Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

Harper.4173:

You do realize I dislike the concept of vertical progression and the fact that FOTM introduced it. I dislike the fact that a few months after launch we got new items with better stats to go for.
How is that having double standards?

That was actually aimed at Vayne, i guess. Who is hypocritical in his defending of ascended gear (even when he himself claims not to like them).

For me, the hard to get/content limited better stat gear is even worse than what we’re talking about here, because it adds vertical progression on top of narrow and stringent acquisition methods. And two wrongs don’t make a right.

Okay, let me ask you. How is it hypocritcal to say I don’t like something but I understand why it was done? Trying to make someone look bad because you don’t agre with them is just not on.

I understand why the government of Australia has made certain cuts to budget. I don’t like those cuts to budget, but I understand the necessity of them.

I don’t defend the cuts to budget, I just don’t complain about it, because I understand there was a reason.

Other budget cuts I feel are too important to cut and I do protest against those.

I don’t like the ascended gear, but I understand why Anet felt they needed to put it in. I still don’t think they’re right for doing so. But I understand. If you call that hypocritical, I’d say it says more about you than me.

Essence Snow.3194:

Astral Projections.7320:

Essence Snow.3194:

Astral Projections.7320:

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

No difference in hosting, major difference in bandwidth. It’s not as simple as what he was talking about. Not to mention, a lot of stuff is a lot more expensive today then back then. A staff of 350 in a bigger office is a lot more to maintain than a staff of 50.

But there’s a lot more complexity in getting 150 people playing together on a the same screen at the same time with better graphics. It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

There’s not a chance in heck that they have 350 ppl working for Anet on gw2 atm. That might have been the case during development or prior to the china release (although I think KZ took much of that burden), but atm, there’s simply no way.

I was also under the impression that Anet was fond of sub-contractors…….ie many of those that used to work on the game were only there when needed. Thus now since they are not needed, they are not there. This explains why we have minimal reflection from what once was a much larger group.

I’d wager that there’s maybe 35 employees tops at Anet actively working on the game itself atm.

From February 2014: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“As for dwindling investment, it appears to be a myth: ArenaNet had a whopping 300 people when Guild Wars 2 launched, and now… now there are 350 and counting – ArenaNet is hiring.”

1/19/2013 size of live teams
http://dulfy.net/2013/01/19/gw2-colin-johanson-mmorpg-livestream-transcript-jan-18/
“In GW1 we had a really small live team because the game wasn’t big enough to generate a consistent revenue. The gems/micro-transaction based model allow us to have a much larger live team in GW2, allowing players to see much more content on a monthly basis.
Our live team in GW2 is 15-20 times larger than the live team in GW1.”

Yes those numbers account for the launch and the China release and include subs (which most likely are not there anymore).

If you look at glassdoor and several recent ex-employees that have made comments on the matter, the actual base is nowhere near the size of those numbers (300-350).

I’m actually stunned that people think 300-350 people would be able to keep their jobs if their jobs resulted in what we’ve seen in terms of this game. That many people are capable of so much more.

Are you saying that from 350 people or so in February 2014, they lost substantial numbers and no one has noticed or commented about it? That’s very interesting. I would have thought that would come out in some sort of business review or note of some kind if they lost that many people in about half a year.

I am saying they included contract employees in that 300-350. They are no longer employed by Anet once their contracts end unless either renewed or a new contract is agreed upon.

Do you have evidence to back this up?

NoTrigger.8396:

Davey.7029:

Really? What is the problem with having challenging content? This game is full of stuff you can easily do with your eyes closed, why not have something so veteran players can do besides farming skins and AP?

If you don’t like raids or you think they’re not for you, fine. Don’t participate in that part of the game. I do the same with Ranked PvP. It’s not my thing and I don’t care about Esports, so just I do something else.

the jelly haters who are bad at the game want everything without effort.
thats the problem.

Vayne.8563:

It’s when the game has too many of these little things and casuals start feeling disenfranchised. You think it won’t happen, I think it might happen.

99% of this game is easy mode content spam 11111 win game.
its when the game only has easy mode content and the veterans start feeling disenfranchised.

seriously dude….

You’re assuming all veterans want challenging content. It’s a kittenumption. The question isn’t whether you feel disenfranchised but how many people by percentage do.

If it’s 5-10% of the playerbase, it might not be enough to justify a whole lot of challenging content.

The problem with skype is that as a voice program it has a high overhead. It takes more resources than programs made to run in the background with games. It slows you down in game.

I never game while on skype. I prefer mumble, teamspeak or vent.

Nick.6972:

Mai Thrin, Liadri, Imbued Flame Shaman – these all are amazing bosses that showcase the best GW2 combat can offer, it requires team work, coordination,
Too bad instead on expanding on these kinds of bosses they continue to add “spam 1” monsters.

How about Triple Threat? That was added after the others.

Astral Projections.7320:

Essence Snow.3194:

Astral Projections.7320:

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

No difference in hosting, major difference in bandwidth. It’s not as simple as what he was talking about. Not to mention, a lot of stuff is a lot more expensive today then back then. A staff of 350 in a bigger office is a lot more to maintain than a staff of 50.

But there’s a lot more complexity in getting 150 people playing together on a the same screen at the same time with better graphics. It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

There’s not a chance in heck that they have 350 ppl working for Anet on gw2 atm. That might have been the case during development or prior to the china release (although I think KZ took much of that burden), but atm, there’s simply no way.

I was also under the impression that Anet was fond of sub-contractors…….ie many of those that used to work on the game were only there when needed. Thus now since they are not needed, they are not there. This explains why we have minimal reflection from what once was a much larger group.

I’d wager that there’s maybe 35 employees tops at Anet actively working on the game itself atm.

From February 2014: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“As for dwindling investment, it appears to be a myth: ArenaNet had a whopping 300 people when Guild Wars 2 launched, and now… now there are 350 and counting – ArenaNet is hiring.”

1/19/2013 size of live teams
http://dulfy.net/2013/01/19/gw2-colin-johanson-mmorpg-livestream-transcript-jan-18/
“In GW1 we had a really small live team because the game wasn’t big enough to generate a consistent revenue. The gems/micro-transaction based model allow us to have a much larger live team in GW2, allowing players to see much more content on a monthly basis.
Our live team in GW2 is 15-20 times larger than the live team in GW1.”

Yes those numbers account for the launch and the China release and include subs (which most likely are not there anymore).

If you look at glassdoor and several recent ex-employees that have made comments on the matter, the actual base is nowhere near the size of those numbers (300-350).

I’m actually stunned that people think 300-350 people would be able to keep their jobs if their jobs resulted in what we’ve seen in terms of this game. That many people are capable of so much more.

Are you saying that from 350 people or so in February 2014, they lost substantial numbers and no one has noticed or commented about it? That’s very interesting. I would have thought that would come out in some sort of business review or note of some kind if they lost that many people in about half a year.

It’s a public company. If they shed jobs to downsize, they’d by law have to inform the shareholders and it would have been in the news.

IndigoSundown.5419:

And yet ANet continues to try to appeal to various demographics, who then come here to the forums to miss and poan about how it’s just not enough. I don’t like ANet’s offerings, particularly, but there are content offerings — and they’re consistent for the most part with what was advertised before launch.

It’s a shame we live in such an entitled society.

A lot of it comes from not understanding the challenges associated with software development, and specifically game development, along with running a business. I’ve seen so many people who have “easy” answers that would be “easy” to implement. Or people crying about bug fixes, thinking that because they know the problem, they’ve been able to isolate the cause.

Alex.9567:

Vayne.8563:

Alex.9567:

Increased staff should result in increased productivity, if you try argue that increasing staff leads to decreased productivity then your kidding yourself, or what you might be saying is that the reason the increase in staff hasnt lead to increased productivity is because anet has bad management, which in that case id have to agree you have a valid point.

arguing inflation is pointless because its always been a factor, it was just as relevant during gw’s1

if you want to talk difference in bandwidth yes that probably is a valid point, however not to the degree that anet is so busy paying for the extra bandwidth that they cant afford to invest anything else in significant content development.

I don’t doubt they had server issues during some of the lw, again you cant argue that’s why they haven’t been able to develop content

so it leads to 1 conclusion, namely they’re milking the cash shop for all its worth before they do release significant content.

I’ll just leave this here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

Edit: For some reason when I tested it the link didn’t work for me. Just look up Brook’s Law on Wikipedia.

Edit 2: This doesn’t even count that fact that two of the head guys walked away from the game during development, in one case taking key people with him. If you don’t think that sets a company back, not sure what to tell you.

Brooks’ law might be valid in this case, then again it might not, its difficult for a player to have the insight to know, however there are other possibility’s which seem logical, I remember reading right at launch that concept artist Kekai Kotaki was calling it quits with anet, I really wondered why, it seemed like the best time to be part of that company, about a 8 month to a year later I concluded that he must have left because he realised the direction the game was headed, these other 2 head guys you speak of, I had no idea about, but again what were their reasons? we don’t know what drove them to leave, it may very well have been that they had insight on the direction the game was headed.

Terrible conclusion. He was a concept artist. Concept artist’s are often used most heavily before the game launches. It’s extremely likely he actually had less to do later on, because he probably expected new areas to be developed faster. A lot of artistic people leave jobs because their particular talents aren’t really needed for the phase the game was in. Concept artists are almost always the first to go when a game launches. That’s very common. So what exactly is your conclusion based on?

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

You may be right, then let’s compare GW2 to GW2. It took ~ 5 year development. Looking at the world at release, they made:
~ 5 zone / year.
~ 6,6 dungeon path /year
~ 0,2 PvP mode /year
~ 3,8 usable weapons / year
~ 43,2 skills /year ( weapon skills not included)
~ 46 personal story instance/year
~ 22,8 armor sets/year
~ 1 race /year
etc. on average.

Probably I miscalculated some stuff, but I guess you see my point. I know this is not how it works, but I focused purely on numbers.

The reason it doesn’t work is because the game launched in a terrible state…one so bad it took two years to get to where it is now. It needed more than five years. It’s been catch up/patch up since day one.

I’m not so sure that two more development year would have helped. Magic find stat, world servers, PvP crafting, not acc bound dye/legendary, temporary content, one time only events, 3 round PvP tournaments & lack of meaningful rewards and a lot more was bad design decision and these were changed (mostly) because of player feedback. Without player feedback they would still need to change these things even if they had 2 more years to complete what they wanted. (Got a little confused english wise, not sure I made sense)
You can always improve the game , especially on a MMO. There are still a loads of things missing that people expected at launch , even some things anet advertised. Also I don’t see any sign the next two year will be different.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Do you even realize how many events were simply broken at launch. Do you really think they wanted to launch without a trading post preview, or the ability to sort by light armor type? Do you think that stuff like the fractals weren’t already in progress before launch? Do you think they really had enough time even to make Arah story mode the dungeon it might have been.

According to a dev that I knew in game, the technology of the moving platforms that allowed them to build Arah only arrived 2 weeks before the game came out.

There’s plenty of stuff that isn’t more content or awards adjustment that could have been done before launch, including a looking for group tool, that wouldn’t have required feedback from players at all.

VergilDeZaniah.3295:

Vayne.8563:

snip

Of course I did like GW1 so much I was thrilled, as well as I was thrilled about the new things they were presenting. The game changed a lot (at first you had a companion, then you could choose not to have one, then we don’t have any).

What I find mostly disappointing is that most of time, and not only in the manifesto, they say something and end up far away from what we have been told. kitten happens during development, but they just pretend nothing happened or was said at all. The fact they don’t keep their message up to date gives me the impression they are in a bubble.

I was not disappointed in GW2 at release (and let’s say for around a year), reason why I played nearly everyday since release. They just don’t seem to provide what they did in GW1: content. Let me be clear, I know they released many many many things, but most were temporary, which is a loss yet the idea of their living world. I can’t deny the fact there was the wonderful battle against the marionette, for example. Yet, most “goodies” were not aimed at casual gamers, even if the new system seems to be aiming at them, but rather at paying people/players with lot of IG money.

The disappointment does not come from the game per se, but rather what happened around during these two years: almost nothing. Any explanation to what did not make the cut? Silence. The team needs some kind of riot to work with us.

I was told we were a community, but most problematic points are not heard, and we are sometimes given the impression we are cash cows.

Do I like the game? I surely do. Will it be like that for a long time? Only time will tell me, but if the game keeps stagnating, I guess most of us will leave.

Yes the temporary stuff was a mistake. If you’re a fan of the company and know they try stuff, you say okay, the mistake set them back and you understand…at least I do. If they wasted a year making stuff that’s not in the game, it’s hard to say well I don’t care they should have new stuff anyway. That new stuff takes time to make and they’ve been working on it. We’ll see it as it’s ready.

The other thing is that Anet has learned what demogrpahic likes and plays the game after launch. Before they couldn’t really know. An MMO is always going to be adjusted on the fly because of that.

Maybe it’s adjusted in a way you like it and maybe it’s adjusted in a way you don’t like it, but the bottom line is, there’s no guarantees in an MMO. It’s just not possible. Everything can and does change.

The sooner you learn that, the happier you’ll be.

I think the idea has merit. The only possible flaw I could see would be if you don’t end up with enough people who want to do it all the time and it would sit idle, because you need a minimum number of people to do it.

It happens with old content in games all the time. It was great when we knew it was leaving, but if it was there every day, in a couple of months, I think it would end up being a ghost town.

It goes even deeper than that. One of my friends played Guild Wars 1 with me and couldn’t get into Guild Wars 2, because it’s not linear. He only plays and understand linear games. Guild Wars 1 pretty much always told you exactly where to go. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t really. He found it very frustrating.

I talked him into coming back and trying it again, and he liked the new version much better. It was better for him because he felt he had some direction.

Obviously it’s not better for me. I know the kitten ed game already.

Alex.9567:

Vayne.8563:

Alex.9567:

No, I recall Mike O Brian specifically saying that there is no difference in costs of hosting instanced to non-instanced, its merely a direction the devs chose for gw’s1, but I like the way you sound so certain even thou ur cluless.

on your second point, its illogical because they’ve released so little content, so if you really believed this, it would mean (more or less) that it takes them one year to make a new zone.

your last point, proves you’ve missed the point, its what ive said in my op, and so many others have said…

No difference in hosting, major difference in bandwidth. It’s not as simple as what he was talking about. Not to mention, a lot of stuff is a lot more expensive today then back then. A staff of 350 in a bigger office is a lot more to maintain than a staff of 50.

But there’s a lot more complexity in getting 150 people playing together on a the same screen at the same time with better graphics. It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

Increased staff should result in increased productivity, if you try argue that increasing staff leads to decreased productivity then your kidding yourself, or what you might be saying is that the reason the increase in staff hasnt lead to increased productivity is because anet has bad management, which in that case id have to agree you have a valid point.

arguing inflation is pointless because its always been a factor, it was just as relevant during gw’s1

if you want to talk difference in bandwidth yes that probably is a valid point, however not to the degree that anet is so busy paying for the extra bandwidth that they cant afford to invest anything else in significant content development.

I don’t doubt they had server issues during some of the lw, again you cant argue that’s why they haven’t been able to develop content

so it leads to 1 conclusion, namely they’re milking the cash shop for all its worth before they do release significant content.

I’ll just leave this here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law

Edit: For some reason when I tested it the link didn’t work for me. Just look up Brook’s Law on Wikipedia.

Edit 2: This doesn’t even count that fact that two of the head guys walked away from the game during development, in one case taking key people with him. If you don’t think that sets a company back, not sure what to tell you.

@VergilDeZaniah.3295

I get the disappointment thing, but you have to understand something. This was one single line from one single video. “Everything you loved about Guild Wars 1”. There was a huge amount of information that followed the production of this video. I mean two years worth. This video game out two years before the game did. During that time we knew the following for sure:

1. There would be no GvG
2. There would be no guild halls at launch
3. There would be only one single PvP mode
4. There would be no hereos
5. There would be less skills
6. Skills would be tied to weapons
7. The level cap would be raised.
8. There would be no dedicated healers and tanks.
9. There would be no “stand-alone” expansions, like Cathan and Elona.
10. The cash shop would be different.
11. There would be no traditional quests.
12. There would be no skills that targeted allies.

I could go on if I wanted but I think you get the point. No one paying attention in the two years that followed that video could possibly believe that the game would have everything you loved about Guild Wars 2 in it.

If you were disappointed, at least in part, it’s because you allowed yourself to focus on a single line instead of two years worth of information.

And yes, Anet did change the game when the brought ascended gear into the game..but they didn’t add another tier of gear after that.

I played Guild Wars 1 for six years and I’m pretty sure 99% of the playerbase never amassed the hours playing that game I did. I got my 50/50 and my GWAMM title.

I’m not disappointed in Guild Wars 2 because I was paying attention and because I know for a fact that MMOs change and evolve. I knew going in not every change would necessarily be to my liking.

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

You may be right, then let’s compare GW2 to GW2. It took ~ 5 year development. Looking at the world at release, they made:
~ 5 zone / year.
~ 6,6 dungeon path /year
~ 0,2 PvP mode /year
~ 3,8 usable weapons / year
~ 43,2 skills /year ( weapon skills not included)
~ 46 personal story instance/year
~ 22,8 armor sets/year
~ 1 race /year
etc. on average.

Probably I miscalculated some stuff, but I guess you see my point. I know this is not how it works, but I focused purely on numbers.

The reason it doesn’t work is because the game launched in a terrible state…one so bad it took two years to get to where it is now. It needed more than five years. It’s been catch up/patch up since day one.

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Ree is talking about the personal story

Are you sure? Some of the things she says make me look around for a blue pencil. And I’m not even an editor.

“The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

Well, first, why should it care that she’s there, and second, what the heck is she doing there in the first place?

“You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, who then remember you.”

Um. Uh. Okay!

I still maintain Colin is talking about how combat looks with the opening sentence of that paragraph stressing the ‘never seen that before’ aspect of combat and the final sentence bringing it home with the ‘change the way people view combat’ closer.

“Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad.” ~ Spock

I believe you’re quoting the episode “I Mudd”.

And yes, I’m sure. Thanks for asking.

That’s the one. The androids’ oft-recurring statement ‘I am not programmed to respond in that area’ in response to certain questions is uncannily similar to anet’s current non-disclosure policy.

I watched waaaaaaaaay too much Star Trek in my misspent youth.

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Ree is talking about the personal story

Are you sure? Some of the things she says make me look around for a blue pencil. And I’m not even an editor.

“The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

Well, first, why should it care that she’s there, and second, what the heck is she doing there in the first place?

“You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, who then remember you.”

Um. Uh. Okay!

I still maintain Colin is talking about how combat looks with the opening sentence of that paragraph stressing the ‘never seen that before’ aspect of combat and the final sentence bringing it home with the ‘change the way people view combat’ closer.

“Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell bad.” ~ Spock

I believe you’re quoting the episode “I Mudd”.

And yes, I’m sure. Thanks for asking.

@VergilDeZaniah.3295

This game does DEFY existing conventions. Or did you think having no trinity is common in the MMO world. Or anyone can rez anyone without using a skill slot. Or not competing for nodes and kills. This is all stuff that defies existing conventions. That line doesn’t actually say we’ll defy every single existing convention. I don’t know a lot of MMOs that have two human warriors that can have different personal stories. That’s defying an existing convention.

I’ve explained what he meant by grinding in an earlier post. You should probably read it. Also you can look up grind on Wikipedia. Over the years that word has changed meaning a lot. In the old days we pretty much only used it with regard for grinding for levels. Killing creatures to level up because we ran out of stuff to do. That’s what he was talking about and that’s the definition still most often used according wikipedia. It’s one of the problems with looking at a four year old video. Four years is a long long time in this industry.

When Ree says “it’s your story”, it’s because you can choose a path that someone else makes different. There’s no way anyone could imagine it would mean you can do absolutely anything you want.

You see in WoW, all human warriors…same story. No difference. You do what everyone else does. Guild Wars 2 changed that so two human warriors could have different stories.

The problem with literal interpretation of a five minute video, particularly a video that was a clearly clarified as this one in the two years after the game, means that you’re taking something that was very public knowledge and trying to twist it in a way to make a point. Did you actually think you could do anything,. just because it’s your story? Because I didn’t…and I don’t know a whole lot of people who did.

The only like I really have a problem with from the entire manifesto is “taking everything you love from Guild Wars 1”. Well yes, they surely didn’t do that. That’s the one line.

Unfortunately even that would have been 100% impossible, unless everyone loved the same thing. There are no heroes in Guild Wars 2 and some people loved heroes. But some people hated heroes and thought they ruined the game.

Shrugs. Without playing silly word games, it’s mostly true. No one could explain the entire game in 5 minutes. That’s why they provided huge amounts of detail afterward.

I could do this with any piece of writing. Analayze it word by word, statement by statement and ignore common sense and context and make it look wrong. It’s what lawyers and politicians do. Which is why people don’t trust them.

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

No difference in hosting, major difference in bandwidth. It’s not as simple as what he was talking about. Not to mention, a lot of stuff is a lot more expensive today then back then. A staff of 350 in a bigger office is a lot more to maintain than a staff of 50.

But there’s a lot more complexity in getting 150 people playing together on a the same screen at the same time with better graphics. It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

There’s not a chance in heck that they have 350 ppl working for Anet on gw2 atm. That might have been the case during development or prior to the china release (although I think KZ took much of that burden), but atm, there’s simply no way.

I was also under the impression that Anet was fond of sub-contractors…….ie many of those that used to work on the game were only there when needed. Thus now since they are not needed, they are not there. This explains why we have minimal reflection from what once was a much larger group.

I’d wager that there’s maybe 35 employees tops at Anet actively working on the game itself atm.

Where do you get your information…I’m quite curious.

I have no problem with not wanting to buy stuff in the gem shop.

Actually, OP, I understand where you’re coming from. I’d like to spend more money but there’s nothing to spend money on.

Furesy.6935:

Vayne.8563:

Prophet.6257:

I’ll just leave this here.

GW2 Manifesto Transcript:

Mike O’Brien: “We founded ArenaNet to innovate, so Guild Wars 2 is our opportunity to question everything, to make a game that defies existing conventions. If you love MMOs, you’ll want to check out Guild Wars 2, and if you hate MMOs, you’ll really want to check out Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world that’s got more active combat, a fully-branching, personalized storyline, a new event system to get people playing together, and still no monthly fees.”

Daniel Dociu: “The look of Guild Wars 2 is stylized. We’re going for a painterly, illustrated aesthetic. Everything in our world feels handcrafted and artisanal. We treat our environments as if they are characters themselves.”

Colin Johanson: “When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

Ree Soesbee: “As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you are doing. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

Colin Johanson: “You’ll get quest text that tells you ’I’m being attacked by these horrible things,’ and it’s not actually happening. In the game world, these horrible centaurs are standing around in a field, and you get a quest step that says ‘Go kill ten centaurs.’ We don’t think that’s OK. You see what’s happening. You see centaurs running to the trading post, knocking the walls down, burning and killing the merchants.”

Ree Soesbee: “We do not want to build the same MMO everyone else is building, and in Guild Wars 2, it’s your world. It’s your story. You affect things around you in a very permanent way.”

Colin Johanson: “Cause and effect: A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”

Ree Soesbee: “You’re meeting new people whom you will then see again. You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, who then remember you. The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

Thanks, I agree. They almost nailed it perfectly. It’s 90% right.

Reading it now, it seems it matches Guild Wars 1 more than it does GW2… lol

The problem with quoting a four year old video…and it is four years old…is that it loses context. For example, almost immediately after this video came out, due to questions about it, Anet clarified something. Ree is talking about the personal story and Colin is talking about dynamic events.

They other thing people usually take out of context (and that’s why I’m glad the whole text is pasted here), is the line about grind. To older MMO players, grind almost always meant killing stuff to level. Which you had to do in many games (if not most) because you always seemed to run out of quests. Today grinding has a completely different definition but if you look at the paragraph, starting and ending on combat, I think it’s pretty logical he wasn’t talking about grinding for gear, which is what people are talking about these days. He was talking about grinding to level.

And you know, I’m leveling a character since the 9/9 patch…and I’m not grinding to level. Leveling is pretty fast and smooth.

Prophet.6257:

I’ll just leave this here.

GW2 Manifesto Transcript:

Mike O’Brien: “We founded ArenaNet to innovate, so Guild Wars 2 is our opportunity to question everything, to make a game that defies existing conventions. If you love MMOs, you’ll want to check out Guild Wars 2, and if you hate MMOs, you’ll really want to check out Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 takes everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and puts it into a persistent world that’s got more active combat, a fully-branching, personalized storyline, a new event system to get people playing together, and still no monthly fees.”

Daniel Dociu: “The look of Guild Wars 2 is stylized. We’re going for a painterly, illustrated aesthetic. Everything in our world feels handcrafted and artisanal. We treat our environments as if they are characters themselves.”

Colin Johanson: “When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

Ree Soesbee: “As a structure, the MMO has lost the ability to make the player feel like a hero. Everybody around you is doing the same thing you are doing. The boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later. It doesn’t care that I’m there.”

Colin Johanson: “You’ll get quest text that tells you ’I’m being attacked by these horrible things,’ and it’s not actually happening. In the game world, these horrible centaurs are standing around in a field, and you get a quest step that says ‘Go kill ten centaurs.’ We don’t think that’s OK. You see what’s happening. You see centaurs running to the trading post, knocking the walls down, burning and killing the merchants.”

Ree Soesbee: “We do not want to build the same MMO everyone else is building, and in Guild Wars 2, it’s your world. It’s your story. You affect things around you in a very permanent way.”

Colin Johanson: “Cause and effect: A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”

Ree Soesbee: “You’re meeting new people whom you will then see again. You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, who then remember you. The most important thing in any game should be the player. We have built a game for them.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

Thanks, I agree. They almost nailed it perfectly. It’s 90% right.

Alex.9567:

lordkrall.7241:

Indeed. GW1 went with the whole buy actual power for real money instead.

Comparing a lobby-based game with an open-world game is also quite silly, since the costs are completely different.

It is also quite likely that it takes way more time to create and release content for a game like this compared to a game like GW1.

You also have to keep in mind that their original plan was new campaigns every six months, a plan that only ever worked on time. And quite soon after the original release they saw that it would not work and thus abandoned it.
If it had worked so well as people here love to claim, why didn’t they use the same model for GW2?

No, I recall Mike O Brian specifically saying that there is no difference in costs of hosting instanced to non-instanced, its merely a direction the devs chose for gw’s1, but I like the way you sound so certain even thou ur cluless.

on your second point, its illogical because they’ve released so little content, so if you really believed this, it would mean (more or less) that it takes them one year to make a new zone.

your last point, proves you’ve missed the point, its what ive said in my op, and so many others have said…

No difference in hosting, major difference in bandwidth. It’s not as simple as what he was talking about. Not to mention, a lot of stuff is a lot more expensive today then back then. A staff of 350 in a bigger office is a lot more to maintain than a staff of 50.

But there’s a lot more complexity in getting 150 people playing together on a the same screen at the same time with better graphics. It’s just a different product. It can’t be compared.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You’re not addressing the point regardless how many times it is repeated, so I am left believing you simply do not understand it.

You keep repeating a point I’ve addressed many times. I can only assume you don’t understand my answer. It’s either that or you’re attempting to deliberately troll me. Either way, this is my last post to you. As usual, you only hear what you want to hear.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You don’t seem to understand.
It is about adding features that are not available to people who are not willing to work for them – the same argument you’re applying to rewards bound to challenging content – in effect disenfranchising every single player (by forcing them to farm the gold for the covnersion, or to directly purchase gems), because none of those items are available directly in the game itself, which is actually far worse than binding a handful of items to challenging content.

Yet it seems to get a thumbs up from you, because you view it as something innately positive due to its intention without as much as paying half a regard to its consequences (the same consequences you, however, appear to be rather stuck up on when it comes to the challenging content rewards).
Ok.

Obviously we don’t see eye to eye and we’re not going to see eye to eye. I see a business doing what it needs to do to support itself to provide a service I enjoy. You’re not enjoying that service, so it’s not worth it to you.

Just because we don’t agree, doesn’t mean I don’t understand. And saying it a million times won’t make it any more true.

KarlaGrey.5903:

A change you perceive as positive means it will help make the game better (which can be understood in different ways ranging from a purely monetary PoW to the actual player experience and all the way to retention figuers), in other words, it will help improve company profits, improve the player experience …let’s not argue semantics yet again.

What difference does it make what Colin or anyone else said? You yourself argued numerous times how past statements are irrelevant to current business decisions, so please don’t fall back on the same PR talk you yourself attempted to discredit (most notably the manifesto, but also any other statements the current game development went back on).

I said that a four year old statement isn’t relevant to the game today. Colin made that statement like last week. So I’m pretty sure it’s relevant to the game.

He made that statement, not as a form of publicity, but as a response to a question.

Edit: I should add that I leveled a character to 65 since the 9/9 update and so far, the experience has been improved for me. I’m not just trusting Colin in this. I like this experience better than the original experience.

KarlaGrey.5903:

And yet you don’t feel disenfranchised at all when they repeatedly add new things to the gem store?
Alrite then.

No, I don’t. Because I’m a pragmatist. The gem store is how the game is funded. Do I want the game to be funded. Hell yeah. I want the game to be funded. The game is funded by the gem store. Or did you think it was funded by the box you purchased more than two years ago?

KarlaGrey.5903:

You don’t understand.
Even if there’d be more challenging content with appropriate rewards (which you’re referring to as ‘stacking up’), it should not pose any kind of problem, because you are not forced/compelled to get that one cute minipet, or that one cool looking gear in order to be able to play the other parts of the game.

Okay, I don’t understand. I see. I don’t understand because you don’t agree.

Or, just possibly, you’re wrong in what you’re saying. Anyway, I KEEP saying and you keep ignoring that it’s not one pet I’m worried about. It’s when the game has too many of these little things and casuals start feeling disenfranchised. You think it won’t happen, I think it might happen.

Anet will ultimately decide how likely it is to happen and make their decisions accordingly.

KarlaGrey.5903:

p.s. Might want to re-read my previous post, as I had made some edits inbetween.

The problem is also YOU seem to be asuming that dumbing things down further will magically improve the game, when history and examples in other games teach almost the polar opposite.

I never said dumbing down the game further will improve the game. That’s your words in my mouth (yet again).

What I said was the dumbing down happens in the genre all the time and it’s done to make the game more accessible to a larger player base. But I never actually said I think the game is particularly dumbed down…it is changed in such a way that it offers a slower entrance to the game.. Not really dumbing it down in my books.

What Colin said, and I agree with, is that the game has been changed to offer a friendlier experience to new players, including changed pacing and rewards. That’s what I’ve said all along.

It’s not just about dumbing it down. It’s about changing the reward structure. I’ve also said all along that giving everyone the same skill point/trait point every level ceased to be exciting to me personally. There were times I went up two or three levels and didn’t even notice, because it didn’t matter. I was saving up skill and trait points at those points anyway, and so those levels were effectively dead levels. There are far fewer dead levels now and by mixing up what you get on each level, you actually create an excitment. No matter how much I like wine (not that I like wine), getting another bottle at Christmas every year wouldn’t excite me. Getting different stuff that I didn’t expect would. I suspect most people are wired that way.

KarlaGrey.5903:

And GW is the most successful ‘coorpg’ out there (well, to me it was always an mmo and played like one too, which is why I probably cannot stand any other ‘more genuine’ mmos), and the one and only game that truly pioneered the level-playing field concept in both pve and pvp.

If money is not the only measurement (it is), you ought stop using it as the main argument against what are often perceived as negative changes to the game (e.g. NPE – a method applied in order to increase player retention with the aim of boosting dwindling playerbase figures and indirectly also improving the associated gem sale revenues).

Moreover, good games will always require a certain amount of thought one way or the other. The key is to capture just the right amount of it and also to have properly designed teaching mediums (tutorials, risk vs reward) at early game stages in particular.

Just because money isn’t the only concern doesn’t mean it’s not a major concern. I’m assuming you didn’t invest huge amounts of money to make this game, and therefore you stand less to lose making changes that make more money even if they’re not always popular. There’s always a balance in business and games ARE business. They require a high overhead, they require a large investment…particularly MMORPGS…and they take a lot of time to make. So you know, millions of dollars invested, you need to protect your investment. That’s all. Whether or not it’s the sole concern it has to be looked at. You can say otherwise, but you’d be wrong. You have to look at the money.

So in the opinion of some people, the changes Anet made will yield them less money. People said the same thing about WoW when WoW made a lot of the changes it made. Years later, WoW is still going strong, and even though they lost subs recently, they gained quite a few subscribers in the past when those changes were originally made. You can’t please everyone but you can go crazy trying to. Anet is pleasing the people it needs the most to stay in the game. At what point do you think that’s bad business?

The problem is you assume that if they add the stuff you like, it’ll stop people from leaving the game. There’s zero evidence that that’s true…if there was, I’m sure Anet would be doing it. Why wouldn’t they?

Kaldrys.1978:

Permanent content is vastly overrated. The novelty of Dry Top and Southsun Cove wore off in no time at all for me. They may as well have been temporary since I have zero intention of ever going back to these maps. We do need new permanent content, but it should be in the form of dungeons/fractals and instanced world bosses – content that has a lot of replay value.

Many people are quick to dismiss temporary content, but I disagree. Events like Marionette, Escape from LA, and the Scarlet fight were only as good as they were because they had high player turnout and they didn’t overstay their welcome. So what if they were temporary. I enjoyed those events while they were around, but I doubt that many people would’ve continued doing them after a few weeks. Even a week or two into the Tower of Nightmares people were struggling to get to the end due to lack of participation.

If Dry Top is the type of content we can expect going forward I would be very concerned. In my opinion Dry Top is the dullest, least engaging piece of open-world content to be released as part of LS thus far, and that’s because it was clearly designed with all of the limitations of permanent content. Anet needs to go back to what they were doing towards the end of Season 1 with large scale encounters that actually felt meaningful and were somewhat challenging.

It’s funny because Dry top is currently my favorite zone in the game, and if they made a dungeon, I’d run it a couple of times and never go in it again. That’s the problem of course.

Everyone likes different stuff.

Usually you get 100 badges from achievement point chests. If you use 50 of them at the karma merchant in WvW (which doesn’t involve WvW, just traveling to that outpost for free), you can buy a drop of liquid karma. I think it costs two laurels two, but it will give you rank up chests which are pretty cool, and up your WvW level if you ever want to get a legendary.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You say money is irrelevant, yet you repeatedly invoke the ‘good for business, cuz more moneyz’ card when anyone advocates how removing depth at the expense of availability is bad.
Even if a game that has been dumbed down happens to receive a greater influx of players, the retention might actually be lower simply because the longivety – the long-term aspect of the game – was butchered in favour of immediate profit (given the game is not f2p, that is).

But WoW is the most successful MMORPG of all time, undeniably and it keeps getting dumbed down.

When I said money wasn’t important, I meant it’s not the only barometer. Obviously America pays atheletes more than most other country’s, but that’s not really what we’re talking about here. Soccer probably has as many fans as any American sport…you just don’t realize it because you’re in America. There’s a whole big wide world out there. You shouldn’t dismiss it so readily.

AdaephonDelat.3890:

KarlaGrey.5903:

At adaephon, you’re correct how it’s rather meaningless to me.

Eh you should try it. It can be quite fun. Especially after your 4th or 5th trip the bar :-P

(Mental note to self, do NOT bring up the Ashes Test lol)…yeah cricket is a lot of fun. But making it faster and flashier is definitely going to give it a future. I think it was a very clever marketing move.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You know what I actually did there? I provided the kind of quasi-argument you usually provide. I’m sort of disappointed you didn’t recognise yourself in it.

I couldn’t care less if cricket is popular, because I am rather certain the sports I listed are more popular overall (in rl and ig world, respectively). The publicity and especially profits associated with them dwarf that of cricket, yet not a single one of them has, to my knowledge, been dumbed down to boost their popularity or improve their accessibility, and I would go so far as to argue some can actually be hard to pick up if you’re not in a particularly good shape, but that didn’t stop them from becoming some of the most successful sports on this planet.

At adaephon, you’re correct how it’s rather meaningless to me.

Well baseball has been the equivalent of dumbed down a number of times. Ask any baseball historian if you don’t believe me. Changes have been made to make games faster and more exciting in most sports, but you really have to follow the sports to know about them.

As for making more money or not, it’s irrelevant. Baseball in most of the world makes no money at all…only really in the US, Japan and Canada is Baseball really popular. American football isn’t as popular as soccer. But none of this is relevant to video games anyway.

Video games NOT being sports have been constantly dumbed down over the years, with reason. It’s because you get more people playing your game when you dumb it down. Even WoW, which is a dumbed down version of EQ, was dumbed down after vanilla WoW, so much so that many people who used to play it left, because it had been dumbed down. Didn’t seem to hurt the game much at the time, however.

WoW redid their starting zones to streamline them and make them more cohesive and accessible to new players. This was in a game already dumbed down.

Could you really imagine people playing adventure games today playing Ultima 4…because I can’t. I can’t even see most people having the patience to play an Infocom game.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Vayne.8563:

No double standard here. Fractals was made to appease a certain audience. It was always going to be a compromise.

Yet , following your logic, the game forces you to play them due to the BiS. Obviously, the game is playable without them, but it is also playable without a random super duper minipet (your example), which – unlike ascended – really does have zero no impact on your performance (number-wise), yet there you are arguing how you’d feel ‘compelled’ getting it.
I feel compelled getting the BiS because its statistically the best gear, so what makes you think you should feel compelled getting that random pet, if others should (in your opinion) not feel forced… I mean, compelled getting a feature that statistically affects their performance?
much
hypocrisy
whoa

Vayne.8563:

You don’t need ascended gear for anything else in the game…and ways to make ascended gear (and to a lesser degree have it drop) were added.

Nor do you need the pet. But you see, the original poster suggested alternative ways of obtaining those things yet you argued against those too. Much. Double. Standards. Yay.

Vayne.8563:

Everyone can have ascended gear if they want it. That’s a very different situation than what we’re discussing here.

Any everyone can have that particular minipet too if they really want it. They can set it as a goal and work towards obtainign it. Like the original poster I quoted stated clearly in several posts.

Vayne.8563:

I love how you always try to malign everyone who disagrees with you, while not actually offering an argument. It’s a great tactic to use, because most people don’t watch carefully.

I love how you always attack anyone who seems to disagree with you, pulling the typical ‘oh but I’m ok with it so it’s ok’ (translation: what I say is fact, while everything else are mere opinions), which however adds absolutely nothing of worth to a discussion.

I think people should read your posts and my posts and decides for themselves who attacks who. It’s pretty obvious.

That aside, you seem to ignore my position, so I’ll make it clearer for you.

A single reward (as I said in this very thread elsewhere) won’t be an issue. It’s when those single rewards keep stacking up, until people start to feel the game isn’t made for them.

Right now, the hard core crowd feel the game isn’t catering to them, it’s catering to casuals. And I agree with that. I think that’s because casuals are in the majority. Pretty sure if it was otherwise, then the game was cater to hard core. So Anet gave them fractals and threw them a bone and you know what…there were still complaints about it at the time, even if you don’t remember that. But the fractals is one thing.

Now that’s say Anet makes a bunch of new hard core content with a bunch of new rewards.

You know how people are saying that everything is made for new players, even though it’s not true. They see a bunch of stuff for new players and feel disenfranchised. Why on Earth would you think that it would be any different when casuals see a bunch of stuff for hard core players that is obviously not targeted at them. You don’t think they’ll start to feel disenfranchised.

Admittedly there’s a ways to go between what we have now and this point, but it’s still a point that needs to be made. Any time you start supporting a sub group another group is going to feel disenfranchised. It’s life in the big city.

It would be logical for Anet to put emphasis on their biggest player base first and support smaller player bases carefully…because the last thing any business wants to do is to annoy it’s core demographic. They already did it with ascended gear and it wasn’t pretty. The did it again with the trait system. I’m thinking no one really liked that. Certainly not casuals forced to go into WvW and EoTM.

So you know, Anet needs to coddle the core player base right now…and that’s what I think they’re going to be working on. It’s good business sense. If they have time, they’ll make something for the hard core crowd as well.

KarlaGrey.5903:

I’m neither playing it nor have I >ever< read or heard anything about it in the news, so it appears it’s not as popular as you perhaps believe it to be.

It’s what happens when your judgement is clouded by overly affectionate sentiments for the game, really. Perhaps in 2 years time, you will be seeing things from a different, more logical, perspective, possible one that will be more similar to that of a player who had long since quit the game.

Oh, I see, you’ve never heard of it in the news, so it’s not popular. Because you’ve never heard of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty20

Specifically from that article:

Since its inception the game has been very successful resulting in its spread around the cricket world. On most international tours there is at least one Twenty20 match and all Test-playing nations have a domestic cup competition. The inaugural ICC World Twenty20 was played in South Africa in 2007 with India winning by five runs against Pakistan in the final.¹ Pakistan won the second tournament in 2009,² and England won the title in 2010. Sri Lanka are the reigning champions after winning the 2014 competition.

Apparently, it must have been on the news somewhere. Why is it that intelligent people like you think you’ve never heard of it so it must not be a thing. The money being thrown at this compared to traditional modes of the game is truly staggering.

KarlaGrey.5903:

There is nothing insulting when I question your ability to think, especially when reading such illogical posts.
Are sports such as football, basketball, tennis, SC2, LoL ‘dumbed down’ to be more accessible? No. They’re easy to pick up but hard to master. Your ‘logic’ is anythnig but logical, but it is also extremely faulty because many, if not every successful game out there has done exactly the opposite you seem to be advocating. Many, many posters have stated that repeatedly already, yet it flies over your head, as you conveniently ignore it so your make-believe theory doesn’t fall apart while repeatedly proven incorrect.

You speak of taking barriers away, yet not only had the game started off with plenty of barriers already (build-making limitations, limitations of stat-based gear, (un)replayability of dungeons, pve design limitations [dps is king, rest can go home; formulaic and lacklustre mob/dungeon design] …), but is even adding more as time goes by (e.g. NPE, trait system changes).

p.s. Being able to play a particular game on a toaster is an advantage rather than a minus.

I don’t know…cricket has been dumbed down at least twice that I know of. It went from test matches to one day internationals to 20-20 matches, the shortest/fastest form of the game. Made to appeal to a younger audience. It’s working and bringing in a lot of money.

I’ve always said I thought you were an intelligent person. Trying to imply I’m not makes me question that assessment.

Galen Grey.4709:

sure I left out more stuff than that too. Its hard to keep track of whats new or what always was there. I only listed the stuff I was sure off.

Sorry, mate, I was being flippant. Letting other’s now that that’s not a comprehensive list without doing any research whatsoever. Your list was excellent.

Ohoni.6057:

There are better and worse ways to play each game, and playing the game in a way that the game wasn’t designed to be played can be problematical.

No, there aren’t. There are ways YOU prefer to play the game, and those might differ from the way I prefer to play the game, and neither of us is “Right.”

Anyone can play Guild Wars 2 the way they played WoW. They can set up a tank/healer and rush to make level to do dungeons.But I doubt they’ll play for very long.

I think you’re saying that they would find that playstyle ineffective and would either adapt or leave, which is likely true. The game does not have to allow any way of playing to be viable, but any way that people do find to play within the game, if THEY enjoy it, is a “correct” way to play. If someone does want to go full tank or healer, and they enjoy how that works for them, then they’re completely entitled to that enjoyment, and they are not “doing it wrong.”

You’re putting words into my mouth and changing the definition of what I said. I never said anything about “doing it wrong”. I agreed that your statement was factually correct. People can play a game any way they want.

However, different games are designed specifically to be played a certain way and playing them a different way isn’t likely to yield maximum enjoyment. For example you could play Guild Wars 2 by standing in Lion’s Arch and there’s nothing wrong with that. But Anet isn’t going to build the game around that play style, and you can’t expect them to.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Vayne.8563:

Because it required people to think to play it.

Nah, it was mostly the strong focus on pvp and being, as a pioneer of esports (see GWWC), way ahead of its time (its peak pvp period is dated quite a few years before streaming and twitch became the norm). But that is all the more reason to love it and give it the credit it rightfully deserves.

Vayne.8563:

They didn’t know or understand how to play the game.

Yet dumbing the game down in terms of build-making apparently wasn’t enough to fix that. (see NPE)
What you don’t understand is there will always be players who won’t know or understand how to play, and bad builds will always be a thing in such games (to varying degrees). But searching for the lowest common denominator to fix that issue instead of implementing proper tutorials and making the game as intuitive and engaging as possible is a fool’s errand, and not something that ensures game longievity. It is actually quite the opposite.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 suited people like me, who love to think

Made me chuckle for real. Aren’t we humble!
#locking self into first-person view
#zaithan managerie

Vayne.8563:

The idea of tying skills to weapons, combined with forcing everyone to take a healing skill, means everyone basically has at least a usable build. That’s why the open world is so easy.

I seriously question your ability to think, if you actually believe any of that. And worse, if you believe it is actually still believe dumbing down games is the way to go cuz ‘popularity’ and ‘accessibility’.

Again with the personal insults. I bet you’re really proud that you can insult people who disagree with you.

Dumbing down games is good if you’re trying to get more people playing them. That’s just simple logic.

If you make a game for the top 20% of the people, at most you’ll get 20% of the people to play it. People are always talking about how popular WoW is, and often they say it’s because it’s a great game. But it also dumbed down what EQ and on top of that, you could pretty much play it on a toaster.

If you take away barriers from people playing your game, more people will play your game. That’s simple business logic.

Will that make it a better game for the top 5%. Undoubtely the answer is no. Will the top 5% pay you enough money to really grow your game? Maybe…maybe not.

Businesses don’t completely make decisions on whether Karla thinks a game is better. They make decisions for all sorts of reasons.

I’m a pragmatist at heart…not an idealist. You think it’s stupid that I look at a business and see why they did what they did. I think it’s smart.

Ohoni.6057:

you need to give rewards to encourage proper play, if yu designed a good game, proper play should make people happy.

There’s no such thing as “proper play.” Play how you enjoy, that is proper. There is no style of playing that needs to be encouraged.

I’m not sure I agree with this. While it’s factually true, it skirts what I think is an important point.

There are better and worse ways to play each game, and playing the game in a way that the game wasn’t designed to be played can be problematical. Anyone can play Guild Wars 2 the way they played WoW. They can set up a tank/healer and rush to make level to do dungeons.

But I doubt they’ll play for very long. It’s a game’s job to explain to people the way the game is best played and from their, people can diversify. This is to me, one of Guild Wars 2’s greatest weakness. Anet did a poor job of explaining to people how to play their game.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Laosduude.1690:

These so called “few players” can go pick up Wildstar then, or play any Korean mmo in the market today. Guild Wars 2 ever since the start has been so relaxing, I don’t want to see it go along some hardcore path to get the best items that gives a significant advantage on almost all situations.

Yeah god forbid challenge in a videogame.

Not really the point. Plenty of people have challenging lives. They don’t need MORE challenge. Getting up in the morning and working is a challenge.

Every job I’ve had in the last 30 years has been ridiculously competitive. I don’t play games to prove myself or challenge myself. I play games to relax and unwind after proving myself and challenging myself all day…or I did before I was retired anyway.

It’s okay for people to play games just to have fun.

And nobody is stopping you.
However certain players are trying to stop me and others from playing rewarding content. For no reason.

But there is a reason. If you put better rewards on that content, you’re pressuring people to do that content. I know myself. I’ll do most of that content. I won’t enjoy it, but I’ll do it. It will change the entire dynamic of the game.

There are plenty of games that cater to that. Why can’t you let us have just one?

Because nobody is forcing you. You’re forcing yourself and it’s half funny and half sad.

I’m going to do something that’s probably going to ruin your game experience if what you wrote above is true.
I’m going to reveal the fact that : Currently the most profitable content in this game is the trading post – and anyone who wants to make money should learn how to play it and get spreadsheets and calculators and get cracking.

If what you wrote above is true – you’re going to become a TP guy right? Hardly.

You know, I know, everybody knows the TP is where it’s at yet I don’t find myself getting a master’s in economics any time soon. And neither will you.

The bottom line is this " pressure " you speak of is something you’re putting on yourself – and it’s a pretty far cry from the casual laid back Vayne you make yourself out to be on the forums.

Nobody is forcing you to play what you don’t like.

Also how do you know you won’t enjoy it?

And why is it that you being " forced " ( when in fact you’re just forcing yourself) to play content you don’t like is worse than me being actually forced to have terrible rewards for content that I do like?

Why should you enjoy yourself over me?

I’m not asking for vertical progression, power creep or other things.

It’s rather hilarious, really.
When one mentions how the game implemented vertical gear progression with fractals and thus even further restricted building freedom, the apologists hurry to defend such design choices by claiming ‘oh but you don’t need it to play the game’, yet in the same moment you see such nuggets of hypocrisy flying around from the very same posters.
I really like it how nicely you exposed those double standards.

No double standard here. Fractals was made to appease a certain audience. It was always going to be a compromise.

But appeasing a certain audience is as far as it went. You don’t need ascended gear for anything else in the game…and ways to make ascended gear (and to a lesser degree have it drop) were added.

Everyone can have ascended gear if they want it. That’s a very different situation than what we’re discussing here.

I love how you always try to malign everyone who disagrees with you, while not actually offering an argument. It’s a great tactic to use, because most people don’t watch carefully.

Using personal attacks to dismiss arguments doesn’t really say a lot for the arguments you’re supporting.

Galen Grey.4709:

Akira.5746:

For clarification, could someone write up a full list of new content (i.e. zones and dungeons) added since release that is STILL in the game?

I’ve heard about LS S1. It’s not here anymore. Same for SAB, same for Zephyr Sanctum, same for many seasonal events. The only “new” things that exist as far as I am aware are Southsun Cove, Dry Top, EotM, a small couple of fractals and SPvP maps and the Aetherpath (an unpopular path that replaced an equally unpopular path). Two zones is not exactly a lot to show after two years of mostly-squandered development time.

Anet has a problem with removing content. It is pervasive and ever-present, and shows no signs of stopping. The fact that an entire arc of the Personal Story was intentionally removed with no prior notice or explanation to date is rings as exemplar to this fundamental flaw in development and design.

I may be a relatively new player, but I am not in any way surprised when I see disenfranchised veterans drowning in disillusionment via /map chat; it is as far as I can tell the obvious conclusion, not the unreasonable one. The game has refused to change.

I really would like that list, by the way.

Permanent Map Still In Game accessable at will:
Southsun Cove
Edge of the Mists
Dry Top
Destroyed Lion’s Arch
Crown Pavilion
4x PvP Maps (temple of the silent Storm, Spirit Watch, Sky Hammer, Courtyard)
12 fractals
Aetherblade Dungeon Path in TA
Some new maps introduced in Guild Missions
Not so secret jumping puzzle
Sanctum Sprint
Cragstead
The Hatchery
New Mini Dungeons -> Forsaken Fortune, Vexa’s Lab

Maps Available During Events that occur periodically
Wintersday -> Winter Wonderland, The Snowball mayhem arena, Bell Choir, Tixx’s Infinitariaum
Halloween -> The Labyrinth, Mad King Clock Tower, Reaper Rumble
SAB
Labyrinthine Cliffs? (may or may not coming back after the destruction of zephyr sanctum)

Maps that where temporary:
Aetherblade retreat
Mad king dungeon
Reaper’s Rumble
Blood Prince Dungeon
Tower of Nightmares
Marionette Arena
Occupied Kesseks Hills

You left out Deirdre’s Garden? I love that place.

My concern is that level gating has absolutely been in this game since launch, and no one said a word about it. All of a sudden “no one thinks level gating makes sense”.

Tell me OP, did or did not your weapon swap unlock at level 7 before the September Feature Patch? Did or did not you get skills unlocked at certain levels.

Level gating has been in the game since day one.

You might argue that the change to level gating is bad, but the actual level gating itself…it’s a bit too late to start complaining about that. If it was such a bad idea, I’m pretty sure we’d have heard complaints about it two years ago.

Gem store funds the game. MMOs, unlike most other games, NEED funding, because they don’t end when you release them. If you release a driving game, you’re basically done and working on the next version of it. With an MMO you’re still putting content into the game, fixing a lot more bugs (because the game is more complex) balancing and changing things up, running servers that cost a lot of money.

Subscription games charge $15 a month. If a game has a million players that’s 15 million dollars a month funding that game.

This isn’t a charity.

Guild names are unique. Guild tags aren’t.

Not really my style. If I wanted one, though, I’d buy with gold. Black lion keys probably aren’t worth the investment.

Yes your level 80 could always get rare drops in Queensdale. In fact, every single rare in Queensdale you get is automatically going to be at level, since there are no level 15 rares. But other drops you got, say blues, would be either at level or at the zone’s level.

Leo G.4501:

windyweather.1238:

I see, Ayrilana. That may have been the intent, and maybe it’s a bug. But the big husk boss was ATTACKING while it was saying Invulnerable. I watched for several minutes. Waiting on more than 3 of us to show up. But when the thing kept going IV and attacking, and doing damage to the folks there, I said – “Cheater” and moved on with my life. If the vine minion thing is going on, the AI design seems to be “I’m a big boss that will kill you, but you have to kill my minions before you can do any damage to me.” I don’t recall having seen that here before. What I have seen is that the boss goes IV and stops attacking until you kill it’s minions. Hey, AN can do anything they want, and I can decide whether their design is cheating, and not participate.

The way I see it is, NPCs have to cheat, because so can we. We can become invulnerable for several frames using the dodge mechanic. So long as the NPCs don’t all cheat the exact same way, it doesn’t seem that bad.

FYI, this ‘cheating’ is prevalent in fractals. The last boss can’t even be attacked until half way through and the only way to harm it until then is to fling crystals you charge with the boss’ own attack.

On a similar note, I never had any fun with all the Toxic content we saw last year, and sill remains in a few places. It was all so difficult that you apparently needed ascended gear. All I have at this point is level 80 exotic, so I was out gunned by so much that it wasn’t even a starter. Hey that’s fine. They build it and I can decide whether or not to participate. So far there are still places that I’ve found where a poor level 80 with only exotic gear can have fun.

Sorry NVM… I’m such a whiner… with the flame thrower it’s trivial. Only died 5 or 6 times and no chest at the end, but I got gold…
- ww

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If you can’t do it in exotic gear, you won’t be able to do it in ascended gear. It’s all about technique and builds, not about stats.

In fact, the biggest problems with those events for most people is they’re running around a zerker gear and so die faster, particularly without enough condition removal.