Guild Wars 2

Squeesidhe.4761:

Vayne.8563:

It’s always been this way. You’ve never needed an aquabreather.

I’ve had an aqua breather on my characters for the entire life of the game, up until this patch. Big ’ol breathing things. On the face.

Yup.

Me too. A year ago I took it off to see what would happen. Nothing at all. You never needed the breather to breathe underwater.

UndeadRufus.6832:

Vayne.8563:

It happens fairly often though, sometimes with less provocation than we have now. The ascended weapons thing took over the forum and Anet didn’t change it. I didn’t like ascended weapons either.

Flooding the forums with this kind of complaint so soon after a patch has consequences for the entire game.

As it should. That’s kind of the point. I guess people would vent anyway, but I think most people would like some acknowledgment that things are screwed up severely, and will be fixed soon.

Some people who post here are genuinely concerned about the game. Some have a bone to pick, no longer play the game and just want to see the game do badly. That’s human nature. Every one of these hot button issues is exacerbated by these people and it becomes a mob instead of an intelligent discussion. Emotion rules instead of logical.

Unavoidable, even as I wish otherwise. The flip-side of this is that, if you do something that riles up the customer base so much that they descend with torches and pitchforks, the inkling in a rational mind might be that something somewhere went very wrong. Even if not everybody makes a logical argument, you still did something to make them mad, and they’re still customers.

[…skipping over points for brevity…]

If most of the complaints were just a bug, then Anet has taken a huge hit with people leaving, people uninstalling, people not buying gems or telling their friends, all for something that may (or may not) just be a bug.

And if it is a bug, the forums have done Anet a disservice and it hurts everyone.

And yeah, bugs suck. But I’d like to see what the patch is supposed to be and give it some time before I take out a pitchfork.

I mean, the pointer thing that is bugged here works fine in China. It’s obviously a bug.

ArenaNet is well aware of this fact. So why would they push out a patch that is so severely bugged (if it is, in fact, bugged)? The bottom line is that they either 1) did this on purpose and people are justifiably throwing in the towel, or they 2) released a shoddy, broken patch, in which case it’s still hard to defend them.

If the horrid level-gating has been misapplied, ArenaNet personnel have certainly been quite slow in clarifying this to all the veteran players with alts, who have had the rug jerked out from under them. You’d think a forum being “taken over” would warrant a swift, soothing response or two, no? These complaints aren’t just limited to this forum, mind you. They’re all throughout game and other sites as well.

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.

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.

It’s always been this way. You’ve never needed an aquabreather.

Vix.6730:

Vayne.8563:

All this patch did was change 1-15 zones to tutorial zones, so people can relax into a character. They’ve greatly increased the speed of leveling. It took me an hour or so to get to level 7. So level 1-15 you level through super fast (or use a 20th level scroll if you have to) and most of the major unlocking is done.

But what this has done is given people more information about what happens when they level.

Anyone who doesn’t think this was necessary hasn’t spent much time on player helping players forums.

Valid points if this was the year 2012.

Valid points for now. No MMO can survive without new blood. All MMOs have natural attrition and lose people over time. If they can’t replace those people, they die.

Anet needs to find a way to get more players into the game. I strongly suspect the free weekends have been failures, or they’d have had more of them. So they want to increase the odds that someone will stay who’s never played the game.

This is a business decision, not one meant to kitten off players. Most of the leveling experience is going to be better, but the first 15 levels sorta suck.

Is it a pain? Maybe a bit yeah. Does it deserve this level of hate?

I don’t think so.

I believe there’ll be more free trials coming up.

Porterhouse.6304:

Aicus.3174:

So where did you get the numbers that those who dislike the patch outnumbered those that like the patch by 2 to 3 times?

My whole guild got no problems with it, most people I met think it is OK with rooms for improvement, my friends got nothing to complain about, my friend’s guild is cool with it as well, so maybe it is actually the other way around?

Well, you can read the forums here and see more dislikes for the update just by skimming through the threads.

But let’s go with math. At this point in this thread I read 21 different names. 6 of them are Pro-patch, 14 of them are Con-patch, 1 is N/A.

That means there are over 2x as many posts here that don’t like the patch, compared the posts that are white knighting Anet’s decision.

Also keep in mind the title of this thread and realize the results will be skewed toward the Pro-patch people. In other threads its all torches and pitchforks and the amount of “we don’t like this patch” people far outweigh the people who think it’s a new and exciting experience.

Hang on a sec, a bit of misinformation here.

Not like the NGE, which is not the whole patch. We’re talking specifically about leveling changes. And presumably no one minds getting rewards at every level while leveling, or most people don’t so it’s not even the entire NGE. If you’re going to provide information let’s look at it.

A bunch of people on a forum that have been playing for probably a year or two and have maxed level characters don’t like changes to the beginning of a game made for people who obviously aren’t play, and are certainly not posting on the forums.

These changes were’t made for you. If they made a change to make dugeons harder, more people on the forums would complain than not. But that doesn’t mean most people playing the game wouldn’t think that was a bad idea. The forums have the brightest, most dedicated players as a rule. The ones that read and write and think more deeply about their gaming experience.

I don’t think we’re the audience these changes were made for. So yes, if only 2/3s of the audience doesn’t like 1 relatively small part of the patch, then I’d say it’s not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Who’s affected by these changes. Only people who want to level alts or people just starting out. I’m an altoholic and I like the changes.

A lot of people complaining probably don’t roll many alts.

I suspect we’ll see a level 40 scroll in the game soon and most of the complaints will die away, since level 40 is when you unlock your elite.

UndeadRufus.6832:

Vayne.8563:

Sure you can complain. But why take over the entire forums for the same complaint over and over?

If I were a decision-maker at ArenaNet, and I saw my game’s forum being “taken over” by negative feedback about a patch, and I had the slightest bit of concern for player opinions, I would at least consider the possibility that the complaints in question warrant some attention. Maybe that’s just me….

It happens fairly often though, sometimes with less provocation than we have now. The ascended weapons thing took over the forum and Anet didn’t change it. I didn’t like ascended weapons either.

Flooding the forums with this kind of complaint so soon after a patch has consequences for the entire game. Some people who post here are genuinely concerned about the game. Some have a bone to pick, no longer play the game and just want to see the game do badly. That’s human nature. Every one of these hot button issues is exacerbated by these people and it becomes a mob instead of an intelligent discussion. Emotion rules instead of logical.

Logically, the changes made have issues, but after a big patch like this there are always issues. Now Colin comes out and says some of the features were supposed to be only for new players and somehow they were passed on to second character players. They still don’t know how but they have to fix it.

If most of the complaints were just a bug, then Anet has taken a huge hit with people leaving, people uninstalling, people not buying gems or telling their friends, all for something that may (or may not) just be a bug.

And if it is a bug, the forums have done Anet a disservice and it hurts everyone.

And yeah, bugs suck. But I’d like to see what the patch is supposed to be and give it some time before I take out a pitchfork.

I mean, the pointer thing that is bugged here works fine in China. It’s obviously a bug.

Guhracie.3419:

Vayne.8563:

Okay stop it everyone. This is getting silly.

The only thing it seems you can’t do that you’d normally need to at low levels is do skill point challenges. That’s it. Everything else you can do, including using Asuran gates.

The logic is that Anet is introducing concepts to people. Most new players have no reason to go to LA until level 20, which for most new players is the first time they’ll ever use a gate.

My level 2 character gathered, used asuran gates, got points of interest and vistas and crafted.

The activities aren’t gated. They’re revealing stuff to new players as new players need to know.

I can’t name my pet, access my profession skills, or the utility skills that were previously available. Nor can I weapon swap.

Weapon swap was always gated. So they changed the gate, but that’s it.

The pet can be accessed from level 5. We know weapon skills have been gated.

But all the stuff about pois and vistas and Asuran gates and gathering and crafting…just try it before you post that’s all.

Okay stop it everyone. This is getting silly.

The only thing it seems you can’t do that you’d normally need to at low levels is do skill point challenges. That’s it. Everything else you can do, including using Asuran gates.

The logic is that Anet is introducing concepts to people. Most new players have no reason to go to LA until level 20, which for most new players is the first time they’ll ever use a gate.

My level 2 character gathered, used asuran gates, got points of interest and vistas and crafted.

The activities aren’t gated. They’re revealing stuff to new players as new players need to know.

So I was out in the world testing out the new longbow changes, and I hit rapid fire on a skritt, which died pretty fast. When I switched to the next target, my rapid fire continued firing, killing the second skritt as well. It used to cancel the skill.

I didn’t see this change in the patch notes, but it’s been a long time in coming.

LMAO! In my testing of the new leveling stuff, I never even checked. My frame rate has gone up significantly. Thanks for pointing this out.

Sokia.3710:

CalamityO.2890:

To be fair, once you’ve reached lvl 10 all weapons skills are unlocked for all weapons. Unlocking each weapon skills individually was way more grindier than under this new system.

Lies. In the previous system, your weapon skills unlocked faster the higher level you were. So, if you were a really high level and used a weapon that you had never used before, you would unlock skill 2 by killing A SINGLE MONSTER.

There is no way that I would consider that grindy. The only way it is grindy is if you try to unlock every weapon skill for every single weapon as soon as you get into the game. If you just play the game normally and choose two weapons to use or just use whatever you find when it is stronger than what you were currently using, you would unlock skills faster than under the new system.

Now if you pick up a new weapon at a higher level, every skill is automatically unlocked without killing anything. And by a higher level, I mean 15.

If you only used a bow and nothing else, by level 12, you’d have every single weapon skill unlocked. I don’t see that as grind.

I think that make more and more threads that say the same thing instead of posting in an existing thread doesn’t help anyway. It just makes work for moderators.

If I saw a thread that said I like this game, I might post in it. But I wouldn’t post a separate thread saying I like this game.

Sure you can complain. But why take over the entire forums for the same complaint over and over?

Delryn.7235:

Lisa.6102:

Vayne.8563:

Anet isn’t completely silent. They did say there were bugs they were working on, including the fact that some of the new player experience was supposed to not carry over to existing players and did. They don’t know why yet.

Ohh Vayne, your loyalty is cute. ( cute is the best I could come up with , without having the porcelain bus waiting for me)

+1

On this note;

I think it’s important for a company, especially an MMO company to take what their customers say into consideration. This doesn’t mean every single customer should be listened to 100%, but if someone has something to say there must be a reasonable enough reason for them to say it. Though many people might wrongly identify an issue they experience, it’s best to listen than to just ignore waves of people.

Anet clearly have a plan and an idea for their game but it’s also important to them to understand their game is played by the players. As well as it’s important for the players to understand those making the game have a vision for it.

Many in the forums can’t understand their vision but they also don’t seem to care to make their vision clear, thus frustrating many of their players.

But then again decisions are being made which might not be just in the best interest of players, they might be forced to make real business decisions, which might be against what players want.

All in all it’s a shame they made a game with such potential that time after time is met with so much criticism (almost always with some sort of credibility) due to their unusual lack of transparency in such trivial subjects with their players.

Also a note for Anet; don’t treat people as stupid, instead teach them to be better. No one goes into a game knowing the game 100%, but to assume that means they’re dumb is insulting. Make engaging, proper, yet subtle tutorials, don’t assume people are dumb and slow.

Overall I think they had the right idea into slowly introducing the game to new players but I think they went overboard and made some not so great choices along the way. I personally think many of their decisions made with the Chinese GW2 were on the right track, but not all of it was so spot on.

Also (unfortunately for some) the fact this is a free to play MMO will mean it must do things very differently from subscription MMOs, their income style is completely different and it seems Anet have been a bit wobbly trying to figure out exactly what their main income source will be with a free to play MMO.

Anet’s biggest problem is how bad their communication is. So many big outrages could have been severely reduced if Anet were just better at communicating.

There needs to be more openness and more transparency.

Anet isn’t completely silent. They did say there were bugs they were working on, including the fact that some of the new player experience was supposed to not carry over to existing players and did. They don’t know why yet.

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Taida.4987:

One Prarie Outpost.4860:

Is it true that a baby Ranger cannot name it’s pet?

You unlock ability to name, switch and put pet on passive at level 5. You can charm another pet and immediately swap to it when game asks you, but it will go back to your starter if you die below level 5.

I am… stunned. Really?
Can’t swap?
No downed state because you unlock that? My head is spinning…
I saw that a new toon is actually told to go to Frostgorge Sound to see the new challenges…
You don’t unlock the weapon skill as you use the weapon?
No underwater skills? That makes zero sense.
No gathering ability
No dyes
no armor
no
no
no
… wow, sure does tempt me into buying the game if I don’t have it

Not making a new toon until this kitten is cleared up.

Till level 5. In the new system, that takes about 15 minutes.

fellyn.5083:

Because every other thing that was data mined didn’t eventually show up in the game in pretty much exactly as it was in the data mined information…

Like the paper bag masks? You’re right!

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Paper-Bag_Helm_4-Pack

Kamui.4038:

Vayne.8563:

Swizzle.7982:

“In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun.” ~ A Sword Swinging Backpeddler

And people wonder why Anet won’t talk to them. A quote from a four year old video is still being quoted today and used as a weapon of sorts.

Anet should just shut up and stop saying anything. It might come back to haunt them.

They’re doing a pretty kitten good job of shutting up and just making changes on a whim without actually consulting the ones that are paying them, and of course using you as a conduit for what they are thinking and then attempting to get others to ignore the massive elephant in the room, since that’s all you seem to do around here.

Anet isn’t using me. Get that straight. Just like others profess to care about this game, I care about this game too. But I also care about being fair. I don’t think most people do.

Are you saying no changes in this patch have been asked for?

AlexEBT.7240:

Vayne.8563:

Swizzle.7982:

“In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun.” ~ A Sword Swinging Backpeddler

And people wonder why Anet won’t talk to them. A quote from a four year old video is still being quoted today and used as a weapon of sorts.

Anet should just shut up and stop saying anything. It might come back to haunt them.

Yes, the manifesto is qouted to this day because this is what got many of us excited, the manifesto really sold the game for them, this is what we wanted and unfortunately Anet did a 180 on their initial vision.

There were still two years of information provided by Anet between the manifesto in this game. If that one paragraph in the manifesto (which I believe is largely misintepreted anyway) is what people based their purchase on, then people need to learn to be smarter consumers.

On topic: I’m not sure how many more threads we need on the new leveling system. They’re all going to be merged anyway.

Swizzle.7982:

“In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun.” ~ A Sword Swinging Backpeddler

And people wonder why Anet won’t talk to them. A quote from a four year old video is still being quoted today and used as a weapon of sorts.

Anet should just shut up and stop saying anything. It might come back to haunt them.

Taygus.4571:

Vayne.8563:

Taygus.4571:

so they made level 1-15 “quicker”, but took away some major experience gains.

vistas/skillpoints/gathering

kitten?? Who thought this was a good idea?

I don’t mind weapon locks really, ….it’s just dragged out a little. But locking out actual experience gains.

So players have to like walk around a map twice? (as if mapping per alt, wasn’t bad enough ….)

So can’t just create a character and just map the towns for transmutation stones anymore. Got to level first.
Anet is doing their best to make it very hard/long to farm gemstore items it seems.

---

though I really don’t understand the gathering and skill challenege lock.

well people complained about leveling too quickly in this game and not feeling progress while you leveled. Fixes both problems…lol..while also being extremely borring and annoying.

I was getting vistas and POIs from level 2. They just don’t show on the map.

they still count then?/get experience for them? can you finish say LA and get map reward at the end?

I have no idea if you can finish the LA map, but I don’t see why you shouldn’t be able to. You can walk through the gate, certainly cause I did. And I did get both POIs and vistas. Yeah it should work.

I’d have to test it.

Bean Muncher.5197:

I do not know how new players will react to this (although my guess is: “Jezz, this game is freaking boring, how do you play this?”), but I do know that leveling was a big part of my own GW2 experience. The last feature pack made it much less fun, but manageable. This feature pack has knocked the last bit of fun right out of it.

Guess I’ll wait until November to play my 2 hours worth of content. Until then I don’t have anything to do anymore.

You gonna miss Halloween!!! Oo!

dekou.6012:

Vayne.8563:

See the thing is, Anet may well care about what “we” think, but if we are divided then who does Anet listen to.

The player base doesn’t seem very divided over these changes. Some loathe them, others seem indifferent and very few like them.

Vayne.8563:

Afya.5842:

I really want to know from what method they gather feedback other than forum, reddit. Where that “majority” is?

Anet has very detailed metrics. They’ve talked about them before. They know how many people attempt dungeons, how many people finish them, how many people die to each time of creature even.

The problem with metrics is that they can point one towards problematic areas (i.e. “people barely use non-weapon skills”), but are of questionable use when it comes to determining the causes of those problems. In this case, ANet apparently decided non-weapon skills are too complex for their idiot players. They could be right, but not because of metrics. I, for one, would say people don’t use those skills because the majority of GW2 is so brain dead you could play through it using only your auto-attack or pressing all buttons in a random order. Making it even dumber will only worsen the situation. But of course, that’s just my conjecture. I’m not against conjectures. I’m against using excuses to ignore feedback.

Poll on reddit has about 35% liking and 65% not liking so far. Which is interesting, because to read this forum, you’d think it would be more like 90/10 or something.

The thing is, almost everyone answering it is a long time player. The people who we really need to find out from are people who’ve never played the game. Because those are potential players.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

I seriously have no idea why ANet thought these changes would help. It blatantly goes against their Manefesto video that they released around launch.

ArenaNet, you guys are going against what this game originally stood for. Why?

In this state, I just can’t play the early leveling experience. I’ll stick around and play PvP, but I WILL NOT be buying gems (either with money or gold) until they fix the leveling experience.

And I’m also going to tell anyone who will listen to stay away from the game due to the god-awful levelling experience. Which is a shame, because not that long ago I was trying to recruit as many friends as I could into the game…

Manifesto was released two years before launch. That was four years ago. Maybe they’ve learned something since then.

Sarathiel.6374:

I’ve been trying to get my friends into GW2, but with these new leveling changes they thought the game was a joke. You can’t even die in the first instance. Maybe if they had rebalanced the personal story and added a more comprehensive tutorial on how the game worked at early levels…. people would enjoy it more. This new patch is for inept preschoolers. Just make it a kids game now since anything with a brain will be avoiding it.

You haven’t been able to die in the first instance for ages. Possibly because it has no way point. I found this out well over a year ago when I had to go afk in a starting instance and came back half an hour later to my character cowering at the foot of a centaur.

Galphar.3901:

Vayne.8563:

Galphar.3901:

eyestrain.3056:

So… the CDI didn’t happen?
For a thread called “communicating with you”, a notice of it not happening would be a responsible step towards said communication.
I get that it must be pandemonium but if I have learned nothing else as a professional, I know that when you can’t commit to an appointment, you give notice of the change in plans, even if you can’t explain. This is pretty basic and critical to trustworthiness…

What I like the best is the LACK of communication we had after the patch yesterday. With multiple threads saying how much people dislike the new leveling system, many threads having over 100 posts, there was not a single dev brave enough to post in ANY of them.

Pretty sure they wouldn’t know what to post. Maybe they’re, I don’t know…fixing bugs and having meetings to decide what to say?

They can’t just come on here and say hi, we know you’re mad, I got nothing. lol

But isn’t that why they created this thread? Seems to me like it’s just another broken promise from them. And all they need to do is ACKNOWLEDGE that people are unsatisfied with the games direction and changes made.

And as far as fixing bugs, guess that’s why we only got 1 bug-fix update yesterday after the patch.

It’s not a broken promise. The patch has been out for less than a day now. During that time, I’m sure they were working hard. They’re probably in the middle of another fix right now. I know people think Anet should drop everything and come kowtow to the forums, but realistically businesses can’t work that way.

They have to decide what to say. They can’t all talk without coordinating. What if they say different things.

When this heat is this hot, anything you say you have to say carefully. It’s a lose/lose for them anyway.

Maybe I’m just old and tired, but I don’t care. I whiz by the stuff I don’t need to know and go about my business. In an hour I got a tenth level character I can more or less use.

gemgenie.4560:

possibly also having post patch meetings (crisis meetings!!??)

Possibly? Definitely. Wouldn’t you?

Galphar.3901:

Vayne.8563:

If you’re in business, let me ask you this question.

Do you have any idea of how many players started the game and never got past level 10 or 15? Because it doesn’t matter that the players that are playing the game did it, that’s obviously true. The question is how many people tried and walked away early? Without that answer, we don’t know if this makes sense or not.

Something tells me the number of “new” players that didn’t make it past level15 is going to rise greatly. We’re already seeing posts stating that a “new” player has deleted their toon and won’t be back till changes are made and other posts from “veteran” players stating they will not recommend GW2 to anyone now because of the changes made yesterday.

Well, I’m not talking about new players who had the old system and had this sudden change (we should have all been grandfathered in), I’m talking about new players who have never played the game.

See that’s the real issue. Anet has run a few free weekends. What if they didn’t like the new player uptake from those weekends What if they’d like to run more weekends but it’s not worth the work if more new players don’t sign on.

The reaction of someone who had the old system and now has this system could be very different from someone who’s never seen any system.

Games get dumbed down, particularly early parts of the game, for very good reason. WoW did this as well with their starting areas.

Galphar.3901:

eyestrain.3056:

So… the CDI didn’t happen?
For a thread called “communicating with you”, a notice of it not happening would be a responsible step towards said communication.
I get that it must be pandemonium but if I have learned nothing else as a professional, I know that when you can’t commit to an appointment, you give notice of the change in plans, even if you can’t explain. This is pretty basic and critical to trustworthiness…

What I like the best is the LACK of communication we had after the patch yesterday. With multiple threads saying how much people dislike the new leveling system, many threads having over 100 posts, there was not a single dev brave enough to post in ANY of them.

Pretty sure they wouldn’t know what to post. Maybe they’re, I don’t know…fixing bugs and having meetings to decide what to say?

They can’t just come on here and say hi, we know you’re mad, I got nothing. lol

Elrey.5472:

(Not native english, sorry in advance about typos or broken sentences).

I can’t recommend the game neither. Being in charge of a big enterprise myself i can’t help to admit that i would had fire someone for this revamp if it would depend on me. Period.

I’m not trying to be too much into criticism, but new players leveled up without major issues for 2 years and were HAPPY. That’s the keyword here, happiness while leveling is something i didn’t ever seen in my years of Lotro, Lineage II or other MMOs. Leveling was always a tedious and boring work. Here in GW2 everyone i asked had fun while leveling.

Of course some bad apples, or a 1% of the population will have problems trying to figure out how to learn specific useful stuff, but in that case all you had to do is add a tutorial (like the new dodge training).
There’s also players that can’t play properly because they have Arthritis or other issues. Does that means that you should remove or change all the Jumping Puzzles in the game because that minority can’t complete them as easy as someone without those problems? Sadly the answer is NO. If you remove all the content that a 99% of the players like just because of a 1%, you will end up losing a majority just because of the greed of trying to make “happy” a minority. You need to learn and accept that everyone can’t be happy, and try to tweak the system a little bit to help the unhappy players, but not at the cost of losing your already happy customers.

It hurts to accept the fact (even it hurts to me) but a game is not designed to the appeal of everyone. Gating stuff behind certain levels was the worst move Anet could make for a new experience, because it completely removes the possibility of a new player to learn something valuable on it’s own. There is too many players that love learning for it’s own and won’t accept low level guilds or help because it’s more challenging to do it on their own. You removed that, and also the engaging effect the combat system had in gw2. You could choose to fight in so many ways at low level that it was fun to try and get engaged into the game. Now you are only able to use 1-2 boring skills, and eventually 1 more… or another one in 12 levels… People will be bored by then! that’s the problem! time invested before getting engaged. If it takes too much time, the players will leave the game before they even seen the stuff they might in love with.

In my humble opinnion, i feel that Anet wanted to adress the possible issue of thinking that you’re using the same skills at lvl 80 that you were using at lvl 2. Yeah, maybe it could be a bit boring by the time you get to the top end. Nevertheless, it would be so much better to add more skills and weapons to high levels than blocking the actual ones to low levels.

TL;DR
Anet though there was some issues learning how to play, but instead of fixing them, they made it a lot worse. They really need to change their priorities or add surveys to the game to gather information before major changes.

If you’re in business, let me ask you this question.

Do you have any idea of how many players started the game and never got past level 10 or 15? Because it doesn’t matter that the players that are playing the game did it, that’s obviously true. The question is how many people tried and walked away early? Without that answer, we don’t know if this makes sense or not.

Taygus.4571:

so they made level 1-15 “quicker”, but took away some major experience gains.

vistas/skillpoints/gathering

kitten?? Who thought this was a good idea?

I don’t mind weapon locks really, ….it’s just dragged out a little. But locking out actual experience gains.

So players have to like walk around a map twice? (as if mapping per alt, wasn’t bad enough ….)

So can’t just create a character and just map the towns for transmutation stones anymore. Got to level first.
Anet is doing their best to make it very hard/long to farm gemstore items it seems.

---

though I really don’t understand the gathering and skill challenege lock.

well people complained about leveling too quickly in this game and not feeling progress while you leveled. Fixes both problems…lol..while also being extremely borring and annoying.

I was getting vistas and POIs from level 2. They just don’t show on the map.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Ah, a thread like I was just about to make!

1) Leveling. The unlocking of things is just way too slow. I don’t need any hand holding, the moment I need the amount of “help” I get with this game, it’s the moment when I probably don’t even know how to turn on my PC.

2) Queen Jennah. Nice, I’ll have a birthday coming up at the end of September and I’ll get a mini I cannot even stash anymore! (I’ll presume the not showing of the minis in PvE maps is a bug)

3) PS pointer. Simple: GET RID OF THAT ANNOYING ARROW! It distracts me from the more important movements on the screen. I already never liked the fact that it was always visible on screen, but now that it is actually a moving thingie, it’s even more annoying.

4) Some strange icon on my map. No idea what it is. I just see a strange huge icon on my map (standing in Plains of Ashford now) in Lake Feritas. Hmm, but I’m all the way near the portal to Blazeridge Steppes… Why the hell would I want to see that icon? Or is that part of the “people are so stupid they cannot even breath without our guiding them” system this patch introduced?

You can turn off the PS pointer from the options menu.

Serophous.9085:

Ltomato.8649:

You can’t salvage til level 15. Gather nodes are an enigma.

straight up false lies. I was salvaging at level 2 and gathering at level 2

Yep. Nodes don’t appear on your map, but you can definitely gather and salvage.

Afya.5842:

I really want to know from what method they gather feedback other than forum, reddit. Where that “majority” is?

Anet has very detailed metrics. They’ve talked about them before. They know how many people attempt dungeons, how many people finish them, how many people die to each time of creature even. Risen thralls killed millions of people the first year and was the deadliest creature in Guild Wars 2. Anet published the exact number.

So Anet knows not only how many people run Fractals, but how many people have ever run them.

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

Just turn off the arrow and do what you want. I will after I’m done testing.

Do what I want with my level-locked skills you mean? Explore locked skill points and take the path less-traveled, gathering non-existent nodes?

As far as I know, those are now all things that you unlock.

My point is that the leveling experience is on rails now, like a traditional WoW clone. You can only “do what you want” to a small degree, before the game will remind you that “no, that is not something you get to do yet – keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times!”

I mean, I guess you can still do EotM. If you consider that “doing what you want.”

As far as I know, the only thing you can’t do is get skill points. You can get vistas and points of interest. They don’t show up on your map. You can still look around and you know, not follow a check list.

The leveling process to level 10 when four of your skills are unlocked on all weapons is massively fast. You get weapons you can use faster in this. Once you get to level ten you can do five chapters of your personal story in a row if you like.

Yes, it takes an hour to get going. But once you get that hour, you can pretty much go around and play the old way. I did.

Straylight.7529:

Vayne.8563:

azyume.6321:

MikaHR.1978:

Actually, many “vets” should probably make new character and go through new tutorials (from my ingame experience).

So yeah, theres that.

It is not a tutorial, just a lock down. The day Anet actually care about making tooltips with a better, cohesive, text in a way the players need to take their time to learn content, things will change.

Besides, those vets and any other player won’t learn absolutely nothing about their classes as long as they can and will level up almost entirely in EoTM by pressing 1 and F or even experience scrolls.

It’s not a tutorial? So what do you call it when you level and something unlocks and you click on it and a giant white arrow goes and points to something and gives you instructions?

No it’s not a tutorial. It’s the systematic dumbing down of an entire game. A tutorial is an optional part of the game that teaches you the basics. The “tutorial” this new feature pack brought is smeared over 50% of the leveling experience to lvl 80 and unfortunately non-optional.

To repeat it, just for you: no, this abomination is not a tutorial anymore.

So noted. You don’t believe it’s a tutorial. I do.

Straylight.7529:

Vayne.8563:

There were times in the story your character would be required to act. Save this person. Save the whatever. Then you find, oh wait…I’m underleveled. I can’t save that person.

I"m literally going to have to stop saving this person, go help a farmer or whatever, level up and THEN go help this person. That to me was far more immersion breaking than doing the entire story segment at one time.

Then you wait until your level is high enough to all the quests at once. Problem solved. You always had this option. But now we’re forced to accomodate to a butchered questing system that forces me to backtrack into the previous zone to do the personal story missions.

Once I reach kessex hills, I have to go back to do the quests in friggin shaemoor village. Once I’m gendarran fields I do the circus quest in kessex etc etc..

The challenge was to create a personal story that tied into the leveling experience of the zone. Incorporate it organically with the flow of the zone. That was the challenge. And guess what? They succeeded at doing that. But not anymore. Now they butchered it for no reason.

At the sacrifice of any reward worth anything. I was doing that. I prefer this. That’s all. This gives me much better rewards and they’re things I can use while leveling.

The old way I’d be level 10 getting level 3 rewards, the level 4 rewards then level 6 rewards.

You know, a lot of people really don’t like the personal story. It’s been complained about quite a bit. People really felt it was underwhelming. They didn’t care about anyone.

The breaks in it really don’t help.

dekou.6012:

Hey, I’m not implying I don’t know how brainstorming works. I’m just pointing out there’s a pretty big difference between the constant “your opinions are really important to us” PR and the usual “your opinions don’t matter because metrics are OP and forum people are too hardcore” excuse. If people on this forum were as disconnected from the overall player base as some would let you believe, brainstorming with them would be pointless or even harmful.

By the way, in this case “we” is everyone on this forum, including you, Vayne.

See the thing is, Anet may well care about what “we” think, but if we are divided then who does Anet listen to.

Let’s say you have a son and a daughter. It’s time to go out for dinner. You ask okay, where do you guys want to eat?

Son: Let’s go to McDonalds.
Daughter: OMG No. That’s gross. Let’s get pizza.
Son: You always want pizza. Can we have chinese?
Daughter: I dont’ like chinese. Indian?
Son: The spices make me sick.

So you care about what they think they’re your kids. But eventually you say, I’m taking you to a dinner. You can each get what you want.

Anet probably cares what we have to say but we’re seldom all on the same page and sometimes, they have other data which suggests that certain loud demographics might not be the majority.

azyume.6321:

MikaHR.1978:

Actually, many “vets” should probably make new character and go through new tutorials (from my ingame experience).

So yeah, theres that.

It is not a tutorial, just a lock down. The day Anet actually care about making tooltips with a better, cohesive, text in a way the players need to take their time to learn content, things will change.

Besides, those vets and any other player won’t learn absolutely nothing about their classes as long as they can and will level up almost entirely in EoTM by pressing 1 and F or even experience scrolls.

It’s not a tutorial? So what do you call it when you level and something unlocks and you click on it and a giant white arrow goes and points to something and gives you instructions?

6-12 months? LMAO! Yeah game will still be here. What you see today isn’t new. It’s happened several times in the games past.

Still plenty of people liking the game. The naysayers will tell you no, but the financial report only shows a modest drop in revenue over a quarter when both Wildstar and ESO came out.

The November after launch was far worse on the forums than it is now, and that was almost two years ago.

Reddit will give you a better perspective on where people are at with the game.

Anet has made some decisions lately that are unpopular with certain groups. But every time they do that a different group profits.

Labjax.2465:

Yargesh.4965:

People don’t like change that is at the heart of it.

Somewhat true, but for me, the saddest part is that now GW2’s leveling system is showing itself to be (drumroll…) every generic leveling system in any MMO ever (e.g. “just another WoW clone”).

So far, the only major difference I can think of is that you don’t actually need to pick up any quests, like in Generic MMO Leveling 101. Instead, you just follow the arrow and it does that step for you.

It’s the tragic loss of yet another unique and interesting game system because, “People don’t understand games.” It is the same kind of thing that happened with SWG. That game had an amazing system in its pre-CU form, but the fact was that it didn’t sell well enough.

WoW set the financial bar way too high for everybody.

Just turn off the arrow and do what you want. I will after I’m done testing.

Easy question to answer. It’s called brainstorming.

The CDI doesn’t make choices for Anet. It gives input to Anet. It doesn’t mean that Anet automatically takes that input. It looks at the input through several different lenses (at least most businesses would) and figures out if that input works for their game, can be produced in a reasonable time frame at a reasonable cost, doesn’t interfere with other plans they have etc.

Just because you’re a minority doesn’t mean you don’t have good ideas.

BTW, I don’t think that you’re the only minority. I think we’re ALL minorities.

I don’t think any group has a majority as in more than 50%.

I think we suffer from a divided player base.

dietzero.3514:

Vayne.8563:

Jade Arkadian.9280:

Im unhappy too with this copy-pasted “new player experience” from the chineses GW2.
I wanted to give it a chance, but after reading more about this and watching some videos, i realised it wasnt worth my time to raise a new char from lvl 1 to 80 with all thoses barriers and levelgated content.

The big picture of this is that you are in a huge tutorial until you hit lvl 80… Hopefully for vets, we still have level tomes…

Moreover, i dont see what was the main goal of this achievement…new players? Why are you making new stuff for new players if you are not expecting incomming newplayers from nowhere?

This has been copyed from the chineses version of GW2…i hope you dont dare to copy that insane and toxic VIP system too..

I really pray for a step backward regarding this, until then, you wont see any new character from my account…

psdt1: People seem very angry with this patch…
psdt2: Please, give us a REAL expansion…

Did it ever occur to you that the update of free beta weekends was particularly poor and they’d like to have more of them but they couldn’t do it without actually making the game more welcoming to new players. They did test this. I’m not convinced they tested it with China.

This game needs new blood, particularly since so much of the old blood seems to be discontented. Anet’s way forward is to leave behind the people that can’t adapt to where the game is going and to get new people who like the game for what it is. And that means keeping people from free demo weekends.

Not throwing a bone to long time players who often complain no matter what you do.

Are you paid to do this? Seriously, are you?

Nope, I do it for free.

Every single thing on your list has been said umpteen times and some of it is fine, and would be a nice addition to the game. All of it takes work and some of it is undoubtedly being worked on.

The dueling and PvP servers gets hit hard any time anyone brings it up.

But bringing all this stuff up now at this point is pointless, because we’re busy reacting to today’s patch.

So, old old suggestions is not as great at beating up the new patch.

That’s why people aren’t commenting.

My guess is the Halloween patch starts at the end of the WvW series, and after Halloween the living story resumes.

Lexan.5930:

I can understand limiting skills, weapon swapping maybe not so much. My problem is limiting the exploration is stupid and i hope they change that back.

Do we know if the wvw and spvp limit is character based or account based.

Account based makes sense so as not to overwhelm brand new players, but character based is a very bad idea since one of the things they pushed when the game launched was being able to lv i wvw without ever having to do pve

On your first character they unlock. All other characters can WvW and SPvP from level 2.

Jade Arkadian.9280:

Im unhappy too with this copy-pasted “new player experience” from the chineses GW2.
I wanted to give it a chance, but after reading more about this and watching some videos, i realised it wasnt worth my time to raise a new char from lvl 1 to 80 with all thoses barriers and levelgated content.

The big picture of this is that you are in a huge tutorial until you hit lvl 80… Hopefully for vets, we still have level tomes…

Moreover, i dont see what was the main goal of this achievement…new players? Why are you making new stuff for new players if you are not expecting incomming newplayers from nowhere?

This has been copyed from the chineses version of GW2…i hope you dont dare to copy that insane and toxic VIP system too..

I really pray for a step backward regarding this, until then, you wont see any new character from my account…

psdt1: People seem very angry with this patch…
psdt2: Please, give us a REAL expansion…

Did it ever occur to you that the update of free beta weekends was particularly poor and they’d like to have more of them but they couldn’t do it without actually making the game more welcoming to new players. They did test this. I’m not convinced they tested it with China.

This game needs new blood, particularly since so much of the old blood seems to be discontented. Anet’s way forward is to leave behind the people that can’t adapt to where the game is going and to get new people who like the game for what it is. And that means keeping people from free demo weekends.

Not throwing a bone to long time players who often complain no matter what you do.

You know, it makes me laugh a bit. People always compare this game to Guild Wars 1. Guild Wars 1 had more this, Guild Wars 1 had less that.

You got skills a whole lot slower in Guild Wars 1 than you do here. You may have gotten a few at once, but you got them slower.

I played this game for an hour today, I had four skills unlocked on any weapon I picked up.

I just find it amusing.

They definitely should have grandfathered in characters that were already made.