No, it means that if you unlock them on a low level character, all your characters can see them from level 2.
Right now, you need to be level 13 to do your first skill challenge. It only affects people making alts now. And after this patch it only affects your first alt.
Bunnies in Wayfarers are still there, they’ve just been moved downhill. Not disagreeing with you, just informing you so you know.
That’s why I wrote ‘usual’. They are completely timid now, maybe one tried to assault me when I was completing the heart. Their AI has been almost completely neutered. Those poor, hated, beloved beasts might as well not be there at all.
One of the most iconic events of the Wayfarer’s, praised by Angry Joe as the best thing he ever found in an MMORPG has been turned into a “player friendly experience”. The saddest thing about the starting zones changes so far. Even worse than the skritt in Plains of Ashford, cows in Queensdale… Maybe about as sad as the Maguuma shark.
Ah okay, sorry about that. Well I liked it quite a bit at the end, but in the beginning, I really REALLY hated that event. With a passion. I didn’t realize you could scare the rabbits away. Some people love that event, but many that I know can’t stand it. I know this because we often do zone completion with the guild. The other one people didn’t really like was the trading one with the Jotun…oh and one in a charr zone where you’re stealthed and have to sneak past everyone.
But yeah, I like that one now…well I did before the patch.
It’s not just this patch, mate. That’s the thing. People don’t segregate out their annoyances into this is annoying and this is not. What you’re really seeing here is people annoyed by the game as a whole.
While a lot of people like the megaserver, a whole lot of people are still mad about it. The trait changes were largely not accepted and most of that hasn’t been fixed, and now this is added on top of it. This came on the heals of interviews that said SAB is on the back burner along with dungeons. People are angry because they’re angry. The new patch is just a focus for their anger.
I don’t think it’s necessarily fair that that happens, and that a pretty good patch is impugned to the degree it was, but who ever said life was fair? It’s what happens.
Someone said in another thread (don’t remember who) that if Anet had a big content release, no one would even be talking about this. People who have done mostly everything they want to do want more content.
What a minute. So you have this list of specific things that some players have been upset over, and you directly acknowledge that these complaints have been ignored in part or whole, and that this trend has been piling up for some time. Yet you still sit there and dismissively say that people are just “angry because they’re angry,” like it’s some social dysfunction. What?
I’m saying that if this was the only thing, the reaction would have been less. That’s all. It’s NORMAL to have an over-reaction if you’re reacting to more than one thing. The changes here were a bit annoying but didn’t deserve the kind of reception it got. Not by a long shot. But when you add in all the other stuff, it explains the reaction.
That’s human nature.
I guarantee you that if the other stuff hadn’t happened, this reaction wouldn’t have been as bad as it was. I’m not even sure what there is to argue about here.
Right, I’ll throw my question in…
Is there even a point in discussing returning some old functionality and content to hearts and events? Bundles, the usual bunnies in Wayfarers, the Inquest shark in Metrica, the golem suit in the very same Metrica, putting out fire with water, picking up mines in Plains of Ashford, feeding cows, rooting grubs out with rakes in Caledon, countless others?
I just completely fail to imagine how such a bland leveling experience, consisting solely of combat and pressing F can be used to attract more players than the old system, I really do.
Bunnies in Wayfarers are still there, they’ve just been moved downhill. Not disagreeing with you, just informing you so you know.
that is true 2014 was not good year at all.
that being said…look the life span of world of gw2 is 2 years. after that the core player(or veteran players) who are the most important players to any mmo already done the content of the game over and over and over again. have multiple legendary weapons, high rank wvw, high rank pvp,etc
anet better not continue such lackluster year in 2015 or they lose a lot of veteran players considering some pretty good mmos coming in 2015.
personally i am waiting for kuf 2.There are always pretty good MMOs coming out though. You know,. ESO, Wildstar, Archage. They were all going to kill Guild Wars 2. I know. I read it here. It must be true.
We don’t know how well any MMO will do because everything looks great on paper. But talking about making an MMO is much easier than making one. So far, most MMOs leave a lot to be desired. I’m not sure that trend won’t continue.
why are you defending gw2 always without thinking that he might have point, you post a lot on different threads defending anet i have seen your name around for some time, stop being you know what it starts with F and end with Y.
did i say doom and gloom or i said it will loose players which is actually true.
Did I say anything untrue here? People say things like there are a lot of good MMOs coming out. Didn’t they say that last year too?
I’m telling it like it is. Fact. Until an MMO comes out, no one can tell how well it will be received. That’s not defending Anet. That’s common sense.
that is true 2014 was not good year at all.
that being said…look the life span of world of gw2 is 2 years. after that the core player(or veteran players) who are the most important players to any mmo already done the content of the game over and over and over again. have multiple legendary weapons, high rank wvw, high rank pvp,etc
anet better not continue such lackluster year in 2015 or they lose a lot of veteran players considering some pretty good mmos coming in 2015.
personally i am waiting for kuf 2.
There are always pretty good MMOs coming out though. You know,. ESO, Wildstar, Archage. They were all going to kill Guild Wars 2. I know. I read it here. It must be true.
We don’t know how well any MMO will do because everything looks great on paper. But talking about making an MMO is much easier than making one. So far, most MMOs leave a lot to be desired. I’m not sure that trend won’t continue.
But you can’t really ignore the fact that LS2 is repeatable for all characters, including ones made after LS 2 started.
Yes you can. The content is barely worth doing once, and having to repeat it for achievements was tedious. It’s certainly not worth repeating on other toons.
Oh boy, lets run around and talk to a bunch of people at a dinner party in DR!! Such repeatable content so much wow.
Then why even play after making one character. You will be doing the same for the newer ones. Your argument has too much negative attitude to be valuable here.
i know you guys are in argument mode,
however i was thinking about this, and i think the main reason people replay certain things is
A) To experience it differently, with the new gameplay of a new class, or if things play out differently
B) When you really enjoy something, you may want to repeat it.
C) rewards or some benefit for doing so.I dont think LS2 (most quests) offer much of a unique experience per class, or play out differently, so A isnt good, and C, well the rewards from what i saw were fairly unentertaining, as far as being unique, and not competing in terms of high gold value returned.
So, how replayable living story missions will be has the most to do with B )
for me, it wasnt so enjoyable i would do it again for joy, but i might do it again for like a refresher at some point.Ideally, if they want something super repeatable, it would probably hit A, B, and C.
I find that doing the LS on different professions is quite different and you have to figure out how to do different things differently. Not so much the first run, but the achievements. I was trying to do On Swift Wings on my mesmer and I was having a world of problems. But I one-shotted it on my ranger.
Sort of not the point. A game company has X number of hours and has to set priorities. Period. If your priorities are different from theirs, then they’re not doing their job to you. If your priorities are the same, they look a lot better.
You have things you want to see fixed more than anything. A lot of people do. But a lot of people don’t also. There are people who like the way this game is going. Logically they share the same priorities as Anet.
Some people come to these forums and say, this guy’s a white knight because he supports what Anet is doing no matter what. That’s just not true. I support what Anet is doing because they stuff they’re doing is the same sorts of stuff I’d be doing. Not always, but most of the time.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to accept that other people have completely different priorities than they do, and based on those priorities they’ll feel differently about the game.
Its more about GW2 having a quantity of content released in this 2 years thats prety low for most MMO. That has been seen worst since they tried to fragmentate it in smaller parts, that make people to conect in a 15 days basis, but make them feel even smaller.
If it has more released content (not in opposition of many releases, but they arent the same of course) then most of what people claim will be alredy fixed.
Edit: Same with bug fixes, etc most of the features, bug fixes, etc including the content are pretty low in quantity considering their competence.
But the thing is, I don’t like the updates in other MMOs for the most part. I went from update to update in Rift and I didn’t like any of them. Rift could have come out with an update every day and it wouldn’t have made any difference to my enjoyment of the game.
This game has less updates this year, probably because of China. That’s done now. But the updates they do have interest me personally. So I’m here.
If another game comes out that has stuff that interests me personally, then I’ll try it out. But so far, no other MMO has come out with content for me.
Copied and modified from a previous post I made back a month ago:
From the latest Raptr stats:
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-july-2014-summers-winners-and-losers/
GW2 is in the top 20 list!People say only a small number of people use these 3rd party apps and wrong, etc, however look at the relative percentages to the other games within the stats, then compare with the Steam stats:
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Beware not all the games in the Raptr list is in the Steam list because those games aren’t released on Steam.(At the time of last month) You’ll notice eg. DOTA2 ~2-3 times the numbers of Counter Strike, CS ~4 times higher than Civ 4, etc, so the Raptr stats do seem to provide a reasonable estimate in terms of relative positions.
Now looking at where GW2 lies in the Raptr ranking, it’s about the same as Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim, so looking at those games concurrency, you get peak of ~50k-60k and normal of ~20-30k, so GW2 is probably around those number, so it’s fairly small.TLDR: GW2 concurrency is probably around the same as in Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim on Steam.
There’s an updated Raptr.
I’m in the boat that doesn’t believe 3rd party applications are a good way to measure players. If anything I would base popularity off of twitch.tv, that’s even the site that Arenanet directs its players to.
I never believe RAPTR numbers because it only counts people who have RAPTR installed. Some games actually install RAPTR when you install the game so their numbers are inflated over others. I look at the WvW map queues as a clue that this game is doing well.
Well, most servers probably don’t have queues, I’d guess. But then, I think this game has more PvE players than PvP players. Polls seem to indicate that.
Raptr has been pretty accurate in predicting game trends for a long long time. It doesn’t matter if it makes logical sense. If you follow the industry and you follow Raptr, it’s always been a fair indication of what’s going on. Not perfect, but fair.
Haters are going to continue to hate. But for the vast majority that this was just a shocking thing. I am glad to see it FINALLY calming down, and I am actually honored that ANet took the development time to sit back, rethink something on the fly and tweak it as needed. Generally I think the NPE is an all around good and I am very happy to see all of the “Account” unlocks now working properly and that new things were added making it ever-easier to continue being my alt-o-holic self. Not that I ever intended to stop Its just nice that its more smooth now.
I usually agree with what you say, but I really don’t like using the word “haters” to describe people who don’t like the game. It’s no better than them trying to dismiss our opinion by calling us white knights. People hate this game for a reason, and often it’s a legitimate reason to them.
In general, though, I think most of the population will be mollified by these changes, and those who aren’t probably didn’t like the game’s direction that much to begin with.
Hmm. a little tit for tat never hurt anyone? And I wasn’t generally directing that at any person just a general statement about someone who said the “people that hate the topic will take it over.” I was simply voicing my opinion the subject. There are people that Actually hate the content, and then there are “haters” (as I call them) who just want to cause problems, stir up things, and generally bait people who may not necessarily speak their minds against them.
Then again, I didn’t write it to offend anyone, but if they are offended by me calling them haters, sorry, not sorry. It’s actually how I feel. Even the most legitimate reasons for disliking something annoy me when its tossed around in anger. I commend people who dislike something when they say it in a good way and I rather detest people who blindly hate things and give no valid solutions otherwise.
Did ever occur to you that some of these problems are really really old problems and that the solutions these so called “haters” have given time and time again have fallen on deaf ears when they decided to make the suggestions folder an archive? Meanwhile here in the general forums every new suggestion is a rehashed one of something someone already said in the suggestions folder over and over again ad nauseum.
Sort of not the point. A game company has X number of hours and has to set priorities. Period. If your priorities are different from theirs, then they’re not doing their job to you. If your priorities are the same, they look a lot better.
You have things you want to see fixed more than anything. A lot of people do. But a lot of people don’t also. There are people who like the way this game is going. Logically they share the same priorities as Anet.
Some people come to these forums and say, this guy’s a white knight because he supports what Anet is doing no matter what. That’s just not true. I support what Anet is doing because they stuff they’re doing is the same sorts of stuff I’d be doing. Not always, but most of the time.
I don’t know why it’s so hard for people to accept that other people have completely different priorities than they do, and based on those priorities they’ll feel differently about the game.
I don’t deny what you’re saying about bugs. I’m simply saying that Anet is making this game more for people like me than people like you. That’s all I’m really saying.
And it’s a good thing too. Because no other MMO is making a game for people like me.
So people who already have a/some level 80 characters should be able to see and interact with all SP & vistas on a completely new level 1 character?
I think you may have to unlock it on the first alt you play and after that all other alts will be unlocked. That’s how I’m reading it.
Haters are going to continue to hate. But for the vast majority that this was just a shocking thing. I am glad to see it FINALLY calming down, and I am actually honored that ANet took the development time to sit back, rethink something on the fly and tweak it as needed. Generally I think the NPE is an all around good and I am very happy to see all of the “Account” unlocks now working properly and that new things were added making it ever-easier to continue being my alt-o-holic self. Not that I ever intended to stop Its just nice that its more smooth now.
I usually agree with what you say, but I really don’t like using the word “haters” to describe people who don’t like the game. It’s no better than them trying to dismiss our opinion by calling us white knights. People hate this game for a reason, and often it’s a legitimate reason to them.
In general, though, I think most of the population will be mollified by these changes, and those who aren’t probably didn’t like the game’s direction that much to begin with.
why a gamer should care bout how easy or not easy it is to make a good game?
a gamer dont make the game he buy it and he play it and when game is not fun he delete it
its that simple
Yep. A gamer shouldn’t care. Still missing my point.
I’m playing Guild Wars 2 for two years. Two years later, Guild Wars 2 is still in the top 20 in Raptr and the top ten in Overwolf. 2 years. Evidence they’ve made a good game, because if it were a bad game, we wouldn’t be in the top 20.
After all ESO and Wildstar are much newer and they’re not. Therefore the game must at least be good. Or why would people still be playing it. It may not be to everyone’s taste. That’s another story. But the odds are if it weren’t a good game, it wouldn’t be in the top 20.
Now it could be a better game, true. So can every game.
this list is not top 20 games – its a top 20 played by raptr comunity (they even write this in the post – just scroll down a bit)
its same with overwolf – most games dont have a use for this and so its normal that games which have a strong supourt for this are high (and yes the api and how wvw works strongly supourts overwolf)there are other sites out where you can get a feel whats played by ALL GAMERS and are not so biased
just go twitch and check the streams by streams/viewers and you get a feel what GAMERS play or care about
http://www.twitch.tv/directory
and scroll down – and for me this looks much more acuratbut anway – move on
Overwolf’s support of Guild Wars 2 is rather new, but it’s been high on the Overwolf rankings for a long time.
I know it’s really hard to admit that a game you don’t like is doing well. But Guild Wars 2 is doing well. Not only from lists, but from financial reports. It’s meeting expectations, or we’d hear about it from stock companies.
But, but Vayne! Didn’t you read that one thread that looked at NCSofts Financials that claimed 100million in a year was a sign the game was dying!? =O It’s Dying Vayne and there is nothing we can do about it.
We must hang up our White Knight Cloaks and Mourn the loss =(.
LMAO! People have been saying the game is dying from the first November. Five years from now, people will still be saying it. It’s always the same on every MMO forum. If you don’t like the game it’s dying. If you like the game it’s doing well.
The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
wasting of time to discuss with ppl like this^^ – you will spam same things over and over again until thread has 10+ sites and noone read it anymore (like all the other threads)
so move on – no time for this
I agree 100%. It’s absolutely pointless discussing something with someone who has made their mind up, despite all sorts of evidence.
Each person can make up their own mind.
why a gamer should care bout how easy or not easy it is to make a good game?
a gamer dont make the game he buy it and he play it and when game is not fun he delete it
its that simple
Yep. A gamer shouldn’t care. Still missing my point.
I’m playing Guild Wars 2 for two years. Two years later, Guild Wars 2 is still in the top 20 in Raptr and the top ten in Overwolf. 2 years. Evidence they’ve made a good game, because if it were a bad game, we wouldn’t be in the top 20.
After all ESO and Wildstar are much newer and they’re not. Therefore the game must at least be good. Or why would people still be playing it. It may not be to everyone’s taste. That’s another story. But the odds are if it weren’t a good game, it wouldn’t be in the top 20.
Now it could be a better game, true. So can every game.
this list is not top 20 games – its a top 20 played by raptr comunity (they even write this in the post – just scroll down a bit)
its same with overwolf – most games dont have a use for this and so its normal that games which have a strong supourt for this are high (and yes the api and how wvw works strongly supourts overwolf)there are other sites out where you can get a feel whats played by ALL GAMERS and are not so biased
just go twitch and check the streams by streams/viewers and you get a feel what GAMERS play or care about
http://www.twitch.tv/directory
and scroll down – and for me this looks much more acuratbut anway – move on
Overwolf’s support of Guild Wars 2 is rather new, but it’s been high on the Overwolf rankings for a long time.
I know it’s really hard to admit that a game you don’t like is doing well. But Guild Wars 2 is doing well. Not only from lists, but from financial reports. It’s meeting expectations, or we’d hear about it from stock companies.
why a gamer should care bout how easy or not easy it is to make a good game?
a gamer dont make the game he buy it and he play it and when game is not fun he delete it
its that simple
Yep. A gamer shouldn’t care. Still missing my point.
I’m playing Guild Wars 2 for two years. Two years later, Guild Wars 2 is still in the top 20 in Raptr and the top ten in Overwolf. 2 years. Evidence they’ve made a good game, because if it were a bad game, we wouldn’t be in the top 20.
After all ESO and Wildstar are much newer and they’re not. Therefore the game must at least be good. Or why would people still be playing it. It may not be to everyone’s taste. That’s another story. But the odds are if it weren’t a good game, it wouldn’t be in the top 20.
Now it could be a better game, true. So can every game.
So GW2 is in an “awful” #12…..
But where are ESO and WS, 2 most hyped MMOs in history that launched only couple of months ago?
Aw, darn
the comparison with only kitten games dont work – cause GAMERS have the option and are not limited to games who are even worse than gw2
But if it was so easy to make an MMO, those games wouldn’t have been disappointments. Maybe the lesson here is that it’s easy to say about bad a game is but it’s not so easy to make a good game.
if you think this year was bad, obviously you weren’t here last year
living story actually had. . . story.. the only downside was we lost dragon bash
game balance.. been here 2 years and have yet to see it so you can’t really say last years was better..Personally i enjoyed last year much more. There was constantly soemthing to do and
as soon as you got bored by the last update there was already the next in sight.Now in LS2 we got 4 !! total new updates in 5 months .. and personally i’m not
interested in playing these instanced storys with hordes of mobs but no loot
and endfights that take longer than a dungeon-run, more than once.So in the end we got Dry Top farming for 5 months.
Four months, assuming you don’t count other stuff like the WvW tournament, which some people do play and collections which some people do like as well.
Did you see the interview with Colin at I think it was last year’s PAX? He said what I said he said.
looked for more info, and this is what i think you are refering to.
“The thing that we haven’t decided yet,” he went on, "is what form that type of content will take. Is it right for Guild Wars 2 for that kind of boxed expansion? Is it right for that to be something we add, live, through storylines in the game? Is that something we want to sell through our in-game store? There are a lot of different options available to us.
“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”
Mike Zadorojny, clarifying his comments from last year – which suggested there wouldn’t be an expansion any time soon – said: “The answer I gave you [in 2013] was that nothing was off the table.”
looking at this quote i would say they have backed off a bit, and now its a possibility, but they still are talking about a timeframe of withing the games lifetime.
still not saying they are working on it now, or have been in the past.
i would say its still in the realms of possible, rather than probable, but each person can interpret the quote how they feel
for clarity of time frame i believe the, “not right now an option” was in july.
and the, “not sure if expansion” was in january.
the time frame is, within the games lifespan, which i would guess is any time within 10 years from release
Nice guess, but just a guess. They may not release features as a paid expansion, but they are working on features that you’d find in an expansion. I’m sure the China launch set them back.
The bottom line is they didn’t say there would or wouldn’t be an expansion. Now, it’s possible that Drytop was one of the things they said they were working on, which is a new zone which is the type of thing that comes in an expansion. But the more I look at the number of people working and the type of stuff they’re doing, the more I come to the conclusion that some work on something is going on in the background.
This is a complex business. A lot of things happen that affect other things. Simplest most recent example is Wildstar not doing as well as expected. That could very well be a queue for NcSoft to pay more attention to Guild Wars 2, and make some of that investment back. Best way to get an influx of cash?
Probably an expansion.
pretty sure ncsoft was reccomending an expansion since day 1, (korean traders kept saying that it was part of their plans) anet was probably the one saying hold up, we got a different plan.
but yes, at this point i would say its still a guess. its an unknown, so i wouldnt rely on it being the case
I don’t know if the content will come out as an expansion or not, but I do believe content is being worked on, quite secretly. I don’t expect to see it quickly either, but I don’t expect it to be years away.
another thread just reminded me.
Non sellable/salvageable gear is horrible. You should not give any one items that break the rules of all other items, and especially not new players.
You should be familiarizing them with game mechanics, not these weird exceptions that dont follow the rules.
What if people put a rune in one of these items? they are completely wasted.I really think you should eliminate this whole class of items, or make it into its own item class which doesnt accept upgrades, and reccomends throwing destroying it on use.
short version, dont give, or encourage new players to get any type of gear that is not salvageable/npcable. It causes more confusion at some point.
Since a LOT of items actually breaks this supposed rule (which of course is not any kind of rule, in fact it follows the rule from previous versions of the game and “awarded items” first one you receive as a part of CHARACTER CREATION)
Earliest karma vedors sell this kind of gear also (since launch), and www, and temple gear…
To be honest, I never liked those either. lol
Did you see the interview with Colin at I think it was last year’s PAX? He said what I said he said.
looked for more info, and this is what i think you are refering to.
“The thing that we haven’t decided yet,” he went on, "is what form that type of content will take. Is it right for Guild Wars 2 for that kind of boxed expansion? Is it right for that to be something we add, live, through storylines in the game? Is that something we want to sell through our in-game store? There are a lot of different options available to us.
“… but we absolutely are going to do sweeping new features that you would traditionally only get in expansions – large regions, content and progression additions to your characters in the form of growth and professions and races. Those are all things that you will see in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2.”
Mike Zadorojny, clarifying his comments from last year – which suggested there wouldn’t be an expansion any time soon – said: “The answer I gave you [in 2013] was that nothing was off the table.”
looking at this quote i would say they have backed off a bit, and now its a possibility, but they still are talking about a timeframe of withing the games lifetime.
still not saying they are working on it now, or have been in the past.
i would say its still in the realms of possible, rather than probable, but each person can interpret the quote how they feel
for clarity of time frame i believe the, “not right now an option” was in july.
and the, “not sure if expansion” was in january.
the time frame is, within the games lifespan, which i would guess is any time within 10 years from release
Nice guess, but just a guess. They may not release features as a paid expansion, but they are working on features that you’d find in an expansion. I’m sure the China launch set them back.
The bottom line is they didn’t say there would or wouldn’t be an expansion. Now, it’s possible that Drytop was one of the things they said they were working on, which is a new zone which is the type of thing that comes in an expansion. But the more I look at the number of people working and the type of stuff they’re doing, the more I come to the conclusion that some work on something is going on in the background.
This is a complex business. A lot of things happen that affect other things. Simplest most recent example is Wildstar not doing as well as expected. That could very well be a queue for NcSoft to pay more attention to Guild Wars 2, and make some of that investment back. Best way to get an influx of cash?
Probably an expansion.
There is just no pleasing people.
So in Living story season 1 one of the major complaints was that the story pacing was too slow.
and you know perhaps it was, 30 mins of story every 2 weeks that would take over a year to resolve.. not a pacing everyone can be comfortable with for sure.In comes season 2 now every release contains 4 – 5x as much story instead of a single 30 mins story instance we get 4 – 5 of them per release. Now feed back is there is not enough story. Only 4 releases before a mid season break? ohh but season 1 was so much longer…. Actually no those 4 releases had at least 4 story instances each and were the equivalent of 16 releases from season 1. if we get double that till then ends thats the equivalent of 32 releases from season 1 making season 2 nearly twice as large as season one story wise.
Longer breaks then season 1? of course with so much more content what do people expect? did you think Anet was taking it easy in Season 1, working 1/4 of the time and just doing nothing the other 3/4? If it took them 4 weeks to do 1 story instance before, how much longer does it take to do 4-5 instance per release? (of course now the teams are larger and the dynamics are differently so the answer probably isnt 16 weeks but its definitely larger then 4 weeks. They can keep up the previous pace indefinitely, it makes sense they need longer breaks to finish the next batch.
And that can be a good thing as they can put stuff SAB, holiday events, Pavillion and things like that in between.
and please lets stop quoting assumptions as facts.
Last I checked they didnt say they’re not working on an expansion they said we’re not talking about it.
I said it before and I will say it again in 5 years they massively updated their engine, designed and developed the game as well as created 8 dungeons, 25 zones, 1500 dynamic events, many jumping puzzles, quite a few secret events / stuff to discover etc.. Since launch their team has increased and not shrunk yet while output should have been higher (better workflow, no game to develop per se, better tools etc..) it didnt seem to be the case. so either people are being paid to do nothing or there is stuff going on in the background we dont know about.
Arenanet for some reason decided not to talk about stuff until its ready to release.
Whatever it is they’re working in the background (if anything at all) we will not know about it until its ready.actually, last thing they said, was we are not working on an expansion.
People who want to be optimistic say that that announcement was long ago, and MAYBE now they COULD be working on expansion.make no mistake, they have never said anything about an expansion, other than not right now, we are not working on it.
The last thing they said were that they were working on the type of content that you’d find in an expansion and they haven’t yet decided how they were going to deliver that content. It could be an expansion, or it could be through living story.
The last thing they said certainly wasn’t we’re not working on an expansion.
they said it more than once, and from different people. Here is a quote from one.
“So right now we’re not really looking at expansions as an option,” lead content designer Mike Zadorojny told me on his visit to London last week."
“It’s something that’s on the table but it’s not something we’re focused on, because what we want to do is – our idea here is that with Living World, we can do what expansions would have done but do it on a more regular basis.”
they may have changed their minds, but the last thing they actually officially said was that they werent working on an expansion.
You can choose to believe that plan has changed, but nothing they have actually said implies that they have.
im not saying this to talk down the possibility, im just trying to keep people operating on real facts. Anets most recent talk on expansion is that they have no plans for an expansion, and were not developing it at this time.
time and time again they basically said, no plans for an expansion, living world is the method of delivery for that type of content.
At some point early in development, before living world was a thing, they said they werent sure how to deliver expansion type content.
Did you see the interview with Colin at I think it was last year’s PAX? He said what I said he said.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/16/raptr-shows-mmos-and-mobas-dominating-the-top-20-in-august
Looks like GW2 is way down to #12.
Can’t imagine why…for me i think #12 is still way to high
but when i see swotr is on #14 than #12 for gw2 is ok^^Gw2 is better than most mmos imo. Wow and eve online are the only mmos I find to be Better. Gw2 just lacks endgame, which is why I’m not a huge fan of it.
Swtor is pretty darn successful. It actually rake in a lot more money than gw2 does.no its not – cause you like it more than other mmos dont mean it is better than most mmos
gw2 is not very attractive for most players – just check twitch (when you count viewers there you will mostly have same list as this raptr list) – and noone on twitch care bout gw2
gw2 was very hyped before and at start from gw2 and gw2 was a sequel from a very popular game – only this brought players
But devs killed it after release with total miss management and incompetent desicions. Looks like gw1 people dont work at arneanet anymore and there are all new people which never cared bout games and gaming in their live but they are good programmers and thats why they have the job
EVERYTHING in gw2 after release was brainstormed to death and had no “FUN” as a maintarget. EVERYTHING in gw2 has not gamers as a target it is made for casuals and bad players who like to spam #1 and being called hero for this
thats why gw2 not popular^^
Opinion stated as fact remains opinion stated as fact. The same can be said about any game, but it doesn’t make it true.
I see no evidence that Guild Wars 2 isn’t popular among most players. Certainly it’s more popular than other new MMOs that have been released that were supposed to have killed it.
Guess you’re not paying attention to the industry as a whole.
and guess you will praise this game even when they shut down servers
I praise the Amiga computer even though the company who makes it couldn’t make it successful as well. However, I think most people would agree that this game isn’t close to shutting down. If it is, and it probably is the third most successful MMO at the moment, that doesn’t bode well for hundreds of other MMOs that are doing worse, but are around for years.
another thread just reminded me.
Non sellable/salvageable gear is horrible. You should not give any one items that break the rules of all other items, and especially not new players.
You should be familiarizing them with game mechanics, not these weird exceptions that dont follow the rules.
What if people put a rune in one of these items? they are completely wasted.I really think you should eliminate this whole class of items, or make it into its own item class which doesnt accept upgrades, and reccomends throwing destroying it on use.
short version, dont give, or encourage new players to get any type of gear that is not salvageable/npcable. It causes more confusion at some point.
I think that this is completely right. If nothing else, having items in your inventory you have to delete just feels horrid. Even if it had a small merchant price it would be better.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/16/raptr-shows-mmos-and-mobas-dominating-the-top-20-in-august
Looks like GW2 is way down to #12.
Can’t imagine why…for me i think #12 is still way to high
but when i see swotr is on #14 than #12 for gw2 is ok^^Gw2 is better than most mmos imo. Wow and eve online are the only mmos I find to be Better. Gw2 just lacks endgame, which is why I’m not a huge fan of it.
Swtor is pretty darn successful. It actually rake in a lot more money than gw2 does.no its not – cause you like it more than other mmos dont mean it is better than most mmos
gw2 is not very attractive for most players – just check twitch (when you count viewers there you will mostly have same list as this raptr list) – and noone on twitch care bout gw2
gw2 was very hyped before and at start from gw2 and gw2 was a sequel from a very popular game – only this brought players
But devs killed it after release with total miss management and incompetent desicions. Looks like gw1 people dont work at arneanet anymore and there are all new people which never cared bout games and gaming in their live but they are good programmers and thats why they have the job
EVERYTHING in gw2 after release was brainstormed to death and had no “FUN” as a maintarget. EVERYTHING in gw2 has not gamers as a target it is made for casuals and bad players who like to spam #1 and being called hero for this
thats why gw2 not popular^^
Opinion stated as fact remains opinion stated as fact. The same can be said about any game, but it doesn’t make it true.
I see no evidence that Guild Wars 2 isn’t popular among most players. Certainly it’s more popular than other new MMOs that have been released that were supposed to have killed it.
Guess you’re not paying attention to the industry as a whole.
There is just no pleasing people.
So in Living story season 1 one of the major complaints was that the story pacing was too slow.
and you know perhaps it was, 30 mins of story every 2 weeks that would take over a year to resolve.. not a pacing everyone can be comfortable with for sure.In comes season 2 now every release contains 4 – 5x as much story instead of a single 30 mins story instance we get 4 – 5 of them per release. Now feed back is there is not enough story. Only 4 releases before a mid season break? ohh but season 1 was so much longer…. Actually no those 4 releases had at least 4 story instances each and were the equivalent of 16 releases from season 1. if we get double that till then ends thats the equivalent of 32 releases from season 1 making season 2 nearly twice as large as season one story wise.
Longer breaks then season 1? of course with so much more content what do people expect? did you think Anet was taking it easy in Season 1, working 1/4 of the time and just doing nothing the other 3/4? If it took them 4 weeks to do 1 story instance before, how much longer does it take to do 4-5 instance per release? (of course now the teams are larger and the dynamics are differently so the answer probably isnt 16 weeks but its definitely larger then 4 weeks. They can keep up the previous pace indefinitely, it makes sense they need longer breaks to finish the next batch.
And that can be a good thing as they can put stuff SAB, holiday events, Pavillion and things like that in between.
and please lets stop quoting assumptions as facts.
Last I checked they didnt say they’re not working on an expansion they said we’re not talking about it.
I said it before and I will say it again in 5 years they massively updated their engine, designed and developed the game as well as created 8 dungeons, 25 zones, 1500 dynamic events, many jumping puzzles, quite a few secret events / stuff to discover etc.. Since launch their team has increased and not shrunk yet while output should have been higher (better workflow, no game to develop per se, better tools etc..) it didnt seem to be the case. so either people are being paid to do nothing or there is stuff going on in the background we dont know about.
Arenanet for some reason decided not to talk about stuff until its ready to release.
Whatever it is they’re working in the background (if anything at all) we will not know about it until its ready.actually, last thing they said, was we are not working on an expansion.
People who want to be optimistic say that that announcement was long ago, and MAYBE now they COULD be working on expansion.make no mistake, they have never said anything about an expansion, other than not right now, we are not working on it.
The last thing they said were that they were working on the type of content that you’d find in an expansion and they haven’t yet decided how they were going to deliver that content. It could be an expansion, or it could be through living story.
The last thing they said certainly wasn’t we’re not working on an expansion.
“Fixed a bug that prevented some accounts from having vistas now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis.
Skill challenges now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis as originally intended.”I hate to look stupid, but I don’t see any change.
I’ve got 3 lvl 80’s, and 2 of them have 100% world completion. But to my lower level alts, the vistas are still just as unviewed and the skill challenges just as undone as they were yesterday, even in zones at or below their level.
What changed, exactly?
The complaints have been about the new NPE (New Player Experience). Getting skill points and seeing vistas on your map were gated in the NPE. Now they’re only gated on the first character you do it on. Once your character unlocks skill points, then all your characters will be able to do them from level 2. Same with vistas. Once you unlock them on your map on a single character, then every subsequent character will see them on the map always.
While it’s not a hard and fast this game is doing better than this, it is however an indication that lots of people are still playing Guild Wars 2 for lots of hours. In fact, Guild Wars 2 has never been out of the top 20, where as ESO and Wildstar have already fallen out of the top 20.
Well, I suppose it provides a decent “minimum,” but I don’t see it being great at tracking maximum users, since many people have never heard of it. Within certain communities, it may track accurately, but within other gaming communities it might not track well at all because those communities are less tied into it.
Well, as I explained, the relative ranking (and proportions) in the Raptr stats agrees fairly well with the Steam concurrency, so I don’t think the numbers are going to be wildly off.
However, Vayne does make a point that the concurrency would be higher during patch days. Since games like Civ4, Skyrim, Garry’s Mod doesn’t have patches, in order for Guild Wars 2 to meet the same relative position, GW2 must have lower concurrency on non-patch days in order to offset the higher concurrency brought on by the patch day interests.
It doesn’t really work that way. Every single game has ebbs and flows of traffic. Other games have it for tournaments and for releases of new DLC, as an example. That’s why it pays not just to look at the chart for Raptr but also to read the articles that accompanies each chart.
For example, though Guild Wars 2 moved up five slots this month, it’s been number 17 for a long time now. More play hours in game are due to the sale, and the article says so.
However, most months, Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy are neck and neck.
What it does show is that games like Wildstar and ESO didn’t get enough play hours to even make the top 20 even though they’re relatively new games. They come out with content patches.
You can’t take content patches away from how well a game does, because it’s part of the game. If that’s what’s getting people to play it’s still part of that game’s success.
It’s interesting that Guild Wars 2 stays pretty high on both Raptr and Overwolf, because they measure players differently. Raptr is based on hours played and Overwolf is based on unique log ins. I personally prefer Raptr for that reason. Someone logging in just to unlock the living story will still count as a unique log in, even if they don’t play. But because Raptr counts hours played it’s a better over all system to see what’s going on.
Face it, if Guild Wars 2 is coming out with content that every month keeps people playing, it can’t be discounted.
I haven’t read the discussion, I don’t really want to spend any more time with this. But my problem is the existence of level gating and unlock quests/requirements. Tiered utility skills, traits since april and this new player experience all are incluced.
Those are just not something I want to ever experience for any reason, and it’s even more jarring when things are changed in the middle of things.
I loved the freedom so much.Okay but most of the things that are gated after the patch were gated already before the patch. People who hate gating so much should have been complaining before the patch, not just after.
Weren’t there multiple complaints regarding this prior the patch?
I’ve never seen a single complaint that slot skills unlocked at certain levels and I’ve never seen a complaint that traits didn’t appear until level 11 or that you couldn’t get your first till level 15. I never saw a single complaint about weapon swapping coming in at level 7.
I did see complaints about changes to gates, such as the trait system, but not that things were gated in the first place. Your utility skills and your elite skills have always been gated. But I don’t remember seeing anyone say you should get your elite as soon as you create your character (which is what no gating would mean).
http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/09/16/raptr-shows-mmos-and-mobas-dominating-the-top-20-in-august
Looks like GW2 is way down to #12.
Can’t imagine why…
Which is up 5 spots from #17 last month. Probably because it’s a good game.
I guess you don’t understand that this is a top 20 and indication of a successful game. Both Wildstar and ESO have already fallen off this list.
If you don’t like the game, don’t play the game. But don’t come back here and try to say the game isn’t doing well, because this chart indicates otherwise.
Edit: I think you should congratulate Anet for having the 3rd most successful MMORPG (at least according to this chart).
(edited by Vayne.8563)
I’m just waiting for the white knights to come in and justify this brilliant development.
Funny I didn’t see any posts by white knights justifying this change.
Maybe it’s because the people you refer to as white knights actually think about what they post and only post if they actually disagree with something.
Anyway it’s all fixed now.
At any rate, they are not gaining (and retaining) new players with this kind of NPE.
If they do I’m glad that these newbs will be gated for a long time to us veterans.
I’m not sure why you say that, but I’m pretty sure that this NPE will be successful in keeping new players. The future will tell it’s own story, no matter what either of us predict though.
Such an horrible patch. Worse ever! Game sucks like no other ever has, and ever will.
Sarcasm over.
I think a lot of people feel disenfranchised because of this patch. But I think over time, this patch will be more helpful than harmful too.
The changes made today should smooth over some of the hard feelings.
My apologies, it just gets tiring because all things considered, if you are open minded, there’s hardly nothing about this patch that is AS kittenome put it. One would think it’s just a malicious attempt (even if it’s not) to steer people away from the game, with all the misinformation and overreaction going on.
I do notice some have been alienated, but unlike with so many other patches, I can’t relate to those that have been “harmed” (megaserver/trait rework/ascended gear=major changes; NPE=nothing in comparison.) Thanks for being reasonable about it, though.
(The Dungeon group kick concerns are actually more valid for those affected than the NPE, IMHO. Perhaps I am just being callous.)
It’s not just this patch, mate. That’s the thing. People don’t segregate out their annoyances into this is annoying and this is not. What you’re really seeing here is people annoyed by the game as a whole.
While a lot of people like the megaserver, a whole lot of people are still mad about it. The trait changes were largely not accepted and most of that hasn’t been fixed, and now this is added on top of it. This came on the heals of interviews that said SAB is on the back burner along with dungeons. People are angry because they’re angry. The new patch is just a focus for their anger.
I don’t think it’s necessarily fair that that happens, and that a pretty good patch is impugned to the degree it was, but who ever said life was fair? It’s what happens.
Someone said in another thread (don’t remember who) that if Anet had a big content release, no one would even be talking about this. People who have done mostly everything they want to do want more content.
Anet claims to have tested several variations of ways to keep people playing more. If you have evidence that their tests are wrong, I’d love to hear it.
The current entire forum for the last week and in the future constant complaints about these changes IS evident.
You don’t do THOUGHT experiment on these changes and make these changes.
There WAS NOT a CDI about these changes. That was the problem!
Maybe if they pay attention and actually do their job correctly there wouldn’t be these problems.
Seems to me most of the complaining has withdrawn, one week after the patch. So I’m not sure why this is such a huge issue. Some people will still complain of course, but the pendulum, if you haven’t noticed, is swinging back.
Perhaps Anet is operating under the old adage that it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission. lol
2014 included some of the best and most popular content updates since launch in my opinion. The only problem is they’re no longer in the game.
snip
I hope most players aren’t that impatient, because my gut instinct is that it’s going to get much better moving forward.
i’d say orgins of madness was pretty good, i enjoyed that one a lot. Aside from that, nothing really awesome, to me, in 2014. I also dont feel like the game has fully integrated some of their major changes
in year one(well 1.3 since it started in august), i would say we had a lot more big deal updates.
southsun cove
fractals
guild missions
SAB
first WvW tournament
nightmare tower
and 2 or 3 pretty good LS updates
tequatl revamp.thats just my opinion of course.
Sort of my point though. We didn’t launch in China last year. We did launch in China this year. Major undertaking is a major untaking. I don’t think anyone really could expect the same number or depth of updates.
Games aren’t created in vacuums and very often what goes on in a game’s development is tightly tied up with other things the game has to do to grow. Growing is good for everyone, even though you can’t see the results in world at the time.
So yeah, there is less stuff this year than last, sure. But I’m not sure why anyone would have expected more.
Also this year we had EotM which is very popular was some people, arguably a much more popular map than Southsun.
to be honest EOTM is popular mostly because its like the champion train:
really good rewards compared to anything else
extremely approachable as a follower
Essentially always going on, and you can jump in and out at will.i would say its 60% the first thing.
But i will say EOTM is a fairly well designed map, even though i the falling all the time style. Its actually a shame that it is mostly a karma train map in someways.
So yeah, ill give EOTM big deal of 2014 props, although i feel it actually hurt WvW itself a bit.
As far as the china release using resources, They probably should have jobbed development out. I think one of the misteps, is mistiming their big deal stuff. I think the second year, players are expecting big things, or at least big announcements.
in the 1-2 year mark, even people who liked your game are often craving something new on the horizon. I get that there will generally be some downtime on development, but i think it was a mistake to have that slump occur in this time frame.
This is probably why many other studios either do minimal changes to the client, or they let a seperate entity work on it, or a fairly small part of their studio. Most games i remember didnt go off their content release schedules in preparation for a new market.
I’ve been saying all along, for almost a couple of years now, that Guild Wars 2 launched too early. It did. Too many bugs, too many unfinished systems, too many things that really weren’t ready…but the game launched because that’s what happens. You run out of money and have to start making some back. Because of the business realities, you have to launch eventually and most MMOs aren’t ready. Even MMOs like Terra and Archeage weren’t ready for launch and its shows. But they had to launch. You really can’t hold it against them.
So now Anet is finally tackling the stuff that should have been done before launch and it’s time consuming. This is a pattern for so many games. They have to launch early, fans are massively hyped, the game is buggy or doesn’t have enough content, or it’s missing big features so they go to the next game which goes through the same thing.
The only way a game can really survive today is to launch early and to be good enough to play catch up. That’s what Guild Wars 2 has done. It’s good enough to play catch up, because they got so much basic stuff right.
I honestly thought, and said many times, the game would be ready to start moving forward in a year, but it took quite a bit longer than I thought it would. It’s been two. With this latest updates, I’m now convinced the game really is ready to start moving forward. Catchup time is over and it’s time to see what this game can really become.
The new living story chapters are a start, but I’d expect a lot more. If this year is disappointing (and it would be for people because not everyone will take into account the realities surrounding making a game) next year should be much much better.
I have a pretty strong feeling that you’ll be surprised in the days ahead.
The old system works fine for you. Colin was quite definitely sure that it wasn’t good enough after having tested it
And by tested it you mean a program team doing their job half hearted and actually COPY AND PASTE the chinese codes AND a QA team that doesn’t actually do their job by playing it but instead sitting a table doing thought experiment?
They didn’t test the build. People tested various options for the game. Not this specific build. From the info they got from tests they produced this build. If you’re waiting for me to disagree that the build is buggy, you’ll be waiting a long time. It’s obviously buggy.
But that doesn’t mean that the changes made aren’t best for the game. The testing we’re talking about wasn’t testing this build for bugs. The testing we’re talking about is testing players for reactions to how the game plays at low levels.
While it’s not a hard and fast this game is doing better than this, it is however an indication that lots of people are still playing Guild Wars 2 for lots of hours. In fact, Guild Wars 2 has never been out of the top 20, where as ESO and Wildstar have already fallen out of the top 20.
Well, I suppose it provides a decent “minimum,” but I don’t see it being great at tracking maximum users, since many people have never heard of it. Within certain communities, it may track accurately, but within other gaming communities it might not track well at all because those communities are less tied into it.
Sure that’s why you need multiple sources. While Raptr puts Guild Wars 2 at 12 for number of hours played total, Overwolf puts Guild Wars 2 at number 7 in terms of total number of unique log ins.
As for steam, since steam doesn’t sell Guild Wars 2 and most people who have steam, including me, would just launch Guild Wars 2 without launching it from steam, it’s impossible to tell how many people who have steam are playing Guild Wars 2. Steam only really tracks games it sells.
Yeah Vayne? Which part of the old system doesn’t work fine? You mean it’s too confusing to pick up cow feed to feed cow? Or do you mean rewarding a skill point for leveling up? Or is it too confusing to unlock a weapon skill by actually USING the said weapon Or is it too confusing to actually be able to jump straight into your personal story at level one?
Actually it’s not just the too hard or too easy question. You’re pulling individual elements from a whole cloth and trying to make that the whole patch. But it’s not the whole patch, it’s the individual elements. Most of the really simple changes were made in the 1-5 areas. Later on in the starter zones the experience is roughly the same.
Pacing before was a problem and rewards were a problem as well. Anet didn’t introduce one type of change, but many to streamline the whole experience. Part of that streamlining was to increase the speed at which you level to 15.
Complaints about there not being any teaching of players go back to the beginning of the game. There have been many discussions about how to better teach players the game. Anyone who frequents the player helping players forum knows very well that some people have problems and not every one of those people come to forums. Some stop playing.
Anet claims to have tested several variations of ways to keep people playing more. If you have evidence that their tests are wrong, I’d love to hear it.
-Early levels are incredibly dull. Early hearts/quests are too simplistic and bland.
True, but apparently this was an issue for not experienced gamers. What, like 12 hearts got adjusted?
-Traits take far too long to open up
Level 60 was already the case since launch. No change there.
I do agree that the trait system needs fine tuning.-Utility slots take far too long to unlock.
They are at level 13 / 17 / 19 now. With exception of the first utility this is at about the same pace as before (time wise).
-“Tutorial” process
You can easily just click it away with 1 button… and more often than not you get loot.
It’s not a tutorial, it’s simply pointing out game specifics. You’d be amazed how many people miss out on them.traits unlock 20 levels later than they used to.
you used to unlock traits at 10 or 11, now its 30
major used to unlock at 40, now its 60
grandmaster used to unlock at 60, now its 80
This is true with one exception. Traits unlocked at 11, but you couldn’t actually get your first trait originally until level 15.
The old system works FINE. Revert ALL the changes except for the level up reward.
Old system doesn’t work fine though. The old system works fine for you. Colin was quite definitely sure that it wasn’t good enough after having tested it. Which means that their testing is greater than any one person’s opinion. Changes had to be made.
All that’s really on the table here is altering the changes, because it won’t be reverted.
2014 included some of the best and most popular content updates since launch in my opinion. The only problem is they’re no longer in the game.
I don’t find the year disappointing. However, I do acknowledge that due to the release of China, we have less stuff. Large undertakings like that are good for the game long term, but people need to be more patient, because no company can take on a big project like that and keep up the release pace from the first year. I don’t feel it’s reasonable to respect them to.
Since China what you’re seeing is all catch up. Things like the mega server and the NPE are necessary, at least in Anet’s mind, the move the game forward.
I hope most players aren’t that impatient, because my gut instinct is that it’s going to get much better moving forward.
i’d say orgins of madness was pretty good, i enjoyed that one a lot. Aside from that, nothing really awesome, to me, in 2014. I also dont feel like the game has fully integrated some of their major changes
in year one(well 1.3 since it started in august), i would say we had a lot more big deal updates.
southsun cove
fractals
guild missions
SAB
first WvW tournament
nightmare tower
and 2 or 3 pretty good LS updates
tequatl revamp.thats just my opinion of course.
Sort of my point though. We didn’t launch in China last year. We did launch in China this year. Major undertaking is a major untaking. I don’t think anyone really could expect the same number or depth of updates.
Games aren’t created in vacuums and very often what goes on in a game’s development is tightly tied up with other things the game has to do to grow. Growing is good for everyone, even though you can’t see the results in world at the time.
So yeah, there is less stuff this year than last, sure. But I’m not sure why anyone would have expected more.
Also this year we had EotM which is very popular was some people, arguably a much more popular map than Southsun.
People say only a small number of people use these 3rd party apps and wrong, etc, however look at the relative percentages to the other games within the stats, then compare with the Steam stats:
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Beware not all the games in the Raptr list is in the Steam list because those games aren’t released on Steam.I’ve been playing GW2 since launch, what’s a Raptr?
It’s not relevant whether you’ve heard of Raptr or not. Raptr is a program that runs in the background that allows you to communicate with friends. It’s got a lot of players. Obviously only players that have heard of it. If you haven’t you won’t be using it.
But of the people who do use it, this month, Guild Wars 2 wracked up enough hours to place it #12 on their list. Since Raptr is running in the background, it tracks how many people using Raptr are playing games for how long.
While it’s not a hard and fast this game is doing better than this, it is however an indication that lots of people are still playing Guild Wars 2 for lots of hours. In fact, Guild Wars 2 has never been out of the top 20, where as ESO and Wildstar have already fallen out of the top 20.
It’s not something that you can get accurate numbers from, but it’s an indication of trends. Haven’t followed the Raptr top 10 for quite a long time now, I can honestly say that it gives a fair indication of how games are doing.
The text below explains why Guild Wars 2 went up five slots, and it’s because of the sale, mostly. Normally it’s hovering around 17 on the chart.
Such an horrible patch. Worse ever! Game sucks like no other ever has, and ever will.
Sarcasm over.
I think a lot of people feel disenfranchised because of this patch. But I think over time, this patch will be more helpful than harmful too.
The changes made today should smooth over some of the hard feelings.
I haven’t read the discussion, I don’t really want to spend any more time with this. But my problem is the existence of level gating and unlock quests/requirements. Tiered utility skills, traits since april and this new player experience all are incluced.
Those are just not something I want to ever experience for any reason, and it’s even more jarring when things are changed in the middle of things.
I loved the freedom so much.
Okay but most of the things that are gated after the patch were gated already before the patch. People who hate gating so much should have been complaining before the patch, not just after.
2014 included some of the best and most popular content updates since launch in my opinion. The only problem is they’re no longer in the game.
I don’t find the year disappointing. However, I do acknowledge that due to the release of China, we have less stuff. Large undertakings like that are good for the game long term, but people need to be more patient, because no company can take on a big project like that and keep up the release pace from the first year. I don’t feel it’s reasonable to respect them to.
Since China what you’re seeing is all catch up. Things like the mega server and the NPE are necessary, at least in Anet’s mind, the move the game forward.
I hope most players aren’t that impatient, because my gut instinct is that it’s going to get much better moving forward.
I’m absolutely convinced that some people don’t care about the changes one way or another, never plan to level a new character and they’re here just to bait white knights, or drive people from this game to whatever game they’re interested in. It does happen.
The problem with the repeating in every thread of the same negative thing (which I try to counter by posting something more positive) is that it gives an unreal impression to people who don’t remember forum names.
There are about twenty people on this forum that really hate (or at least say they hate) the new NPE. I’ve been accused many times of posting in every negative thread, even though it’s not true. I pick my negative threads I post in.
If you put a teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewerage, you get sewerage. If you put a teaspoon of sewerage into a barrel of wine…you get sewerage. It’s much much easier to tear something down than it is to build it up.
It takes the people who want to far less energy to start a negative stampede than it does to stop it. And when that happens and misinformation starts, it’s not good for the game, period.
For some it’s an honest reaction. Some just get caught up in the peer pressure or the bashing. Some are trolling. And at the end of the day, most of it gets fixed, or enough of it to play and the game continues.
But the affect it has on the population is staggering. You might be surprised at how many people have contacted me saying they wouldn’t post on this forum because of how aggressively negative it is if you post something positive.
So yeah, repeating the same thing over and over in every thread is more destructive than helpful…in my opinion.
perhaps, but for those who feel that way, talking about talking about repeating it over and over again (or talking about the possible negative outcomes) is even less productive.
So on that note, how do you feel about these changes with the latest patch, in combination with how you felt before?
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a bug that occasionally caused the Content Direction System to direct players to higher-level zones when a more appropriate zone was nearby.
* Fixed a bug that would occasionally direct players using alternate characters towards the dodge tutorial before level 4.
* Diving goggles now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis.
* Fixed a bug that occasionally unlocked collection items incorrectly.
* Fixed the text in the options menu for the Content Direction System.
* Fixed a bug that prevented some accounts from having vistas now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis.
* Skill challenges now unlock on an account-wide basis rather than a per-character basis as originally intended.
* Utility slot skills 2 and 3 now unlock at levels 17 and 19, respectively.
* The elite slot skill now unlocks at level 31.
* Elementalist F4 commands, mesmer F3 commands, and guardian F3 commands now unlock at level 17.
* Mesmer F4 commands and engineer F4 commands now unlock at level 19.
* Skill Challenges are now visible at level 13 instead of level 15.personally i feel these a pretty good changes, and overall make the experience fairly livable for veterans, and seem designed around the idea that by level 20 you once again have most things unlocked.
Still i feel that the unlock system is still fairly unfair and unbalanced for some professions, and that level 1-20 will still not be as enjoyable, though better than before.
essentially, good job, its better, but i dont think 1-20 will be a better experience for newbs, and vets who havent the means to skip to 20.
On the + side, it will be a fairly short period of being any different than anything else they have done, so its tolerable.
basically, less painful, but still not increasing peoples motivation to play this experience, for vets, and average new gamers.
I think the changes are good. I always knew it would be scaled back, from the moment I first saw what was and wasn’t. Anet reacts pretty fast to patch changes and in less than a week we have a more livable NPE, that still can help players that need the help. I’m still convinced we’ll start seeing more free player weekends now, so it’s good they got this done.
I didn’t particularly have a problem with most of the original patch. It felt a bit inconvenient to me, but most of that convenience was over rather quickly. Some of the bugs were particularly unfortunately, like the leveling in the 20s bug, because compared to the first 15 levels, it made it seem so much slower. But I think the fixes are good.
Copied and modified from a previous post I made back a month ago:
From the latest Raptr stats:
http://caas.raptr.com/most-played-pc-games-july-2014-summers-winners-and-losers/
GW2 is in the top 20 list!People say only a small number of people use these 3rd party apps and wrong, etc, however look at the relative percentages to the other games within the stats, then compare with the Steam stats:
http://store.steampowered.com/stats/
Beware not all the games in the Raptr list is in the Steam list because those games aren’t released on Steam.(At the time of last month) You’ll notice eg. DOTA2 ~2-3 times the numbers of Counter Strike, CS ~4 times higher than Civ 4, etc, so the Raptr stats do seem to provide a reasonable estimate in terms of relative positions.
Now looking at where GW2 lies in the Raptr ranking, it’s about the same as Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim, so looking at those games concurrency, you get peak of ~50k-60k and normal of ~20-30k, so GW2 is probably around those number, so it’s fairly small.TLDR: GW2 concurrency is probably around the same as in Garry’s Mod, Civ4, Skyrim on Steam.
There’s an updated Raptr.
I’m in the boat that doesn’t believe 3rd party applications are a good way to measure players. If anything I would base popularity off of twitch.tv, that’s even the site that Arenanet directs its players to.
Thanks for the updated link.
Personally, I think viewership on Twitch a little worse in terms of measurements, since depending on the game, if you’re watching, you’re probably not playing.
However, I agree the popularity of GW2 on Twitch does mean the level of interest of the game isn’t very high (especially in the e-sport area).
Some games are good to watch and some games are bad to watch. A lot of the twitch streams are competitive PvP and I think most people agree that competitive PvP is not Guild Wars 2’s strong suit. But PvE isn’t nearly as entertaining to watch. So you get an imbalanced perspective from something like twitch. Great commentary probably on how Guild Wars 2 PvP is doing but from most polls we get that most people in this game, an overwhelming majority PvE…which twitch wouldn’t show.
You have two different sources that both put Guild Wars 2 in the top 20 in players for the month. Raptr, which counts actual hours played (which is useful) and Overwolf, which measures unique log ins over the month. Overwolf has Guild Wars 2 at number 7 for many many months in a row now.
It’s obvious the game isn’t dying, isn’t close to dying,. people are still playing it a lot. Games that were supposed to sink it (Neverwinter, Wildstar, ESO) aren’t doing as well and aren’t in any of these top lists. That means either GW 2 did something right, or no one else can make a game. Now people are saying it about Arch Age.
And Arch Age might make a dent for a short time in numbers…but I suspect not a big one. There are tons of complaints about the launch, which I’m following through my son who’s bought a founders package. They’ve made a lot of questionable decisions that will affect the game’s long term growth.
At any rate, I don’t think Guild Wars 2 has a population problem. But I’m not sure what the concurrent population is, because everyone is so scattered.
I think it’s fair to say on patch days we get much higher concurrency than towards the end of a patch, and that if you’re in a tier 1 server in WvW, Blackgate’s zerg is probably bigger than the people left playing ESO (blatant exaggeration for the purposes of humor).
Everybody that hates the NPE is going to take over the discussion after all the fixes have been released I believe. You’re going to see multiple posts by the same people that hate it, and it’s going to seem like a lot more people dislike the new changes, when in reality, it’s just those same people that really want to make their point across. And not that there is anything wrong with posting more than once, it is a discussion after all, but you get my point.
I mean you can see the evidence of it now, with people complaining in one thread over the subject, and then having some of those same people from that thread start up new threads on pretty much the same topic.
I do agree that some minor changes need to happen, but hopefully Anet doesn’t give in to the pressure and make a complete 180 to the NPE, because I believe some of these changes are good for the game.
So I can’t wait to chime in when all the fixes are done. Should be interesting.
I agree with you about this. I think it’s premature to gauge how NPE will play at the current time, because we do know changes are coming.
And yes, you do see some forum members making the same points again and again. That truly is not helpful to the review and discussion, in that the devs would prefer a focused, clear, concise statement rather than realizing “Wait, it’s that same person, saying the same thing for the 19th times.”
I think you are missing the point, a lot of people havent seen the new changes yet, thats why the discussion at this time is old.
As far as seeing the same people, i dont think that is really relevant in a logical discussion. As long as the discussion is logical (which i admit many are not)I think the best method to promote useful talk,
reiterate the new patch that just happened changed things. ask people to focus on those changes/whats missing/how they feel about the new stuff.Actively engage posts that you feel are the type of posts you want to see, or are useful feedback and collate the major points adressed to compile feedback.
not saying you shouldnt agree with people you agree with, but essentially your post just continues the discussion on whether you think the information will be useful, instead of encouraging/focusing talk on useful information.
I’m absolutely convinced that some people don’t care about the changes one way or another, never plan to level a new character and they’re here just to bait white knights, or drive people from this game to whatever game they’re interested in. It does happen.
The problem with the repeating in every thread of the same negative thing (which I try to counter by posting something more positive) is that it gives an unreal impression to people who don’t remember forum names.
There are about twenty people on this forum that really hate (or at least say they hate) the new NPE. I’ve been accused many times of posting in every negative thread, even though it’s not true. I pick my negative threads I post in.
If you put a teaspoon of wine in a barrel of sewerage, you get sewerage. If you put a teaspoon of sewerage into a barrel of wine…you get sewerage. It’s much much easier to tear something down than it is to build it up.
It takes the people who want to far less energy to start a negative stampede than it does to stop it. And when that happens and misinformation starts, it’s not good for the game, period.
For some it’s an honest reaction. Some just get caught up in the peer pressure or the bashing. Some are trolling. And at the end of the day, most of it gets fixed, or enough of it to play and the game continues.
But the affect it has on the population is staggering. You might be surprised at how many people have contacted me saying they wouldn’t post on this forum because of how aggressively negative it is if you post something positive.
So yeah, repeating the same thing over and over in every thread is more destructive than helpful…in my opinion.
I too leveled a caracter after the patch from 1-80. And i cannot agree on some points of the op. First there was plenty of armor as rewards and altho some was not salvagable some where. As for stats ye some where the wrong stats but some you could choose the stats you want. As for making gold yes i made more money leveling up this time than before the patch. All those crafting bags you got as rewards had enough stuff in to make you a reasonable amount of gold.
You do realize that you make more money because now you have to purchase every trait individually, right?
Essentially you are being given little pouches of extra gold while they cut a hole in your wallet as compensation.
Unless you play the game to get the traits you want. In which case, it’s not that bad. But yeah, the trait system needs work…and presumably they’re working on it.