas.

GW2 status: abandoned.

I don’t know, most people who play MMOs are probably used to have one skill for the first five minutes of the game. What are the other popular MMOs right now? They seem to do it.

Sure it’s not what the game was at launch, I agree with that, but it is the big deal people are making it out to be.

The trait system thing did a lot more damage to the game than the NPE ever did.

What it will come down to is people playing ESO long enough to see the flaws, which are bound to still be there, albeit different flaws than launch.

People here who are saying ESO is refreshing, many of them anyway, are in the new game honeymoon phase, which passes eventually.

I’m sure it is a nice diversion though. I’ll wait for it to be cheap before I get it myself however.

@Devata

And yet I still liked Season 1 of the Living Story much more than I like Season 2 and I’d have preferred to remain with the temporary content. With an ever changing world that moves forward. With something to look forward to that’s different.

That was taken away with the removal of the Living Story Season 1. I still maintain that that was better and I’m surely not the only person who thinks Season 1 was more fun. Others have posted the same.

Anet has apparently decided that more people wanted repeatable permanent content over temporary ever changing content, and I’ve had to accept that that was their decision because I’m not the only one playing the game. If enough of the game changes to where I don’t like it, I’ll leave.

The point is, the game is successful as it is now and there’s no real guarantee the changes suggested will make it more successful, even if you’d like it better. Again, it is my belief that changes to the game made where I have to do specific content over and over to get stuff (like Silverwastes) will make the game less enjoyable FOR ME.

I assume that it’ll make the game more enjoyable for you. I like the freedom of pretty much playing where I want to get stuff and I dislike having to play specific content to get specific rewards.

To each their own, I suppose, but at the end of the day, Anet is going to go where they feel the numbers are. In the case of temporary content, they made that decision. If they feel your suggestions have value I’m sure they’ll take them on board. But it probably won’t make the game better for me.

Test.8734:

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Most MMORPGs are very poor games.

I remember reading a review of a MMORPG some time ago and the reviewer saying, “All quests are of the ‘kill ten rats’ variety, but that’s just part of the genre, right?”, and I think that’s exactly why MMORPGs are so bad.

Because they are not even trying to be good.

MMORPGs cater to the lowest denominator. You can see it here – when someone complains that GW2’s story is weak, the usual reply is, “if you want a good story, go play a single player MMORPG”. When someone complains that GW2 has too much grind, the usual reply is, “if you want a game without grind, don’t play MMORPGs”, and so on. MMORPGs are bad games because MMORPG players are willing to accept bad games.

The irony is that there aren’t that many players willing to accept bad games out there. Not nearly enough to sustain all the MMORPGs that currently exist. It’s little surprise that so many have failed, that very few of them manage to keep themselves as pay-to-play, and that the MMORPG fad – when every single developer claimed to be working on one – has passed.

I think they’re a lost cause by now. The current generation of MMORPG players is happy to swim in the cesspool we currently have. Only when they’re gone, AND players demand good content from MMORPG developers, AND the genre isn’t seen as intrinsically subpar when compared to other games, is that MMORPGs may become something good.

So what you’re solution to a game people expect to spend thousands of hours in that has no grind? I’m truly curious.

You make the erroneous assumption that people accept grind because they’re settling. But since no one has created a game I can spend thousands of hours in without any kind of grind, I don’t see an alternative.

That’s not really called settling. That’s called being pragmatic.

Locuz.2651:

Devildoc.6721:

Tera had great combat (great art too but aside from that nothing was great about it), never played Blade and Soul.. Wildstar…

from what I remember about it every attack was like a 90 degree frontal cone with range. I don’t think it deserves to be mentioned in the company you mentioned it with. Nothing was great about Wildstar except its pre launch viral marketing. I call it Viralstar for that reason.

ESO’s aiming is not a perfect recreation of the single player TPS/FPS combat, but I still prefer it over sticky targetting.

Wildstars dungeon mechanics where actually miles ahead of the dungeons in GW2. Proper difficulty aswell.

Rest of the game was mediocre tho. But so is GW2.

Depends on what you like. I don’t think dungeon mechanics being ahead would make a game any less or more mediocre for some of us. And I think the number of people who play MMOs focused on instances is smaller than many think. I can’t prove it, but I truly believe it.

rotten.9753:

Morfedel.4165:

I’m sorry, what gw1 expansion had ANY dungeons? 18?! please.

The only expansion gw1 had had 18 dungeons.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dungeons

It was an example, not an all inclusive list. Many people DO find the content engaging. Just because YOU don’t doesnt mean your experience matches that of others.

Depends how you define engaging content. For people that want instanced content, vinewrath (and probably every other open world boss) doesn’t cut it.

But that’s sort of the discussion. What percentage of people want instanced content? What percentage of people just solo and never want to group? What percentage of people don’t care one way or another (such as me).

It’s an interesting question.

Over all I prefer open world content to instanced content, but I don’t particularly mind instanced content and wouldn’t be against it being added.

The only real question here is how many people feel that instanced content is the whole game (there are definitely some) and how many people think that the game requires instant content to be successful.

I still think we’ll see more forward momentum on fractals than any new dungeon.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

In the end, what is most important about the grind discussion is that if people experience grind, that will likely be one of the biggest reasons to start disliking a game, making people feel bored by a game.

Grind might be a good way to keep people busy for a while when you would have a lack of content but eventually people will simply get burned out or bored by the game. Then you can make a beautiful world, come with a lot of great QoL improvements, have an ongoing story, be very innovative, fix huge issues like temporary content, have great animations, have a great movement system and have a lot of potential. (All things than you could apply to GW2).

When you end up with a game that many people consider boring (because of grind) people will not like is and walk away from the game. That is the main problem of the grind and is also why Anet should do something about it.

Except for those people who claim to like to grind.

True, those will stay, they will have no problem with GW2. Luckily they would also not have a problem when you make the game so there is a direct (no or less grindy way) but also have the current grind way as an option.

The big question is how big is the other group and I think they are big enough for a game-company to want to have them as part of their player-base.

In fact I think it´s one of the biggest groups. You really think a game like WoW is popular because of all the people who like to do the highest level raids (that where the grind is in WoW)? I think that is only a very small group of the total player-base.

This is faulty logic.

You make a logical leap here with no evidence.

I agree that hard core raiders make up a small percentage of WoW’s playerbase. But I don’t agree the reason is because they like to grind and no one else did.

In fact, my experience is the opposite. I know a lot of people who love to grind that don’t want hard content. They want to wander around the world and gather stuff, kill a bunch of creatures and have a good time. They like to grind.

My wife likes to grind. It relaxes her. She gets into a rhythm and just does what she has to, whatever it is. And though she has raided in other games, she didn’t raid to grind. The grind she likes it repetitive thoughtless stuff that lets her zone out and relax.

I can assure you she’s not alone.

I just said that those high level raids is what is considered the grind in that game. It’s true there are also other people grinding in WoW but your missing the point that a lot of people are there and playing the game without grinding. It’s not so much false logic as it was leaving out parts that seemed irrelevant. Anyway, yes there are more people grinding then only those doing those raids but the point was and stays that many people play who do not do it to grind. And no, it;s again something we do not have numbers for.

Right, we don’t know how many people grind or don’t grind. No one knows. So the whole argument that a lot of people are or aren’t going to leave because of grind or perceived grind (the same thing for all practical purposes), nor do we know how many people might leave if things were changed the way you want them. We don’t know. There’s no way to know.

You have a theory that what you want will be better. My theory is that there’s never going to be a good balance, because no matter what you do, a percentage of the fan base will be dissatisfied. It’s always a lose/lose situation.

Also without having exact numbers it’s just common sense to understand it’s a big group who dislikes grind. My suggestion do not change anything for the people who already like the game so not much reason for them to leave, but it will likely be a change that might hold people who dislike the grind in GW2. So it would a win / win situation. Don’t be so negative

Ah the old common sense argument. Given the number of games that attract people sololy on grind (candy corn crush, farmville), I’d say there’s more chance people stay with a game with grind in it than a game without it. That’s common sense to me.

Unfortunately your common sense tells you I like this so there must be enough people like me. That’s not really common sense. It’s just human nature to think that way.

I know that I’m not a typical gamer and most players aren’t like me. But a large group? How large?

Basically I think that if they made the game you wanted, the way you wanted it, there’d be less players long term. I can’t prove it, but that’s what I believe.

Devildoc.6721:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Investors want to start seeing a return on their investment and so the game goes live whether the actual devs thinks its good to go or not. Every MMO company, that I have seen, starts accepting money when they know their product is not ready. GW2 was no exception.

I’m not sure you can compare the Guild Wars 2 launch with the ESO launch. There’s not being ready and there’s not being ready.

Guild Wars 2 had issues for sure, but at least the combat worked. ESO was far more deeply flawed at launch that Guild Wars 2 was and most people you ask would say that Guild Wars 2 had a relatively good launch.

The only really negative thing I remember from GW2 launch was the TP was down for the first few weeks.

Otherwise, relatively smooth.

ESO launch was a disaster, duping bugs bank wiping bugs, etc. The first impression was so bad that it poisoned people’s opinions of the game to this day.

See this thread a majority of the negative remarks are based on beta/launch experience.

There were bugs and broken events too, but the game itself was playable. Most people consider it a smooth launch, however.

DarkWasp.7291:

Check this out. Open the gem store. For the low low price of only 2000 gems, you can upgrade to digital deluxe again! It’ll fix your problem right up, and you’ll get that choice of legacy armor. You’ll also get an 18 slot bag and a bunch of boosters.

That’s right. 2000 gems for: 500 gems worth of armor, a bag that would otherwise cost maybe 2-5 gold in the trading post and some boosters.

Don’t think of it as a “Customer Loyalty Reward” think of it more as a “Customer Loyalty Test.”

It was great when it was on sale recently for 500 gems.

Ashen.2907:

I have yet to see an MMO that didn’t feel like it launched too early.

Investors want to start seeing a return on their investment and so the game goes live whether the actual devs thinks its good to go or not. Every MMO company, that I have seen, starts accepting money when they know their product is not ready. GW2 was no exception.

I’m not sure you can compare the Guild Wars 2 launch with the ESO launch. There’s not being ready and there’s not being ready.

Guild Wars 2 had issues for sure, but at least the combat worked. ESO was far more deeply flawed at launch that Guild Wars 2 was and most people you ask would say that Guild Wars 2 had a relatively good launch.

Charrbeque.8729:

Talindra.4958:

they selling the expansion, it will be part of what you pay for, they should provide 1 or two character slots . its what guild wars 1 expansion did too. that’s what I believe

A lot of people mistake GW Factions and Nightfall as expansions. It is true they gave you extra character slots, but they were full games with their own self contained story lines and did not require you to own any of the other games to play through them. You could take a character over to any of them and play through the later story lines. The early story lines for new characters created from that game were not accessible to characters created in another campaign, though you could still do the early town missions after making your way to them along with exploring the low level maps.

The only true traditional expansion to GW1 was Eye of the North which required you to own at least 1 of the full games (Prophesies, Factions, or Nightfall). If I remember right I was disappointed because EotN did not give me a free character slot.

So it’s possible Heart of Thorns won’t give us a free character slot, but since it seems to be a popular request it might just happen.

On the other hand Eye of the North didn’t come with a new profession, and if you owned previous Guild Wars 2 games, you’d get 2 extra slots for the new professions when you bought Factions or Nightfall.

Basically, if they follow suit, you should get a character slot.

The other thing is they may have different versions of the game some with and some without. It might be part of a digital collectors edition or something but not come with the base expansion.

When the game started, I had a character with my real name that looked like me in real life and I RPed myself being transported to Tyria.

It was a lot of fun.

Starting a new MMO a year or more after launch means you’re behind. Even in a game like Guild Wars 2, you’re still behind. So if they give you a single suit of the original armor that was in the cash shop at launch, 10 experience boosters and an 18 slot big, big, fat hairy deal.

What I always say to people that complain about this is this…you should get everything that comes with the new expansion…but you should give up everything you’ve earned in the interim. You send everything back and Anet should give you that stuff.

Do you think it’s a bad thing that Anet changes the package to entice more players to buy the game that haven’t bought it before…cause I don’t.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

There is no software company that will ever have the resources to fix every bug or annoyance in their products. As Behellagh says, this means they have to prioritize. The usual practice is to look at

• scope (how many affected),
• severity (how much is someone affected),
• difficulty (how easy is it to figure out what’s wrong and fix it),
• opportunity (can this be fixed with other changes or fixes), importance (how much does it matter in the grand scheme of things),
• interoperability (how much does adjusting this affect other things), and
• luck (was it noticed sooner or later, was it described well, was there sufficient data to troubleshoot, is there a test environment set up suitable for replicating/confirming fixes, …)

It’s a lot like fixing potholes: everyone wants their town to fix the ones in front of their own house, but the city has to choose which to fix first. Then, before they fix the next set, there will be new ones appearing. As a result, pretty much most people are annoyed by potholes at some point, even if the city does a great job of fixing them.

This is a great post and it’s what I’ve tried to say many times. You have a list of things to do and you have but so much time and energy to do it. The stuff you can’t get to gets put off.

When I wrote, I had a list of things to write as long as my arm. I didn’t get to finish 80% of them. I’d have liked to, but I didn’t have the time or energy. It doesn’t mean I didn’t want to or mean to. I just never got to them, because there was always some job that actually made me money that had to be done first.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

It’s very rare a game gets a second chance. I mean it has happened, but there are many MMOs that have made huge improvements after launch that people gave up on anyway.

Final Fantasy XIV was an exception but most MMOs don’t get that luxury. ESO has the console advantage, but even with that, I think for many that ship has sailed. It doesn’t really help that Archeage and Wildstar both had bad launches. I’m always going to play an MMO, but that’s not true for most people. Many people walk away from the genre.

FF14 was kind of an aberration, I’ll agree. A sub game that reinvented itself as a better-received sub game is certainly not an every year occurrence. However, that’s not what ESO has done. It’s gone B2P w/ store. Going B2P or F2p plus store has to some extent revitalized several sub MMO’s that were considered to be failing, ToR, TSW and AoC as examples. They will never be top of the heap — but that wasn’t going to happen regardless. Heck, even CO is still limping along. Now maybe these are examples of developers milking what profit they can off their investment — but that’s kind of what the entire MMO genre is these days with 1-2 exceptions.

As to GW2 as the cure to what ails one in ESO… I’ve been thinking that I might try ESO as something to do since ANet seems headed in a direction I’m not sure I want to follow — at least until the WvW meta sorts itself out over the stab changes.

No real reason not try ESO…except that for me, I can’t really play it for very long without want to tear my eyes out, but that’s just me. When the price is cheaper, I’ll buy it myself. But I suspect that the game won’t do as well as the makers think it will, even with console coming out.

Considering this is the week they’ve gone free to play there’s been a lot less going on on their reddit than I thought there’d be.

Devildoc.6721:

Vayne.8563:

ckotoc.5421:

Eso is buy to play now like gw2.

Not quite exactly like Guild Wars 2, there’s still an optional subscription.

The “subscription” is more or less an automatic purchase of cash shop currency every month. You pay $15 a month, you get $15 worth of “crowns”, and there are some perks on top of that. It’s a little different than other MMO’s with optional “freemium” subs that I’ve encountered where you pay $15, they temporarily uncripple the client (the F2P accounts are often extremely crippled), and give you $5 worth of cash shop currency per month. Here your entire subscription payment is exchanged for the value of crowns you would have purchased if you weren’t subbing but just buying crowns. It’s like if Arenanet were to add an option to automatically buy 800 gems a month for $10 a month, and then added some minor bonuses to it like 10% increased xp from kills.

Whether you subscribe or decide for yourself without subscription to spend $10, you get 800 gems, just the recurring subscription adds a bonus on top I guess.

Still, wholly unnecessary, as the game client and accounts, like GW2, are not crippled and requiring a freemium subscription to have full functionality.

The game isn’t going to be to anyone’s tastes, I hear a lot of complaints about the combat, which I like since it’s more action oriented (plays like Oblivion, with right mouse blocking left mouse attacking, holding down to power attack, and manual aim no tab targetting), and it does not play much like a standard MMO at all, so if you go in expecting an MMO like experience being able to tab target and autoattack your way through, prepare for disappointment, but the business model is fair.

I encourage more MMO’s to go B2P, as it’s honest.

B2P is a store saying “we made this product, would you like to buy it?” you buy the product, you enjoy the product free of future obligations.

Subscription is like mafia, they sell you some property, and then charge you “protection fees” every month. They might promise other things to go with the protection fees, like landscaping or other amenities, but you’re still handing them money hand over fist on a regular basis and they can decide whether or not to deliver on those “promises”

F2P is like an auto-shop/used car dealership, where they GIVE you a car for free but it breaks down in the lot, they tell you they can fix it, but it’s going to cost you, then it breaks down again a few feet down the road, they tell you they can fix it, but it’ll cost even more, so then they sell you on a “service plan” to pay money on a regular basis and fixing the car is “covered”, until you stop paying, then the car will mysteriously break down again.

But it was a sub for a year. It wasn’t ready, they knew it wasn’t ready, and they charged monthly for it. People talk about Anet making cash grabs all time, but if they ended up with half a million players paying for that time, they’ve made a whole lot of money at $15 a month, knowing they were likely to go free to play before the game launched on console anyway. I’m absolutely convinced that was the plan. And that, unfortunately, does not make me want to support that company.

You can say that you like about Anet but they were buy to play from day 1 and until the Living Story Season 2, you didn’t have to pay for content at all. I don’t know about you,. but I played a lot of the season 1 content and had a ball with some of it.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

In the end, what is most important about the grind discussion is that if people experience grind, that will likely be one of the biggest reasons to start disliking a game, making people feel bored by a game.

Grind might be a good way to keep people busy for a while when you would have a lack of content but eventually people will simply get burned out or bored by the game. Then you can make a beautiful world, come with a lot of great QoL improvements, have an ongoing story, be very innovative, fix huge issues like temporary content, have great animations, have a great movement system and have a lot of potential. (All things than you could apply to GW2).

When you end up with a game that many people consider boring (because of grind) people will not like is and walk away from the game. That is the main problem of the grind and is also why Anet should do something about it.

Except for those people who claim to like to grind.

True, those will stay, they will have no problem with GW2. Luckily they would also not have a problem when you make the game so there is a direct (no or less grindy way) but also have the current grind way as an option.

The big question is how big is the other group and I think they are big enough for a game-company to want to have them as part of their player-base.

In fact I think it´s one of the biggest groups. You really think a game like WoW is popular because of all the people who like to do the highest level raids (that where the grind is in WoW)? I think that is only a very small group of the total player-base.

This is faulty logic.

You make a logical leap here with no evidence.

I agree that hard core raiders make up a small percentage of WoW’s playerbase. But I don’t agree the reason is because they like to grind and no one else did.

In fact, my experience is the opposite. I know a lot of people who love to grind that don’t want hard content. They want to wander around the world and gather stuff, kill a bunch of creatures and have a good time. They like to grind.

My wife likes to grind. It relaxes her. She gets into a rhythm and just does what she has to, whatever it is. And though she has raided in other games, she didn’t raid to grind. The grind she likes it repetitive thoughtless stuff that lets her zone out and relax.

I can assure you she’s not alone.

I just said that those high level raids is what is considered the grind in that game. It’s true there are also other people grinding in WoW but your missing the point that a lot of people are there and playing the game without grinding. It’s not so much false logic as it was leaving out parts that seemed irrelevant. Anyway, yes there are more people grinding then only those doing those raids but the point was and stays that many people play who do not do it to grind. And no, it;s again something we do not have numbers for.

Right, we don’t know how many people grind or don’t grind. No one knows. So the whole argument that a lot of people are or aren’t going to leave because of grind or perceived grind (the same thing for all practical purposes), nor do we know how many people might leave if things were changed the way you want them. We don’t know. There’s no way to know.

You have a theory that what you want will be better. My theory is that there’s never going to be a good balance, because no matter what you do, a percentage of the fan base will be dissatisfied. It’s always a lose/lose situation.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Mirta.5029:

Ricky Da Man.5064:

More recent TES games have sold heavily on consoles, infact they make pc sales look tiny.. you cannot mod on console.

Do they count digital sales in the statistics though? Or only boxed? Because majority of PC gamers just buy digital by now.

Majority of this “PC sales statistics” are boxed copies only.

Bethesda isn’t a public company so they don’t have to (and usually don’t) share their data at all. Which means we might know what percentage of sales were retail boxed (seems to be about 14%) but we don’t know how many were bought directly from them for download.

From other games we know that 3-4 times the amount of boxes sales are often sold as downloads. How that affects the final percent, no one can tell you, except Bethesda…and they haven’t said.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Devata.6589:

In the end, what is most important about the grind discussion is that if people experience grind, that will likely be one of the biggest reasons to start disliking a game, making people feel bored by a game.

Grind might be a good way to keep people busy for a while when you would have a lack of content but eventually people will simply get burned out or bored by the game. Then you can make a beautiful world, come with a lot of great QoL improvements, have an ongoing story, be very innovative, fix huge issues like temporary content, have great animations, have a great movement system and have a lot of potential. (All things than you could apply to GW2).

When you end up with a game that many people consider boring (because of grind) people will not like is and walk away from the game. That is the main problem of the grind and is also why Anet should do something about it.

Except for those people who claim to like to grind.

True, those will stay, they will have no problem with GW2. Luckily they would also not have a problem when you make the game so there is a direct (no or less grindy way) but also have the current grind way as an option.

The big question is how big is the other group and I think they are big enough for a game-company to want to have them as part of their player-base.

In fact I think it´s one of the biggest groups. You really think a game like WoW is popular because of all the people who like to do the highest level raids (that where the grind is in WoW)? I think that is only a very small group of the total player-base.

This is faulty logic.

You make a logical leap here with no evidence.

I agree that hard core raiders make up a small percentage of WoW’s playerbase. But I don’t agree the reason is because they like to grind and no one else did.

In fact, my experience is the opposite. I know a lot of people who love to grind that don’t want hard content. They want to wander around the world and gather stuff, kill a bunch of creatures and have a good time. They like to grind.

My wife likes to grind. It relaxes her. She gets into a rhythm and just does what she has to, whatever it is. And though she has raided in other games, she didn’t raid to grind. The grind she likes it repetitive thoughtless stuff that lets her zone out and relax.

I can assure you she’s not alone.