Guild Wars 2

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

Ye but the game has been out for two years. No more waiting. That was a valid excuse for season 1 because they were experimenting. They had 15 months of experimenting with season 1. They have no more time to say “well with season 2 we’re experimenitng with” no. The game has been out too long. This is Anets chance to prove expansion worthy content.

It’s called drama and building. You do big stuff for climaxes, not openers. This has nothing to do with big stuff every 2 weeks or every month.

They give you half a zone, not good enough. You want something very specific. Shrugs.

There may well be big events like the ones you’re talking about, but if it was a constant influx of those they’d become meaningless.

Thats called an excuse lol. You don’t know much about MMO’s do you? Its not normal to have nearly 2 zones after 2 years. Thats called sub-par for the industry. Its not even that. You act like im the only one who was surprised how little we got from season 2 so far in terms of open world content. You kidding? Especially the most recent patch should have had a much bigger sized zone since we’d be without any updates to content for over a month.

It’s not normal to start an MMO with 25 zones either, or 5 starting zones and various personal stories. Do you realize how much bigger this game was at launch than most MMOs. Have you looked at some of the MMOs that have come out and what they actually offer AT LAUNCH?

A lot of MMOs add zones after the first year, and even the second year. When Rift was two years old, it wasn’t as big as Guild Wars 2 at launch.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

Ye but the game has been out for two years. No more waiting. That was a valid excuse for season 1 because they were experimenting. They had 15 months of experimenting with season 1. They have no more time to say “well with season 2 we’re experimenitng with” no. The game has been out too long. This is Anets chance to prove expansion worthy content.

It’s called drama and building. You do big stuff for climaxes, not openers. This has nothing to do with big stuff every 2 weeks or every month.

They give you half a zone, not good enough. You want something very specific. Shrugs.

There may well be big events like the ones you’re talking about, but if it was a constant influx of those they’d become meaningless.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

Ye but look at how much it was updated over the course of the living story. In the beginning it was a lot, towards the end, barely. The last 2 patches barely gave us anything.

Perhaps you’re not remembering the beginning of Season 1. Most of the really big stuff game 6 months in.

We very little big stuff until near the end. I mean there was the Molten Facility but that was an instance. Before that we banged in signs.

Four chapters isn’t the whole story. In fact if you compare the first two months of the two seasons, the stuff we have open world in Dry Top is more than we got in the first Season by the same point.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

Ye but thats like co-op, not a massive multiplayer online experience.

Drytop, however, is a massive multiplayer experience. Getting to higher tiers requires coordination. You get some reward not getting to higher tiers, but getting to higher tiers feels (and is) a lot more rewarding.

I’ve done almost all of season 2 with my guild. The instances do scale up if more players join you. So solo players can enjoy it AND groups can enjoy it.

And of course, no one is soloing Dry Top.

floude.5291:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Floude, you say that the developers are killing the game, and I say they are making it better by the day.

Your opinion is not superior to everyone else’s.

Of course it’s not. Don’t get me wrong i like the game too my concern is the quality of the game, they’re making the game better just for the one side of the game.

@Ele, you, milady, are overlooking the term called ‘feedback’. They want it and they need it. A consumer has the right to tell what he think or feel about the product, for further information about capitalism here you go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZozthpLBUs

@Vayne, you still defending the game by only looking at the game from your point of playing. I concur, the game went your side too long that make pvp people feel like ignored and they left the game on its own, see the twitch channel’s pvp videos and see how much hit they get everytime they cast a pvp event.

Dude, why must you jump on the I’m defending the game bandwagon. Saying I don’t think the new WoW is going to hurt this game isn’t defending the game. It’s insulting WoW. There are games out there, which I won’t list, that have far more potential to pull people from this game. WoW. Not an issue. I truly believe that.

I give constructive feedback when it’s needed. I just don’t see WoW as a threat.

If you really really have trouble (and I don’t see why you should) all traits can be purchased with coin and skill points. It’s not like you have to get them in world.

@floud

I disagree. I think WoW is past it’s useby date. A couple of years ago it had 12.4 million subscribers. It’s down to almost half that now. They’ve lost half their player base. Many of those people will never come back.

If WOW went free to play it would be another story, but many people don’t like paying subs. Many don’t like cartoony graphics. Many don’t like the old engine or static quests. Many don’t like reading text, because not enough of it is voiced.

Frankly, of all the new MMOs coming out, WoW is the least of my worries.

As for Guild Wars 2 being great… it’s not great. It’s just better than anything else out there for my play style. That may last, it may not last. But WoW will never be of any interest to me, or players like me. Not ever.

munkiman.3068:

There isn’t much need to argue about RP. One of the only times ANet has really commented on it, they stated they would look into a way to help RP folks with the megaserver changes. So, they at least acknowledge RP is a large enough demographic to consider.

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely think Anet should do more for the RP community and I always have. It’s why I said the city servers should be on home servers and not the mega server. That would help a lot. There should be an RP chat (instead of using say so it’s harder to get trolled) or a box you can check so the megaserver algorhthym can identify you as an RPer. I’m in favor of all of that.

But I still think more people are helped by the mega server than hindered by it. It needs work for sure.

Azhure.1857:

Vayne.8563:

You have no idea of what I know or where I’ve been, but you should probably just stop arguing. Every time you say something like people RPG because this is an MMORPG, you are asking for this kind of feedback. Don’t make statements like that, and you won’t get this type of feedback.

The same could be directed right back at you. :/
When you continually take a disrespectful tone, is it really a surprise that you may receive the same? You’re creating much of it, though not all admittedly. If you actually took some care into what you’re saying and how you say it – I imagine the same consideration would be granted towards you.

Right now though I don’t see anybody cheering you on, Vayne, except yourself. I’m not happy with myself right now because I’ve allowed myself to post completely off topic and I’m rewarding you right now. You’re enjoying all of this. * sigh *

While its hard for me to remain quiet and/or ignore rude behavior – I’m going to try my hardest to completely ignore everything you have to say from this point forward. I don’t see anything productive coming from you to suggest that I should. I’m sorry in advance if that offends you.

Actually that works for me. As far as people cheering me on, I have plenty of friends on these forums. More than you’d likely believe. Not everyone who cheers me on needs to do it publicly. You’d be surprised at how many people who lurk have thanked me for posting the stuff I do.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

You’ve made statements that basically amount to saying I’m making things up, and using conjecture, even when my comments are backed up by industry standards, including the company you worked for. They didn’t call those games RPGs because in the industry they weren’t considered RPGs. RPGs were about stat progression. When that shift happened a lot of people complained about it and there was a lot of talk about it, but of course, the companies one. Today RPG means something different than it meant 20 years ago.

So your insistence that people RP because this is an MMORPG, when you don’t even know what an RPG is by today’s standards, doesn’t hold much weight. You accuse me of speculating on stuff that I know from experience.

You have no idea of what I know or where I’ve been, but you should probably just stop arguing. Every time you say something like people RPG because this is an MMORPG, you are asking for this kind of feedback. Don’t make statements like that, and you won’t get this type of feedback.

In fact, say anything you want now. I’m convinced talking to you isn’t going to end well. Trahearne told me that.

20 years ago there were no MMOs. The MMORPG is a new term… so it doesn’t matter that the usage of RPG has changed over time. And even back then the term RPG has the same basis for RP…. in the sense that you have a specific type of character that you play…. suited to your playstyle or personality…. or the personality of your character.

And I do NOT think RPG meant stat progression… although that was an element in many of them…

I am sorry but you are the one that is completely off base here.

I’m off base. So explain to me how games like this were sold as an RPG (and even listed in Wikipedia as an RPG).

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

Edit: You keep making my points for me. You’re right. 20 years ago there were no MMORPGs and the RPG moniker was already changing what it meant. By the time the game came out, it didn’t mean RPing to most people in the same way it did to me in earlier years.

The industry changed what an RPG was. Don’t blame me for it. So again saying MMORPG is in the name of the program means people are RPing is just a little bit preposterous.

Sorry, mate, my bad. A consumable usually implies something that’s not there after you use it. But you can drag that into the costume slot, take it out again and put it in your bank. At least I"m pretty sure you can.

Anyway there’s no harm in deleting them, but I put mine on characters that didn’t already have costumes.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Second Life isn’t a game. It’s a virtual world. It can contain games within it. You still didn’t answer my question. I’m actually stunned that someone who worked for Sierra Online would claim that RPGs today are about RPGing, when in fact most of Sierra’s Online games were adventure games and not called RPGs at all. That’s where the real RPGing took place, if you were looking for immersion.

Games like Dungeon Master, quite popular in its time (you can look up Legend of Grimrock another game like that) had a party of four. But you couldn’t be RPing in it because all your characters moved together and though they all had different skills, none of them interacted with anything in any meaningful way. It was all attacking and solving puzzles, with progression. But it was still an RPG. It was advertised and sold as an RPG.

Immersion isn’t RPing and trying ot say that 20% of people are either RPing or immersion players might actually be right. But I’m pretty sure many of those people don’t have the same problems with mega servers you do, because I’m an immmersion player not an RPer and I don’t have those problems.

SecondLife is a MMO… what we have been talking about here no? Sierra Online made adventure games that were sort of roleplayish but I never claimed they were RPGs did I? Although Quest for Glory may have been considered one….

I am not sure where you are going with all this but I don’t see how questioning my background helps you prove any points?

You’ve made statements that basically amount to saying I’m making things up, and using conjecture, even when my comments are backed up by industry standards, including the company you worked for. They didn’t call those games RPGs because in the industry they weren’t considered RPGs. RPGs were about stat progression. When that shift happened a lot of people complained about it and there was a lot of talk about it, but of course, the companies one. Today RPG means something different than it meant 20 years ago.

So your insistence that people RP because this is an MMORPG, when you don’t even know what an RPG is by today’s standards, doesn’t hold much weight. You accuse me of speculating on stuff that I know from experience.

You have no idea of what I know or where I’ve been, but you should probably just stop arguing. Every time you say something like people RPG because this is an MMORPG, you are asking for this kind of feedback. Don’t make statements like that, and you won’t get this type of feedback.

In fact, say anything you want now. I’m convinced talking to you isn’t going to end well. Trahearne told me that.

Pirate Captain’s outfit didn’t become a consumable. It became a costume. It goes in a costume slot. If you have more than one character who wears it, you can chuck it in their slot.

If you don’t you can delete them. They’re free to use from the wardrobe anyway.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

That’s my professional view as someone who was a game buyer and worked with companies like EA and Sierra Online and SSI on a regular basis. My limited view is a professional view from in the industry. What are you basing your view on?

I looked at the games called RPGs and realized the shift. In fact, most adventure games coming out were more like old RPGs because many of the new RPGs were nothing more than dungeon crawls.

Take a game like Dungeon Master which was an RPG in which you played four characters at the same time. They moved at once. There was nothing in it to say you played in character, because you were four characters. There was no dialogue. No story, besides a flimsy excuse to get through the dungeon. But it was an RPG.

It’s all very nice to disagree with me and all, but this isn’t something I’m making up. Maybe you need to fact check?

I did work for Sierra online in the when I was in college…. currently I make content that is used in video games…. and make roleplay aids in SecondLife.

Second Life isn’t a game. It’s a virtual world. It can contain games within it. You still didn’t answer my question. I’m actually stunned that someone who worked for Sierra Online would claim that RPGs today are about RPGing, when in fact most of Sierra’s Online games were adventure games and not called RPGs at all. That’s where the real RPGing took place, if you were looking for immersion.

Games like Dungeon Master, quite popular in its time (you can look up Legend of Grimrock another game like that) had a party of four. But you couldn’t be RPing in it because all your characters moved together and though they all had different skills, none of them interacted with anything in any meaningful way. It was all attacking and solving puzzles, with progression. But it was still an RPG. It was advertised and sold as an RPG.

Immersion isn’t RPing and trying ot say that 20% of people are either RPing or immersion players might actually be right. But I’m pretty sure many of those people don’t have the same problems with mega servers you do, because I’m an immmersion player not an RPer and I don’t have those problems.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

LMFAO! Now look at who’s speculating. RP ORIGINALLY meant something completely different than it does today and that’s not speculation. All RPG means today is a game with a story in which you have a character that progresses. That’s all it means.

Many RPGs today are single player games. Now you might be calling something RP that’s not RP, for example, being immersed in a game or story…but RP, as in the activity has a very specific definition. I get immersed and into games and story all the time…but that’s not actually RPing and people who do that don’t necessarily consider themselves RPers. I sure don’t.

Now if solo games can be RPGs and no one is actually RPing in them, then 100% of those RPGs are played by non-role players.

This isn’t just speculation. It’s a gross misintepretation of the entire genre. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons anymore, which I used to play. What RPing has become is completely 100% totally different.

20% of people don’t RP in RPGs, unless you’re just talking about immersion…which isn’t RPing.

No it didn’t mean something completely different… the role meant the class you played. Rogue, Fighter etc…

That is your limited view of things… but I come to expect that from you.

That’s my professional view as someone who was a game buyer and worked with companies like EA and Sierra Online and SSI on a regular basis. My limited view is a professional view from in the industry. What are you basing your view on?

I looked at the games called RPGs and realized the shift. In fact, most adventure games coming out were more like old RPGs because many of the new RPGs were nothing more than dungeon crawls.

Take a game like Dungeon Master which was an RPG in which you played four characters at the same time. They moved at once. There was nothing in it to say you played in character, because you were four characters. There was no dialogue. No story, besides a flimsy excuse to get through the dungeon. But it was an RPG.

It’s all very nice to disagree with me and all, but this isn’t something I’m making up. Maybe you need to fact check?

Warrior is a lot easier to play than engineer.

For my money Warrior, Guardian and ranger are the easiest to play. If you’re spending most of your time doing open world PvE, I like the ranger. If you’re spending more time in dungeons, warrior or guardian.

If you like PvP, I’ll let more knowledgable people guide you, but I don’t think you can go wrong with warrior or guardian in any aspect of the game.

floude.5291:

Vayne.8563:

floude.5291:

Vayne.8563:

floude.5291:

The only thing that i can say about an expansion: Anet please don’t make one.
The game is far beyond mediocre, pvp is not competitive and no one really cares your competitive tournments (look at the twitch watch numbers). In turn you don’t really care for pvp (especially wvwvw) too. Even if i want to do some wvwvw i collide with imbalance barrier, and log of immediately (still didn’t changed OP abilities that everyone can see).
In Pve there is no real content but saving some collectibles which does not really make a change whether you build them or not. Dungeons has same repetitive stacking behaviour and world bosses are not so unique when compared the other games. Actually game is like a wardrobe simulator, nothing more.
The story and lore is especially pathetic in my opinion. It’s not a groundbreaking story and you can find a band of races which everyone has one class to represent, actually only difference of your band of heroes is the leader has no sense of leading and makes no real sense of epicness. Even the big bad dragon killed by a ship not the leader itself, nice difference from other games…
Just like I said in the beginning, don’t release an expansion because if you do, i won’t buy it and only thing that makes me stay in the not being have to pay you money for the game time. After the expansion i’ll lose my ability to stand in the same ground with other people and this is gonna make me uninstal the game and never come back. Especially a while there is a lot of good games to play around.

So the people who do like the game shouldn’t have an expansion because you don’t like the game? I’m not sure what kind of logic that is.

Do loss of people like me can be compensated by satisfaction and spending money like yours? Dunno, Anet have to think about these losses and gains.

Yep, I think Anet has a very close eye on numbers. They have lots and lots of metrics. I know this for a fact, not a guess.

So when they make decisions that push the living world, I have to assume there’s a reason for that decision. They didn’t fail with it last year and suddenly put more into it this year.

They didn’t fail at their first year (the game was still “new”), don’t forget this. People were playing no matter what for the first year and now while there are other mmos which look quite good, they can’t continue acting like this. Also, Wow is coming…

WoW is coming? You mean it hasn’t been here the whole time. Of course WoW is coming. Do you know what. Mists of Pandaria launched 1 month after Guild Wars 2 launched. WoW already came. It happened already.

If you like WoW and lots of people do, you’re liking playing it. If you don’t like WoW and plenty of people don’t it doesn’t matter how many expansions came out for it. If Blizzard gave me WoW for free, with a free lifetime subscription I wouldn’t waste my time downloading it, or the space on my hard drive storing it. I don’t like the game, PERIOD. It’s not for me.

This game is. There are enough people out there who DO like this game who won’t be going to WoW because they don’t like that game. There are entire pages devoted on the web to people who hate WoW, including many who used to play WoW. WoW is coming.

Big, fat, hairy deal.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Vayne, I don’t mean any disrespect by asking this, but didn’t you quit the forums earlier this year?

If I remember correctly you made a big post about how awful these forums were, or something along those lines. How come you’re back?

Because some people who usually disagreed with me often asked me to come back. I worked out some differences with some people.

NO, you won’t get banned, because you don’t use Overswolf “inside” of Guild Wars 2. You use it over the top. It’s an overlay.

It doesn’t give you in game advantage.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Guhracie.3419:

Come on. I don’t even agree with the majority of Vayne’s points here (though I do agree with some of them), and I like to RP (For the toast!), but 20% is an exceedingly high estimate. I’d wager the RP community is closer to 1% than 20%. There are legions of people who play MMORPGs and have absolutely no idea what the RP stands for. RPG describes a genre of game that attempts to emulate the old tabletop RPGs. There are decades of computer-based RPGs that predate the first MMOs, and even MUDs.

Actual roleplay has very little to do with the MMO crowds, Vayne is spot-on.

And I don’t disagree with the majority of what you said there, but 1% is ridiculous… I guess it also depends on what you define as RP…. that definition itself can swing the % vastly. There is a wide spectrum of casual roleplay… just pretending to be your character while doing the content. Roleplaying with other players in that manner…. complete immersion.

If you say complete immersion… sure 1% is probably accurate. Roleplaying with others probably brings it to 10% and casual roleplay I think brings it to 20%.

That is my 2 cents… but the whole idea of RPG going back to MUD and single player RPGs is all about getting into character and acting things out like you were that character. That is roleplay.

Players who just create characters to kill things are not roleplayers… and that is the majority of the players I am pretty sure.

RP as defined by RPers….people who engage in the activity is not immersion. I’m an immersion player and because RP has other connotations I’d never use it to describe what I do.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Yep, that why I said everyone can decide for themselves. Because it is unknowable.

But if you look at the RPers and what they’re saying, and they’ve said it from the beginning…Anet completely ignores them. They’re like the red-headed stepchildren of Guild Wars 2.

Now if you were a developer, and 20% of your playerbase was doing something, would you really ignore them? Not without a good reason.

That’s called an educated guess.

You’ll find people do unreasonable things call the time… and maybe there is some greater context that neither of us is seeing explaining Arenanet’s decision making process that we are not privy to. So I can see both things as possibilities.

Either 1) They have a good reason why they are not doing it and we just don’t know what it is or 2) There is no good reason and they are hurting themselves out of ignorance or not caring.

There are plenty of real world examples of both these things happening everywhere you look. Assuming that it is because there just aren’t very many roleplayers does not have a sound basis in fact.

You don’t make changes out of ignorance and uncaring. If you don’t care, you don’t put effort into changing something that was working before. They have a reason. My guess is town clothes sales didn’t meet expectations and weren’t worth continuing. My guess is the mega server was created to keep people playing the game, instead of leaving it from seeing a dead world.

An MMO with low retention rates for new players…is an MMO on a bad bad road.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

You know what I love about you? You attempt to make completely reasonable assumptions sound unreasonable.

Do you know what an educated guess is? It’s a guess that’s informed by experience. That’s all it is.

I’m arguing with someone who thinks 20% of MMO players RP. 20%. Do you believe that’s accurate?

MMO I am pretty sure comes from MMORPG which has RP in it. So yes I think 20% is a reasonable guess.

LMFAO! Now look at who’s speculating. RP ORIGINALLY meant something completely different than it does today and that’s not speculation. All RPG means today is a game with a story in which you have a character that progresses. That’s all it means.

Many RPGs today are single player games. Now you might be calling something RP that’s not RP, for example, being immersed in a game or story…but RP, as in the activity has a very specific definition. I get immersed and into games and story all the time…but that’s not actually RPing and people who do that don’t necessarily consider themselves RPers. I sure don’t.

Now if solo games can be RPGs and no one is actually RPing in them, then 100% of those RPGs are played by non-role players.

This isn’t just speculation. It’s a gross misintepretation of the entire genre. This isn’t Dungeons and Dragons anymore, which I used to play. What RPing has become is completely 100% totally different.

20% of people don’t RP in RPGs, unless you’re just talking about immersion…which isn’t RPing.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

I’m going by years and years of experience. It’s possible that Guild Wars 2 flies wildly in the fact of tradition from other MMOs, but considering how badly this game supports RPers I don’t why anyone would support that concept.

Very few games even have 10% of their playerbase as RPers. Even I’ve RPed from time to time…but I’m not an RPer. Any more than doing a dungeon every now and again makes me a dungeon runner. It’s not what I do. It’s not how I play.

The percentage of the playerbase that is self-identified as RPers is usually in most games very small. You don’t have to believe that, but that’s what past information has shown.

If you think somehow this game, which isn’t friendly to RPers (according to most RPers I’ve seen post) somehow bucks the trend and has more RPers by percentage than the rest of the industry, you’re perfectly welcome to believe that. I have no problem with it.

My suggestion that most people should just make up their own minds on what they believe is because I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine.

When I have tried out other MMOs most of them have several worlds dedicated to roleplay…. that to me indicates there is a pretty significant amount of people interested in doing it. Why Arenanet decided to not do that, is a mystery to me… so while in other games all of the roleplayers would gather on their own servers… here in GW2 it is more diluted and they are spread out among all of the servers more.

People should and will of course decide for themselves but I am going to still point out when you are spouting unsubstantiated or unprovable or unknowable things as fact in the thread.

Yep, that why I said everyone can decide for themselves. Because it is unknowable.

But if you look at the RPers and what they’re saying, and they’ve said it from the beginning…Anet completely ignores them. They’re like the red-headed stepchildren of Guild Wars 2.

Now if you were a developer, and 20% of your playerbase was doing something, would you really ignore them? Not without a good reason.

That’s called an educated guess.

Phoenixlin.8624:

Years of experience. Lel. It is really pathetic to try to support your arguments by only with your experience.

Come with real evidence. Your own thoughts are not evidence.

Oh whatever. You are the one who said “DON’T GIEF PLAYERS ANY CHOICE. IF YOU DO, MY EXPERIENCE WILL BE HURTED”.

You know what I love about you? You attempt to make completely reasonable assumptions sound unreasonable.

Do you know what an educated guess is? It’s a guess that’s informed by experience. That’s all it is.

I’m arguing with someone who thinks 20% of MMO players RP. 20%. Do you believe that’s accurate?

saye.9304:

billizard announced a yearly expansion for wow, yep that is true, world of warcraft gonna have expansion every year.
that is very sweet deal and might bring back ex-players to wow. and if wow do it that game will remain one of the best and top mmos for who knows maybe another 10 years.
about gw2 tho, i am not sure about future of this game, with new mmos coming out every year, probably small dedicated community will keep it alive but it wont be among top mmos if anet continue this way with their LS stuff and no expansion in sight.

ESO came out and everyone said it was going to be the end of GW 2. ESO wasn’t only not the end but it’s not doing nearly as well as people thought it would. Wildstar came out and everyone said it had a much better end game and eveyrone would be playing it. Wildstar isn’t doing all that well, if the numbers from the NCsoft quarterly report are anything to go on.

People said it about Neverwinter, they said it about FF…it still hasn’t happened.

It’s nice to say stuff like this, but the evidence really isn’t there to support it.

floude.5291:

Vayne.8563:

floude.5291:

The only thing that i can say about an expansion: Anet please don’t make one.
The game is far beyond mediocre, pvp is not competitive and no one really cares your competitive tournments (look at the twitch watch numbers). In turn you don’t really care for pvp (especially wvwvw) too. Even if i want to do some wvwvw i collide with imbalance barrier, and log of immediately (still didn’t changed OP abilities that everyone can see).
In Pve there is no real content but saving some collectibles which does not really make a change whether you build them or not. Dungeons has same repetitive stacking behaviour and world bosses are not so unique when compared the other games. Actually game is like a wardrobe simulator, nothing more.
The story and lore is especially pathetic in my opinion. It’s not a groundbreaking story and you can find a band of races which everyone has one class to represent, actually only difference of your band of heroes is the leader has no sense of leading and makes no real sense of epicness. Even the big bad dragon killed by a ship not the leader itself, nice difference from other games…
Just like I said in the beginning, don’t release an expansion because if you do, i won’t buy it and only thing that makes me stay in the not being have to pay you money for the game time. After the expansion i’ll lose my ability to stand in the same ground with other people and this is gonna make me uninstal the game and never come back. Especially a while there is a lot of good games to play around.

So the people who do like the game shouldn’t have an expansion because you don’t like the game? I’m not sure what kind of logic that is.

Do loss of people like me can be compensated by satisfaction and spending money like yours? Dunno, Anet have to think about these losses and gains.

Yep, I think Anet has a very close eye on numbers. They have lots and lots of metrics. I know this for a fact, not a guess.

So when they make decisions that push the living world, I have to assume there’s a reason for that decision. They didn’t fail with it last year and suddenly put more into it this year.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Even if you weight it, it doesn’t come NEAR 20%. More to the point I don’t believe and I don’t even believe most RPers believe 50% of TC RPs. Nor do I believe 10% of other servers RP. You’re not anywhere near 20% in my opinion.

And I think most people would agree.

And I disagree with you on most of those counts… and saying “I think most people would agree” does not really help your argument. It is basically just saying “I have run out of things to support me so I am going to make up a bunch of hypothetical people to agree with me”

I actually think that it is less than 50% on TC and higher than 10% on all the others… but I was just using those numbers as an example.

I’m going by years and years of experience. It’s possible that Guild Wars 2 flies wildly in the fact of tradition from other MMOs, but considering how badly this game supports RPers I don’t why anyone would support that concept.

Very few games even have 10% of their playerbase as RPers. Even I’ve RPed from time to time…but I’m not an RPer. Any more than doing a dungeon every now and again makes me a dungeon runner. It’s not what I do. It’s not how I play.

The percentage of the playerbase that is self-identified as RPers is usually in most games very small. You don’t have to believe that, but that’s what past information has shown.

If you think somehow this game, which isn’t friendly to RPers (according to most RPers I’ve seen post) somehow bucks the trend and has more RPers by percentage than the rest of the industry, you’re perfectly welcome to believe that. I have no problem with it.

My suggestion that most people should just make up their own minds on what they believe is because I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine.

Do fast dailies on the second account. Finish off what you have left of the monthly. Cash in laurels for T6 mats. Can’t think of too much else, besides extra storage space of course.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

No the guy who posted didn’t really know anything about the issue and admitted as much. But he still felt strongly enough to demand that Anet turn him back. He had no idea anyone liked it.

Edit: Obviously the positive responses came AFTER he felt urged to make that post.

Well I don’t see that… if there is any mob mentality in your example it is him switching sides to be like the other people in the thread. Thus the pro-megaserver people are the mob.

Most disingenuous response to date.

Guy says I knew nothing about it, but everyone else was mad, so I felt I had to post about it, which is exactly what happened, and you’re saying you don’t see mob mentality there.

He didn’t understand what he was complaining about. This thread angered him in spite of not really understanding, incited him to post.

Other people took the time to message him and explain to him the ups and downs (and no I wasn’t one of them) and he completely withdrew his post. He’s not alone.

Mob mentality is a very real thing. I brought it up in this thread, because of that thread. It’s not a theory. It’s not something unknown. There are also psychological studies that show that people who are unhappy will complain more than people who are happy will defend. But you know, it’s all just my crazy opinion. There’s no evidence for this stuff at all. It’s all wild speculation, right?

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Here’s some food for thought for you.

A week or so ago, there was a post demanding that Anet kill the mega server. The guy who posted it had about 12 responses before the three was closed. 2 were against the mega server and 10 were pro.

But then something really amazing happened. The OP removed the first post before the thread was closed.

Someone suggested he was censored, but then he came back into the thread, again before it was closed and said, no I removed it myself. He was incensed, not because he believed the mega server was so bad, but because of everything he read about it in that thread. Apparently he started talking to some other people who all liked the mega server and after hearing what they had to say he ended up agreeing and removing his OP.

This is why I brought up mob mentality.

Not sure how that demonstrates mob mentality even if that were true (which again you show no evidence regarding this) … unless the pro-megaserver people are the mob?

No the guy who posted didn’t really know anything about the issue and admitted as much. But he still felt strongly enough to demand that Anet turn back the megaserver. He had no idea anyone liked it.

Edit: Obviously the positive responses came AFTER he felt urged to make that post.

Hamfast.8719:

You’re getting the thread off track. How about throwing around some more unsubstantiated numbers to prove how many people like the MegaServer and how many people hate it? That’s always a good show.

Your current argument belong here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Megaservers-and-RP/first

Here’s some food for thought for you.

A week or so ago, there was a post demanding that Anet kill the mega server. The guy who posted it had about 12 responses before the three was closed. 2 were against the mega server and 10 were pro.

But then something really amazing happened. The OP removed the first post before the thread was closed.

Someone suggested he was censored, but then he came back into the thread, again before it was closed and said, no I removed it myself. He was incensed, not because he believed the mega server was so bad, but because of everything he read about it in that thread. Apparently he started talking to some other people who all liked the mega server and after hearing what they had to say he ended up agreeing and removing his OP.

This is why I brought up mob mentality.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

I’ll let others make up their mind if they want to believe that 20% of this game RPs.

Edit: Your math is faulty anyway. Let’s pretend there are 12 servers, each with 10 people on it. That’s 120 players. Now if 50% of one RPs thats 6 people. If 10% of the other 11 RP that’s another 11 people. Which makes it 17 people altogether out of 120.

That’s assuming 50% of TC RPs which I don’t believe, and 10% of othr servers RP which I don’t believe.

Edit 2: And there are 24 US worlds not 12, so the math would be even greater. TC would have 6 RPers, each of the other 23 would have 1, or 29 RPers out of 240 players. Which isn’t really 50% of the population, even if it were true that 50% of TC RPs.

No you need to weight the high population servers such as TC higher… that is the whole reason people were complaining about the lower pop servers being empty.

Even if you weight it, it doesn’t come NEAR 20%. More to the point I don’t believe and I don’t even believe most RPers believe 50% of TC RPs. Nor do I believe 10% of other servers RP. You’re not anywhere near 20% in my opinion.

And I think most people would agree.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Being on TC and saying there are a lot of RPers is like going to a ping pong match and saying there are a lot of ping pongers. Of course there are a lot of RPers on the RP server. There are also a dozen other servers.

Now I can pretty much guarantee the percentage of TC that RPs isn’t 50% anyway. But even if it was, that would still be less than 20%, way less, of the population.

However, I seriously doubt even 20% of TC RPs. You hang out with RPers so of course most people you know RP. I have a guild of 150 people and out of that guild even though we started as an RP guild, less than 5 RP.

If it was 50% on TC how would that be less than 20% overall… you are assuming that there are no roleplayers on any other servers? If it was 50% on TC and 10% on the others it would be pretty close to 20%. No?

Anyway my point is that any one of our experiences in GW2 is a very small sample size and not necessarily representative of GW2 as a whole. So while your experience is quite valid…. projecting it onto the rest of GW2 is a flawed argument without some sort of independent unbiased sampling.

I’ll let others make up their mind if they want to believe that 20% of this game RPs.

Edit: Your math is faulty anyway. Let’s pretend there are 12 servers, each with 10 people on it. That’s 120 players. Now if 50% of one RPs thats 6 people. If 10% of the other 11 RP that’s another 11 people. Which makes it 17 people altogether out of 120.

That’s assuming 50% of TC RPs which I don’t believe, and 10% of othr servers RP which I don’t believe.

Edit 2: And there are 24 US worlds not 12, so the math would be even greater. TC would have 6 RPers, each of the other 23 would have 1, or 29 RPers out of 240 players. Which isn’t really 50% of the population, even if it were true that 50% of TC RPs.

Dusty Moon.4382:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Nerelith.7360:

[Quote]The game setting has included riders since GW1.

Where and when? if it is NPC’s please tell us where these mounts are.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dolyak_Master
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dolyak_Rider
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Zombie_Horseman
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Banished_Dream_Rider
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Necrid_Horseman

Sorry – none of those would be considered mounts as the rider does not separates from the mount. They were designed as one piece and die as one piece. If it was a mount/rider, if the mount dies, the rider would dismount not die with it.

Try again.[/quote]

I remember killing siege devourers in GW 1 that left behind a flame legion charr to kill.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

But most people don’t RP OR take surveys. Estimates of RPers is probably a whole lot lower than 20%. The problem is the people who participate online outside of games is generally about 15%. That means 85% of the population doesn’t and my guess is most of that 85% is not RPers.

It’s like people think raiders are so prevalent, but recently we found out in a game like lotro according to the devs, raiders are only 2% of the population. Polls always show them to be much higher. That 2% are the loudest, most demanding segment of the forums. Not making this up, a lotro dev said it.

So even though polls shows that raiders are 15% of the population, 2% of the number the devs gave. That’s how useful those polls are.

If you think 20% of this game’s player base RPs, you’re very much out of touch.

Well I haven’t seen any of these surveys and you aren’t posting links to your “facts” but if I were to take my personal account for how many there are… it would be about 50% since I came to guild wars with a bunch of roleplayers. That is how I ended up on Tarnished Coast because it had been the unofficial roleplay server. (I actually started on Jade Quarry because I liked the name but switched to TC to be with all my roleplay friends)

So it is all perspective… so by cutting that down to like 20% I think I am being pretty realistic. Just because it isn’t your experience doesn’t make me wrong and you right or vice versa.

Also just observing people not roleplaying doesn’t mean they aren’t roleplayers… lots of it is done in whispers or private instances as well.

Being on TC and saying there are a lot of RPers is like going to a ping pong match and saying there are a lot of ping pongers. Of course there are a lot of RPers on the RP server. There are also a dozen other servers.

Now I can pretty much guarantee the percentage of TC that RPs isn’t 50% anyway. But even if it was, that would still be less than 20%, way less, of the population.

However, I seriously doubt even 20% of TC RPs. You hang out with RPers so of course most people you know RP. I have a guild of 150 people and out of that guild even though we started as an RP guild, less than 5 RP.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

Valid point. Players who are not roleplayers GREATLY outnumber players who are roleplayers. If you don’t think that’s a valid point, then there’s not much to be said anymore. I’ll let others determine whether that’s true or not.

Valid point: People have complained about the old town clothes. Not once or twice. There are have many threads about how useless those town clothes were. Why? Because you can only use them in towns. Which people stay in towns most? RPers. Town Clothes were relatively useless to people doing champ trains, dungeons, WvW, etc.

Valid point: If Anet was making money with town clothes as they were, they probably wouldn’t have changed it. They changed it for a reason. Not just to kitten off RPers.

Unless you think they changed it for NO reason.

What I am about to say is completely unsubstantiated by any surveys but I would say roleplayers account for 20% of the player-base. Just from my personal experience. 20% is a significant amount… and that is assuming ONLY roleplayers were interested in town clothes…. which is also not the case…. since I am not one and I was always wanting them to release more town clothes and they did not. I would have bought them if they did. So if we include people like me… say another 20% of the players… that is 40% total. Seems like a pretty high percentage if my numbers are anywhere close to accurate.

They were not making money on town clothes because of one simple fact… they were not making town clothes.

But most people don’t RP OR take surveys. Estimates of RPers is probably a whole lot lower than 20%. The problem is the people who participate online outside of games is generally about 15%. That means 85% of the population doesn’t and my guess is most of that 85% is not RPers.

It’s like people think raiders are so prevalent, but recently we found out in a game like lotro according to the devs, raiders are only 2% of the population. Polls always show them to be much higher. That 2% are the loudest, most demanding segment of the forums. Not making this up, a lotro dev said it.

So even though polls shows that raiders are 15% of the population, 2% of the number the devs gave. That’s how useful those polls are.

If you think 20% of this game’s player base RPs, you’re very much out of touch.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

This is very rude. Please refrain such rude comments. I’m not a roleplayer and I guarantee you I spend as much as 99% of RPers. I bet you people who gamble on RNG boxes for tickets spend as much.

I’m talking about RPers are a percentage of the population. Do you think 50% of this game are RPers. If every RPers bought every outfit, which clearly isn’t the case, likely it wouldn’t be worth developing townclothes.

I find your attitude completely offensive. I don’t agree and I make a valid point about the percentage of RPers in the game, and you CHOOSE to take offense. Well you know what?

It doesn’t make me wrong.

You do not make a valid point… you are throwing out nonsense that you have no facts to back up… if you refrain from insulting large segments of the community and wildly ridiculous conjecture we can have a civil conversation.

Yes I do think that it is worth making town clothes in any of those cases…. because I know I would buy it and I am not even a roleplayer. I am very sadded by what they did to the town clothes… and my roleplayer friends are too.

You are taking your tiny little world of experience and projecting it onto the game as a whole…. and insulting large portions of the community in the process. When you stop doing that I will stop taking offense.

Valid point. Players who are not roleplayers GREATLY outnumber players who are roleplayers. If you don’t think that’s a valid point, then there’s not much to be said anymore. I’ll let others determine whether that’s true or not.

Valid point: People have complained about the old town clothes. Not once or twice. There are have many threads about how useless those town clothes were. Why? Because you can only use them in towns. Which people stay in towns most? RPers. Town Clothes were relatively useless to people doing champ trains, dungeons, WvW, etc.

Valid point: If Anet was making money with town clothes as they were, they probably wouldn’t have changed it. They changed it for a reason. Not just to kitten off RPers.

Unless you think they changed it for NO reason.

Amethyst Rose.4367:

Vayne.8563:

The devastated the RP community because the whatever tiny percentage of you who bought clothes was such a small percentage of the population that it wasn’t worth making clothes just for you guys or guess what…they would have kept making them. But they didn’t keep making them. That’s because the limits on town clothes that made them completely worthless to a large percentage of the player base.

Again this is all rude and unsubstantiated non-sense. I know plenty of roleplayers and they typically spend way more on the game than normal players.

This is very rude. Please refrain such rude comments. I’m not a roleplayer and I guarantee you I spend as much as 99% of RPers. I bet you people who gamble on RNG boxes for tickets spend as much.

I’m talking about RPers are a percentage of the population. Do you think 50% of this game are RPers. If every RPers bought every outfit, which clearly isn’t the case, likely it wouldn’t be worth developing townclothes.

I find your attitude completely offensive. I don’t agree and I make a valid point about the percentage of RPers in the game, and you CHOOSE to take offense. Well you know what?

It doesn’t make me wrong.

ipan.4356:

Yes to all of it.

Get rid of waypoints, introduce mounts.

Mounts are way cooler than waypoints. Waypoints suck.

In this game, specifically this game, mounts would suck. Because at least a decent portion of the time I have to get to a specific place by a specific time or I’m going to miss an event.

So someone says to me, the giant is up. I can waypoint there and be there in less than a minute or I can ride across the zone and be there in two minutes. That difference of a minute or more would be the difference between reaching the event or missing it.

With the giant it’s no big deal but people hate missing temples in Orr. Or meta events. Or my friend needs help and says can you come. With waypoints I’m not usually that far away. Mounts would be a big step backwards for this game.

And I’m pro mount.

As long as they keep way points in.

Hamfast.8719:

Vayne.8563:

Profits at this point are based on store sales, not copies sold. Rentention for new players doesn’t figure greatly into that short term, only long term.

Makes you kinda scratch your head and wonder why they devastated the RP crowd, eh? You know… the guys who buy all the Town Clothes and extra storage (to hold their Town Clothes) and character slots, etc… Now they think they can placate them with one-size-fits-all Outfits.

Vayne.8563:

Don’t you remember all the threads about dead zones. How does that encourage people to stay?

All those threads made by how many people?

Vayne.8563:

50? 100? How many are posting over and over again (including me). We know not only from experience but from as an actual fact that forum users don’t represent the bulk of the player base, pretty much ever.

And now all those threads about dead zones have been replaced by threads about overcrowded events.

munkiman.3068:

It was simply too close to launch in China to be coincidence.

That must be it. They were simply making their new Chinese customers feel at home by cramming a huge population into one big zone.

Vayne.8563:

Anet’s communication is terrible, plain and simple. It’s by far the worst thing they do.

Agreed, 100%. Admittedly, many posters are/were childish in their behavior. But that’s why we have Moderators. They are the babysitters that keep the children under control and report to the game developers (our parents). But when the game developers stop communicating with us, it’s like our parents left us with the babysitter and never came home. Recriminations abound as to why they abandoned us, and it’s nothing but ugliness.

GOOD COMMUNICATION is the foundation of a strong relationship. That’s the first rule of a successful business, and a darned important rule of life. Such an easy thing to do, but without it the relationship slowly disappears. The silent treatment, combined with the current mad rush of marketing, indicates they are more interested in a short term relationship with us than a long term one. If someday they decide they want customers to remain customers, the parents need to come home and let their children know they still love them.

The devastated the RP community because the whatever tiny percentage of you who bought clothes was such a small percentage of the population that it wasn’t worth making clothes just for you guys or guess what…they would have kept making them. But they didn’t keep making them. That’s because the limits on town clothes that made them completely worthless to a large percentage of the player base.

Hey how about a hawaiian shirt that you can only wear in town and disappears as soon as you enter combat. Ummm, no thanks. There were complaint threads on the forums about how useless town clothes were. So RPers were happy, but it was a waste to most other people. I wouldn’t have bought the old town clothes under any circumstance. Now I’ve bought some of the head gear at least.

As for how Anet communicates, I agree it’s terrible. I’ve said so. I posted a thread (now deleted) about how they need someone who’s job is to pretty much talk to the forums.

munkiman.3068:

Vayne.8563:

munkiman.3068:

I guess that’s where we differ. It was simply too close to launch in China to be coincidence. I think the rush was that it had to do with changing the functionality of the system, that it was far to much work to figure out why scripts ran just fine on one server and constantly failed on another. It really seems this was the most business sense move to make. And that’s actually pretty sad, especially when i’ve seen members of the team, in-game express less than stellar comments about the it. It completely seems a necessary evil, one that impacted the community in some pretty big ways.

Before i forget, i remember watching the twitch stream when Colin announced what the megaserver meant and how it should work. It felt very forced, almost like it was just as much a hot-button topic for them as it turned out to be for us. IT felt like he was trying to sell something even they really didn’t think was good for the game. Obviously, this is entirely my perspective and i certainly had my doubts. But, at the time i said to myself, hey, this is anet, they know what’s what, lets give it a shot.

Anyway, thanks for the talk.

I think you’re seeing what you want to see. I didn’t think Colin felt any more forced than normal. And it makes no sense to take a game that’s working fine and make a mega server, even if they did it in China. It makes less than no sense, since no change would have had to be made. China has its own servers.

The only thing it has to do with China is that that’s where they tested and implemented the mega server first. But you can bet it was instituted in the west for a reason. People came to the game, saw no one in empty zones and left the game. They couldn’t sustain that. That’s my take on it.

I really wish that was the case, that i’m seeing what i want to… It would make it a lot easier to just up and quit the game entirely. But i can tell you i won’t be spending the money i once did on it, that’s for sure.

And I’ll spend more. That’s how it works. People who like the game will spend money and people who don’t won’t. Anet is risking that enough people will like the game to spend money on it.

I mean seriously what’s really the difference between a game with no direction and a game advancing on all fronts? Because to me, the direction is clearly the Living World. That’s the direction. I like the story instances. I like the new zone. I like how they’re introducing these things into the game. Even the Edge of the Mists, I like how that was introduced through story.

That’s direction. Saying the game has no direction when everyone is complaining that the living story is all that we’re getting is sorta weird to me.

munkiman.3068:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I don’t understand the ‘all dungeons are is stack and whatever’ comments. If someone doesn’t like to ‘stack and whatever’, why don’t they create a group for a dungeon, and ask for people that don’t want to ‘stack and whatever’? Seems like an answer to the problem to me. Maybe I’m odd, though.

I, also, don’t understand how people are so prescient about the Feature Patch. So far, they have only explained one of the 13 days of releases. Might be some interesting things coming.

There is always so much blackmail here….“if ArenaNet doesn’t do (insert demand here), I’m quitting!”. Sigh. The Devs must look like bobble-heads with all the head-shaking that must go on.

How about them releasing the entirety of the feature pack instead of draggin’ it out for a week and a half? How about they clarify what’s up with the commander tag? How about they fix the stacking in dungeons or the exploited paths? How about they focus on stuff they talk about instead of patch-working things in? And really, at this point, let’s put the living story to bed, yeah it’s gotten better, but really, 2 weeks of waiting for an hours worth of gameplay is hardly something to gawk at.

Actually if they put the living story to bed, I might lose interest in this game. That’s the problem for asking for stuff like that. I could care less about dungeons, but I don’t ask that Anet never make another dungeon.

The Living Story is the one of the things about this game that sets it apart from other games. Some people like it. If you don’t, don’t ask for them to stop making it. Just ask for them to add what you like.

As far as how they release info…I say they should do it in a way that most profits the game and company. Throwing it all out there means nothing to look forward to for three weeks. And if you think people aren’t looking forward to it…many are.

floude.5291:

The only thing that i can say about an expansion: Anet please don’t make one.
The game is far beyond mediocre, pvp is not competitive and no one really cares your competitive tournments (look at the twitch watch numbers). In turn you don’t really care for pvp (especially wvwvw) too. Even if i want to do some wvwvw i collide with imbalance barrier, and log of immediately (still didn’t changed OP abilities that everyone can see).
In Pve there is no real content but saving some collectibles which does not really make a change whether you build them or not. Dungeons has same repetitive stacking behaviour and world bosses are not so unique when compared the other games. Actually game is like a wardrobe simulator, nothing more.
The story and lore is especially pathetic in my opinion. It’s not a groundbreaking story and you can find a band of races which everyone has one class to represent, actually only difference of your band of heroes is the leader has no sense of leading and makes no real sense of epicness. Even the big bad dragon killed by a ship not the leader itself, nice difference from other games…
Just like I said in the beginning, don’t release an expansion because if you do, i won’t buy it and only thing that makes me stay in the not being have to pay you money for the game time. After the expansion i’ll lose my ability to stand in the same ground with other people and this is gonna make me uninstal the game and never come back. Especially a while there is a lot of good games to play around.

So the people who do like the game shouldn’t have an expansion because you don’t like the game? I’m not sure what kind of logic that is.

munkiman.3068:

I guess that’s where we differ. It was simply too close to launch in China to be coincidence. I think the rush was that it had to do with changing the functionality of the system, that it was far to much work to figure out why scripts ran just fine on one server and constantly failed on another. It really seems this was the most business sense move to make. And that’s actually pretty sad, especially when i’ve seen members of the team, in-game express less than stellar comments about the it. It completely seems a necessary evil, one that impacted the community in some pretty big ways.

Before i forget, i remember watching the twitch stream when Colin announced what the megaserver meant and how it should work. It felt very forced, almost like it was just as much a hot-button topic for them as it turned out to be for us. IT felt like he was trying to sell something even they really didn’t think was good for the game. Obviously, this is entirely my perspective and i certainly had my doubts. But, at the time i said to myself, hey, this is anet, they know what’s what, lets give it a shot.

Anyway, thanks for the talk.

I think you’re seeing what you want to see. I didn’t think Colin felt any more forced than normal. And it makes no sense to take a game that’s working fine and make a mega server, even if they did it in China. It makes less than no sense, since no change would have had to be made. China has its own servers.

The only thing it has to do with China is that that’s where they tested and implemented the mega server first. But you can bet it was instituted in the west for a reason. People came to the game, saw no one in empty zones and left the game. They couldn’t sustain that. That’s my take on it.

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I wasn’t trying to prove a point, i was just expressing, not only my concern, but my observations. I have no desire to convince you that megaservers are uber bad for the game, nor do i think or feel as though you’re trying to do the opposite.

I was simply pointing out the pattern i’ve noticed and the lack of focus anet has had. Its a well known (or at least popular opinion) that catering to every demographic, simply isn’t a good move. They need (i.e. read MUST) focus on the stuff that’s popular, stuff that brings in revenue.

The last feature pack had some really great stuff, stuff people have been clamoring for since launch and that’s great, however BAM megaserver, an unpolished, unprepared system, that was initially even said to roll out over the year. I guess they meant over the course of a tyrian year since it was less than a couple weeks. So it completely shadowed all the great stuff. And here we are again, there may be some fantastic stuff coming in this feature pack, but what’s the shadow now? 300g per color for the commander tag… They keep making these thing bitter sweet and with 0 communication on the whys.

That’s another thing, “we need to communicate better with our players” yet it’s been radio silence with this hot button topic since the last feature pack. Stellar work there.

One of the REALLY huge things i absolutely loved about GW was, Gaile Gray as a liaison for the dev team. Hot button topics would get addressed, she’d go to the dev team and ask question on behalf of the community, it felt at least intimate when we got answers on Guru.

Now, look what we have. A forum that’s about as functional as an 80’s BBS. CDI’s on occasion that only really take feedback and muck it about, when they clearly flip things upside down when they release. It’s at best kitten-poor communication. I actually love Chris’s enthusiasm and his attempt to take time out of his busy day to talk to players, but when it goes dead, people speculate and wonder WTH happened. So, in reality you can’t just do this half-kittened. Dedicate the time, all-the-time or don’t. No stab against Chris, but get a liason for cryin’ out loud or a few… Or simply just continue to randomly talk to the community.

I know for absolute fact that the forum community is small in comparison, but look at me, really, I’m a person that put a ton of time, energy and money into the game and it’s server community. Organized a now (IMO failing community) and i have every right to feel kittened on.

I used to get emotional about guild wars and GW2, i had a really big heart and felt genuine awe at the effort they took, now, i can’t even watch most of their twitch stuff without feeling like it’s all smoke and mirrors. It’s a sad state of affairs for me.

Anet’s communication is terrible, plain and simple. It’s by far the worst thing they do.

However, where you see lack of focus I see different things being provided by different teams. Sure it looks like a lack of focus. Because they have teams doing different stuff.

Why the rush with the megaserver. Do the math. The rushed it out for a reason. The only reason I can come up with is the new player retention rate being down without it.

Palador.2170:

ANet may say that GW2 is the most frequently updated MMO on the market, and perhaps that’s true. But when you compare the updates by the amount of content, it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s not close to measuring up.

In other words, GW2 updates are quantity over quality. Not that LS2 isn’t an improvement over LS1, but it still may not be providing what people are looking for.

Some people like the LS format, others want expansions. But it’s ANet with their jobs on the line, so I figure they’re going to do what they think works best. We’ll see where that goes.

But you’re assuming they’re not working on an expansion too. I’m not making that assumption.

munkiman.3068:

Vayne.8563:

Profits at this point are based on store sales, not copies sold. Rentention for new players doesn’t figure greatly into that short term, only long term.

I’m relatively sure that during the days when people were saying starting zones were dead, the retention was low. That’s how people think with MMOs. They come into the game, see no one and think wow this game is dead what’s the point.

You’re not going to see a huge advantage to this now, but as sales are run frequently, retention for those players because key to renewal. I suspect that we’re seeing numbers now that are coming out from the quarter before mega server retention actually kicked in. It’ll take months of catching up from people starting and not staying.

If you don’t stay, you can’t buy. Again, I can’t back this up with hard numbers, but I do know how the genre works. Don’t you remember all the threads about dead zones. How does that encourage people to stay?

I won’t even bother talking numbers, but i can tell you i have a pretty large sample size, many of which have played the game since release and many of which were pretty avid community members that bought gems. Most of them haven’t logged in in at least 5 days. I don’t absolutely tribute that to megaservers, but it’s not helping.

New players are also confused, i have a few friends that started playing and really didn’t get how servers work or why they are there at all, when they clearly don’t matter in the majority of the game. Retention has a lot to do with the social aspect of the game, which has been reduced. Guild recruiting is harder, since guild things like influence and participation across server still isn’t working with the megaserver. Not to mention WvW. That’s also a problem, players can’t find guilds to play with as easily and vice versa. The released it, but only half-way.

There is also, still, broken events, glitched out new content releases, massive RNG headaches, feeling like there is a lot of cash grabs on anets part and changes that don’t seem to make a lot of sense. There are far more reasons for less retention than just empty maps and even then i think that’s much less of a problem than you think it is.

In my mind anet’s making a lot of mistakes, all in the name of innovation, to the point that players feel like guinea pigs. Some of that stuff really lacks focus from a player perspective. When i hear things like it could take up to 6 months to build a map, i cringe. The thought that it could take them several years to come up with more than a couple new zones is cringe worthy. Especially coming from GW, where we got expanded maps and new content almost yearly. I personally think barren maps are the least of their worries and i still speculate the megaserver has far more to do with the technical/back-end issues than funneling more people on the maps.

They also have a large majority of people totally feeling casual about the game, while they clearly are now trying to focus on more hardcore stuff, like WvW and competitive PvP. It’s stuff like that, that leave players disillusioned about where this game is even going, it seems like most people want them to focus on the popular stuff and give up on PvP. With only one mode in the PvP scene, it feels like they are tossing good money at limited, underdeveloped stuff. Those things are far more relevant to lower retention than empty zones.

You’re entitled to your opinion but I don’t see a focus on WvW or PvP. I see an upgrade to those things that is long overdue. Anet is trying to cater to every demographic. That’s all.

Anyway it’s all irrelevent. Neither one of us can prove their point.

Nabuko Darayon.9645:

Vayne.8563:

Hi OP, while I’m generally pro mount and not against most of what you said, I do take an issue with open world housing, for a lot of reasons.

First of all the world is beautiful. It wont’ be as beautiful once people start building in it. If there are a limited number of houses, getting the one you want will be a major problem. With mega servers it’s even worse, since your house would have to be on every server. Remember, servers are created spontaneously as they’re needed So if you have a house, it has to be part of all servers. That means 25 zones, types a max of 150 players.

3750 players get houses. Less if there are no houses in Orr, which there shouldn’t be.

There’s no good way to introduce open world housing in a game with small server population caps.

Well I think they know people aren’t exactly happy with the current Megaservers and I think that they’re just a filler for a problem on which’s solution they’re working on so that’s why I added open housing. is it doable? Yes. How long would it take ANet to implement it, I guess a long time since it would involve expanding parts of the maps for house lots.
The other idea that comes to my mind as a replacement are open World Guild Halls on different areas. But for this to work I imagine we’d have a ranking GvG’s so that the Top guilds get priority over what land to purchase, or they get a new unlock in more prestigious zones (e.g. Top 3 guilds have a lot in the Rings of Fire). But this also has it’s pros and cons.
And with/if the release of Cantha/Elona you’d get a lot more options to move to. So if anything for real open-world housing/halling I wouldn’t expect anything sooner until most of the World of Tyria has been explored/added.

I think more people are happy with the mega server than unhappy with it. Either way, it’s not going back to how it was. That’s just wishful thinking on your part.

Plus 1. This is a great idea.