Guild Wars 2

Rogue.7856:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Highlord.7158:

So. Who thought these changes were a good idea, and why are they still employed?

I think they’re compelling as an idea. I think the execution . . . leaves a lot to be desired.

The whole idea of reusing already existing content and turning it into a reward isn’t a reward at all. It’s a punishment if anything, and it’s creating the very grind that they were trying to innovate out of their game from the beginning.

The whole thing failed in every way. And they need to accept the fact that their research is wrong and its time to fix it before the damage is permanent.

Which existing content are you referring to?

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

Graka.9457:

Vayne.8563:

Overlays aren’t add ons. They’re overlays and not against the terms of service. There’s nothing you get from this that you can’t have from having a second monitor and a calculator.

We’ve been using overlays for a long time already…at least I have.

Is there any sort of red post saying that overlays are okay? I just dont want to get myself into any sort of trouble.

Overlays don’t alter the game at all. Anet doesn’t even have a way to know you’re using the overlay. It does nothing more than a second monitor would do for you. It doesn’t give you in game advantage. It doesn’t change the code. It literally breaks no rules.

If it didn’t give some sort of an advantage there wouldn’t be any reason to use it now would there?……….Come on you’ve got to be realistic sometimes. Ease of access to information is always an advantage in everything.

It doesn’t give an in game advantage. It doesn’t make your character faster. It doesn’t make your character stronger it doesn’t allow you to teleport. It doesn’t in fact do anything a person with two monitors couldn’t do.

That’s all semantics. Having two monitors is an advantage. (I couldn’t see myself going back to one after playing with two.) Timer websites are an advantage, pen and paper, dulfy, voip, etc etc….they are all advantageous. I’m not saying they are against tos or anything, just not going to try and call something not advantageous when it definitely is. Level of advantage is secondary and besides the point.

Anet is saying anything that gives you an “in game” advantage. Anet can’t regulate who has two monitors and who doesn’t. They wouldn’t even know. You can call it semantics all they want, but I think it’s pretty clear what they mean by an in game advantage. They don’t want hacks. They don’t want people using macros that give them a competitive advantage in combat.

Having access to how much profit you’ve made isn’t really an advantage, because you can do it with a pen and paper. I generally know about how much money I make from a dungeon run because, you know, math. Having a calculator to do it for me, telling me the exact amount doesn’t change the game for me at all. It’s not like I’ll make more money from that dungeon if I know how much I’ve made.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

QFT. Anet takes a lot of flack for not delivering on things announced. But if Anet came out and said, clearly and front in center, that certain things are delayed or have been moved to the back burner, most reasonable fans would understand.

Anet not saying anything is pretty much Anet asking for trouble. The logic is simple.

If I tell my wife we’re probably going on vacation in June to Europe and I can’t make it, I probably should let her know before September. It would save me a lot of grief in the long run.

She might very well be disappointed if I came and told her I couldn’t get time off, or we couldn’t afford a vacation to Europe but she’s understand.

Put another way, I am super disappointed in the direction this game is going (and clearly I’m not alone).

ArenaNet, why would people like me stick around if you’re not giving me something to look forward to? Or do you not care if people like me stick around?

You do realize you agreed with a post of mine? Just checking.

I think the direction of the game hasn’t really changed, but the focus has. It’s been going in this direction for a long long time. Not like a couple of weeks. A long time.

For some people that makes this the ideal game. For me it’s good. I’m an achievement hunter. Yay me. I like collecting stuff. Yay me again. I’m relatively casual. I don’t need to be constantly challenged. Again, perfect for me.

There are people who play games for completely different reasons. I don’t know that this game ever really catered to the hard core crowd, tbh, certainly not the PvE game. It has some challenging content, but no content that’s challenging remains challenging if you keep repeating it, at least in PvE. You learn all the tricks. You learn every short cut. So of course it’s not challenging.

I remember first running Arah and it was challenging. Now it’s mostly on farm.

The thing is, if Anet puts time into make content for the people who want the hard core challenging experience, it has to be worth the time. The last really hard thing they made, besides Triple Trouble, was the TA dungeon. The hard core crowd says it wasn’t rewarding enough to run which is why no one runs it.

Anet doesn’t want to make it more rewarding to run, because if they do, people will feel that they have to run it to get X. It’s a kind of pressure. The idea was supposed to be that you can get the best rewards, more or less by doing anything. Hell a precusor can and has dropped from a mob in the starting area.

I seriously doubt Anet is going to want to compromise that part of the game to make the rewards worth it to do more challenging content. As much as it would be great for the hard core crowd, the more casual crowd wouldn’t like that change. Sucks but there it is. And it would be a change, since Anet has never really rewarded challenge. Fractal skins are the closest thing. They have to keep the RNG because everyone would stop running fractals as soon as they got the skins they want.

I think the people who run challenging content to be challenged, as opposed to for rewards, is very small. So Anet either has to up the rewards, or shift their focus.

I think they’ve made a choice on that. It doesn’t bode well for the ultra hard core crowd and I know that must be frustrating as kitten.

But there are people like me, for whom the new focus works quite well.

Harper.4173:

So on the topic of communication between developers and players I feel I have something to add.
There’s been a lot of back and forth about the lack of communication and while that’s a fact too what bothers me most is the miscommunication of intent on the dev’s side.

What do I mean? I mean statements that were made and they never happened. I mean – I understand that priorities shift and change in a MMO this big – that things become unviable or simply won’t work with new systems but you have to keep us up to speed with what’s going on.

Back in 2013 you announced “new legendary weapons and new legendary types before the end of the year” – I don’t know why it never came to pass but frankly I waited every month for that.
I saved up, I didn’t get stuff I might have wanted and enjoyed because I kept thinking to myself " it’s right around the corner" – and it wasn’t.

It’s almost the end of 2014 and that statement hasn’t come true. And that’s not the issue. The issue is that you – the devs – probably knew at one point or another that you weren’t going to make that milestone and deliver on that promise but you didn’t say anything about it. So people like me kept waiting and waiting for no good reason.

Another thing that pops to mind is the “Fractal Leaderboards” that was waved around as a reason to reset all our PR to 30. I get it – fair playing field for all – and while I hated the PR reset I went along with it because I could understand the Leaderboards issue.

What about the “Fractal weapon boxes” ? Where are they almost a year later after the fractured patch?

It’s been almost a year – where are these leaderboards? At least tell us that they’re not coming.

These sort of issues ( and I’m sure there are other issues like these that affect other players in places near and dear to their hearts) break trust between the player base and the developers and make players like me unable to keep trusting the devs when they say they’re going to do this or fix that.

How can I believe there’ll be no more vertical progression when stuff keeps being tossed around just to generate hype apparently and then nothing happens. And I don’t really mind that nothing happens -a lot of things can interfere but at least keep us in the loop.

QFT. Anet takes a lot of flack for not delivering on things announced. But if Anet came out and said, clearly and front in center, that certain things are delayed or have been moved to the back burner, most reasonable fans would understand.

Anet not saying anything is pretty much Anet asking for trouble. The logic is simple.

If I tell my wife we’re probably going on vacation in June to Europe and I can’t make it, I probably should let her know before September. It would save me a lot of grief in the long run.

She might very well be disappointed if I came and told her I couldn’t get time off, or we couldn’t afford a vacation to Europe but she’s understand.

Penarddun.6827:

wiredrawn.7298:

They will also hiss when a quest/activity npc says come back later and they don’t understand what the hell that means … are there quests/objectives I need to complete, nobody thinks I need to level to fulfill this odd npc feedback.

Yeah, when an NPC says come back later, I have never in all the games I’ve played over the last 20 years imagined this is part of the NPCs dialogue because my level is too low.

I would assume either 1) The NPC doesn’t actually have content yet, maybe this is something that will be programmed into the game in the future, or 2) I have to accomplish some quest related task in order to open up the dialogue. In both situations I leave and forget to come back to that NPC.

Same with something like diving goggles, if I’m not allowed to use them, my mind will put them into “non-interact-able scenery” and I may not think to attempt to interact with them again for a long time, if ever.

Is my reaction so unusual? Out of the norm?

In Guild Wars 1, Mox didn’t actually unlock until level 10. You got a message to come back later. That was all there was. Level 10 and you could interact with him. Pretty sure the early PvP arenas were the same. You went to Yaks Bend and if you weren’t high enough level you couldn’t intereact with the NPC that allowed you access.

LordByron.8369:

Collections are a nice idea developed in the laziest possible way:

issues:
1) putting 1 TP rng items in most collections was “not smart”.
If anyone having access to infos stockpiled and started manipulating them maybe it wasn t so hard to see.

2) Rewards value: you spend alwatys more than you would getting same items in other ways.

3) reciclying content forever: Even giving weapon/armor skins using the base models and changing colour or adding particle effects would have been a good deal with few minutes of work.
Giving trinkets invisible in game just updating the Icon is really lazy.

4) its not content, its pushing players to replay the same old stuff forever.

It’s not content, you’re 100% right. Because this wasn’t a content patch. It’s a feature. It gives people reason to do existing content.

Content will resume with Halloween and then the new living story, presumably with more new territory.

Lots of people call things lazy. Anet has been many things, but lazy has definitely not been one of them.

Smarter humans overestimate average humans. lol

Sokia.3710:

Vayne.8563:

There isn’t just one player base, there are many people with many different opinions. I’ve always thought the story was too fragmented, and wasn’t cohesive because of the original presentation.

Living Story was never cohesive. Season 2 hasn’t fixed that.

I’m talking about the personal story, not the living story. The living story was meant to be played differently. The living story is like a Flash Gordon serial. You’re supposed to be on a cliffhanger every episode. That’s a deliberate design.

The personal story isn’t meant to be a cliffhanger after every chapter though. It’s designed to be a cohesive story, fragmented by the way it was presented. These are completely different situations.

Vitus Dance.4509:

Renn.8241:

Yes all you (me included) veteran’s

You were doing so well…right up until you mentioned ‘veterans’.
Don’t worry, it’s not just you as people have been brandishing the term all over the forums recently
Can anyone really consider themselves a veteran because they’ve played since release or have a slew of level 80 characters?
WoW vets i can understand as WoW has been quite happily trundling along since November 2004 but GW2 is a mere baby by comparison at, just over, 2 years old.
I don’t know – perhaps it’s just one of those words…like moreish, to supposedly describe wanting more of something, that just sets my teeth on edge…who can say?

We’re relative Veterans. And some of us played Guild Wars 1 before Guild Wars 2 and that counts for something too, even if it’s not the same game. I’ve been with Guild Wars for about eight year now, maybe a hair less. I feel like a veteran.

Anyway, being a part of these forums is certainly like fighting a war. lol

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

If you say so. Only you can judge of the long term goals suck for you. I think the collection stuff is fine. But then, I’m not in a rush to get it, hence the concept of a long term goal.

I don’t expect to ever get a couple of these. Like, the Black Lion collections.

I don’t expect to get all of them either. One the one hand, that’s good because there’s always one other thing to do. On the other hands it’s bad, particularly in the case of the black lion collections, which are ridiculously expensive and no good in game way of getting them. That feels to me to be greedy.

I’d agree, except it seems like a “well why not?” throw-in. Especially giving you back tickets (any tickets at all) for finishing it. What’s more puzzling is the lack of a Fractal Weapon one . . . and Mystic Weapon one.

Maybe they’ll add them later. Have to have something to add. lol

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

If you say so. Only you can judge of the long term goals suck for you. I think the collection stuff is fine. But then, I’m not in a rush to get it, hence the concept of a long term goal.

I don’t expect to ever get a couple of these. Like, the Black Lion collections.

I don’t expect to get all of them either. One the one hand, that’s good because there’s always one other thing to do. On the other hands it’s bad, particularly in the case of the black lion collections, which are ridiculously expensive and no good in game way of getting them. That feels to me to be greedy.

I just ignore them. It’s not like getting or not getting that collection will in any way affect my game. But I don’t like it.

Jyoung.4815:

I have been seeing a lot of talk about keeping new players interested but nothing about what’s to keep veterans interested. I’m a pretty casual player and loved the freedom that gw2 offered and how I could do pretty much what I wanted. I haven’t been able to play for a while due to real world events, but got back on yesterday and made a new character. I did not know what was going on. My main story quest was nowhere to be found, Several features were locked, a lot of other things besides the main story quest weren’t on the map, I was extremely confused. I did a little research and learned that my game was not broken but the game itself has turned to crap. It seems to me that the staff only cares about getting new people to play the game considering this being beneficial for new players is all you guys have been talking about. It doesn’t make someone that has already purchased the game and played for quite sometime feel very appreciated. I paid to play this game too and this is no longer the game that I spent my money on!

So what about the veteran players that have been complaining since day one the the living story was too disjointed and we had to keep stopping to continue, or wait ten levels and have five stories of completely useless rewards.

There isn’t just one player base, there are many people with many different opinions. I’ve always thought the story was too fragmented, and wasn’t cohesive because of the original presentation.

leman.7682:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know, maybe they were meant to be long term goals and the purpose of them isn’t just to buy everything off the trading post. That would be my guess.

If so, the long term goals in this game suck plain and simple (imo <4mods>)

If you say so. Only you can judge of the long term goals suck for you. I think the collection stuff is fine. But then, I’m not in a rush to get it, hence the concept of a long term goal.

Theftwind.8976:

LindaW.4308:

Theftwind.8976:

I have 9 level 80 characters and highly doubt that I will start another unless a new race/class is introduced but please clarify something for me. Can you still get the skill credits in an area even if you cannot use them or do you have to go back to that area once you have gained a few levels just to get/clear the skill challenge?

I started a new Asura Friday and found that I could get credit for a skill point if I joined in the combat after it was started by a player who met the level requirement. I could not activate it myself at the lower level.

Then that totally blows. If I want to clear a map before moving on I do not want to have to come back to that map just to do the skill point challenges. When I leveled my toons to 80 the wife and I would both start new characters and work as a duo to get through maps and personal stories. Working as a team we found it a faster and more efficient way of leveling then doing it alone and could challenge things that were above our levels.

Skill points unlock before you leave the first map, though. You just have to backtrack a bit. At level 12 the waypoint cost is a few copper. I mean yeah, it’s inconvenient but not that inconvenient.

I don’t know, maybe they were meant to be long term goals and the purpose of them isn’t just to buy everything off the trading post. That would be my guess.

I have map completion on 4 characters and expect to have it on at least a few more…but I don’t “work” at it. I just play characters and every time I enter a zone, I do one or two things, until the zone is complete.

I have four legendary weapons., so I have 4 more gifts of exploration to go, before I have to worry about another map complete.

On the other hand I don’t know that I’ll be making more than two more legendaries unless they release more (or I get a precusor drop).

All moot anyway. I’m pretty sure there’ll never be a PTR, no matter what we think.

Essence Snow.3194:

Vayne.8563:

Graka.9457:

Vayne.8563:

Overlays aren’t add ons. They’re overlays and not against the terms of service. There’s nothing you get from this that you can’t have from having a second monitor and a calculator.

We’ve been using overlays for a long time already…at least I have.

Is there any sort of red post saying that overlays are okay? I just dont want to get myself into any sort of trouble.

Overlays don’t alter the game at all. Anet doesn’t even have a way to know you’re using the overlay. It does nothing more than a second monitor would do for you. It doesn’t give you in game advantage. It doesn’t change the code. It literally breaks no rules.

If it didn’t give some sort of an advantage there wouldn’t be any reason to use it now would there?……….Come on you’ve got to be realistic sometimes. Ease of access to information is always an advantage in everything.

It doesn’t give an in game advantage. It doesn’t make your character faster. It doesn’t make your character stronger it doesn’t allow you to teleport. It doesn’t in fact do anything a person with two monitors couldn’t do.

Graka.9457:

Vayne.8563:

Overlays aren’t add ons. They’re overlays and not against the terms of service. There’s nothing you get from this that you can’t have from having a second monitor and a calculator.

We’ve been using overlays for a long time already…at least I have.

Is there any sort of red post saying that overlays are okay? I just dont want to get myself into any sort of trouble.

Overlays don’t alter the game at all. Anet doesn’t even have a way to know you’re using the overlay. It does nothing more than a second monitor would do for you. It doesn’t give you in game advantage. It doesn’t change the code. It literally breaks no rules.

Sogradde.8016:

Redenaz.8631:

Does it make sense for them to upset the apple cart on this issue if everything is okay? I’m sure it took them by surprise as well; Anet can’t be any happier than we are about stripping out parts of the game that are already developed and paid for, and were intended as permanent content. I can’t say for sure that the changes they made were completely correct—They’re certainly not the ones I’d like to have seen made, for my own experience. But I think it’s safe to say that if the devs are getting a mandate that they need to fix this problem, the problem exists.

Now riddle me this: Is the new player influx on NA/EU so much bigger than the current active playerbase, that you need to spend all your resources on “improving” the leveling experience instead of adding new content for those who finished the game and most likely supported it from the beginning on?

Could be if they’re planning more free demo weekends.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

tigirius.9014:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

tigirius.9014:

We’ve been saying for years now that they need a PTR for some things and what they’ve done to progression prior to max level is a perfect example of why. Even people like Vayne can’t deny this fact honestly without losing face in the process.

Yeah, I dunno about a PTR being a good idea for unrelated reasons. Primarily, I think it could lead to people quietly taking down information of what’s upcoming and preparing their Black Lion pocketbooks for it.

For the related reasons, I don’t know if the PTR would catch enough with enough players interested in taking part to realistically emulate live server loads. Remember, often times things break when too many players go trigger the same thing at once . . . that happened on Lost Shores, it happened with Dragon’s Reach Part 1.

Even if they limited PTR to feature patches it would be lightyears better then the testing they are doing now. I understand people’s desire not to see posts about content or story, I do and I agree totally with that but when it comes to game balance, or feature changes we need a PTR!

We don’t need one. With Anet’s release schedule it probably wouldn’t have helped much anyway. And it would force people to go there, or be left out of all the price gouging going on. First in, first to get the expensive stuff and make a fortune.

you dont keep any items you get in a PTR, its a seperate world. Usually they may allow you to copy your charachter in. but you cant take anything back.

The only advantage people get would be knowledge, which isnt even an advantage because people who are interested would be talking about it and sharing it in the forums, they already do this. BLTC TP wizards already are in a race from the first hour of a patch to buy sell and trade based on what people figured out would be valuable based on patch notes. Anyone who takes a wait and see approach is already late to the game of TP hustling.

Not to mention, PTRs change drops/rewards often in the process. They often have placeholder drops, because they update it as new changes come in. They tweak things back and forward based on input from day to day.

Also people say ptr doesnt give you the same load testing usually.
This is true, but the main flaws with these patches arent load testing. The main flaw is generally that they have things which would be found early in testing, or could get real feedback early on and save time and money.

not saying they must have one, but with their development style, the more feedback they can get during the development process the better. They also seem have a system whereby once they give something a pass, they dont revisit it for a long time. This means finding small issues earlier is better as well.

In this case, in this patch, we have collections, which would need to be tested as part of the feature patch. Those who get there, and those who read forums would have a huge advantage, because not everyone does. It would force people to the PTR, they’d feel they have to be there, even if they didn’t want to.

In a game like this where that kind of change completely changes the economy, a PTR would screw with too many people.

Erick Alastor.3917:

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

And this is it, I don’t like the update, so everything I don’t like about the game is because of the update, like that guy who made that video that said that now you can’t die in the tutorial anymore…which has been true forever. But you know, let’s blame this update.

This update killed my cat!

And kicked the Puppy!

But at least now some people pay attention to some stuff. Its at least partial success ;D

The update is pretty bad and if you play you should know that people aren’t complaining just on the forum. The only people that are not complaining are the ones that never knew how it was before the patch, but if you explain how it was they say they would have preferred levelling with the old system.
On a positive note, at least for the veterans, with the excuse that is all a giant bug, they will revert the changes.

P.s. You’re coming back posting on forum after a long hiatus and you agree with basically every post Vayne is creating. Are you a stolen account or what?
I’m the only one that remember the MikaHR battling against Ascended and Vayne’s opinion with 89 posts in the same thread? °____°

Mika and I agreed on most things before the ascended debacle and even back then, I said I understood why Anet did it, that’s all. I was never a fan of ascended stuff. That’s not the same as believing there’s a reason to do it. I never needed it personally.

There are more than a few people who think like I do. Many of them don’t post, because they don’t like the conflict. I draw the fire from most of them.

I’m happy Mika is back.

Overlays aren’t add ons. They’re overlays and not against the terms of service. There’s nothing you get from this that you can’t have from having a second monitor and a calculator.

We’ve been using overlays for a long time already…at least I have.

Katz.5143:

Vayne.8563:

aliksyian.7642:

I’m pretty sure anet’s internal politics are a mess. I bet a lot of people working there would love to work on dungeons or other fun content, but their upper management won’t give them the go ahead. I don’t know how you fix that. Pool our money and buy out the company, maybe?

LMAO! Yes, I’m sure that would work.

But what do you do if you get into the company and find most people don’t run dungeons? I’m not saying they do or they don’t…but what would you do if that were the case?

My guess is that if more people ran dungeons, more work would be done on them, because it’s just logical.

People ran the dungeons in gw1 constantly for fun and profit. Something changed. Something is different about the dungeons here than there. I ran the ones in gw1 for fun. Guildies were always asking for us to do a FOW run and it was a blast. Took a long time commitment. If some goof got the NPCs killed on us it would all fail. But it was FUN. It was fun even when it failed. We would all say, oh no! the mesmer did it again, going after that chest. (we had one specific mesmer notorious for that).

Lots of dungeons were popular and done often. For fun. I wish I could make a list that said.. here is how you make the current dungeons as fun as the ones in gw1 but fun is very subjective.

I don’t know why the dungeons here don’t feel as fun to me. I have done them some, and they were ok sometimes but I don’t know, they seemed a bit tedious and less fun. More like a job than fun but I don’t know why.

I often get the feeling here that decisions are made without fun being the primary consideration. I play games to have fun.

As for people just leaving silently without leaving feedback, I’m sure there are lots of people that do that. In fact, there are a bunch in my guild that left silently.

The business I work in puts a lot of effort in getting people (customers and employees) who leave to give them feedback. They told us that it is better economically to keep the customers and employees you have than to have retention problems. I would think most businesses would welcome feedback.

When you say people ran dungeons in Guild Wars 1, what percent of the population? Do you know? Do you have any idea at all?

People run dungeons here all the time. I have people in my guild who live in dungeons. They like it. But it’s only a small percentage of my guild.

The thing is, just because you and your friends run dungeons and just because a lot of dungeons are being run doesn’t mean that most people run dungeons ever. I suspect less people run dungeons than most people think. That’s just a guess.

Because I suspect most people avoid harder combat and I believe many more people solo than most people think. Particularly in Guild Wars 2 where soloing a dungeon without heroes is very hard, less people are going to run them, but even in Guild Wars 1, I knew a whole lot of people who never set foot in a dungeon.

Stiofan.6720:

Vayne I don’t think we hate you, We just find it annoying that you always argue with us for every criticism of gw2 we have, We don’t know if you are trying to troll us or if you genuinely believe that gw2 is perfect with absolutely no faults. The criticism isn’t us having a cheap shot at arenanet, We are just really trying to get them to improve the game.

I really do want to get to sleep. It’s after midnight here, but I’ll answer this as I’ve answered it many times before. I wish Anet would sticky it sometimes.

I don’t have a problem with constructive criticism. In case you missed it, I posted quite a few times about things I didn’t like about the new trait system. I’ve posted about other stuff I don’t like in the past. Also, there are almost always negative posts on the forums that I don’t enter into at all. These are NOT the threads I care about.

The ones that bother me are ones where people are offensive, or they exaagerate their position so much that it takes away any validity they might have had.

You’ve been on the forums the last week, and you didn’t see people calling for boycotts, people threatening, people stamping their feet? If you have constructive criticism offer it in a fair and polite way. I might disagree, but I won’t fight about it. It’s an opinion.

But when people make statements like No one likes this update. Or no one likes the NPE. Or this is going to completely destroy the game, yes, then I take exception and then I say something.

It could just be that I’m more used to writing critique groups, where critiques have to be polite. There was a thread on reddit were one guy called for a specific employee’s job to be terminated. It was downvoted to hell very fast, but it was there.

I don’t have a problem with criticism.

A thread titles RIP Guild Wars 2 leveling is not only an exaageration but we haven’t even seen the fixes to the system yet. It’s a ridiculous thread to post now, when you don’t even know what changes the monday patch will bring. At least wait to see if anything is fixed before you make that judgment.

Munkiman posted an excellent 2 year review of the game, now on page two. He made a lot of negative comments, but I only commented one line on one of them. Why? Because it was a respectful review that was constructive.

Saying the game is dying, or telling people the game isn’t doing well because someone doesn’t know how to read a financial report is just wrong. That’s all.

Don’t believe me. Watch over the weeks ahead the number of critical threads that I don’t post in and then tell me that I post in every negative thread.

There are ways to constructively criticize. There are ways to start a panic. They’re not the same thing.

Vyanie.9048:

Vayne i edited my post to hopefully give you a clearer understanding. If for some reason you are still in denial about it you should really start seeing someone professionally

Actually I’m going to bed. Have a great night.

Leo Paul.1659:

Vayne.8563:

rapthorne.7345:

I have learned over the course of a few weeks to not to bother to engage with Vayne on any level as you will be dismissed unless you agree with him/her.

Why people who have been using this forum for much, much longer than me haven’t learned this valuable and forum experience enhancing lesson, I don’t know.

For every person who hates me on these forums, another really likes me. I’m okay with that.

Not really.

I’ve always been a polarizing influence. In every area of my life. I know the percentages.

Vyanie.9048:

I have read it. But again your trying to basically fix an election. If you only ask the people that agree with you about something of course your going to get the desired response. Your basic theory is flawed. and the reddit is more positive because most people in the game, except those you have told about it, had no idea about the poll. When you opened it up to the forums you then basically removed your control over the voters of the poll.

You can think that if you want. I have no problem with that. Doesn’t change the truth of anything I’ve said.

Reddit is generally more positive, and while the forum tends to be negative almost all day every day, reddit is not. That’s because reddit is generally fan moderated and if someone posts something completely ridiculous or overstated it gets downvoted by fans until it disappears.

Reddit does get angry sometimes, and does pop it’s cork, but not nearly as often as the forums and not for nearly as long.

Again, because it’s fan moderated. Moderators have to let negative stuff stand or they get accused of bias. They get accused of that anyway, but it’s silly considering how many negative threads and comments there are.

But like I said, you’re 100% free to believe anything you want.

Vyanie.9048:

Vayne your saying that your purposely trying to skew it?
Asking a select group of people instead of a broad audience is basically like trying to fix an election. With the small amount of people that actually voted in it i doubt there was many if any that tried to skew it besides yourself.

I’m saying I wanted to see how inviting the forum into the much more positive reddit would work out. I saw.

That’s not purposely trying to skew something. I was testing a theory.

I’ve already explained the wording of the survey earlier in the thread. Feel free to backtrack and read it if you like.

rapthorne.7345:

I have learned over the course of a few weeks to not to bother to engage with Vayne on any level as you will be dismissed unless you agree with him/her.

Why people who have been using this forum for much, much longer than me haven’t learned this valuable and forum experience enhancing lesson, I don’t know.

For every person who hates me on these forums, another really likes me. I’m okay with that.

Vyanie.9048:

Vayne your poll is a bit skewed to hide numbers, you should have only given 3 options
love it, hate it, doesn’t matter.

looking at your poll 40% of the people HATE the new leveling at 512 votes. Since you tried to skew it ill fix it for you.
1065 people do NOT like the new leveling
114 like it
122 people it doesn’t affect
There are more people that it does not affect than like it. There are almost 10 times the people that HATE it than like it.. yes i guess it is showing correct numbers. Me personally im disgusted by it, i came back to this game a few weeks ago. started playing my old characters and said meh game is decent so ill stick around…. patch hit and I started a new character. SOMEONE PLEASE GOUGE OUT MY EYES…. leveling is beyond boring now, everyone is the same, you cant differentiate your character really until 80, traits come kittened slow, everything is level gated, the game went from decent to complete snoozefest. Add in having to hunt all over creation to actually get a trait and it makes you want to / wrist.

It’s so cool. Before the official forums got involved it was very balanced. Then suddenly out of nowhere, it got downvoted by a bunch of people and the numbers stacked up with hate it.

I didn’t announce it on the official forums first, because I was pretty sure that’s what would happen.

I voted once and once only. My wife couldn’t vote, because we have the same IP. But of course, no one from the official forums would possibly try to skew the vote at all. That would never happen under any circumstance.

The pre forum annoucement and post forum annoucement were night and day. I’m quite okay with it.

dace.8019:

Vayne.8563:

A PTR. So no game with a PTR ever implemented something that didn’t go over well with the fans? LMAO.

The person you’re quoting never said, or implied, that. You may wish to comprehend posts you quote and reply to.

Vayne.8563:

The fact is, and this is FACT, it wouldn’t have mattered if the public test server showed this to be unpopular, because Anet didn’t implement this change completely for it to be popular.

You say that what you are about to present is a fact (twice, once in capitals, directly after saying it already) but then you state an opinion based on your own interpretation and/or unsubstantiated “evidence”.

Vayne.8563:

PTR. Yes, solves all problems. No game with PTR has ever been unsuccessful.

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

Vayne.8563:

In fact, how many games with PTRs are more successful than Guild Wars 2? How many games with PTRs are less succesful.

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

Well someone is saying a PTR would improve this game. There’s no evidence of this. Period.

Rogue.7856:

Yeah the removal of the hint system was a pretty bad change. I think they should have kept it. This leveling info pop up is only temporary and once you click accept, your hints are gone for good.

I agree, they should have kept the hints. I have no idea why that was removed.

Fair review. For me it was otherwise. The megaserver was probably the most positive change for me since launch.

Sokia.3710:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Most WvWvW chatter is more on the TS, or small status reports in /team . . . occasionally you’ll get a request for information or help but they’re not often.

Map chat is usually pretty busy on my server. But, nothing seemed to be going on. There were a couple of commanders there (who I had never seen command) but I was really surprised at the lack of chatter.

I might have just caught them at a dead time. I might consider logging in tomorrow and see if I get the same results.

Oh, and Lion’s Arch is still a cesspool people try to start “discussions” of politics or religion in semi-constantly.

Yeah, the one map where there definitely wasn’t a lack of chatter was Lion’s Arch. In fact, there was still too much chatter going on, there.

Most WvW people I know don’t chat in map chat, they go onto the mumble server for TC. That’s where most of the talking seems to happen.

An ex-girlfriend used to collect spoons. Everywhere we went on vacation she’d look for a spoon to bring back. Shrugs.

One man’s junk is another’s treasure.

Pretty sure that’s a bug. Let’s hope they fix it in the monday patch.

tigirius.9014:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

tigirius.9014:

We’ve been saying for years now that they need a PTR for some things and what they’ve done to progression prior to max level is a perfect example of why. Even people like Vayne can’t deny this fact honestly without losing face in the process.

Yeah, I dunno about a PTR being a good idea for unrelated reasons. Primarily, I think it could lead to people quietly taking down information of what’s upcoming and preparing their Black Lion pocketbooks for it.

For the related reasons, I don’t know if the PTR would catch enough with enough players interested in taking part to realistically emulate live server loads. Remember, often times things break when too many players go trigger the same thing at once . . . that happened on Lost Shores, it happened with Dragon’s Reach Part 1.

Even if they limited PTR to feature patches it would be lightyears better then the testing they are doing now. I understand people’s desire not to see posts about content or story, I do and I agree totally with that but when it comes to game balance, or feature changes we need a PTR!

We don’t need one. With Anet’s release schedule it probably wouldn’t have helped much anyway. And it would force people to go there, or be left out of all the price gouging going on. First in, first to get the expensive stuff and make a fortune.

rapthorne.7345:

I got a seiege commander’s spoon, but can’t do anything with it

Once it’s unlocked merch it. It’s 10 silver.

Kanck.6578:

Vayne.8563:

Kanck.6578:

Hey Vayne, thanks for answering! My intentions are not to start an argument about how the game “should” be, but rather to get a feel of what players are doing in this game.

What about you Guys? What keeps you playing? What’s your favorite aspect of the game? What are you doing now, and how long have you been playing?

I do a boatload of stuff, a bit of everything really. Some WvW, a tiny bit of SPvP when I want to take out frustration on someone who doesn’t have a ranger (the ranger update was very helpful in this regard lol). But 90% of my time is spent in PvE.

I’m an achievement hunter and a collector. I run a relatively decent sized Guild of about 150, with 30-50 people who log on a lot. That keeps me pretty busy. I run dungeons when people need a fifth, or sometimes just for some extra cash. I run the ocassional fractals. But mostly I just enjoy the world. I particularly like the new zone, Drytop. It’s harder than other end game zones, in a lot of ways. There are new creatures with new mechanics there. And the entire zone is like a giant toy. Because in order to maximize profits from it, you have to impress the Zephyrites by doing events. THe more events you do before the next sandstorm hits. the higher the tier and the cheaper your rewards in terms of geodes.

I’ve been working on crafting a full set of the insects in Amber weapons.

So I log in in the morning, check the daily and based loosely on that figure out what I want to do (assuming no one in the guild is doing anything interesting). Then I do some dailies, usually end up sidetracked by helping someone get something in the guild, even if it’s just an annoying skill point in Orr. A couple of days a week we run guild missions and one night a week is a social night.

Because of the current WvW tournament, I’m spending a lot more time in WvW for the next four weeks, because you know…server pride (coughs).

Anyway, after the tournament is over, Halloween starts. That’ll be a couple of weeks and then the new living story returns. Now that has some major ups and downs.

If you message me in game, I can explain more. It’s a lot. lol

Hey, that sounds amazing. I really didn’t think Anet would introduce new zones after crab island. That makes me a lot more optimistic for the future of the game. Sadly, I don’t have a computer at the moment, which is why I’m making this thread. :p Getting abstinence from not playing games for s few months, so I’m doing research on what I’d like to play for when my PC arrives.

I guess what you decide to do in game is heavily flavored by the daily and monthly challenges (for laurels?). WvW also still sounds like a popular past-time, which is very positive. My friend never got to try it, so it’s good that he’ll still have a chance to experience the large scale battles.

As for achievements, how are they structured/designed? Do you think you’ll run out of achievements to do in the near future? Do they offer any rewards outside of just points (as in titles/gear/mini pets etc)?

After you do the easy achievements, the harder ones take longer. Logically. Some aren’t worth it to me, but I’m getting close to 20,000 achievement points now.

I like getting the chests, but more than that, I love getting the account wide bonuses that start stacking up.

Not everyone collects for rewards though. In fact most collectors in real life don’t. Collecting for some people is the reward.

I got one today as a drop from an NPC commander in WvW.

Kanck.6578:

Hey Vayne, thanks for answering! My intentions are not to start an argument about how the game “should” be, but rather to get a feel of what players are doing in this game.

What about you Guys? What keeps you playing? What’s your favorite aspect of the game? What are you doing now, and how long have you been playing?

I do a boatload of stuff, a bit of everything really. Some WvW, a tiny bit of SPvP when I want to take out frustration on someone who doesn’t have a ranger (the ranger update was very helpful in this regard lol). But 90% of my time is spent in PvE.

I’m an achievement hunter and a collector. I run a relatively decent sized Guild of about 150, with 30-50 people who log on a lot. That keeps me pretty busy. I run dungeons when people need a fifth, or sometimes just for some extra cash. I run the ocassional fractals. But mostly I just enjoy the world. I particularly like the new zone, Drytop. It’s harder than other end game zones, in a lot of ways. There are new creatures with new mechanics there. And the entire zone is like a giant toy. Because in order to maximize profits from it, you have to impress the Zephyrites by doing events. THe more events you do before the next sandstorm hits. the higher the tier and the cheaper your rewards in terms of geodes.

I’ve been working on crafting a full set of the insects in Amber weapons.

So I log in in the morning, check the daily and based loosely on that figure out what I want to do (assuming no one in the guild is doing anything interesting). Then I do some dailies, usually end up sidetracked by helping someone get something in the guild, even if it’s just an annoying skill point in Orr. A couple of days a week we run guild missions and one night a week is a social night.

Because of the current WvW tournament, I’m spending a lot more time in WvW for the next four weeks, because you know…server pride (coughs).

Anyway, after the tournament is over, Halloween starts. That’ll be a couple of weeks and then the new living story returns. Now that has some major ups and downs.

If you message me in game, I can explain more. It’s a lot. lol

tigirius.9014:

Vayne.8563:

We’ll know if this gambit is successful only after the first free weekend is done…probably a couple of months after that.

Because I’m sure that’s why these changes were made. Not to inconvenience us. To grow the player base.

If they’d like to grow the playerbase there are three areas I can tell them to work on right now that will do it instead of fixing yet another something that wasn’t broken in their Feature Patch 3. Remove gold entirely from the cost of progression (this includes traits, sigils, runes, and gear), make diversity a thing in PVE again (this includes fixing all of the problems they can in every class that’s caused them to nerf PVE, things like Kit Refinement rollback and condition damage builds and make healing a real life thing for every class with healing skills), fix the rewards system post level 80 in the open world (remove DR entirely because it’s never been effective at removing bots or gold farmers, eliminate some of the RNG from crafting, allow for the trading of Tier 7 and karma for essential Tier 6 crafting materials like lodestones).

Those three things have been the most complained about items in the game in these forums yet we’re sitting at the 2 year mark and they’ve not even been mentioned by the developers in all this time.

I know you think those things would grow the player base. Those things won’t. New content might, but not that.

I know you believe these things would grow the player base. I think they wouldn’t have much effect at all.

This topic is going to get ugly very fast. lol

A lot of people will tell you there’s no end game, or hardly any end game, and if you’re a dungeon runner, and a raider and that’s what you think end game is, you’re definitely going to be very unhappy here.

Guild Wars 2 really doesn’t have one end game, or any standard end game. It has a bunch of things to do, and you do the things you want to. It’s quite a different concept from most MMOs in that regard. So if you want just hard, challenging content and that’s all end game is, well, then you’re not going to likely stay for the long haul.

Everyone’s end game is a bit different. For some it’s WvW or PvP. For for most it’s about setting goals and getting to those goals, no matter what they happen to be. A lot of people are achievement hunters and for them, it’s their end game. Some people like to solo dungeons for their end game.

Some people like to explore the world and find stuff they’ve never seen before…that’s and end game. We have collections now, that’ll be an end game for some. Forging the rarest weapons in an end game for others.

Making lots of money is an end game for others.

There really isn’t one end game. So how you approach the game makes all the difference in how much you’ll enjoy it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Vayne.8563:

The rabbit one is still there though.

. . . why are people telling me it’s gone? Oh right -grabs torch and axe- rabbit season time . . .

They moved the heart down to the bottom. It’s now on the ground. I just did it a few minutes ago. I think they toned it down some though.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Straylight.7529:

ColinJohanson.2394:

because retaining new users at early levels wasn’t just a china problem we needed to solve, it’s a problem in the west too.

Then make the game more interesting, not more boring. You removed every unique heartquest in the beginner zones (golem chess, turning into a fernhound, dodging killer-rabbits) and turned them into generic “go there, click that” quests.

I found the Raven Shrine heart still existed, that one was one of my favorites since BWE2. Also seems the Snow Leopard Shrine one still has a form change on it which also was fun.

Hated golem chess – too easy to win at it. And the rabbit one made me really want to start a market for rabbits’ feet to Orr farmers for magic find boosts.

The rabbit one is still there though.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

Where was the PTR then?

That would depend.

Did the company in question actually listen to the PTR data?

I beta’d Cata and Pandaria.

Wanna know one of the reasons they tanked so bad, despite having betas and PTRs?

Because Blizzard didn’t actually -do- anything with all the information that had been gathered in the various beta forums after a certain point. In some instances, they outright ignored the data that had been gathered.

But no, you obviously must be right. PTRs are worthless because of your crappy experiences in RIFT.

Rift and other games. You’ve just given another example. First of all, the lower the population of a game, the lower the population of a test server. WoW, when it had 12 million subscribers could probably do with one. I don’t think enough people went on the Rift test server to make a difference and you know…if they did, there wouldn’t have been enough people in the game on most servers.

PTRs are something fans often insist on but I’ve seen no actually evidence that they make the game better. But they don’t have a high cost in resources. If you’re going to invest those resources, you’d have to pretty much know they’d be worth it.

PTRs do catch more bugs but at a very high cost.

The cost of setting up and running the server, another server to monitor and fix, spoilers for people who don’t want them in map chat, people who use the server to profit financially, and thinning out of the people who play the actual game (assuming many use the test server. I didn’t find that to be the case in Rift, because I used the test server there).

And this is it, I don’t like the update, so everything I don’t like about the game is because of the update, like that guy who made that video that said that now you can’t die in the tutorial anymore…which has been true forever. But you know, let’s blame this update.