Guild Wars 2

Wizzlock.3492:

Vayne.8563:

cranked.3812:

gryph.8734:

scerevisiae.1972:

…

…

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Take the warrior nerf as an example. A lot of people hate it. A lot of warriors are really not happy with it. But it was clearly something that had to be done, because whenever you see on a forum that the warrior is pretty much the best profession to use in every area of the game there’s a problem.
…

Depends. Warrior was best proffesion to use in every area of the game, not because magical overpower that had to be nerfed, but because of the design of encounters in the game.
As You said – You are looking at the leaves, not forest. Or the oher way around? We can debate on it for hours.
The thing is – there were 2 ways to “fix” this situation:
-nerf warrior.
-work on other professions to make them viable to a game design in comparable manner to a warrior.
Geuess which one was cheap and easy to do, and which one needed large amount of work? And again – which one is looking like a bandaid for a larger problem and guess which one I find right? More – which one was easy to read from metrics and which was behind our motivation?
Again – problem with warrior was a same problem, that Anet had with zerker builds. It’s not the players fault that almost all encounters in game goes same road. Players work with what they have, and the zerker was the answer. Changing zerker was the bandaid same way that changing warrior is. What Anet should do, is to keep the promise of a good fights in-game. Working on the battle model until it no longer gratify zerker above anything else. But again – nerfing zerker is easier. Cheaper. Faster. And it’s dumbing the game instead of enriching it.
But he-heeey – it’s my opinion.

And your opinion on how to change things goes against what any game designer will tell you.

There are already complaints that the game is too face roll easy. If every single profession was buffed to where warriors were, everything in the entire game would need to be redone. Every encounter. Every creature. Every dungeon.

That’s the big picture.

vectorfox.6894:

Alright I have read the dev post and i am still confused. You said that the testers included people who have heavily played different rpg’s and even more importantly mmorpg’s yet they still needed a more inept early game which almost sounds impossible when other people have claimed that their 5yr old daughter played the game just fine. I know that there were also new players but then this also begs the question, would they survive in this game at end game content if learning the early game was hard enough i mean we usually ask for new more in depth content or harder content but if these people ever reached 80 they would hardly survive much of the end game content, so would that mean everything gets dumbed down? many people find some of the hard content mediocre right now so dumbing it down will drive them away.

Also with this new NPE did you expect to see as much new players coming into the game to make the time and money worth it? I mean this was introduced just as new games had been released which get a lot more coverage than gw2 right now so you would expect them to try those games out first. Another thing is that many players were boarder line quitting the game from a large variety of reasons which could have been implemented in this feature pack but instead weren’t and now they have left because of it, so the worthiness of this NPE is pretty much nil and worse since a) most new players are off playing the new mmo’s b) quite a number of players have left. Also i believe even more people are now boarder line quitting because either lack of content or even lack okittennowledgement as a veteran.

Of course i don’t know if the amount of people leaving was even that much but losing players because you think that reeling in new players would be easier or better for the game is irritating to me.
Also with how it is right now i don’t think many people who have the same mindset of current gw2 players would play the game as it stands now although a select few has enjoyed so gj on that i suppose.

I had more to say but forgot it so here is just a tl;dr version, why bother trying to get new players when your struggling to keep veterans to stay

ps. for some reason “lack okittennowledgement” was censored

Not quite what the devs said. They said people weren’t staying with the game the way it used to be, and when they changed it to this way, more people continued playing for longer.

It’s not even necessarily that they needed hand holding. The changes are more than just hand holding. They also give rewards up front more often and some people like/need that.

So instead of just getting something, if it’s given as a reward (because we humans tend to like rewards), people end up more engaged.

Before weapon skills meant nothing when you got another one. It was done. This time, Anet front-loaded a bunch of rewards, even meaningless stuff, and then gave people a feel of accomplishment as they played.

It’s not the gating and learning that’s the only important thing, apparently, but the pacing and the feeling of progression.

This way people felt like they were progressing and stayed to play longer. The other way they didn’t.

Kamui.4038:

dwillikers.2348:

@ MikeHR: Please. The Op isn’t suggesting anything specific. Where on earth did you get that the idea he/she was referring specifically to forum posts? Because they posted this on a forum? Surely you see that idiocy in that. Is there somewhere else they should express this without the bias of people like you assuming simply because you post your opinion on virtually the only place it can be viewed by Anet that it should be inherently disregarded simply because they voiced their opinion on the only means of expression Anet can see? Is there a democratic meeting that’s held monthly I wasn’t made aware of?

Irrelevant. I’m not here to debate. I’m here merely to express that I acknowledge the personal expression the OP has conveyed here. Whether I agree with his/her complaints or not I don’t see worth voicing right now. The point of my post is simply to point out that some here, whether their complaints are justified or not, serve to show that Anet has some pretty dedicated fans behind it. I’m simply looking at things outside the box here. For a company to have someone communicate their emotional investment in the game like this, is something to consider, regardless of how you feel about what their specifically trying to express.

Some will take what I’m pointing out into consideration. Those that won’t will disregard my and the OP’s post as, simply, different form their own, and therefore, unimportant.

Either way, I find it comforting people here are able to voice their disapproval with anet (which seems to be, like a newly buffed class, the new flavor of the month from the forums) in an actual way that involves more than just, Anet omgwtfbbq do you even lift, which I have seen (granted this is in.. simplified terms-ish) so frequently on the forums these past few days.

Spot on. Someone else that can think critically. Most of the naysayers that seem to think ANet can do no wrong are really just hiding under blankets and scared at the angry mob this update has brought upon itself. Well you can’t wish away us monsters that easily this time…

And yes, OP is not speaking about only the forums, obviously. “We” does not mean “those of us that post on the GW2 or other forums”, “we” means “we”: the players playing the game. ANet could make in game surveys if they wanted to take in information and make decisions based on that, for one. Even better: they could make a Public Test Server. It’s all within their power to do so.

Mistakes happen and ANet made a booboo with this update. The important part is that we learn from this so that we do not continue repeating it.

I don’t know, I’ve seen the pendulum swing quite far back on this one already and it’s only been a couple of days. A post about leveling being more fun now on reddit with over 300 upvotes for example.

A lot of people watched a popular video, got enraged and came to the forums without even trying to level. How do I know? Because people said so in their posts. Then when people tried it, a lot of people seemed to think people were over-reacting and others liked the experience.

So I don’t know what mob you think we’re scared of. Maybe wishful thinking on your part.

This too shall pass.

Ravion Hawk.4736:

Snorcha.7586:

+1 – does anyone on the dev team even play a low level character.. this has turned into the most frustrating leveling experience i’ve ever done…. what was wrong with the old system????

From the devs that no longer work for ANet, they saw this coming and bailed when the higher ups refused to listen to even them when they said this was wrong. They knew this was coming months ago.

I’m sure this is a factual statement and you know those devs personally and they old told you this.

People leave companies for all sorts of reasons. Drawing this kind of conclusion is a matter of confirmation bias. I seriously doubt you can verify what you’ve said.

Swizzle.7982:

Vayne.8563:

NNYinsanenature.5684:

Kinda silly how they removed harvesting nodes for low level players. “Hey you like xp for doing almost anything? Lets take away one source for you.”

They didn’t remove nodes, they took nodes off the map.

kitten me. Vayne you are insipid.

Not really sure how that applies to what I said. If you tell people they’ve removed nodes from the game and you can’t harvest them, it’s very definitely untrue. If you say nodes don’t appear on the map until a certain low level, then you’re being accurate.

Accuracy is important in communicating what is and isn’t happening with the patch. There are a whole bunch of people saying that gathering is locked out and you can’t do it, because those nodes don’t appear….but you can in fact gather.

Clarity is important when discussing the patch.

Rauderi.8706:

Vayne.8563:

Yep, same problem I have. Lots of people don’t take me seriously because I like the game and say so.

D’aww. I still take you seriously.
Mostly because you’re not a plastic bag full of water intended to irrigate certain biological parts.

We may disagree on the ‘goodness’ of the change, but I rarely see you fly off the handle. Stay productive, V.

I hope we can hear from new-new players soon, and see if this onboarding process works out for them. That, and hopefully we can distinguish between “unlocks” and “notifications” for more experienced players. The notifications were fine and all, but it felt like the game was hiding stuff that shouldn’t need to be hidden.

I talked my friend who didn’t get into the game the first time into trying it again. He rolled a character today. I’m going to leave him alone and see if he stays this time, and what his experience is.

It’ll be interesting.

It’s illegal to buy gold from anywhere but Anet. One of the reasosn for that is because much of the gold being sold comes from hacked and stolen accounts. Buying gold from illegitimate gold sellers (which is all of them) is the same as supporting people who bot, hack accounts and generally destroy the game.

Regardless you shouldn’t have linked that. This thread will soon be closed by a moderator.

Kamui.4038:

Vayne.8563:

Kamui.4038:

ANet needs to be more candid with their pre-update blog posts and so on. Less fluff and dressing it up with PR words and maybe they can prevent some of the outrage, because by just reading blog snippets that are dressed up with optimism, people are going to be elevated only to come crashing down even harder once they actually get in game and witness everything for themselves.

That’s what happened here.

As to the poster above (vayne): details are what make the picture a flop, or a legend. Just because someone focuses on details does not mean they are not taking the big picture into account. Often times they are, because one little bad smudge can ruin the whole picture, like a large wart on an otherwise beautiful face.

That too is what is happening here.

I’ve always been a guy short on the details and big on the big picture. I usually hired detail guys. I was quite successful at the stuff I turned my hand to, because big picture guys are rarer than detail guys. It’s just the way it is. You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true.

Saying that people often take the big picture into account is a massive assumption. Maybe, possibly you do. Maybe you think most people are like you. I’m pretty sure most people aren’t. I don’t only think most people don’t take the big picture into account, I think most people can’t…any more than I can suddenly be detail oriented. It’s not just something you do, it’s a mindset.

Making the assumption that people complaining are taking the big picture into view is demonstrably untrue in many cases.

Conjecture. Conjecture everywhere. Whether most people understand as I do is irrelevant: they and I are on the same page here, and if they can’t consciously see the big picture, I can, which ultimately means they do understand what is happening, they just may not phrase it in so many words all the time, but they feel it instinctively. A brilliant game of freedom and potential reduced to fenced cribs and safety helmets. That’s the future of the current path and what everyone unanimously sees happening to the game.

Maybe all the resistance will veer us off that course – who knows what ANet is thinking behind closed doors at this point – but if it doesn’t, there is no hope left. We all get that, and that is the big picture here.

I wish I could shower this game with praise, I really do, and I did do that when it launched as did millions of others, but I’m not blind enough to do that in its current state, nor am I unethical enough.

Have you ever seen me shower this game in praise? Once even?

There’s a difference between showering a game in praise, and not accepting criticism that doesn’t make the game particularly better.

One easy example is the big backlash to the elite skill not being unlocked to level 40. All people see is a number. I used to get it at 30, now I get it at 40. I’m disadvantaged.

But since the leveling process has changed. according to Colin who tested it (and the first 15 levels are certainly faster), you get the elite at roughly the same number of hours played.

Seeing the small picture, the level number, you never look at the whole picture. If you got the elite at 30 hours before and you get it at 30 hours now, it’s not really a problem.

This is just one recent and simple example of people who think they know what’s going on, because they focus on a detail.

We have a relatively big patch and people are focused on a tiny portion of it. It happens all the time. A lot of people on these forums have hot button issues.

A lot of the complaints about one of the paragraphs in the manifesto takes the line out of context. Why do people pick one line and focus on it? Because that one line is the one thing that related to what they wanted. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the paragraph changes the definition of that line, they don’t care. They’re not seeing the big picture. They’re seeing the detail.

This is relatively normal. Those who think outside the box are by far the exception to the rule, or there wouldn’t be a box.

It’s a bug fix. It was listed in the patch notes.

Kamui.4038:

ANet needs to be more candid with their pre-update blog posts and so on. Less fluff and dressing it up with PR words and maybe they can prevent some of the outrage, because by just reading blog snippets that are dressed up with optimism, people are going to be elevated only to come crashing down even harder once they actually get in game and witness everything for themselves.

That’s what happened here.

As to the poster above (vayne): details are what make the picture a flop, or a legend. Just because someone focuses on details does not mean they are not taking the big picture into account. Often times they are, because one little bad smudge can ruin the whole picture, like a large wart on an otherwise beautiful face.

That too is what is happening here.

I’ve always been a guy short on the details and big on the big picture. I usually hired detail guys. I was quite successful at the stuff I turned my hand to, because big picture guys are rarer than detail guys. It’s just the way it is. You don’t have to believe it, but it’s true.

Saying that people often take the big picture into account is a massive assumption. Maybe, possibly you do. Maybe you think most people are like you. I’m pretty sure most people aren’t. I don’t only think most people don’t take the big picture into account, I think most people can’t…any more than I can suddenly be detail oriented. It’s not just something you do, it’s a mindset.

Making the assumption that people complaining are taking the big picture into view is demonstrably untrue in many cases.

Morsus.5106:

loseridoit.2756:

People complain about not enough dungeons. they added a path to atherblade path

They also removed a path. 33 + 1 – 1 is still 33.

They removed an underused path that most people never played. Shrugs.

The new dungeon is longer and more challenging. Just the kind of thing the hard core dungeon crowd was asking for. It’s a bigger and longer dungeon than the one they removed. It’s probably closer to two dungeons anyway, so if they removed 1 and put in one that’s twice as hard, long and big…well you still have more dungeon in the game.

How do we know most people didn’t use it. Well aside from the fact that Anet said so, when we ran TA in my guild, it was like pulling teeth to get anyone to do the F/U path, so we just didn’t do it.

cranked.3812:

gryph.8734:

scerevisiae.1972:

Metrics are only good when the right things are measured and the right conclusions drawn. Otherwise they just paint the wrong picture.

Word on the street is that Anet management are overly obsessed with their graphite dashboards and the continued misreading of same is why the game continues its march into mediocrity.

If you can do any better, give it a try. Make a game and see how many people you can get to play it. See if you can put enough financing into it to make it financially viable for one year, let-alone the two that GW2 has already existed for. Go ahead. Try it. I’ll wait.

This is the worst argument I ever see to threads like this. You don’t have to be able to poor hundreds of thousands of dollars into a game and/or be able to design one to see how bad or good a game is. All you have to do is play it. Stop acting like people have to be able to create a better game in order to critique the one they are playing.

While what you’re saying is absolutely true, it doesn’t go deep enough. Because people who are playing games often don’t know what would be best for the game.

Most people see leaves, not forest. They see detail but not the big picture. And you can’t build a game, not a good game, on only details. Most of the complaints we actually see here are complaints about details and very often they overlook the main picture.

Take the warrior nerf as an example. A lot of people hate it. A lot of warriors are really not happy with it. But it was clearly something that had to be done, because whenever you see on a forum that the warrior is pretty much the best profession to use in every area of the game there’s a problem.

The warrior player might have left the game, totally kittened that his fun experience was ruined. He knows what’s fun and this isn’kitten But it’s not fun for the other seven professions.

It’s true that not everyone is going to go out and design a game, but it’s also true that not everyone who thinks something is better or good is necessarily right. They only know if it’s good for them.

I believe there are no real majorities on this forum. PvPers aren’t a majority certainly. But they want things that make PvP better and to hell with PvE. WvWers aren’t a majority but they too want things that make their experience better. PvE is probably a majority but it’s not just one thing. It’s broken into RP, which is not a majority, dungeon runners, who I don’t believe are a majority, and people who only do open world PvE or altoholics, neither of which I think are a majority. So if you have eight, ten groups of players, not counting cross players, who are all asking for different things, they all judge the game from their perspective.

It’s obvious a company can’t do that. They can’t listen to everyone all at once, if for no other reason than adding harder content for one guy would ruin the game for another. So they have to use some method to figure out who’s playing what and for how long. Enter metrics.

The metrics Anet is using is showing poor uptake for players just starting out. They don’t want to move on until they get the core game right. That’s what they’re doing now.

There are going to be growing pains. Some people won’t like it. Some people will quit. Some people will threaten to quit. Some people will stop buying gems. I like the changes so I’ll buy more gems this month.

But at the end of the day, most players have no idea how to make a game better….they only know how to make a game better for the minority they represent.

BlackGhostz.2483:

This is what’s wrong with Guild Wars 2. It was a game that was made for the players. Not a game made to give the players the best experience. You can tell at times ANET is running on a serious budget because of the lack of a subscription.

To elaborate on this and yes, we have to compare it to WoW because WoW has undoubtedly been the best MMO.

In GW2 the instanced dungeons are pretty terrible and lack real rewards unless you essentially farm tokens. And this farming has lead to mindless repetition of COF where new players can’t even get five seconds to even watch the cut scenes without being left behind or booted.

In WoW you can essentially earn money by the means you choose to. If you want to farm crafting materials from enemies to sell you are not penalized by this. If you want to earn money by questing you can earn a lot of money on this alone. If you want to earn money by foraging that is also an great way. In GW2 the only way to farm. Yes, you can get 1 gold for a 10-30 minute dungeon but anything worth having costs 2000+ gold.

High level gear in this game can really only be obtained by crafting and that means having massive amounts of gold, which involves massive amounts of farming. So pretty much only the people that play a lot of hours or spend a lot of real money can get legendary gear. In, wow it’s a lot more rewarding and you get to choose how you want to get your high level gear. There is raiding, PVP, crafting, etc.

Raids I’m still not sure I consider the open world bosses in Guild Wars raiding.

And do not get me started on Zerg vs Zerg I mean Guild wars pvp.

I love that Guild Wars 2 is very casual and free after you buy. I stopped playing WoW because I was honestly playing that game way to much and it was costly. It’s a good game but if your looking for a more polished experience and can afford it just play WoW.

I don’t really think WoW has been the best MMO. I’d rather pay a subscription for Guild Wars 2 than play WoW for free. It’s been undoubtedly the most successful MMO, but I don’t believe anyone can claim it’s the best by a long stretch.

For a very long time they barely had competition, and they have a boatload of money to advertise. They got in early and they got in deep and that was that. I think they have done some good things, but over all, I think WoW has hamstrung the entire MMO genre, and I blame WoW and those copying WoW for the long stagnation in the MMO genre. If WoW hadn’t been successful, I’m convinced another company would have done it better eight years ago.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

The first 15 levels suck for an experienced player, or at least they’re more limited. You also get through them in under an hour, or I did anyway.

That’s fast. I created a new thief and got to level 10 in 2 hours, 5 minutes. Even that seemed ridiculously fast to me.

I can’t imagine why it took that long, to be honest. I tried a mesmer and leveled it to 10 in under an hour. I tried another ranger and leveled it to 15 in an hour.

Giant button? You using an 8 foot monitor?

Its a tiny little strip below your gold. It’s not a webpage banner. It takes you to the place to trade in gems just like it used to. It’s the old gem exchange.

People will complain about anything.

It’s funny. People wanted this game to be more like Guild Wars 1 and in Guild Wars 1, holiday festivals were almost exactly the same for a year at a time.

I guess people want it to be like Guild Wars 1 only when it proves their point.

It’s not reasonable to expect tons of new stuff every halloween, and for a two week period not worth working on it that much with everything esle going on, if they have to redo half of it every year.

That’s a bad time investment.

Galphar.3901:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve played Guild Wars 1, and I don’t feel the way you do. Because I recognize the reality of the situation. The gaming population isn’t what it was when people played EQ and if you make a game for us, it’s going to end up being a much smaller game, with a much smaller population.

This kind of project is ambitious. Anet isn’t a 50 person company anymore, they’ve got more than 300 employees. Realistically they have to attract more people. They’re not going to that by making the same game.

Referring to the bolded selection, perhaps that is why so many MMOs are failing so quickly now. Back in the days of EQ and UO MMOs were “niche” games and 500k subscribers was a success. Now if you don’t have at least 1mil subs then you’re considered a failure and a lot of companies think the only ways to do that a to make WoW clones with a different skin. The reason that A-net had so much success with Guild Wars was because it wasn’t a WoW clone and wasn’t just trying to make money, they made Guild Wars FOR the players and it showed.

Anet had success with Guild Wars 8 years ago. I can’t put too fine a point on this. The landscape HAS changed. Games today, even the failures are more successful financially than EQ was. WoW dumbed down what EQ offered and made a killing on it.

There’s a reason for that.

HandOfKane.5409:

Vayne.8563:

Resubian.5823:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Traveller.7496:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There are definitely bugs and some external miscommunication with the system and I want to listen some more before discussing.
Chris

This is interesting.

Chris is saying there has been external miscommunication about the new system. Could it be that you guys realize you went too far with the removing of functions and level gating it too extreme, and it was not supposed to dumb down the game quite this much?

Hi Traveller,

No not really. I m referring to some videos etc that aren’t quite factually correct in all areas and thus there are some misconceptions being propagated by those that have not played the through NPE yet.

Chris

You mean the Magic Mike video? I played through the NPE and I found it to be pretty accurate from the point of view of a person playing on an alt.

Well it was at least incorrect in that he claimed the new patch was responsible for not being able to die in the tutorial instance, when that was true at least a year ago, when I discovered it. So not the new patch.

He did show that the compass in the charr area was broken. However, it isn’t broken in Queensdale. It worked perfectly.

So he found a bug and demonstrated it. Whee.

So you found ONE inaccuracy. Whee.

There are probably more..however the entire video is actually using humor to make fun of something most of which is a single bug that doesn’t affect Queensdale at all. It’s been used to assault a patch that is much larger than that one issue.

It muddies the whole patch situation. It’s not helpful. The whole bias is obvious from moment one. The video made the guy money, which I guess was his intention, but it was unfair, and didn’t help the game in any way shape or form.

That stuff will be fixed. The video won’t be forgotten.

Combination NC.9813:

50% of the character’s max level cannot really be considered a small percentage of their life.

Really? You stop playing characters when you hit 80? And due to the first 15 levels being accelerated it’s not 50% anyway.

Maybe it’s 35% of your leveling experience, during which time you have most of your stuff unlocked anyway.

I know that I spent 80 hours leveling and have played some characters for hundreds of hours. That’s a lot less than 50%.

DeWolfe.2174:

ykyk.2740:

As a new player I am very sad that you would suggest such a thing. What do you think would happen if I started the game and saw so many colors? Obviously I would be confused and stop playing. Please don’t discriminate against new players.

LOL! Maybe Anet can make a deal with Gucci or Rayban and make official Guild Wars 2 beginner glasses? They’ll be available on the TP right below the “Get More Gold” button.

This joke gets funnier every time someone tells it. It’s always on topic and helps the conversation immensely. Thanks for making my…

ow, sorry, I just took an arrow to the knee.

Edit: On topic, I don’t think that would aid the player retention Anet is trying to work on, which is getting more people to stay with the early game after trying it.

You’re right, individually we’re not metrics. Collectively, metrics illustrate what we’re playing, how long we’re playing it for, how often we log in, and how often we take long breaks from the game.

We are not metrics. Our collective behavior is quantified by metrics.

Thelgar.7214:

This is supposed to be a big picture change, so here is a big picture issue with it.

The change was made in order to keep new people who didn’t like the existing system enough to stay.

People who played the previous system liked it enough to stay.

Don’t those two groups of people like different things? At some point, there are going to be two groups of people who like drastically different things and ArenaNet resources aren’t unlimited. So if this new system works, and attracts people that like things the existing players don’t, the existing players are going to be getting less from the game at all levels because more changes will be necessary to retain the new players who don’t like the same things as the existing players.

I remember a lot of people leaving because the game wasn’t like WoW. Is the Unholy Trinity the next step?

It’s an unfair comparison. This change affects only a small percentage of the life of your character. It’s not a drastic change for most people because most long term players have most of the characters they’ll ever need. You bring the trinity in it affects everyone.

Anet is improving the game based on data they have that we don’t. Why would we have that data.

Anet needs to communicate why they do thinks better. I think that’s very important. I see this as by far their biggest weakness.

szshou.2193:

gryph.8734:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

gryph.8734:

Asacledhae.2650:

bloodletting wolf.2837:

gryph.8734:

To all those leaving: Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.

Good attitude. Empty mega server eventually must be your cup of tea.

It won’t.

Megamauler will continuously harass him to change instance due to the lack of players. Eventually, if everyone leaves, then he’ll end up getting a: “Sorry, there aren’t enough players to open an instance. Instead, you’ve been taken in a queue. Your instance opens in 109:45:29 hours, please be patient.” message instead..

You people flatter yourselves. It’ll take many more than the number of whiners in these forums to have a meaningfully negative impact on the future of GW2.

Says the guy with a 6 hour forum presence. It’s ok if you are new here but calling people whiners who genuinely care(d) for the game is just [deleted due to content]. More people leave the game without saying a word compared to the forums. Have fun new guy.

Oh I know. Many more people are upset than are represented on this forum because…

…wait for it…

This forum isn’t representative of the entire population of GW2 players!

You think maybe that these whiners (Yeah. I went there…) are overestimating their ability to damage a game that doesn’t even have a monthly subscription fee by picking up their ball and going home? Good riddance!

And by the by, if I talk about whiners and you take it personally, perhaps you should ask yourself why. If you think I need convincing that the whiners feel like they cared for the game without regard for the fact that they bothered to play in the first place, aren’t you insulting my intelligence?

Shazam!

If you haven’t played GW1 or GW2 since the beginning you wouldnt understand how much ANet’s watering down of the game has affected everyone’s morale and desire to play. If you can’t even name your pet, or die in the tutorial instance, or make sense of what’s happening in the ending of the personal story, or access most game content until you hit a certain level it completely destroys immersion and makes you feel like the devs are laughing at you while rolling around in a bathtub full of your money.

With new MMO’s coming out or going into beta such as Archeage or Black Desert don’t be surprised if people leave GW2 by the truckload. NEVER underestimate the power of word-of-mouth; especially in a game that gains momentum through friends joining and playing together. If the devs continue on their path of self-destruction by: Not having Q&A testing, being extremely vague about upcoming releases, and devaluing the player experience to the point of loss of continuity and isolation of new players from genuine game mechanics, then this game will be dead before summer 2015. More and more people from my guild are disappearing even during times that are supposed to make the game thrive like patch days and WvW tournament season. It’s all due to how out of touch the developers are with the actual game, the sad thing is they probably don’t even know where they went wrong, hence the “adopt a dev” ploy so they can actually see what they’re doing wrong (I hope it works). If not then I’ll probably jump ship too when a game I prefer comes out. Which, by the looks of it, will be sooner rather than later.

I’ve played Guild Wars 1, and I don’t feel the way you do. Because I recognize the reality of the situation. The gaming population isn’t what it was when people played EQ and if you make a game for us, it’s going to end up being a much smaller game, with a much smaller population.

This kind of project is ambitious. Anet isn’t a 50 person company anymore, they’ve got more than 300 employees. Realistically they have to attract more people. They’re not going to that by making the same game.

Orangensaft.7139:

Guhracie.3419:

Skill points are awarded at intervals. I got 8 skillpoints for hitting… level 31 or 32.

… why did they dOO this? :/

Why do you think it’s bad that they did this?

Experienced players tend to have enough skill points they can consume to buy whatever they want. New players tend to get what’s given to them and don’t look for a new skill point every level.

By the time you’re level 40, you generally have bought all the 1 point skills you need anyway, so 1 skill point isn’t very helpful.

That’s why they did it.

Taterz.1706:

sweetmesquite.5024:

Good luck in your future endeavors! Can I have your stuff? ;D

If i like Archeage as much as i hope i will gladly give you my stuff.

Give it six months before you make that decision.

Plenty of good things about this game. Plenty of bad things about this game. Depends on who you ask, who you play with. My guild is mostly happily playing since the patch. We had one guy that didn’t like the changes and he left. That’s 1 out of 50 regulars who play very frequently.

I went to the guild yesterday due to the reaction on the forums and asked them how they were enjoying the patch. Most of them either likes it or didn’t feel it made a difference to their game play.

A couple of them felt that the new leveling experience, one part of the patch needed to be tweaked. They saw what Anet was going for, but they don’t think Anet has hit the mark yet.

But I still have roughly the same number of people logging in daily as I did last week, actually a couple more because some older members came back for the patch, and I have substantially more people logging in and staying logged in now than six months ago.

Things I like about the game: The graphics, the combat, the cooperative (as oppose to competitive) nature of PvE, jumping puzzles (done better in this game than others I’ve seen), the fact that dungeon groups fill fast because you don’t have to wait for a tank or healer, no one can steal your node, no one can steal your kill, I like the crafting better now than I did before the patch, I like the trading post better now than I did before the patch, I like the leveling experience better now than I did before the patch.

I’ve played this game almost every day since the first beta. I must like something about it.

Many of my guild members have been playing that long as well.

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

lets take an iphone, should they lock all functionality and give you 1 new function each day until you fully know the phone?

the solution is bad.

That is actually the only method which worked for teaching my mother how to do general low-level maintenance (data and physical) and preventative measures to keep her computer from burning out every year.

which is excellent for your mother, but horrible for many other users. To be clear, its not bad to teach things slowly and one at a time(for some learners). Its bad to force all users to operate a similar pace.

But what pace are we really talking about here. As many people have said, an hour to get to level 15 where most of your stuff is unlocked. And as Colin said the overall time played to unlocking stuff like your elite is the same roughly in this system as the old system.

People see numbers like levels and they think, oh level 40 they rolled it back. But if level 40 takes the same time to get to, they really didn’t.

That’s if, of course. But I think it’s probably relatively true. The way I’m leveling now, if they gave me my elite at 30 I’d be getting it faster than I used to.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Vayne.8563:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Vayne.8563:

Im Mudbone.1437:

fourhim.3584:

This accusation gets tossed around a lot – that certain people who post such high praise for Anet’s decisions might be rewarded in some way. I haven’t reached a decision on this yet, so I thought the best approach is just to come right out and ask.

Will someone at ANet please tell the rest of us if you reward certain people for their forum comments? If you could just issue a flat out denial then that might diminish the number of accusations, especially right now.

I don’t believe they do even though there are a few blind White Knights.

And therein lies the problem. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is blind or a white knight or both.

Anyone who uses those terms, or hater for that matter, is doing themselves a disservice.

Exact same thing can be said for the White Knights.

No,. not at all.

I don’t call you a hater, or try to dismiss what you say by labeling you. You try to dismiss what I say by labeling me.

I might disagree with what you say, or more often how you say it, but I don’t use a single word to describe you that denotes blindness, or even bias.

When have I ever used the word blind in relation to what you’ve said?

See right now you are being blind in your answer(think really hard about it), and to my recollection I have never seen you call anyone blind or a hater but I have seen you blindly dismiss/discredit other peoples problems with the game as immaterial.

Maybe I didn’t do it “blindly”. Frankly, I find the way you phrase things offensive. It’s like you have a monopoly on seeing things, and I don’t see them that way, so I’m doing it blindly.

You’ve never seen me blindly do anything. You just call it that to try to discredit me.

Take it easy. Have fun wherever you end up.

Resubian.5823:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Traveller.7496:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

There are definitely bugs and some external miscommunication with the system and I want to listen some more before discussing.
Chris

This is interesting.

Chris is saying there has been external miscommunication about the new system. Could it be that you guys realize you went too far with the removing of functions and level gating it too extreme, and it was not supposed to dumb down the game quite this much?

Hi Traveller,

No not really. I m referring to some videos etc that aren’t quite factually correct in all areas and thus there are some misconceptions being propagated by those that have not played the through NPE yet.

Chris

You mean the Magic Mike video? I played through the NPE and I found it to be pretty accurate from the point of view of a person playing on an alt.

Well it was at least incorrect in that he claimed the new patch was responsible for not being able to die in the tutorial instance, when that was true at least a year ago, when I discovered it. So not the new patch.

He did show that the compass in the charr area was broken. However, it isn’t broken in Queensdale. It worked perfectly.

So he found a bug and demonstrated it. Whee.

Swizzle.7982:

Vayne.8563:

As an example, the compass works perfectly in China, apparently works on the test server but didn’t work properly when the game went live.

How do you know this, do you have a source for that? And what about the completely messed up scaling issues, how were those not detected? What about the gated things that aren’t meant to be gated? How did those mysteriously change between test builds and our version?
Sounds like you’re just making kitten up to be honest.

Okay I’m making it up. Go on reddit, ask some Chinese players if the compass works fine in China. Then you can get that information. One of my guildies follows the news from the China release quite closely and he’s told me quite a few stories of stuff that went wrong there. Today when we learned about the bug in the tracking he said it was odd, because he’d never heard anything about that.

But let’s think logically for one second. Just a bit. If China launched five months ago, and that was bugged, you don’t think that they’d have had a fix for it, being one of the main new player experiences. Even if it were bugged at launch, it would have been fixed.

And if it was bugged, Anet certainly would have known about it a lot earlier. Strangely, that’s not really the kind of thing you put a patch out knowing.

Maybe it’s me, but I’ll go with the logic and what I’ve been told by a person who follow the Chinese release.

Swizzle.7982:

Sounds like an awful lot of backpedaling to me. Either that or the people testing the game, if there are any at all, are incredibly incompetent.

“- There are bugs! We’ve seen the content direction system (the little arrow) pointing people at super high level maps when it shouldn’t, some systems/features not unlocking as intended for all characters on your account once your first learns them, some systems level gated that aren’t intended to be, balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, our team is working to figure out what happened here and fix these as quickly as possible.”

Sure, there are always going to be bugs. But for the whole system to be completely and utterly wrong and instantly detectable by anyone who might have decided to actually play this content, well, that’s a whole new level of unbelievability. I really hope these are just excuses to revise most of the changes, because if the whole thing is really as messed up as Colin is saying then I think it might be time to pack up and move on, for both devs and players.

As an example, the compass works perfectly in China, apparently works on the test server but didn’t work properly when the game went live.

Anyone who’s worked on this sort of thing will tell you this can happen with all the testing in the world. Microsoft products are filled with bugs, but I’m sure they test them. And this is a game.

The problem is that to get out the biggest percentage of bugs, you’d have to work for much longer, backing up everything else and everyone is already complaining there’s not enough content.

Developers are people, not supermen. They’re often overworked, they get tired, they sometimes miss stuff. But even with everything working fine on test servers, bugs can creep into the system. Sometimes changing something to fix a bug at the last minute will cause five bugs that wouldn’t even seem to be related to the code you’ve touched.

Sariel V.7024:

Galen.9042:

The image was datamined back in January. Anet said that it was not for the NA version.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1utx8p/data_mining_vip_membership/

Martin Kerstein:

We just wanted to respond to the image that has been data-mined from the Edge of the Mists testing branch.

This is a testing branch. We conduct internal experiments for various territories on our testing branches. This particular experiment is not being tested for the West.

As always, keep in mind that we test a lot more than we ship, so data-mining is no guarantee of anything. If we have announcements to make about future content, we’ll make them through the usual official channels.

This is NOT a denial that it will never be instituted here.

Right, but Colin just directly said it won’t happen. And that was a direct denial.

Elsdragon.5109:

Paradox.1380:

Much respect, Vayne. I’ve been flailing in futility trying to get some of this across in my own way in all these negative threads but I have been largely ignored. So thanks much. I’ve come to really respect almost everything you put on these forums. The more I read them the more level headed I feel you are. So, thank you. =)

Same here, Vayne. Thanks for this post, and your other ones.

Man…you guys…I don’t even know how to respond to this.

You think maybe we get get like some white knight icons to put by our names? lol

dekou.6012:

It’s good this system may get fixed. Maybe. A year from now. Because I’m not sure what ANet is doing, but they’re not doing it fast.

Still, if this system is working as designed, they need better designers. If it’s not working as designed, they need better QA. Either way, the quality of the NPE is beyond low.

They’ve generally fixed patch bugs pretty fast, from my recollection.

Sariel V.7024:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Vayne.8563:

Im Mudbone.1437:

fourhim.3584:

This accusation gets tossed around a lot – that certain people who post such high praise for Anet’s decisions might be rewarded in some way. I haven’t reached a decision on this yet, so I thought the best approach is just to come right out and ask.

Will someone at ANet please tell the rest of us if you reward certain people for their forum comments? If you could just issue a flat out denial then that might diminish the number of accusations, especially right now.

I don’t believe they do even though there are a few blind White Knights.

And therein lies the problem. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is blind or a white knight or both.

Anyone who uses those terms, or hater for that matter, is doing themselves a disservice.

Exact same thing can be said for the White Knights.

Except they aren’t calling people blind or biased entirely out of fanboyism.

Exactly. In fact, I often start off posts with I see your point, but I don’t agree with it and then say why. And very often I do see the other point.

And I really don’t like the term hater or doom and gloom crowd either. I haven’t used either in ages.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Vayne.8563:

Im Mudbone.1437:

fourhim.3584:

This accusation gets tossed around a lot – that certain people who post such high praise for Anet’s decisions might be rewarded in some way. I haven’t reached a decision on this yet, so I thought the best approach is just to come right out and ask.

Will someone at ANet please tell the rest of us if you reward certain people for their forum comments? If you could just issue a flat out denial then that might diminish the number of accusations, especially right now.

I don’t believe they do even though there are a few blind White Knights.

And therein lies the problem. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is blind or a white knight or both.

Anyone who uses those terms, or hater for that matter, is doing themselves a disservice.

Exact same thing can be said for the White Knights.

No,. not at all.

I don’t call you a hater, or try to dismiss what you say by labeling you. You try to dismiss what I say by labeling me.

I might disagree with what you say, or more often how you say it, but I don’t use a single word to describe you that denotes blindness, or even bias.

When have I ever used the word blind in relation to what you’ve said?

Im Mudbone.1437:

fourhim.3584:

This accusation gets tossed around a lot – that certain people who post such high praise for Anet’s decisions might be rewarded in some way. I haven’t reached a decision on this yet, so I thought the best approach is just to come right out and ask.

Will someone at ANet please tell the rest of us if you reward certain people for their forum comments? If you could just issue a flat out denial then that might diminish the number of accusations, especially right now.

I don’t believe they do even though there are a few blind White Knights.

And therein lies the problem. Anyone who doesn’t agree with you is blind or a white knight or both.

Anyone who uses those terms, or hater for that matter, is doing themselves a disservice.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Very few big companies will give you a swift response because they’re not free too. Meetings have to be held. Things have to be figured out.

Anet is not a big company.

Even so the only swift response I would expect to see (and have) is acknowledgement by Anet that certain things are in fact bugs, or are in fact working as intended. Anything more than that is unneeded at this time.

Vayne.8563:

They still don’t know where the bug us. It works find in China, so why does it not work here.

It even probably works on the test server.

Anyone with programming experience will tell you that sometimes, even if you have something working perfectly, soon as you move it to the live server it can behave in unexpected ways.

Completely agreed.

Anet isn’t a big company…NcSoft is. I don’t think Anet can just say anything they want. Some things, particularly big things, have to be cleared and even then, there may be rules involved in what can and can’t be said.

Bottom line is, Anet is a big enough company even without NcSoft to hold a meeting before making a response. Colin made yet another response today in more detail.

butch.8136:

Nick.6972:

Why did it take two days to clarify that there are "bugs’ in this new system?

They didn’t. Colin posted yesterday.

Both Colin and Regina posted about it yesterday.

Obviously not a hard and fast best of list, but it does track the number of unique log ins per game for the month.

Guild Wars 2 is holding steady at 7..for several months now in fact.

http://www.alistdaily.com/news/superdatas-august-top-20-pc-game-rankings

GuzziHero.2467:

…

Dude, I have 13 lvl 80s. I don’t need pointers on how to play. I am following it as if I was a new player.

Yeah I did the same thing. I found it sorta fun. Usually I have to follow my wife. lol

Always the same on these forums. New patch, massive rage the first day, people calm down, figure stuff out, try stuff….less rage. Not no rage. Some people will still be dissatisfied but not the vast numbers that jumped on the lets bash the patch band wagon.

What bothers me is that because the NPE is so dominant, everyone ignored everything else. I’m loving some of the other changes as well.

And yes, I like the NGE as well. Thanks OP!

Warlock.2583:

Vayne, Sparks, while I understand where you are coming from, the process presented, as I’ve seen it, takes away more than it provides in helping to learn. There are, in fact, better ways to teach the skills and systems that they are level gating.

For instance, making you invulnerable to defeat in a story start instance, only to have you die in the outside world, only to then reveal later that there is a rally from downed state does not actually prepare the player for any of the later life/downed/defeated states of the game.

Focused, instanced tutorials, even if they are required as part of your story provide the ability to introduce a player to a system, give them details, and walk them through the functional system of the game, and allowing the player to do so at a pace that works for them, especially if the tutorial is repeatable until they understand the fundamentals.

What they have provided is a process where by you are taught something, and then that function is proven to be not the baseline or actual truth/nature of the game you are playing. In fact, you are being taught, and then told that what you experienced and learned is, in fact, wrong. Then, “Here’s how the world really works”. And there’s more, you can see the slots and the buttosn and the icons, but you aren’t ready for it yet. Because the system knows better what you are ready for, rather than adapting to the pace at which you as an individual can learn.

The previous system COULD overwhelm a player, I will not argue that point. But a player was allowed to learn, experiment, grow, and explore at THEIR pace. Not and artificially gated one which actually provides incorrect presentation of the final system at multiple stages.

So, to the devs, please…undo this. Find a better way. Because there ARE better ways to accommodate different players learning speeds and styles.

That invulnerable to defeat in the starter instance has been in the game for at least a year…probably more. Not part of this patch.

That’s probably because there’s no waypoint in the tutorial.

GuzziHero.2467:

Even after all my negative comments, I AM trying the new levelling system. I am following all the instructions given by the compass and it’s going ok. My gear is being refreshed reasonably frequently.

Can’t say its as fun though. There’s little adventure in it. I feel like Im playing a single player game.

If you know where to go, turn off the compass.

Jornophelanthas.1475:

I think you may be better off linking to the post directly:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Misconceptions-regarding-Level-gating/page/4#post4396936

Thanks edited my OP with this.

mtpelion.4562:

Kamui.4038:

mtpelion.4562:

Is the NPE so bad as to warrant quitting/raging? Lol No.

No? Really? How else do you propose the players send ANet a message aside from just not ever giving them a cent again? Just sitting on your hands does nothing. People are reacting the only way they can.

They’ve got your money already and they are setting the stage to get more money from a lot more players. Your decision to quit does nothing other than deprive yourself of the content you have already paid for.

You’ve let them know that you don’t like it. Continuing to post that you don’t like it does not improve your chances of being heard because that’s just you saying the same thing over an over. If enough DIFFERENT people complain, they may address the complaints.

Right now you are just crying over spilt milk which doesn’t put the milk back in the jug.

Yep, same problem I have. Lots of people don’t take me seriously because I like the game and say so.

pdavis.8031:

Vayne.8563:

Anet wouldn’t touch me with a 20 foot pole. I’m far too contraversial. Not to mention the fact that people ignore the negative stuff I’ve said, and just focus on the positive. But I have said negative stuff. I don’t like the way the new trait system was handled, for example.

No one here is being paid for being a fan, any more than a fan of a sports team that defends their team is being paid. Because you don’t have to pay people to be fans of something.

I really enjoy my time in Tyria. I have fun here. I have a great guild. Of course I’m going to defend it.

Why should anyone have to pay me for that.

I agree!! Well said!

(Also, was your check late this month? I still haven’t got mine. I tried to email Chris, but no reponse yet… :P)

OMFG! hahahaha…..this is the best post EVER!

This is in another thread, posted by Colin…leaving it here for people to read and comment on. I don’t think a comment like this should get lost in the middle of another thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Misconceptions-regarding-Level-gating/page/4#post4396936

Hey folks,

Wanted to pop by and give another update on where we stand, as well as to help provide some information on some of the more common misconceptions we’ve seen floating around as well:

- There are bugs! We’ve seen the content direction system (the little arrow) pointing people at super high level maps when it shouldn’t, some systems/features not unlocking as intended for all characters on your account once your first learns them, some systems level gated that aren’t intended to be, balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, our team is working to figure out what happened here and fix these as quickly as possible.

- There is misinformation: Numerous systems that show up in the level up guide that teaches you about things in the game when you gain levels are not locked out, the system simply tells you they exist in the game to help give you a better list of things you can do. Just because it’s included in the level up guide, doesn’t mean it’s actually locked out. You can dodge from level one, jumping puzzle from level one, etc. There also appear to be a lot of folks chiming in who haven’t actually played with any of the system, and are making claims that aren’t remotely true.

- There are some things happening at the wrong levels. Things like utility skills and elites are intended to come at approx. the same time they used to in actual game time, we sped up leveling for levels 1-15 and had them slide back in levels a bit to offset that pacing, they are not currently where we want them to be in the level up system. This was an oversight, and will absolutely be fixed.
- Not all of these changes were made as ways to teach the game, some of them are to provide a better sense of pacing, reward and progression. Early on we want to give a sense that you’re rapidly gaining new abilities, rewards, and learning new things as you level up. We added the level up reward messages, and the actual rewards themselves, and took abilities you’d usually use around that point in total game hours and presented them as unlocks (or things we teach that are already unlocked) to help give a better sense of pacing and progression.

With the addition of the new rewards, messaging, and level up screen to make leveling more exciting: we also wanted to make sure you had that feeling of excitement more often early on in the game, and presented new learning on a more regular cadence. So we greatly sped up leveling from levels 1-15. Many of the things unlocked at later levels are earned at about the same time period you used to start using them in the old system in actual real game time, we just staggered them out across the levels since we sped up leveling to make the game feel more rewarding early on.

- In general, this system is intended to be not only better for new players, but our hope is by the time it’s all in place you’ll find via the better rewards from levels 1-80 via the level up guide, the better rewards from personal story, the faster leveling from 1-15, and the ability to toggle the content direction system to help you with map complete will make this a better for experienced players as well.

- Over a years worth of testing with new players found we were absolutely able to keep them both more engaged, and more likely to return to keep playing Gw2 as a result of the intended system. That is at the end of the day, a win for all of us since all of you need more people to play with! However: if we find in the live environment that isn’t true and we’re not retaining new users better, we’ll absolutely both share that information with you, and continue to iterate to make it better. We keep very real time metrics of player retention for new users, and we’ll know very quickly how effective the work we’ve done is. I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users. Before we do some of the other things we want to do with Gw2, we had to fix this, period.

- Finally, I want to add that a few things (hello traits!) are things that can be improved for players who make multiple alts, we’re aware of this, and though company policy prevents us from discussing what’s in development: I can say we know Gw2 can be an even better game for people who love making alts in the long run, more info: when it’s ready™.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Wanted to pop by and give another update on where we stand, as well as to help provide some information on some of the more common misconceptions we’ve seen floating around as well:

- There are bugs! We’ve seen the content direction system (the little arrow) pointing people at super high level maps when it shouldn’t, some systems/features not unlocking as intended for all characters on your account once your first learns them, some systems level gated that aren’t intended to be, balance issues where certain levels appear to be very out of whack, etc. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, our team is working to figure out what happened here and fix these as quickly as possible.

- There is misinformation: Numerous systems that show up in the level up guide that teaches you about things in the game when you gain levels are not locked out, the system simply tells you they exist in the game to help give you a better list of things you can do. Just because it’s included in the level up guide, doesn’t mean it’s actually locked out. You can dodge from level one, jumping puzzle from level one, etc. There also appear to be a lot of folks chiming in who haven’t actually played with any of the system, and are making claims that aren’t remotely true.

- There are some things happening at the wrong levels. Things like utility skills and elites are intended to come at approx. the same time they used to in actual game time, we sped up leveling for levels 1-15 and had them slide back in levels a bit to offset that pacing, they are not currently where we want them to be in the level up system. This was an oversight, and will absolutely be fixed.

- Not all of these changes were made as ways to teach the game, some of them are to provide a better sense of pacing, reward and progression. Early on we want to give a sense that you’re rapidly gaining new abilities, rewards, and learning new things as you level up. We added the level up reward messages, and the actual rewards themselves, and took abilities you’d usually use around that point in total game hours and presented them as unlocks (or things we teach that are already unlocked) to help give a better sense of pacing and progression.

With the addition of the new rewards, messaging, and level up screen to make leveling more exciting: we also wanted to make sure you had that feeling of excitement more often early on in the game, and presented new learning on a more regular cadence. So we greatly sped up leveling from levels 1-15. Many of the things unlocked at later levels are earned at about the same time period you used to start using them in the old system in actual real game time, we just staggered them out across the levels since we sped up leveling to make the game feel more rewarding early on.

- In general, this system is intended to be not only better for new players, but our hope is by the time it’s all in place you’ll find via the better rewards from levels 1-80 via the level up guide, the better rewards from personal story, the faster leveling from 1-15, and the ability to toggle the content direction system to help you with map complete will make this a better for experienced players as well.

- Over a years worth of testing with new players found we were absolutely able to keep them both more engaged, and more likely to return to keep playing Gw2 as a result of the intended system. That is at the end of the day, a win for all of us since all of you need more people to play with! However: if we find in the live environment that isn’t true and we’re not retaining new users better, we’ll absolutely both share that information with you, and continue to iterate to make it better. We keep very real time metrics of player retention for new users, and we’ll know very quickly how effective the work we’ve done is. I want to make it clear: what we used to have absolutely wasn’t good enough for our standards of retaining new users. Before we do some of the other things we want to do with Gw2, we had to fix this, period.

- Finally, I want to add that a few things (hello traits!) are things that can be improved for players who make multiple alts, we’re aware of this, and though company policy prevents us from discussing what’s in development: I can say we know Gw2 can be an even better game for people who love making alts in the long run, more info: when it’s ready™.

Thanks you for this. I never doubted you for a second (ask everyone else lol).