Guild Wars 2

New players in MMOs are always at a tremendous disadvantage. Every day there’s a post or two or three on reddit asking, is it too late to start this game? Am I too far behind. Every single day. And for each person who posts, you know another person thinks it.

Having something like this on the Guild Wars 2 page is good for business.

Anyone who’s played the game for a while and doesn’t think that keeping new players who buy games from the sales is a good thing, probably doesn’t understand the business of MMOs.

And, this is the best part. None of these rewards are off the table. If you level another character, you’ll get the same treatment. If Anet released a new race in three months or six months, you’ll get the better rewards.

Palador.2170:

Vayne.8563:

I’m just saying, all I’m seeing is people say over and over again, this stuff isn’t needed. Obviously someone, somehow thought it was.

Would you consider it a fair concern that, in the process of making the game “easier” to understand, they’re doing damage to it in other ways that they’ve not measured?

Making leveling easier to understand I have no problem with. It’s not going to affect how I play the game either way. That’s what they’re trying to do. Make it so that people who know how to play can jump into PvP at any level, people who don’t won’t unlock it till X level.

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

Anet knows how many people are in game, and how many are posting on forums. It’s another metric. They also know what percentage are posting and what percentage are lurking.

Since Anet has told us about these metrics and since it’s completely logical and even normal for a business to have them, why would you doubt them? Do you have evidence that Anet doesn’t have them? Because it seems to be quite certain that they they do, down to which creature killed the most players during the first year of play.

You better just play!
Don’t post a QQ!
Cuz metrics reveal
Everything that you do!
Metrics make the game great for you!

They know where you’ve been farming!
Though you may think them blind!
They know when you have bought no gems
So buy now! And grind, grind, grind!

Metrics, shmetrics. Or, to put it another way, while they surely do have access to all that metrical knowledge, in all that metrical detail, there’s no way for us to know whether they are interpreting it correctly, or that they’re even attempting to interpret it at all. For all we know they could write the word ‘metrics’ on a dart and toss it at a dartboard, and then say (in all honesty) “We did this or that because metrics indicated this or that would be good to do.”

Ultimately, it’s what they choose to do with all that metrical knowledge that counts. And what they are choosing to do with it certainly seems to be causing widespread and increasing unhappiness, and in more places than just here on the forums.

And remember, fellow forumites:

You better not pout!
You better not groan!
Here have a few more
Porous bones!
Metrics make the game great for you!

Great writing. Bad points.

The whole point is is that players think they know everything and they don’t. Devs don’t know everything either.

But if you are going to make a decision about the game, I’d trust devs over players pretty much all the time.

I’ve seen what player input does to games.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Vayne.8563:

I’ll post this here too. Direct quote from Colin, for those of you who think and truly believe it wasn’t broken:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.
Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.
This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Colin also said we’d have best in slot gear by the time we reach level 80.

He did. I’ve said hundreds of thousands of things in my life. Some of them turned out eventually to be wrong. But my track record is pretty kitten ed good and most people who know me in real life end up trusting me because of that.

Colins track record is pretty good too. If you can pick five or ten things out of the thousands of things he said that turned out to be wrong, that’s a pretty good track record.

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Look Anet said we went and tested this stuff it’s why we made the changes we did. Whether that was late or not late, it’s just not relevant. What is relevant is they tested stuff and made decisions based on that testing which is all I’m saying.

Which is fair enough, I never said you weren’t entitled to that opinion or that you were wrong in any way, nor did I (intend to) imply that I thought ANet was jumping in blind; I just felt it didn’t make sense, which is actually something even Colin touched upon when he said “Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially” – it’s the initial phase for me as well and I don’t have the benefit of the data that Colin had, so I’m going to be stuck in the “initial” phase until it’s implemented.

So, like I said, feel free to call me cynical.

I’m just saying, all I’m seeing is people say over and over again, this stuff isn’t needed. Obviously someone, somehow thought it was.

Spira.4578:

tolunart.2095:

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

The proof about metrics is in stuff they’ve posted. Either they’re lying or they have metrics. It’s what they’ve said. I don’t believe they’re lying because I know something about business.

Can you show me some actual post about this kind of metrics?

John Smith.4610:

Rouven.7409:

… you have to love numbers, perhaps you could tease us with some numbers. I don’t know, x bazillion oozes squished since launch and they dropped x gold total. Pretty please with interest on top.

Just this month 7,496,080 Oozes have been dealt with.

I don’t have a direct quote, but one “red” post about how much data is collected through the game logs made the comment, “we know your shoe size.” An exaggeration for the purpose of a humorous response, but not much of an exaggeration. Pretty much anything any player does in the game is recorded and can be analyzed.

I agree. however it can’t track players wishes. since the features are not implemented ingame players can’t use them. For anet to know what players want, they have to ask them, not look at statistics.

A stupid example but still –
If there’s a restaurant that don’t have pizza on their menu, will the owner know, if pizzas are what his customers want most only by looking at the statistics of what was sold most? No – the only way to know that is if the costumers start asking about it, so the word gets to the owner and start thinking in that direction.

We know that, but the common complaint right now is that this patch wasn’t needed. That’s what people are saying. Anet is doing stuff because they don’t understand what’s needed.

Why can’t you acknowledge at least that chance that they really do know some stuff is needed? They can’t provide everything all at once. So they’re giving us stuff now they had to do for China anyway.

Why? Because their metrics show it’s needed. That’s all I’m saying.

You’re saying they’re not listening. If they’ve talked to people and changed things based on that data, they very much are listening by definition.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

You discount all the questionaries in beta? Good.

Point noted. They didn’t ask questions they didn’t htink they needed to and later refined them. Business as usual.

Still proves they have and use metrics.

Really?
because :“interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China” Kinda shows that they realized that after the release on China.
Just stop. Seriously. You lost your own argument by presenting your proof that proved the exact opposite of what you were trying to say and now you’re grasping at straws.
Seriously.. Stop being so naive and so overprotective.

Dude, in the original beta, they had questionaires for every single event. All of them. That proves they have metrics.

During the first anniversary they posted some of those metrics to an infographic.

Thinking that a company that has metrics will do EVERYTHING right is silly.

Thinking that the guys on the forum know more about what’s going on than the people with the data is even more silly.

I think most people in business have been confronted with this before. I’ve met it many times. People making suggestions you should do X or Y when they’ve been tried and tested and are completely unviable.

Everyone thinks they can manage a baseball team to a world series, until they actually try it.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

Dude this is tiresome. I said they’ve said, so of course there are quotes. Because I don’t care to do your research for you, you can google the first year anniversary infograph which includes all kinds of stats you don’t get without metrics. Then there’s this…

Yepp it is. And I won’t back away just because you want me to. I’m here to express my thoughts same as you are. If you can’t provide proofs to back your claims then I certainly won’t search for them. I just rather won’t believe you. Well I wouldn’t believe you either way because I’m sure that those proof that you have were proofs that you got by reading between the lines and not actual claims where they say “we have metrics and we know exactly what players want”

Vayne.8563:

A lot of stuff is being said about the current patch and stuff like who the hell needs the downed state to not start til level 5. This is the reply Colin gave on reddit, which I’ve already posted to two other threads.

Like i said. reading between the lines

Vayne.8563:

To paraphrase they extensively tested the leveling process in a number of markets with a number of people. They were surprised by some of the results. They tried various solutions. The level five thing is the one that worked. I’m sure someone can provide the link for you, hell it’s probably in this thread somewhere.

What does that answer tell you about Anet and metrics?

Exactly what I’m saying from the start. That they don’t have any kind of info on what players want since it’s not implemented in game yet. Anet decided to change the leveling system and THEN went to test it out. They didn’t decided to change it because it was the most demanded feature. Because they. can’t. know. that. EASY AS THAT.

They talked about tests up front too, which is why they added the heart system. They had questionaires in beta about every single event. You don’t call those metrics.

They posted an infographic with very specific data on it from the first year. Those are things they’ve been tracking (which some would call metrics).

If you’re too lazy to search for the infographic, why should I do it for you? Just because you haven’t seen something I’ve seen? Like I said, the information is out there. One of us is choosing to ignore it.

From the same reply that you mentioned:
“Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand”
Try not to read between the lines now.
Nice metrics they have there. They only figured out 2 years after release. nice metrics.

You discount all the questionaries in beta? Good.

Point noted. They didn’t ask questions they didn’t htink they needed to and later refined them. Business as usual.

Still proves they have and use metrics.

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Well, then call me cynical, but I don’t assume that testing something means it’ll work; ANet tests plenty of features and updates before they implement them, it didn’t guarantee a perfect track record and I don’t see why I should believe that’s any different now.

Now if by “test” Colin meant they monitored how Chinese players reacted to the system, which would provide a much more sizable and reliable sample size, then I would be more inclined to believe it’ll work; however if it’s just cycling through a handful of new playtesters every time they tried a new build (because they need to test it with people who aren’t aware of rallying), then I’ll remain highly skeptical until it’s implemented.

The quote says they didn’t just test on on Chinese, but on European and American testers as well. It says the test was quite extensive and what they tried to do that didn’t work before they decided on this.

At least read the quote before trying to win an argument.

How about you read the quote and read my post before trying to “win” an argument?

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

That’s not testing anything, that was the discovery process to find out what was wrong.

We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above.

Doesn’t say anything about who the “numerous different groups” were or what the tests entailed.

And how does me explaining why I’ll remain skeptical constitute trying to “win” an argument?

Look Anet said we went and tested this stuff it’s why we made the changes we did. Whether that was late or not late, it’s just not relevant. What is relevant is they tested stuff and made decisions based on that testing which is all I’m saying.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

The proof about metrics is in stuff they’ve posted. Either they’re lying or they have metrics. It’s what they’ve said. I don’t believe they’re lying because I know something about business.

Can you show me some actual post about this kind of metrics?

Vayne.8563:

I don’t believe any business of any size that has customers doesn’t have some way of measuring how their customers use their products.

BELIEVE. not KNOW.
That doesn’t make it a fact. And once again. They can’t measure what players want if the feature is not yet implemented in game.
And do you SERIOUSLY believe that some kind of metrics showed them that most players currently want leveling up features. Really? Come on.. don’t act so stupid.

Vayne.8563:

Do you have evidence that Anet doesn’t have them?

Do you have evidence that they ACTUALLY do?

Vayne.8563:

Because it seems to be quite certain that they they do, down to which creature killed the most players during the first year of play.

Dude this is tiresome. I said they’ve said, so of course there are quotes. Because I don’t care to do your research for you, you can google the first year anniversary infograph which includes all kinds of stats you don’t get without metrics. Then there’s this…

A lot of stuff is being said about the current patch and stuff like who the hell needs the downed state to not start til level 5. This is the reply Colin gave on reddit, which I’ve already posted to two other threads.

To paraphrase they extensively tested the leveling process in a number of markets with a number of people. They were surprised by some of the results. They tried various solutions. The level five thing is the one that worked. I’m sure someone can provide the link for you, hell it’s probably in this thread somewhere.

What does that answer tell you about Anet and metrics?

And second. Players keep leaving. At some point they will run out of new players coming to the game for the first time too.

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Well, then call me cynical, but I don’t assume that testing something means it’ll work; ANet tests plenty of features and updates before they implement them, it didn’t guarantee a perfect track record and I don’t see why I should believe that’s any different now.

Now if by “test” Colin meant they monitored how Chinese players reacted to the system, which would provide a much more sizable and reliable sample size, then I would be more inclined to believe it’ll work; however if it’s just cycling through a handful of new playtesters every time they tried a new build (because they need to test it with people who aren’t aware of rallying), then I’ll remain highly skeptical until it’s implemented.

The quote says they didn’t just test on on Chinese, but on European and American testers as well. It says the test was quite extensive and what they tried to do that didn’t work before they decided on this.

At least read the quote before trying to win an argument.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

I’d love to know, Vayne, why you think Anet knows what’s better for the game and the community when they were prepared to, and thought it was a good idea to charge 300g per colored commander tag.

Easy answer. Content is changes to the base game aren’t marketing decisions. Marketing is a whole different thing. NO one says that the marketing department is brilliant, but when it comes to making the core game better, that’s a completely different team.

Is Marketing a part of Anet or not? You didn’t say devs. You said Anet. Anet is the entire company, marketing department and all.

So I ask again, what makes you think Anet knows what is best when they were fully ready to make a decision like that?

Anet is a company and companies don’t know anything. It’s people in companies who know things. By your definition, no company in the world knows anything. Only people in the company knows things.

The major complaint of this thread, taken in context, is saying that Anet the developers, the people making the updates, don’t know what players want. Aside from the obvious fact that this is a deeply divided player base, and the fact that Anet has some kind of metrics, it’s more logical that they would know what’s going on than we would.

So you take one single decision to hold up as an example, that’s likely not to have been made by developers at all, and try to use that to prove the point. It does prove a point., but not the point you’re trying to prove.

It proves you’ll go to great lengths to win arguments,. when in fact within the boundaries of the topic of the thread, what I was saying was pretty clear.

Yes, decisions made by marketing are sometimes going to kitten players off. Fortunately, marketing doesn’t decide what upgrades are made, only how they’re monetized.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

I’d love to know, Vayne, why you think Anet knows what’s better for the game and the community when they were prepared to, and thought it was a good idea to charge 300g per colored commander tag.

Easy answer. Content is changes to the base game aren’t marketing decisions. Marketing is a whole different thing. NO one says that the marketing department is brilliant, but when it comes to making the core game better, that’s a completely different team.

If that would be so, GW2 would probably have a bigger playerbase right now and a base of happier players in general. ANET already knows that their playerbase is cylcing and that most of the players they get are trough the living story. The core game was awesome and it’s the only thing that makes players stay ingame for so long. But sadly 2 years after release, players are starting to run out of things to do and those small updates won’t change that.
I’m always over-hyped when a new LS episode comes out. But lately I asked myself.. Is it really because it’s so awesome or is it because the game is stagnating and the LS is the only change in the game that makes the game seem running its clogs for at least some time. It’s the latest. Don’t get me wrong, I still like the LS, but not as much to get over-hyped.
I’m aware that anet is working on other things too, and as I stated in the first message, at this point I’d personally be happy if they would at least be honest and tell us WHAT are they working on, so we could actually have something to look for. Saying things like “we can’t tell you much right now” and “it’s on the table” only let me know that they have a huge table.

I hope you understand that if I wouldn’t like this game, I wouldn’t waste my time trying to prove this point to you and other people like you, but would simply write something and then go.
I understand that your point of view is different, but could you stop defending them so much and try to prove that everyone else is wrong? You mentioned metrics and stuff like that, but you don’t really have proof for that, do you? It’s your belief which you think is true – and that’s okay. But at the same time, you are disproving anyone elses beliefs on subjects you don’t agree with.
Why do you have to keep trying to make fools out of everyone else who think differently?
We are all here to try and make a difference, we’re just doing it in a different way. Could you at least respect that? I don’t care if you are an über veteran player with 19k AP. You’re a player, same as everyone else. You don’t have to defend ANET. It’s not your job. You don’t even have to defend them in this topic since the message is not an attack at all.
As I stated many times already, I’m a fan of this game and I don’t want it to die. That’s it. If you can’t agree with me on the things that I wrote in the first message, at least respect that and leave it as it is.
If what I wrote is really so irrelevant and untrue, ANET won’t do anything about it and you would be right. But if all the complaints and thoughts written on the forum and other social medias would actually make a difference, wouldn’t you be happy too?
It’s not your job to get in between players and ANET. It’s not your job to defend them all the time based on your personal beliefs. ANET can speak for themselves.

The proof about metrics is in stuff they’ve posted. Either they’re lying or they have metrics. It’s what they’ve said. I don’t believe they’re lying because I know something about business.

What business says, look all our players are playing dungeons, let’s focus on crafting. Answer. None of them. I don’t believe any business of any size that has customers doesn’t have some way of measuring how their customers use their products.

They make decisions based on those metrics, because those metrics are sold. The forums, on the other hand, are amorphous. They’re a bunch of people posting opinions, wildly differing opinions if you haven’t noticed. Opinions that tell us nothing except that dissatisfied people like to complain.

Anet knows how many people are in game, and how many are posting on forums. It’s another metric. They also know what percentage are posting and what percentage are lurking.

Since Anet has told us about these metrics and since it’s completely logical and even normal for a business to have them, why would you doubt them? Do you have evidence that Anet doesn’t have them? Because it seems to be quite certain that they they do, down to which creature killed the most players during the first year of play.

Zoso.8279:

Stiofan.6720:

The maps in guild wars 2 do feel a bit bigger than their counterparts in gw1, But we are still missing so many areas that were in gw1. Rest of maguuma, Rest of eotn areas, Crystal desert, Ring of fire isles, All of Cantha, All of elona. How was the gw1 dev team able to pump out new maps/content so fast? The gw2 dev team is bigger so you would think they could bring out maps/content much faster than the gw1 team, I would love to know what they do in the office all day.

Lets remember GW1 was almost all private instances. Only part of GW1 that was “open world” was city hubs. That affects development.

And GW 2 had more content at launch than all three games. The last two years are content fixes, because the game launched way too early.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

I’d love to know, Vayne, why you think Anet knows what’s better for the game and the community when they were prepared to, and thought it was a good idea to charge 300g per colored commander tag.

Easy answer. Content is changes to the base game aren’t marketing decisions. Marketing is a whole different thing. NO one says that the marketing department is brilliant, but when it comes to making the core game better, that’s a completely different team.

Romek.4201:

rly – some answers here make me just /facepalm

" this game is not deigned to have endgame" – wtf? you guyz even think before write such nonsense?

it was said before release “EVERYTHING IS ENDGAME” – but probelm is we still have only same kitten we had at release and arenanet is to slow to add new dungeons or fractals or whatever.

so after 2 years its arenanets fault – people can play same things only for some amount of time before get bored and in this game it is now 2 years without any content – so ye arenanet fails here and no livingstory is ABSOLUT NO content cause only masochists watch this more than 1x and even 1x is hard

Some people really don’t think before posting.

For example, many of us used the words “traditional” end game for a reason. This is a build your own end game, game. If that means soloing dungeons, collecting every skin, or roaming in WvW, or SPvP tournaments, it’s all your choice. To some people end game is just making alts. And that’s okay.

But the OP is clearly asked for a very specific kind of end game. That’s why people are responding the way they are.

This game isn’t designed for people who want the “old style” end game content. I thought that was clear way before launch. This game is designed for people who don’t.

So the people who don’t like this game leave, but not all of them do. Many in my guild are playing 2 years and still enjoying the game.

And they’re not looking for more end game content, at least not the kind you seem to be talking about.

Keeping people in the game that want this game is what Anet is doing. Losing people from this game who want a completely different game is inevitable.

Hopefully the stability will improve on September 9th. It’s one of the things the feature patch is supposed to address.

This Guild Wars 1 vet is happy with the game to a point and expect to be happier in the future.

Pandaman.4758:

Vayne.8563:

It’s really interesting. If you present too many things at one time to people, they don’t get all of them. So, you’re in the game new. Maybe even it’s your first MMO. You get a bunch of weapons and new skills. You go down in a fight. In most games you just die. You don’t even really know a downed state exists.

Level 5 is pretty fast to get to. What’s the big deal?

Well, like I said, how does pushing it to level 5 make it easier to understand rallying? At worst it’s five levels (granted five fast levels, as you pointed out) teaching players that killing mobs while you’re in a downed state does nothing, which is counterproductive.

Go back and read the Colin quote about it, where he says they TESTED it extensively on all sorts of variations. With like, you know, players.

I don’t really care what one person things or five people think. Anet did the labwork, it’s why they made the changes.

Labjax.2465:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Thanks for the link, I could not find it. Probably because of the ‘ArenaColin’ thing. Lol.

Not only the information about early game mechanics, but it’s interesting hearing about the percentage of forum-users/Reddit-users ratio to game players, as well. You learn something every day!

Yup! I wasn’t exactly surprised to hear that they used extensive usability testing (I know it’s something valuable in any kind of software) but I was nonetheless impressed to know that they’re utilizing it so heavily, even for something as simple as downed state.

I’ve been saying this all along. Anet has so much data coming in. You can argue perhaps that they’re misinterpreting the data, but they know so much more about traffic patterns in this game than we do.

So they make decisions on what they know.

Suppose, hypothetically, that 20% of the player base comes to the forums (which is I think a high estimate) and of that 20% only 20% actually post, which I also think it a high estimate. That means only 5% of the player base are posting here on the forums. For sure the most engaged, active part of the community.

However, I played Guild Wars 1 for an obscene number of hours, had my own guild, played that game to death and almost never posted on any forums. The one time I posted was when I’d been hacked. Other than that, no forums saw me.

I’m sure a lot of people wished that had continued. lol

For every person who says it’s a natural progression, there are posts of people who complain that they can’t do the next story because they’re not leveling fast enough to keep up with it. This prevents that.

Edit: Not to mention doing something at level 3, being told to do something and then having to wait 2 levels to do it breaks immersion for me.

Labjax.2465:

Vayne.8563:

Colin posted an entire explanation not only on how extensively they tested it, but how many solutions they tried that didn’t change the result.

Incidentally, where was this posted? I missed it.

It was a response on reddit.

Conncept.7638:

They’ve said all season one content will be returning, one would assume that means this too. I’m betting this will be in the form of one of the new guild spawned boss events, it perfectly fits the new tech and everything, it’s be just like the triwurm or tequatl except it never spawns on its own.

Did they say it would all be returning? I thought they said they’d like to, but they didn’t say it would actually happen, or that they were working on it.

You’re right. WE are customers. I agree 100%.

You believe, really really believe, that the people on this forum make up the majority of the customers of this game, or at very least, those posting to these forums are truly representative of the majority.

I truly believe that special interest groups are always louder than the population of any game.

I believe Anet has metrics that can track stuff you and I have not the faintest idea about.

Like when people said, I don’t see how the downed state is so hard to understand and Anet is moving it till level five. Colin posted an entire explanation not only on how extensively they tested it, but how many solutions they tried that didn’t change the result.

But the forum, if you listen to them, mostly think it’s stupid, so it must be stupid, right?

It’s ridiculous to believe that Anet doesn’t have metrics on what people actually play. It’s ridiculous to believe that a company would provide only stuff to a minority and ignore the majority.

But somehow people still believe this.

Trading 1000 gems at this second will give you 108 gold.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

You have no evidence that end game is more requested than anything else, except the forums. Anet has said in the past that most people never reached end game in the first Guild Wars game, and we know from other games, most recently Lotro, that most players never get to end game.

It’s so easy to say try to dismiss what I say with your opinions. I’m pretty sure that everyone on Lotro who wants raids believes most people raid, when we know from devs it’s not only less than 10% of the playerbase, but it’s ALWAYS been less than 10%.

Really? I think it’s OBVIOUS we all want end game as it’s the only thing that keeps an mmo going and we all want GW2 to keep going, right? Or do you maybe want it to die prematurely?

I asked for honesty so please be honest. Can you tell me which part of the GW2’s end game you didn’t explore yet? Cause personally I think that reaching level 50 fractals, doing all dungeons, getting all LS achievements and such is pretty much the absolute end of the end game. One you start repeating some kind of content over and over again, you reached end game. Players that started playing playing 2 years ago, reached that end game in less than a month and kept doing the same thing over and over again.

I’m being honest. Honestly most people don’t DO end game in most MMOs. That’s according to quotes over the years from Devs.

You know Wildstar is a game completely focused on the standard end game. It’s not doing that well. When Rift came out focused on end game, it received a lot of flack from the community. The end game myth, and it is a myth, traditionally affects a smaller number of players than you’d think. But they’re very vocal on the forums.

Did you see the quote from the lotro dev about raiding and PvP in Lotro? How less than 10% of the playerbase not only raids now, but has ever raided. I’m not making it up, I can find it for you again, if you like.

It led to the decision to not include raids in upcoming patches.

There is a market for hard end game content, but like TA Aetherblade path, harder content, ie end game content, is really not what “most” people want. That’s not to say no one. But most people…in my opinion.

I’m pretty sure the devs have metrics and have had metrics for a long time about how many people gravitate to harder content.

I’ll post this here too. Direct quote from Colin, for those of you who think and truly believe it wasn’t broken:

Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.
Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.
This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm

Godzzila.3752:

Vayne.8563:

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

Just curious. I think this new patch, particularly the last bit, is REALLY important.

Because the community has been complaining about that for more than a year now and kept defending anet too. After almost 2 years, I’m starting to lose hope too.

The only important part of the patch MIGHT be the last one. Every other part of it was just welcomed additions but nothing that players actually asked for.

Players definitely 100% asked for better frame rates and performance at big events. They asked for account bound commander tags and colors. They asked for a better crafting UI.

In fact, most of the stuff in this patch was asked for along the way. I’m not really sure why you’d think otherwise.

The last page, yesterday, wasn’t asked for by long time players, but there have been plenty of complaints about how the game doesn’t teach you anything and even several large threads on tutorials.

The majority asked for other things. ESPECIALLY END GAME THINGS – which, based on the latest interviews we won’t be getting anytime soon.
In order to please 10% of the players who will find their own way anyway (same as everyone else did), they are ignoring the wishes of the veteran players who are asking for more or less the same thing for 2 years now. and they always get the same reply “it’s on the table”. Listen – I wrote this to express what MANY players think. I’m not really looking for an argument but for ANET to see and hopefully realize that we are in need of actual endgame features and content more than an even better leveling experience which we will forget as soon as we reach level 80 (so, basically around 1 week).

The majority of players don’t play end game in any game. I firmly believe it. We’ve heard the devs say how many people did elite instances in Guild Wars 1 in the past and it’s never as much as you think it is. I do all that stuff, but most players didn’t. It’s a sad fact of life.

The loudest people on forums are not necessarily a majority. I say it all the time. I believe it to be true.

And if you think people in WvW and people who do meta events are some sort of minority (both groups require faster frame rates in big battles and more stability), I don’t know what to tell you.

Crafters have been as ignored as anyone since launch. There are people who love crafting and want to do more with it. They get something for them in this update.

Dungeon complaints about getting booted out of a dungeon when the leader leaves have been around for a long long time. There’s tons of people who wanted the instance leadership thing changed.

Guilds have been complaining for a long time about guild missions. This patch so far, remember, we haven’t seen it all, has covered a lot of different elements of the game, but get this….

the one thing it’s not and was never supposed to be was a content patch. It’s a feature patch. The stuff you’re talking about is content. Content isn’t features. So the content you want won’t be coming in this pack because it’s not a content pack. It’s a feature pack.

And almost all of it was asked for by people.

Yeah, “most people don’t play endgame” that must be why they are all happy on the forums right now. Because the veterans that are in endgame want the content to not be endgame… They clearly are looking for content that is for lower levels just so that they that are at lvl 80 sitting around can still be just sitting around…
/sarcasm

Anet feels a lot like Scar, I’m just waiting for their musical number where they keep saying: “THIS WILL BE AMAZING!” and “THIS WILL BE GREAT FOR ALL OF YOU” but in the end is just underwhelming stuff that nobody cares / cared / will ever care for.

You have no evidence that end game is more requested than anything else, except the forums. Anet has said in the past that most people never reached end game in the first Guild Wars game, and we know from other games, most recently Lotro, that most players never get to end game.

It’s so easy to say try to dismiss what I say with your opinions. I’m pretty sure that everyone on Lotro who wants raids believes most people raid, when we know from devs it’s not only less than 10% of the playerbase, but it’s ALWAYS been less than 10%.

Tachenon.5270:

Ayrilana.1396:

So what happens to the player base when they have exhausted all of the new content from an expansion within a month or two, like they do for each living story episode but in days, and then have nothing to do for for the next year or two until the next expansion?

Well, the content this game had at launch kept me playing for over a year. An expansion providing that much content on top of the original content? Can you say ‘woo hoo!’

Instead, we got living story. Instead of a woo hoo, we got a boo hoo.

Expansions tend not to keep people playing as long as the original though. I mean even in Guild Wars 1 where you had stand alone games, Factions was much much smaller than Prophecies and Eye of the North, the only true expansion, couldn’t very well keep you playing as long as the main games…because it was much smaller, with no new classes or starting areas.

This is a quote from Colin on reddit. Thought I’d leave this hear for you.

“Yeah we thought so too. After tens of thousands of usability testers and interviews with players who tried Gw2 and left leading up to China launch both in NA/EU and in China – we learned we were wrong.

Honestly, we were kind of shocked how many systems, downed included a surprising number of players just didn’t understand. For downed, we tried a downed tutorial, building downed into the level 1 tutorial, etc. We found after usability testing with numerous different groups, the best rate of people learning and understanding it came from having it be layered complexity and the solution we went with above. Intuitively that wouldn’t have been my guess either initially, but we found people understood it better this way than all other options we tried.

This same level of testing led to the other changes as well. At the end of the day the biggest take away I’d say is: all of us, especially people who go to a reddit to discuss a game, probably know games (and Gw2) really really well. We have millions of users, and a tiny % of them frequent game forums or reddit. Just because all of us, me included, learned those systems well and thought it was all really easy doesn’t mean we are the norm"

I’ve said this time and time again. Anet isn’t making decision just to make decisions. They have access to information we simply don’t have. This time he told us, but it’s been pretty obvious to me all along.

munkiman.3068:

Something to ponder regarding all this. “pre-cursor crafting” or “an expansions worth of content”. These 2 statements alone have been thrown back at them probably 100’s if not 1000’s of times. I’d be really leery to talk about what’s in development too.

I’d really like to be hyped again, but i can definitely see why things have pretty much been hush-hush.

And the expansion’s worth of content line was explained very clearly by Colin, but everyone seems to have ignored his explanation.

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

Just curious. I think this new patch, particularly the last bit, is REALLY important.

Because the community has been complaining about that for more than a year now and kept defending anet too. After almost 2 years, I’m starting to lose hope too.

The only important part of the patch MIGHT be the last one. Every other part of it was just welcomed additions but nothing that players actually asked for.

Players definitely 100% asked for better frame rates and performance at big events. They asked for account bound commander tags and colors. They asked for a better crafting UI.

In fact, most of the stuff in this patch was asked for along the way. I’m not really sure why you’d think otherwise.

The last page, yesterday, wasn’t asked for by long time players, but there have been plenty of complaints about how the game doesn’t teach you anything and even several large threads on tutorials.

The majority asked for other things. ESPECIALLY END GAME THINGS – which, based on the latest interviews we won’t be getting anytime soon.
In order to please 10% of the players who will find their own way anyway (same as everyone else did), they are ignoring the wishes of the veteran players who are asking for more or less the same thing for 2 years now. and they always get the same reply “it’s on the table”. Listen – I wrote this to express what MANY players think. I’m not really looking for an argument but for ANET to see and hopefully realize that we are in need of actual endgame features and content more than an even better leveling experience which we will forget as soon as we reach level 80 (so, basically around 1 week).

The majority of players don’t play end game in any game. I firmly believe it. We’ve heard the devs say how many people did elite instances in Guild Wars 1 in the past and it’s never as much as you think it is. I do all that stuff, but most players didn’t. It’s a sad fact of life.

The loudest people on forums are not necessarily a majority. I say it all the time. I believe it to be true.

And if you think people in WvW and people who do meta events are some sort of minority (both groups require faster frame rates in big battles and more stability), I don’t know what to tell you.

Crafters have been as ignored as anyone since launch. There are people who love crafting and want to do more with it. They get something for them in this update.

Dungeon complaints about getting booted out of a dungeon when the leader leaves have been around for a long long time. There’s tons of people who wanted the instance leadership thing changed.

Guilds have been complaining for a long time about guild missions. This patch so far, remember, we haven’t seen it all, has covered a lot of different elements of the game, but get this….

the one thing it’s not and was never supposed to be was a content patch. It’s a feature patch. The stuff you’re talking about is content. Content isn’t features. So the content you want won’t be coming in this pack because it’s not a content pack. It’s a feature pack.

And almost all of it was asked for by people.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

eye floater.7140:

Azure The Heartless.3261:

DiogoSilva.7089:

Brother Grimm.5176:

I’m more confused about why this change concerns LVL 80 players…. This is an area of the game that has been LACKING for 2 years and when they try to improve it (not saying the improvements are good or bad), the player base wants to complain?

Gotta love the Dev hate this forum thrives on….

True, most of the changes announced so far for this feature patch are based on player’s criticism on the early game experience.

You have to understand two things about this forum.

1.) the population consists of people working a desk job that use it for entertainment, and then people that have either a genuine concern, dissatisfaction with the game that stems from their attitude, and trolls.

2.) The people with the desk jobs are (hopefully) more focused on their work.

The people that actually enjoy the game will either have very little to say, or actually be in game playing if possible, so expect to see very little more than dissatisfaction and anger bordering on spoiled selfishness.

You can usually tell when someone has a point and when someone is just complaining because (insert something about them) sucks, so don’t get displeased by the overwhelming anger you’re seeing. Many people here will poke holes in their argument very quickly.

Now now, lets not derail this (so far) peaceful thread! I had an opinion, I wanted to discuss it, that’s exactly what these forums are for.

- hands up -

Be my guest, no derailing here.

On topic: The downed state is pretty self explanatory once you get knocked around a couple times, so unless you are the best player ever and don’t find yourself downed before lvl80, a tooltip would suffice.

In fact, I’d go so far to say that suddenly introducing downed at level 5 will confuse and surprise people even more.

There was also a thread about adding downed skills to your character panel. that would work really well too.

I think we’ll have to see it in action before we judge. A lot of this is for first time players. Maybe they think they’ll have more of those if they release an expansion. lol

Spira.4578:

Vayne.8563:

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

Just curious. I think this new patch, particularly the last bit, is REALLY important.

Because the community has been complaining about that for more than a year now and kept defending anet too. After almost 2 years, I’m starting to lose hope too.

The only important part of the patch MIGHT be the last one. Every other part of it was just welcomed additions but nothing that players actually asked for.

Players definitely 100% asked for better frame rates and performance at big events. They asked for account bound commander tags and colors. They asked for a better crafting UI.

In fact, most of the stuff in this patch was asked for along the way. I’m not really sure why you’d think otherwise.

The last page, yesterday, wasn’t asked for by long time players, but there have been plenty of complaints about how the game doesn’t teach you anything and even several large threads on tutorials.

I’d love to know, OP, why you think you know what’s better for the game and the community than Anet.

Just curious. I think this new patch, particularly the last bit, is REALLY important.

Pandaman.4758:

I’m just baffled by what was so confusing about rallying that they had to make it a level 5 unlock and how making it a level 5 unlock will magically teach people how to rally; if they didn’t understand what it was when it’s first presented to them, covering their eyes and telling them to ignore it for five levels isn’t going to help.

If you want people to learn what a feature is, you explain it to them.

Have a tutorial where a Rally Trainer NPC jumps out of nowhere, downs you with a sucker punch, starts screaming at you to hit #4 if you want to get back up, kicks you to interrupt your rally, screams at you that you’re a yutz for trying to rally while under attack, then jumps back into nowhere before you can get back up to retaliate.

Maybe have him voiced by Ronald Lee Ermey.

It’s really interesting. If you present too many things at one time to people, they don’t get all of them. So, you’re in the game new. Maybe even it’s your first MMO. You get a bunch of weapons and new skills. You go down in a fight. In most games you just die. You don’t even really know a downed state exists.

Level 5 is pretty fast to get to. What’s the big deal?

Draknar.5748:

As someone who has lurked the forums basically since release I can say that there was definitely a community of players that felt leveling was difficult, a “grind” as they call it and very un-rewarding. While most people feel this wasn’t needed, there are people who will find it useful.

Plenty of new players have come on the forums, or have messaged in /map, about what do to, where to go; that their personal story mission is too high a level for them and they don’t know what to do to level up.

I’m not even sure most people find it wasn’t needed. Maybe most people who stuck with the game find that, because obviously it’s not a big deal to them. What we really don’t know is how many people started the game, got bored or confused and went and played something they understood. It’s amazing what people don’t know about this game, even some level 80s I’ve met.

Ezrin.8217:

Zanshin.5379:

DiogoSilva.7089:

All those changes are important because they fix the several flaws that GW2 has early game: the lack of a sense of progression, poor tutorials, directionless, forgottable rewards and jumpy story instances that forced you to level up midway, interrupting the flow of the story.

I never had any problem understanding what to do when I started playing. Neither did anybody that I know.

That’s because it was simple, easy to understand, and fluid. Not anymore.

Even before the trait changes, we had so many people who didn’t know what to do. I don’t see how you guys could ignore the posts in Players Helping players.

People woudl do everything in a zone and not know what to do, because they weren’t high enough to get to the next zone. And we’d tell them to go to another zone, which isn’t really the only answer.

Most games have statics quests and clearly defined hubs and that’s it. You finish one hub, every quest, before you move to the next, because that’s the way you have a high enough level for it. This game is completely different.

And there are people who poke their head it, don’t get it and leave. You can say it doesn’t happen, but I’ve seen it happen.

It might well happen often enough to warrant changing it.

But a lot of those changes were made to the China release due to research from the American release. They knew more when they made the Chinese release.

I see it as completely 100% irrelevant whether Anet said something was happening or not…at least in this case.

Because there are so many people that start this game and don’t know what to do. Maybe some people don’t spend a lot of time talking to people in starter zones, but people are lost when they come into this game. Not all people, but enough to be concerned, including people I know pretty well. Even some people who have played other MMOs. It’s a different animal.

Adding an idea progression and better rewards for leveling and personal story is a good thing, not a bad thing. There’s no real way it can be seen as a bad thing. It’s good for the game. And you know, Anet has to do what’s good for the game.

They need to provide both content and these types of updates. For the health of the game over all, which affects everyone who plays.

You mean people will do dungeons with only mesmers, necros and eles? I somehow don’t see this happening OP.

People who like to play heavy professions will still play them. People who like to have pets will still play rangers. And people who like stealth will still play thieves.

Very few people by percentage follow any kind of meta, which is why the world is full of so-called under powered professions.

The changes are about player retention. PvP isn’t gated. If you know what to do, you can go and PvP. If you know what to do, you can go WvW. If you don’t know what to do,. then you can’t do it until those levels, which is fine. On your first character, PvPing at level 18 will only get your killed really fast anyway. It’s not a bad change.

Re the equipment yes you get some loot. I know it doesn’t mean anything to you. Does having more players in the game a year from now mean anything to you. Because that’s why a lot of these things were done.

Unlike us, Anet actually researched this stuff by testing the game on people who have never played it. The results surprised them. They made changes to up the retention rates of new players, which helps everyone.

No MMO is going to survive long term without new player retention. It’s good that they’ve done this…even if it doesn’t directly affect me.

Of course, if they do come out with a new race/profession, it will affect everyone who levels one.

OP if you haven’t heard complaints about the leveling system, you’ve been ignoring posts that don’t apply to you. There have been many posts over time about the leveling system, and it shows in the retention of players, a stat that you don’t have access to and Anet does.

It’s easy for some people and really hard for others. Almost every day someone posts in players helping players saying they just don’t get the game, or leveling or how it is. Almost every day.

You got it. You followed the game maybe. You knew what to expect. Or it fit your style. For a lot of people. those used to other games, they really don’t have a clue.

This isn’t a single isolated case, but a problem that’s existed since day 1.

No MMO can exist long term without a renewal of fresh players. It’s pretty much a given. People leave ANY MMO, good or bad, for reasons other than in game reasons. And then people burn out, people get jobs, people grow up, people have kids, people have school and don’t have enough time…it goes on and on. Some of those people come back. Some of them don’t.

But without new players replacing leaving players, you might as well close the doors. You’ll do it sooner rather than later. The better the experience for new players, the more players stay. That retention rate is vital to the future of the game PERIOD.

It helps long term players who plan on staying more than you know.

Sunshine.4680:

Didn’t people say that the Chinese stuff wouldn’t ever come to NA side? So much for that. =p

Nah, they only said the optional VIP membership for a monthly fee wasn’t planned for the states. They never said that the games wouldn’t share features.

I rez people for two reasons. I like to help out and more people alive means more people doing damage. I don’t rez people who are dead in events where the waypoint is close, because they should just teleport and run back. I do. But anyone downed I rez. There’s no reason to risk yourself rezzing people who are too lazy to run a few feet. But if the waypoint is far away then I’ll rez.

OP, by the time a new person starts an MMO, they’re so so far behind, there’s no amount of rewards they could get that could catch them up.

And as an experienced player you can make a new character and get the rewards yourself. That’s a choice.

Nothing to see here folks. Move along.

Guild Wars 1 only had humans. Capes were easier. With 5 races that have distinct body types not so. I’m sure I wouldn’t want them to divert resources to making capes. I’m sure there are more urgent matters.

I’m also sure that guild halls are on their list of things to do. They’re simply not done yet.

In Guild Wars 1, Guild Halls were an integral part of Guild vs Guild, which doesn’t exist in this game, though.

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

We have people clamoring for an expansion but someone posted an expansion thread, also on the front page as I type this, and many in that thread say they don’t want an expansion.

One might wax poetic and say the expansionists were marked for extinction in Tyria the day Living World debuted. Now only a few are left. Soon only their fossilized remains will remain. Fossilized. Their fire has gone out of Tyria.

I honor them. I honor their struggle, futile though it may have been, for it was all too clear that the powers that be did not care. They fought for the game. They fought for excellence. They fought for US. And most of us ignored them, or scoffed at them, or laughed at them, or actively sought to prevent their success by picking apart each and every paragraph and sentence and word and syllable, until any semblance of communication or meaning was hopelessly lost. We obfuscated them out of existence. Now only the occasional QQ still rings out in the megaserved darkness, a last lonely call to arms, a last rallying cry to companions and friends long gone, left behind by a world which used them up and left their empty, soulless wallets and pockets and coin purses to rot.

And when that last expansionist falls at last, and his or her courageous voice is silenced forever, who then will stand between us and a future filled with naught but fluff and nonsense?

I’ll tell you who: no one.

And so, I salute them, those brave, intrepid, courageous few who dared to dream of a bigger and better game world for us all.

/e salute.
/e fire 21 cows across the green, green fields of Ascalon.
/e oops – seems one was actually a player character in a cow costume.

Carry on.

You have a great writing style. Just saying. Your wit and the way you put together words is extraordinary.

Of course, great wordsmiths have a talent for deflection, such as deflecting what’s being said.

I’m saying no one knows the numbers on one side or the other. Not me, and not you. Probably not even Anet.

Saying you have some sort of monopoly on the truth is almost always wrong.