Guild Wars 2

IndigoSundown.5419:

I feel from time to time as if my particular desires are not being catered to. I can’t for the life of say, though, that most of what is added to the game is not aimed at veteran players. The 9/9 patch contained several updates, one of which was NPE. The rest were aimed at all players. Ask for what you want all you want, but don’t use the NPE as a shame club. It’s disingenuous at best.

Pretty much what I was going to say. A big percentage of the 9/9 patch was for everyone including veteran players. That doesn’t mean you’ll like every update…but that also doesn’t mean veteran players have been ignored.

In fact, I’d say the opposite is true now that Living Story updates are level 80 content. It means most updates are for veterans. I’m sure most new players haven’t run around in Dry Top. The game has had updates predominantly for veteran players, and added one area of one update for new players and people make posts like this.

GuzziHero.2467:

I don’t really, anymore.

The way Ascended gear was implemented planned the funeral. April megafailpatch dug the hole. Anet not giving a half a kitten about our concerns made the coffin. The ridiculous, mindless changes to the storyline hammered the lid shut.

I stick around in the vain hope that there are some signs of life before they start shovelling in the soil.

Pretty strong on the hyperbole. The game still seems to have a lot of people, even if it’s not the same people, or it’s some returning people.

You don’t like the changes or the game, so Anet is burying it. The game is alive and well. There’s absolutely no evidence anyone has put forward to the contrary besides the annecdotal evidence of my friend, my guild etc.

Tachenon.5270:

Cuddy.6247:

I’d like dwarves more than anything. Of course, they’re turned to stone and the kitten pull would be of epic proportions to bring them back as a playable race, so I’ll concede that my wishes won’t come true.

If I can’t have dwarves though, maybe mursaat or kodan some day. I still expect Tengu to be first of the list but at least I can hold dreams while still maintaining a firm grip on reality.

Well, we don’t know that all dwarves everywhere were turned to stone. There might be others. Even now they might be migrating into the areas we know. Refugees, perhaps, fleeing some disaster. Or intrepid explorers, curious to see what lies beyond the horizon.

Well, according to Anet’s lore masters, we do actually know that. It may not have been posted here, but it’s definitely been said. Every single dwarf eventally took the right, and became stone.

Edit: I"m pretty sure it was on a TowerTalk audio interview, but I no longer have the link.

Corpus Christi.2057:

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Because we are all waiting for Assassin’s Creed Unity, while simultaneously waiting for Destiny to arrive on PC.

Destiny on PC – that would be the best thing ever!

Because Destiny was so well-received on console…oh wait….

First of all, I doubt Anet even tracks the repairs cost of every character, so I’m not sure how you propose they refund those characters.

The bottom line is that people who paid all those repairs, also had a year and a half of the game. People who start after that are starting from scratch and playing catch up. All the stuff I’ve accumulated in that time, they won’t have at all.

It’s good that Anet made a small change to repair costs, but I don’t think we need to be refunded past repair costs.

Sorry Drake but I feel you’re way off the mark here. If any company making any game wanted to make the game completely 100% immersive, and make the story count, it would have to be designed that way from moment one. Band aid patches two years later might improve the game slightly, but I’m still going to kill a deer and get a breastplate from it. I’m still going to be out of combat and all my wounds will magically disappear. I’m still going to see NPCs in the story die and not end up getting rezzed, when I can rezz many other NPCs. For dramatic purposes those NPCs have to be dead and stay dead.

All MMOs ever really are are games people play to do stuff. Story is an excuse to do the stuff. Story can almost always be improved. I’ve never seen an MMORPG where this wasn’t true.

The problem is, most people really don’t play these games for the story and those of us who like the story agree to suspend our disbelief. That’s how pretty much all games (and many movies and books work). If you enjoy it enough, you put your disbelief to the side and you go with it. If you’re not enjoying it, obviously you won’t do that.

I’m not saying your suggestions don’t make some kind of sense, but reprogramming every NPCs that calls out an event to track the event is an awful lot of work for a very small issue. An issue so small, I doubt many people have ever even thought about it.

Would it improve this game. Absolutely. Is it worth the time and manpower to do what you’re asking? I doubt that very much.

I’m not saying you’re wrong in what you’re saying. I’m saying your expectations for an MMORPG are probably too high.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

No, I didn’t tell you they couldn’t do that first thing, only that they didn’t want to. I can/did conceive of a solid reason they can’t, and lead off with it – “it depends on how the wardrobe would see the Town Clothes”.

The game is full of things they “could have done better if they had more time”. I honestly would rather see those things ripped out rather than just left with a promise of “we’ll get to it someday”.

No? Even if you’re right on that score, I pointed out reasons not to do that thing.

They do have not the resources. Otherwise they would’ve found a better solution than dancing in front of cows. That however doesn’t take away the fact that they destroyed something working. And while you say you want it removed rather than improved later on, I don’t buy into destroying something you can’t fix immediately.
Town clothes did work, they were fine. They hadn’t great use but they weren’t broken. They just didn’t fit into the wardrobe, so they had to go.
And your point of recognizing each class based on their armor gets undermined by ANet itself by releasing outfits.

Town clothes didn’t work, in fact. They worked for YOU. I’d never ever EVER buy a piece of towns clothing because I would never ever EVER buy a piece of clothing I could pretty much only use in a city. I don’t play games to stand around in the city.

So RPers may have liked them them but I can tell you if people were buying them in any kind of quantity they’d have kept them. Therefore they weren’t working.

If you consider offering a product most people wouldn’t touch working, there’s definitely a problem.

Again, why if it was successful would Anet have changed it. They changed it because people wanted clothes they could fight in.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Vayne.8563:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

Another example is the first-person camera. I would understand, eventhough I wouldn’t agree with them, if they would say that a first-person camera is just a minor tweak and therefore pretty far down on the to-do list.
Instead they say that they don’t want to implement the first-person camera because they want the player to be able to see their characters.
If that’s so important for ANet, why is stacking still possible?
Is that (see attachment) the intended way of keeping track of your character?

I have no problem with them making decisions I can’t agree with as long as they are honest why they’ve made them. And I don’t have the feeling that they are sometimes.

There are some flawed arguments here. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t actually claim to have 3 million active players…and it probably doesn’t. That would be a huge amount of retention from sales.

They didn’t say that they lost people just because people don’t get it. The included three reasons in the lack of early game retention. Part of it was understanding what was going on but part of it was pacing and rewards as well. It’s a flawed argument when you misquote something to try to make a point about flawed arguments.

As for asking people, you don’t ask 3 million people a question, you watch what 3 million people do (assuming there were 3 million people to ask). People don’t even always think about or realize what they do. The same small percentage of people who post on forums are the same small percentage who would answer relatively accurately. Anet knows what we want from the forums. A lot of people don’t even know what they want. A lot of people don’t think deeply about their gaming experience.

I agree with you completely on the first person camera. However, the person answering the question about it wasn’t Anet. He was a single Anet employee answering a question in an interview he wasn’t prepared to give, from a completely different department.

So yes, I’d say there’s a lot of flawed arguments here. The OP for example, is filled with them.

They said they have 3 million players. I don’t have the link but they said it on an interview with another magazine.

They said they lost 10000 players in 3 or 4 months.

They said that the “flaws” they “fixed” were identified based on a survey that got filled by those 10000 players.

I don’t have the links for all that, I don’t save those every time someone at ANet says something, sorry for that. Other than this, I can remember all of it because it did upset me and it still does.

The first-person camera is yet another example. The employee could’ve just said that he personally has no clue why it isn’t in the game because that’s not in his range of tasks. Yet he claimed otherwise. The GuildMag interview is another example of this. They just shirk from almost all questions.

Off the record: If they have to reward players to play through even the first ten levels, then the problems is way bigger than just missing rewards.

First of all…as far as I know they didn’t say the stuff you’re saying. They didn’t actually have a survey that people filled out. They had people actually testing the game and testing variations on it. That’s a big difference from a survey. I’m pretty sure I read as much about the game as most people and I never saw this quote.

How old is the magazine quote you’re referring to. If it’s very old it has nothing to do with how many players are playing when they made these choices.

And yes, the employee could have done anything, but judging the company answer on one thing one employee said out of his area of expertise is just a bit misleading. That interview they gave was in fact one they were completely unqualified to give. I’m pretty sure Anet didn’t get the questions before hand and they expected to be talking about something else completely. So they tried. It’s human. Sue him.

The stuff you don’t have links for, I suspect is old info no longer applicable, or completely misunderstood/misremembered.

If you’re going to make a post about flawed arguments, you need to factcheck first, or the post falls apart.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I notice ever so often that the ArenaNet staff uses flawed arguments.
One example are the NPE changes. They said the game losing new players becasue they don’t get it, they say they lost more than 10000 players due to this. They said that the NPE changes got developed based on a survey filled by those players.

And I’m just sitting here asking myself why they didn’t even bother to ask the 3 million players they claim to have.

Another example is the first-person camera. I would understand, eventhough I wouldn’t agree with them, if they would say that a first-person camera is just a minor tweak and therefore pretty far down on the to-do list.
Instead they say that they don’t want to implement the first-person camera because they want the player to be able to see their characters.
If that’s so important for ANet, why is stacking still possible?
Is that (see attachment) the intended way of keeping track of your character?

I have no problem with them making decisions I can’t agree with as long as they are honest why they’ve made them. And I don’t have the feeling that they are sometimes.

There are some flawed arguments here. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t actually claim to have 3 million active players…and it probably doesn’t. That would be a huge amount of retention from sales.

They didn’t say that they lost people just because people don’t get it. The included three reasons in the lack of early game retention. Part of it was understanding what was going on but part of it was pacing and rewards as well. It’s a flawed argument when you misquote something to try to make a point about flawed arguments.

As for asking people, you don’t ask 3 million people a question, you watch what 3 million people do (assuming there were 3 million people to ask). People don’t even always think about or realize what they do. The same small percentage of people who post on forums are the same small percentage who would answer relatively accurately. Anet knows what we want from the forums. A lot of people don’t even know what they want. A lot of people don’t think deeply about their gaming experience.

I agree with you completely on the first person camera. However, the person answering the question about it wasn’t Anet. He was a single Anet employee answering a question in an interview he wasn’t prepared to give, from a completely different department.

So yes, I’d say there’s a lot of flawed arguments here. The OP for example, is filled with them.

The stories aren’t going to be remembered. Not in the sense of a great book or a great movie. That’s just wishful thing. Fights will be remembered. People will likely remember the fight at the end of the current arc, for example, in the same way people remember the Marionette fight. They’re remembering the fun game, not the story.

Some people, like me, will remember the story, but it’s a focus for me.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

That’s why almost all MMOs have mediocre writing. But mediocre doesn’t mean amateur. It doesn’t mean juvenile.

The one I’ve played with the best so far has to be A Realm Reborn, but that’s because it’s basically a Final Fantasy game with MMO aspects grafted into it. And that’s usually where a lot of focus goes in FF games.

In neither case is it amateur or juvenile. That’s why I use the “writing to purpose” line. One of the first things I wrote I wrote for a very specific audience. It’s terrible if you don’t take that audience into account. It’s fine if you think about who you’re writing for.

Pretty much this. Most of my work is actually in tabletop gaming, and writing for that purpose. It makes pretty poor literature.

And my short story / novellas are an entirely different animal which I won’t begin to talk about but they are also not masterpieces by any stretch.

Because a lot of MMO people really don’t pay much attention to what you’re stating you have to overstate it, in the same way actors on stage have to overact for people to see their reactions without close ups.

Is that why “The Producers” most recently looked so fake and overblown? Oh, wait, I saw the stage play and the recentish release was basically the stage show on a smaller stage :P

But it should be said – all of this is irrelevant to people who like to see solid, good writing are going to be disappointed. There’s just too much which has flaws, and problems. GW2’s writing is not much worse (or better) than what we got the first time around in Tyria. An opinion I’ll continue to repeat on the topic of story/writing quality . . .

Along with my opinion the reason the writing is “bad” is partly because of the medium and partly because of how it was put together – in parts rather than as a whole.

People who judge writing without looking at the audience are going to be disappointed. It’s not the writing’s fault, it’s their expectations of what they want writing to be.

A lot of people who play MMOs are readers and a lot aren’t. But I’m willing to wager more aren’t than are. So if the company writes for those who aren’t (people who don’t understand subtlety and have to be hit over the head with repeated information for example, then that’s what they’re writing for.

You being disappointed won’t change the need to write that way. The point is it’s not amateur and people should stop blaming writers. Because the writing is doing exactly what it’s supposed to.

If you’re going to make a product for everyone you have to cater to the lowest common denominator, or you’re going to lose a big part of your audience. If your expectations are set higher than the LCD than you’re going to be disappointed, which is okay.

But I don’t particularly see that as being reasonable.

Sure. In a game, writing can almost always be improved. That’s because deadlines. You get a short time to write something because we need it yesterday, maybe you have other thing you’re writing that were due the day before, this is a priority. Gotta get it out and done. You write something fast that serves the purpose of the scene, because you’re writing other stuff at the same time. It’s not your story.

That’s why almost all MMOs have mediocre writing. But mediocre doesn’t mean amateur. It doesn’t mean juvenile.

Games that are written around story, like some single player games, are going to have better writing. Games where the writing is only there to further the gameplay elements are going to have worse writing.

In neither case is it amateur or juvenile. That’s why I use the “writing to purpose” line. One of the first things I wrote I wrote for a very specific audience. It’s terrible if you don’t take that audience into account. It’s fine if you think about who you’re writing for.

Because a lot of MMO people really don’t pay much attention to what you’re stating you have to overstate it, in the same way actors on stage have to overact for people to see their reactions without close ups.

Well, I’m am a profession writer and there’s such a thing as writing to purpose and there’s another thing called writing style. Both of those are being ignored in this conversation.

In the LA guard dialogue, there really isn’t anything wrong. The writing is being intentionally exaggerated as it often is in games. What the writers got is what the writers were going for.

But it’s not just being a good writer or being a bad writer. Its’ being a writer under deadline with a specific set of instructions.

No matter how good an actor is, bad direction can sink him. Until you’re written anything under time constraints with someone else calling the shots, you have no idea what it’s like.

This writing is being produced for the purpose of furthering game elements, not telling it’s own story. It would be much better if the writers were given complete freedom, which is, in this circumstance impossible.

However stilted dialogue isn’t juvenile and writing a scene that shows prejudice and job corruption isn’t juvenile.

People are writing to purpose. The writing serves the purpose for which it was created.

It’s not a novel it’s a game.

Not getting much lag here in Australia either.

NewTrain.7549:

Vayne.8563:

NewTrain.7549:

Vayne.8563:

NewTrain.7549:

Zaklex.6308:

Thanatos.2691:

NewTrain.7549:

The writing is just plain bad. It can involve me as much as I want, but if it’s written like a young adult novel, I’m still not going to be interested.

Yes. Yes. Yes. The writing feels more like fan-fiction than legitimate GW2 lore. I completely hate it.

I disagree, none of what is happening now is new, it’s actually GW history repeating itself. I can see you going ‘huh?’ right about now…well, it’s simple, this isn’t the first time the Elder Dragons have risen now, is it? Therefore what we’re experiencing is past events in a current world context. The concept is hard to understand, I know…

That response has nothing to do with the problem we’re discussing. You’re talking plot line, we’re talking writing. There’s a difference.

The writing is uneven in both games. There are some pretty good and pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 2. There are also some pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 1.

But most of us were much younger and less discerning when we played Guild Wars 1 for the first time.

I never mentioned Guild Wars 1. I was only talking about Guild Wars 2, in which the writing is overwhelmingly shallow and juvenile. I’m not sure what you bringing GW1 into the equation has to do with my post, unless you’re trying to put words into other people’s mouths yet again.

I never said you mentioned Guild Wars 1, but enough people have. In reality, this is how Anet writes. This how they wrote 10 years ago.

It’s not Shakespeare. It was never going to be Shakespeare.

It’s not all or even mostly juvenile, those it is aimed at a certain audience. Clearly you’re not that audience.

It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare. I doubt anyone is asking for Shakespeare. It does however need to be a little bit more mature than Dr. Seuss for players to feel any sense of gravitas and this is something the GW2 story repeatedly fails to achieve. You claim the writing is aimed at a certain audience. What audience is that? People who like the Twilight novels?

So how is this Dr. Seuss?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lionguard_Brenn_Hillow

Yes I posted this link higher, but apparently you ignored it. It’s definitely not Shakespeare, but it’s certainly not Dr. Seuss either.

Yoroiookami.3485:

Vayne.8563:

Giving more XP for map completion, when you consider every vista, POI and heart gives you XP already would make map completion over-rewarding.

There are people who really don’t like map completing who would feel pressured to if you made the rewards so vast.

If you don’t like it, don’t do it. If you do like it do it. That’s pretty much the way the whole game is set up.

That’s why the rewards are set the way they’re set.

If that was the case, judging by the amount of negative posts I see on these forums – no one would play the game. If I don’t like something, I will say that I don’t like it and I will ask anet to make some alternative for people like me. I think that’s fair.

If you really enjoy completing maps after you managed to complete 100% of world map, then either you’re one of those people who really enjoy repeating the same content/grinding, which I personally don’t; or you have some serious mental issues. And it would be nice to have something that would encourage me to finish these maps again. Those small rewards just don’t quite do this for me.

The number of complaints you see on this forum doesn’t necessarily represent anything except the number of the complaints on this forum. And that’s all it represents.

The game doesn’t revolve around what any one person wants. It revolves around what’s good for the game as a whole.

People want dungeons, particularly hard dungeons to be more rewarding than they are, but from experience, I know people in other games who hated raiding but ended up raiding because it was the only way to get better gear.

Making something more profitable (when it’s already profitable to many), just because it’s not profitable to a few people is a bad way to run a railroad.

The question is (and it’s always the question) is how many people feel the reward isn’t good enough. Because so far from this thread, it doesn’t look like you have a ton of support.

Giving more XP for map completion, when you consider every vista, POI and heart gives you XP already would make map completion over-rewarding.

There are people who really don’t like map completing who would feel pressured to if you made the rewards so vast.

If you don’t like it, don’t do it. If you do like it do it. That’s pretty much the way the whole game is set up.

That’s why the rewards are set the way they’re set.

Digital Midget, at least, is the name of a band.

http://www.last.fm/music/Digital+Midgets

No idea about Deranged Killer. Neither seem offensive to me.

I need scrap 2/4 as well. I’ve opened countless chests in Ascalon without every getting a map piece. The other three I got very quickly.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

And yet there are two lion guards walking around Lion’s Arch that tell a whole story in their rounds that I followed because I was fascinated by what they had to say. Seven scenes in all that talk about how the aftermath of the Lion’s Arch battles left in its wake corruption and prejudice.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lionguard_Brenn_Hillow

That’s why I say the writing is uneven.

Even better, how about the cub escort in the Plains of Ashford where you keep ghosts off them? Or the Sharkmaw jumping puzzle? Sure, they’re not drama, but come on.

If you want to talk about drama writing, how about the one event chain in the Blazeridge Steppes where Ebon Vanguard and Legionnaires get to work together taking out ogres because they are a threat?

If you just want to talk about good, period, how about the sequence of events in Lornar’s Pass starting with fishing Dwarven Artifacts out of False Lake and ending with the one battle with the Fire Imp from a cursed Summoning Stone? They crammed a lot into that sequence of events.

I think Guild Wars 2’s ambient and event dialogue, on the whole, tends to be better than story dialogue at least the stuff the game launched with.

It’s probably easier for people to ignore stuff like ambient dialogue, because you don’t need to listen to it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not in game.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

NewTrain.7549:

Vayne.8563:

NewTrain.7549:

Zaklex.6308:

Thanatos.2691:

NewTrain.7549:

The writing is just plain bad. It can involve me as much as I want, but if it’s written like a young adult novel, I’m still not going to be interested.

Yes. Yes. Yes. The writing feels more like fan-fiction than legitimate GW2 lore. I completely hate it.

I disagree, none of what is happening now is new, it’s actually GW history repeating itself. I can see you going ‘huh?’ right about now…well, it’s simple, this isn’t the first time the Elder Dragons have risen now, is it? Therefore what we’re experiencing is past events in a current world context. The concept is hard to understand, I know…

That response has nothing to do with the problem we’re discussing. You’re talking plot line, we’re talking writing. There’s a difference.

The writing is uneven in both games. There are some pretty good and pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 2. There are also some pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 1.

But most of us were much younger and less discerning when we played Guild Wars 1 for the first time.

I never mentioned Guild Wars 1. I was only talking about Guild Wars 2, in which the writing is overwhelmingly shallow and juvenile. I’m not sure what you bringing GW1 into the equation has to do with my post, unless you’re trying to put words into other people’s mouths yet again.

I agree with what you’re saying about the writing in GW2, I find it overwhelmingly cheesy where I actually see the dialogue and say “Oh come on…” For example boss fractal with the molten firestrom/bruiser and the exchange goes:
Molten Firestorm: Squeeee! We’ve got company! Hey, bruiser. You see what I see?
Molten Berserker: (ROAR)
Molten Firestorm: I’ll take that as a yippee. Let’s see how colorful a smear we can make.

Or the Mai Trin boss fractal:

Mai Trin: This has all gone to crud. Scarlet’s gonna have my noggin for screwing up.
Champion First Mate Horrik: What now, Captain? It’ll take cannonballs to get out of here alive.

Who wrote this stuff, I read both of the books and they were never this cheesy. In fact, compared to this cheese I dare say the books were actually GOOD writing.

And yet there are two lion guards walking around Lion’s Arch that tell a whole story in their rounds that I followed because I was fascinated by what they had to say. Seven scenes in all that talk about how the aftermath of the Lion’s Arch battles left in its wake corruption and prejudice.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lionguard_Brenn_Hillow

That’s why I say the writing is uneven.

VodCom.6924:

My personnal view there : some zones have a very good story tied to them.

Blazeridge, fireheart and kessex hills are very well done in this regard. However there are other horrible exambles like timberline falls where there is so much happening and I don’t know what the end goal is.

As for the personal story :
The story is all compassing, really inclusive and well designed in theory. In practice, all the subtilities and details of the fight against zaithan are poorly delivered.

[SPOILER WARNING BELOW]
Answer this question : how did anyone figured out how to build magic canons that can harm zaithan ? (I know the answer, however I think that it is poorly explained and many people miss this sort of capital plot points).

All in all, the stories are here but the delivery method is uneven.

It is something they have started to fix in LW season 2. You jump from taimi to rox in a bizarre fashion however you do not miss important details and it fits the timeline.

Spoilers:

It was explained in the Asuran story line at least to my satisfaction. It’s no worse than being able to make a teleport.

Professor Gor experimented with dragon magic. He designed a weapon to be used against dragon minions that stole their magic from them and used it again them. It absorbed their magic as the way dragons absorb magic, then redirected it back at them. I played that story so I knew how that went.

The problem is from a story telling view, there are many pieces and you don’t get to see them all.

NewTrain.7549:

Vayne.8563:

NewTrain.7549:

Zaklex.6308:

Thanatos.2691:

NewTrain.7549:

The writing is just plain bad. It can involve me as much as I want, but if it’s written like a young adult novel, I’m still not going to be interested.

Yes. Yes. Yes. The writing feels more like fan-fiction than legitimate GW2 lore. I completely hate it.

I disagree, none of what is happening now is new, it’s actually GW history repeating itself. I can see you going ‘huh?’ right about now…well, it’s simple, this isn’t the first time the Elder Dragons have risen now, is it? Therefore what we’re experiencing is past events in a current world context. The concept is hard to understand, I know…

That response has nothing to do with the problem we’re discussing. You’re talking plot line, we’re talking writing. There’s a difference.

The writing is uneven in both games. There are some pretty good and pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 2. There are also some pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 1.

But most of us were much younger and less discerning when we played Guild Wars 1 for the first time.

I never mentioned Guild Wars 1. I was only talking about Guild Wars 2, in which the writing is overwhelmingly shallow and juvenile. I’m not sure what you bringing GW1 into the equation has to do with my post, unless you’re trying to put words into other people’s mouths yet again.

I never said you mentioned Guild Wars 1, but enough people have. In reality, this is how Anet writes. This how they wrote 10 years ago.

It’s not Shakespeare. It was never going to be Shakespeare.

It’s not all or even mostly juvenile, those it is aimed at a certain audience. Clearly you’re not that audience.

Stormcrow.7513:

The boss fight could have been better.

Vayne, could it be that you are finally seeing the light?

Frodo and friends also didn’t throw Gandalf’s fireworks at Sauron’s tower until he finally got so annoyed that he decided to fall to his doom. Just sayin

I might not need a boss fight but you had better have a better conclusion to a story than what GW2’s was.

On a side note I really liked the fight with the eye, that was a good fight and also had some cool music.

It wasn’t a boss fight. That’s my point. It could have been a boss fight. It was essentially a cut scene with a bit of interaction.

There is almost nothing I care less about than boss fights. That’s a personal thing. It’s one of the reasons that Hirathi and Straits of Devastation on my favorite zones. I prefer feeling like I’m in a pitched battle to fighting one big boss.

It’s the reason I don’t really enjoy dungeons.

There could have been a boss fight…but it wouldn’t have made Arah story mode better for me personally. I do acknowledge it would likely have been better for a huge percentage of the playerbase.

But I personally would have liked it less.

Boss fights serve no real purpose in my mind.

Hybarf Tics.2048:

Gw1 is the MMO that gave me faith in MMO’s. GW 2 is the MMO that made me loose faith in MMO’s. Destiny will be the MMO that’ll renew that faith. Then GW 2 will become the game I come to while I wait for an expansion for Destiny.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO. That’s why it was so good. Of the MMOs I’ve played, Guild Wars 2 is the best.

I was a WoW player…I didn’t really like it, but I kept playing it, hoping it would get better. It was okay. I saw the potential of the format.

Then I told my niece I was playing WoW, which she said was the evil empire, and suggested I tried Guild Wars 1 instead. Said I’d like it better. She was right.

I gave up my WoW sub and never looked back. I was one of those playing Guild Wars 2 waiting for the Utopia update, when it was cancelled in favor of Guild Wars 2.

I like Guild Wars 2 a lot, but it’s lacking quite a bit that I liked in Guild Wars 1. On other other hand there’s quite a lot I like in this game that Guild Wars 1 didn’t have. C’est La Vie.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 hasn’t had a major update in years and people still play it. UO hasn’t had an update in a decade and people still play it.

Vayne? Fact check yourself . . .

Ultima Online got an expansion in ’08 (Stygian Abyss) and a “booster pack” in ’10 (High Seas).

Still . . . most people I know still prefer to . . . um . . . think about playing emulated 1999 versions.

Okay sorry, Ultima Online hasn’t had an expansion in 6 years and no one plays it. I didn’t look it up. However, the basis of what I said remains true whether the specifics do or not. Changing the numbers doesn’t change the reality of what I’m saying.

For all practical purposes, it’s hard to imagine no one playing this game in ten years, unless NcSoft shuts down the servers.

Stormcrow.7513:

Well yeah, I did feel that about Zhaitan because I think drama as in book and not boss fight as in game.

I spent ten levels fighting Zhaitan. Cutting off a lot of his power. The last bit was the final cut scene.

Are you seriously defending the Zhaitan fight? SERIOUSLY!!!! If you think of drama as a book then maybe a text adventure game is more akin to your needs.
The Zhaitan fight was by far the worse and most terribly designed, anticlimactic ending to ANY game that I have ever played in 30+odd years. [/quote]

I’m not defending the Zhaitan fight. Your saying so shows a lack of understanding of what I’ve said.

I didn’t see the Zhaitan fight as a boss fight. You started fighting Zhaitan the moment you saw it. I was fighting Zhaitan from level 70.

My Zhaitan fight was everything from level 70 up, because I don’t think in terms of boss fights.

Frodo destroyed Sauran by getting the one ring to the fire. He didn’t have a boss fight. Some of us don’t require a boss fight.

The boss fight could have been better. But the fight against Zhaitan, (which now starts at level 80 story) started back then at level 70.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Nope it’s not any different. At one point they had 3D cards, but you wouldn’t necessarily get one in every pack. You only had a chance to get the 3D card.

And getting the cards everyone had was pretty much worthless. I mean it’s not like you can sell Skip Jutze to anyone. It was a card no one cared about.

There’s really nothing in the BLTC that’s actually worthless. Transmuation charges aren’t worthless. Leveling scrolls aren’t worthless. Even when essences of luck where in teh chest, they weren’t worthless unless you happened to have 300 luck already (which very very few people do).

I disagree. Baseball card packs contained cards no matter what they worth. When you bought a pack, there was no chance that you got chewing gums ,candy(These aren’t worthless either) or other small things instead of a card you didn’t intend to buy, and there was no case you didn’t get any card at all.

What’s the difference between a worthless baseball card and a worthless booster. The list of stuff you get is known in both cases.

In both cases there’s a list of things you can get and in both cases what you get is random. If you buy a back of baseball cards and get nothing good, you feel ripped off in the same way.

It’s gambling because you’re paying money to get the one thing you want, not the five cards you don’t care about. You’re taking a chance that spending that money will get you what you want, when it’s likely that spending that money won’t.

There’s no real way to say it’s not gambling. You want something. You’re spending money on it. And you might not get it.

I agree this event can’t be pugged. The trick is to show up a bit more than an hour early and stay in the zone you’re in and it should start filling. If you’re luck you’ll get one of the guilds in that zone. I’ve chanced upon big guilds doing it more than once, but you have to be early in the zone because if you should up late for it, then all those guild servers will be full.

And if you’re going to do that, research the fight first, because it’s far more complicated than any other fight in the game.

DonQuack.9025:

I dont even think thats false advertising. Intent would be required no? Not sure but there was no false intent. They thought they had a steak. Infact unless money was exchanged I dont think anything could be done other than bad publicity for said shop.

Also I am fine with the amount of communication that is being done by arenanet. They never lost my trust and I am a relatively happy customer.

I’m not saying any court would find them guilty of false advertising, but the complaint, as stated, is that complaint. It’s a flawed complaint for a number of reasons.

Bait and switch, however, is a completely different kettle of fish, involved advertising one model of a product, not having that in stock, and upselling to something you do have in stock. The bait is getting people to come into your store based on an advertised price for a piece of merchandise and then trying to sell them a completely different product.

It’s a different crime than selling the same product you advertised with different features.

NewTrain.7549:

Zaklex.6308:

Thanatos.2691:

NewTrain.7549:

The writing is just plain bad. It can involve me as much as I want, but if it’s written like a young adult novel, I’m still not going to be interested.

Yes. Yes. Yes. The writing feels more like fan-fiction than legitimate GW2 lore. I completely hate it.

I disagree, none of what is happening now is new, it’s actually GW history repeating itself. I can see you going ‘huh?’ right about now…well, it’s simple, this isn’t the first time the Elder Dragons have risen now, is it? Therefore what we’re experiencing is past events in a current world context. The concept is hard to understand, I know…

That response has nothing to do with the problem we’re discussing. You’re talking plot line, we’re talking writing. There’s a difference.

The writing is uneven in both games. There are some pretty good and pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 2. There are also some pretty bad examples of writing in Guild Wars 1.

But most of us were much younger and less discerning when we played Guild Wars 1 for the first time.

saalle.4623:

Besides new LS that is btw vary good…there is almost nothing new in game.There was patch with some useless features that no1 wanted or cared about,some people like them,most of them hate them,as for me…i dont really care about them.Only good that happen since that period is new season of Living Story that seems much better then LS season 1.You will have to wait for it though,cause Anet made months of delaying it.

Oh come on. People didn’t like the NPE but plenty of people did like and care about the minipet update, the auction house update, even the collections..for that matter even the account wardrobe wasn’t around when the OP last played. Nor were megaservers.

You may have not liked the update, but 99% of the the complaints about it were from the NPE, not the rest of it…and there was a rest of it.

Or are you saying no one cared about account bound commander tags, or commander tag colors. Or the new SPvP armor set.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

When I was young, I used to buy baseball cards. You always wanted a full set, but you never knew what you were going to get in the pack. Baseball cards have a cash value. The items in this game don’t because you can’t sell them for cash.

Gambling laws only exist in games were you can cash out like Second Life. This is more along the lines of baseball cards. First of all you’re not even paying cash for black lion keys, you’re paying cash for gems which can buy many things. Costumes, toys, minis.

You’re spending gems, which are not cash, and have no cash value (because they can’t be sold) for black lion keys.

So yeah, until they change gambling laws, this isn’t gambling, even if it does fall under the dictionary definition…it doesn’t fall under the legal definition.

Gambling is a word in an English language. You can gamble on a person’s honesty too, but it’s not illegal. lol

Baseball cards are more like minipacks, not like BL chests. You know there will be 3 of them inside, and you might get a rare but most likely a common that everyone has. I wasn’t talking about these kind of things. BL chests on the other hand might contain something that has zero value or one of the most expensive things in the game.

Also, it’s true you are spending gem ,which you buy, but I don’t really see the point here. In poker you don’t use your money directly in game either. And it’s true you can’t change back your winning to money ,this is why I made this thread, otherwise it would be clear it’s gambling, but the value between winnings could be drastically big (From zero to ~1500g) and you can put a price on the value of these items in real money too.

Nope it’s not any different. At one point they had 3D cards, but you wouldn’t necessarily get one in every pack. You only had a chance to get the 3D card.

And getting the cards everyone had was pretty much worthless. I mean it’s not like you can sell Skip Jutze to anyone. It was a card no one cared about.

There’s really nothing in the BLTC that’s actually worthless. Transmuation charges aren’t worthless. Leveling scrolls aren’t worthless. Even when essences of luck where in teh chest, they weren’t worthless unless you happened to have 300 luck already (which very very few people do).

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Heheee… funny thread. Never had problems with any leap outside of missing the final hit with rush.

You autotarget enemies when using a leap? Turn of autotarget in the options.
You jump of a cliff instead towards your enemy? Can only happen with ranger sword AA #justrangerthings
You miss your Rush as warrior? That’s beause the hit-detection only occurs after the whole animation is done. Could be fixed but that problem is probably deep inside the code.

My autotarget is always off. It still screws up for me. It might be, as some suggested, a latency type issue. That is who I’m seeing targeted on my screen isn’t actually there anymore on the server…but I haven’t caught up yet.

When I was young, I used to buy baseball cards. You always wanted a full set, but you never knew what you were going to get in the pack. Baseball cards have a cash value. The items in this game don’t because you can’t sell them for cash.

Gambling laws only exist in games were you can cash out like Second Life. This is more along the lines of baseball cards. First of all you’re not even paying cash for black lion keys, you’re paying cash for gems which can buy many things. Costumes, toys, minis.

You’re spending gems, which are not cash, and have no cash value (because they can’t be sold) for black lion keys.

So yeah, until they change gambling laws, this isn’t gambling, even if it does fall under the dictionary definition…it doesn’t fall under the legal definition.

Gambling is a word in an English language. You can gamble on a person’s honesty too, but it’s not illegal. lol

Offair.2563:

Yargesh.4965:

yorick.1305:

Vayne.8563:

Many of us wouldn’t play WoW for free. I might not even play WoW if they paid me.

Agree.

Although how many will still be playing GW2, who are playing NOW, will still be logging in after nearly 10 years.

Easy, wait 10 years and see.

Gw2 wont last another 8 years on this pace with hardly any major content update and polish. This game could easily be the killer of all MMO’s but nothing happens with it apart from some living story updates and gemstore stuff.

Guild Wars 1 hasn’t had a major update in years and people still play it. UO hasn’t had an update in a decade and people still play it.

Saying a game won’t last ten years is just wrong.

For one thing, no one can predict the future. So far every game that was supposed to kill this one is severely lacking. So if that continues, even with modest upgrades this game will continue.

But then, the new content we’re getting won’t be temporary and will add up. So I’m not thinking that predicting ten years in the future of this genre is all that valuable.

Sure it’ll take you longer, but just keep on the dungeon reward tracks. They should cycle all the way through and then repeat.

Ohoni.6057:

That’s not even transparency – it’s hype generating and PR talk. Throwing some exciting statements isn’t exactly fair if there’s no follow-up.
IF they had thrown those statements and then kept us updated – I would have seen it as transparency.
As it stands now I see it as a bait and switch : "stick with the game – more exciting stuff is coming by the end of 2013 " and then nothing comes.

It’s technically bait and switch.

That’s certainly a valid way of looking at it, but bait and switch implies that it’s deliberate. I am not assuming that they intended to mislead us. But it’s basically like going to a restaurant, and ordering a steak, and they say “ok, we’ll have it right to you in fifteen minutes,” and then they realize they have no steaks on hand, so they riddle around in the kitchen without saying a word, and then an hour later they give you a lat full of shrimp, which you’re allergic to, when they could have saved all that time and effort by just letting you know they were out of steak and asking what you’d like instead.

Bait and switch has a very specific legal definition. What you’re talking about here is more like false advertising, which is a whole different ball game.

Having been in the electronics industry for a very long time, I can tell you this is NOT bait and switch.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

I suspect the QQ will be from small and middle sized guilds, rather than casuals. Like when Guild Missions first came out.

That’s just describing casual guilds.

Ah, yeah, because obviously big zerg is more hardcore than a small group.

Big guilds aren’t necessarily hard core and small guilds aren’t necessarily casual. Small dungeon running guilds exist, where people just run dungeons as a team. They get really good because it’s the same handful of dedicated guys. Some small guilds run around WvW as havoc groups. They’re not big guilds but they’re definitely hard core about their gaming.

Some people just like to know and be friends with everyone in their guild.

By the same token, I wouldn’t call many of the big guilds I’ve seen hard core, since they take literally anyone.

The bigger your guild is – at least in GW2 – the more benefits you get from it. Influence alone makes a huge impact – but the more people you generally have the better its.

That’s why – my personal experience is that bigger guilds are more invested in the game because they attract players that want those benefits of a big guild.

My guild has 150 people in it and I don’t really think any of us are there for the “benefits”. But yes, many would be. It’s why we don’t recruit.

Xae Isareth.1364:

You cut off his food supply and spies, you wiped out vast amounts of his army and his top commanders, but you didn’t weaken the dragon himself. When you fought him, it was implied he was still at his full power. That’s why there was all the talk before that final confrontation.

The dragon was hit by a beam of anti-dragon magic created by Professor Gor. If you followed that Asuran story line you’d know exactly what he was hit with with that laser. Already not eating, partially blinded, he was hit with literally a superweapon.

In that Asuran story the whole process of it’s discovery and later on its creation and testing is documented.

Of course, that does no good to anyone who hasn’t played it.1

Xae Isareth.1364:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

KarlaGrey.5903:

/threadwin

Just because you say threadwin, doesn’t mean anything’s been won. Do you see the game getting much harder. I don’t. Do you want to know why? Because Anet knows what side the bread is buttered on.

The thread was lost the moment someone tried to convince the rest of us that the MMORPG playerbase largely consists of people who want hard/challenging content.

Maybe they should take the words RPG out of it, and just make it a fighting game. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Wait rpg means easy/casual? When did this occur.
Also you do realize the game was and is advertised as having action combat? Don’t say fighting game like its a dirty word. They have some of the most balanced finrly tuned responsive action systems out there.
There are things to be learned from fighting games.
Also some fighting games are fairly accessible, ever play powerstone?

You miss my point. What made a lot of RPGs hard where thinking challenges, not fighting challenges. The problem is that people who want hard stuff, they’re really looking for boss fights. Since when did RPGs become all about boss fights. I remember older RPGs we didn’t even know what a boss fight was. It was about story, and lore.

My point is all sorts of people play these games and not all of them are after challenge. In fact many aren’t after challenge. They’re after immersion, collecting, achievement point hunting (even if there’s no achievement to it), getting rich by playing the market.

You should look at the people I’m responding to, instead of taking my text out of context. Because it is a response.

Since when does everyone who plays RPGs or even most people play them for the challenge. Most people that I knew didn’t. They played the for the story.

Guild Wars 2 needs help in that department too, but that doesn’t mean that’s not why a lot of people play the game. Or to explore an fantasy world with cool stuff.

The question is do most people want challenge? I don’t think so. Did most people play RPGs to be challenged? Not in the same sense of challenge a lot of people in this thread are asking for.

I feel that some sort of challenge is needed for the immersion. Did you feel like the Hero of Shaemore when you got that title in the PS? I sure didn’t. Did you really believe that Zhaitan was this all-powerful and nearly unbeatable foe when you fought him? I sure didnt.

Even console RPGs have challenging fights to materialise the sense of threat. I can be told this guy is powerful as nuts and ate worlds for breakfast, but if I feel that power, I’m not convinced, I just think the rest of the characters are idiots.

Well yeah, I did feel that about Zhaitan because I think drama as in book and not boss fight as in game.

I spent ten levels fighting Zhaitan. Cutting off a lot of his power. The last bit was the final cut scene.

Nah Anet said they’re working on fixes for it.

I case the OP didn’t realize, MoP came out a month after Guild Wars 2. Even if some people did go play it, they’d play it for a few months, do all the content and come back…but I don’t think that many will go.

I’ve talked to enough people who actively dislike WoW to believe otherwise.

Zaklex.6308:

Vayne.8563:

I agree with the OP. I might not have phrased it that way, but leaps leave a lot to be desired.

Many is the time I have a targeted creature, use my 3 skill, and end up jumping off a cliff, instead of toward my target.

Then I can almost guarantee that what you thought you had targeted is not really what you had targeted, or it changed targets just before using the skill(I’ve had this happen to me, and only realized it after thinking the skill wasn’t working properly and watching which creature I had targeted, it’s also possible that this is a hit or miss bug and hard to track down).

Not even close. I had a boss targeted in SE on more than one occassion and got propelled off the edge…and there was no target over the edge and the boss was the only guy there.

The second time it happened I was watching who I had targeted (which was after all the called target, and I hit T).

Berk.8561:

A simple summary of the problem I have with the megaservers:

I traded a familiar community of people who would struggle together to complete interesting events with maybe too few people for a faceless zerg led by a commander that can’t lose where I have to hope I do enough damage to creatures that die before they are finished rendering and to a boss I can sometimes barely see to get credit for the event.

Not. An. Improvement.

As time goes on, server pride will be replaced by guild pride. It’s going in that direction and has been for some time.

Guilds are just like what you describe…my guild is still a group of people I see all the time.

Dungeon reward tracks rotate in PvP every two weeks. So you can do the current dungeon reward track and just keep working on them, without ever doing a dungeon.

If you want to do a specific dungeon all the time, then yes, you’ll have to do story mode.

moiraine.2753:

Vayne.8563:

Many of us wouldn’t play WoW for free. I might not even play WoW if they paid me.

Stop talking for the whole playerbase.‘’Many of us?’’ You are NOT me and definitely NOT my friends.I like to play different MMOs including P2P ones if they are good.I like WoW and Wildstar.So what if one of them is an old MMO and the two of them are P2P MMOs?That doesn’t matter.Playing more than 1 MMO is never a problem.Different MMOs bring different things to the ’’table’’.

I’m not talking for the whole player base. Many of us is just that. It doesn’t even imply most of it. Seriously, objecting to an obviously true statement because you don’t personally like my posts is wrong.

I didn’t talk for you. I talked for the people who don’t like WOW in this game, and that group is myriad.

Some have said they’ll NEVER play a subscription game. Some just don’t like WoW. You do realize there are entire websites devoted just to hating WoW. Some just don’t like cartoony graphics and can’t get into it. Some don’t like quest hub leveling.

But you know, many of us isn’t talking for everyone. It’s talking for a group of people I’m part of.

It doesn’t even imply most (though I believe most Guild Wars 2 players aren’t particularly interested in WoW).

I agree with the OP. I might not have phrased it that way, but leaps leave a lot to be desired.

Many is the time I have a targeted creature, use my 3 skill, and end up jumping off a cliff, instead of toward my target.