The system actually looks at your forum posts, and based on your positivity in the forums, it favors your chances.
Me…I get…nothing.
It might work the other way around. The less you get, the less positive your forum posts. lol
That option already exists, but for some reason ocassionally doesn’t show up. Not sure why.
Using the skill to summon elementals doesn’t hurt either. They do damage and sometimes take the aggro off of you.
Rather than that, I’d prefer it if there was a simple check that sees if the character you’re trying to learn the recipe on qualifies for the recipe, and it pops up a warning window if you’re not.
“You are not high enough level in Armorsmithing to use this recipe! Are you sure you want to learn it on this character?”
If the recipe matches the type of character you want to unlock it on, the name of the profession on the bottom is green. So if you’re on a character, about to unlock say an artificer recipe and the word artificer isn’t in green, you’re not on an artificer.
But if I remember correctly, it only means that you’re not CURRENTLY an artificer. You may still have leveled artificer to 400 and then switched to something else (I switch my crafts around all the time). So this is not the best indicator to check. Right? Or am I remembering this wrong?
You’re remembering right. Many people, because you get five character slots, put two crafts on each of four characters. If you switch back and forth on a single character, you’re probably in a minority.
I never think of that because I’ve not switched once, ever. lol
Always do the various daily achievements, always do events even if you’ve done them before, and gather everything. That’s a good start.
Events were meant to be repeated.
Rather than that, I’d prefer it if there was a simple check that sees if the character you’re trying to learn the recipe on qualifies for the recipe, and it pops up a warning window if you’re not.
“You are not high enough level in Armorsmithing to use this recipe! Are you sure you want to learn it on this character?”
If the recipe matches the type of character you want to unlock it on, the name of the profession on the bottom is green. So if you’re on a character, about to unlock say an artificer recipe and the word artificer isn’t in green, you’re not on an artificer.
You have to understand, that after years of seeing the potential of the MMO genre for someone of my playstyle, and never having seen a game cater to it, this game feels like a good fit for me. It still has some glaring flaws, but for my play style those flaws don’t particularly affect me personally.
The game needs more viable builds. The professions need to be brought more into line with each other as far as capability, and we need more skills, or at least more attributes to shake things up. Or more weapons. And I wouldn’t say no to an expansion or even mounts. Actually I quite like mounts.
But the actual game itself, not focused on raids or end game is what I’ve been waiting years to find in an MMO space. So naturally I"m happier with the game than other people.
There are things I’m unhappy with too, and I do talk about them or offer my support when others do.
But I’m convinced that if Anet communicated more, that we wouldn’t see quite the amount of negativity we do on the forums.
Except I’m not defending everything Anet does. In this thread, I’m actually saying Anet is doing the wrong thing by not communicating. In the thread on the trait system revamp, I said Anet got it wrong. They made the game less enjoyable. The idea is okay but the implementation is poor. I’ve always hated the RNG boxes in the cash shop.
But you know, I don’t hate a lot of things that other people hate and I may enjoy a lot of things others don’t enjoy.
What I don’t like is people using hyperbole to make things seem worse than they are (this game is dying), or people accusing people of lying with relatively little evidence, or personal attacks like many of the posts that respond to me. This forum can’t bully me, because I don’t care enough about the opinions of my detractors to take it personally. But you have to admit, attacking someone for liking stuff you don’t like doesn’t make you reasonable. If your arguments were stronger, maybe you wouldn’t have to get personal.
I understand, and you know what, a couple weeks ago I saw for the first time(there may have been a couple before who knows) that you were actually giving criticism of GW2 and I actually said to my guildies: “Holy crap Vayne is actually saying something negative about GW2 the world is going to end”, that’s how bad it has become. For the first time in months I actually started to read your posts on these forums, but most of it was much the same as before. TBH most of my rant wasn’t towards you Vayne and I should have taken some time to show that. Most of your posts are well thought out and make me think, “Well ya, I understand that”.
I may seem negative of GW2, but it is by far my favorite game(even more so than GW1), but I can’t stand the lengths people go to to defend many of the things that Anet does. Blind defense does a good game make.
But it’s not blind defense. If you think my defense is blind you have no clue about me at all. I’ll comment on what I think is unfair. Some people think not liking a game entitles them to say whatever they want. I don’t think that’s true.
Do you realize there are 25 threads on the front page and I’m posting in 5 of them. That’s 20 threads I’m not posting in some of which are negative. I’m posting when I see personal attacks, name calling, accusations of lying. They don’t belong on the forums. They should never be acceptable.
Hey look, it’s the anti-Vayne crowd in again to push a derailment. And then further to push the agenda of witch-hunting on people who actually like the game and are willing to admit it.
This, this here? This is why I really think ArenaNet will never find someone willing to do the job Vayne asked for, for the amount of money they’d be paid to do so. I know even if they tripled my current wages, I’d still not touch it with a standard ten foot pole.
No different from you being part of the Anti- ANYTHING RESEMBLING CRITICISM towards GW2, you, Vayne and a half dozen other individuals destroy threads left and right by picking a single piece of information out of someones post and derailing a thread by bringing it up OVER AND OVER.
I know Vayne isn’t an Anet employee, and the ones who actually believe he is are way to cynical, but to not be able to see how insane some of you defend everything Anet does is sad.
Except I’m not defending everything Anet does. In this thread, I’m actually saying Anet is doing the wrong thing by not communicating. In the thread on the trait system revamp, I said Anet got it wrong. They made the game less enjoyable. The idea is okay but the implementation is poor. I’ve always hated the RNG boxes in the cash shop.
But you know, I don’t hate a lot of things that other people hate and I may enjoy a lot of things others don’t enjoy.
What I don’t like is people using hyperbole to make things seem worse than they are (this game is dying), or people accusing people of lying with relatively little evidence, or personal attacks like many of the posts that respond to me. This forum can’t bully me, because I don’t care enough about the opinions of my detractors to take it personally. But you have to admit, attacking someone for liking stuff you don’t like doesn’t make you reasonable. If your arguments were stronger, maybe you wouldn’t have to get personal.
No, I really just don’t like bullying or anything that looks like it. I don’t like personal attacks on people trying to do a job. I don’t like people being accused of stuff with little or no evidence.
I’ve had too much of it in my own life. Seeing people accused who won’t even really be able to defend themselves is just wrong. I wish more people saw it.
Report abusive people. If people start doing it, people will get temporary bans and think twice before doing it the next time.
I make friends on megaservers too. I talk to people, I add them to my friend’s list. If I see them again I talk to them again. I’ve made friends. It takes some effort, but it always did.
This.
Everyone is well aware of how MegaServer SHOULD group players. If you run into someone you want to play with again, add them to friends list….how hard is this? If you don’t have time to add them, how much did you really want to see them again?
Not every person should be added to friends list though. The way i see it, the Friends list, is for people that i’ve met in other games or for people i’ve formed a more closer bond with. Then there’s the occasional familiar face you see in chat and near the banks, crafters, mystic forge, etc., that would always socialize in /say and /map, and you would get to know them better, and do events with them from time to time, but never wanted to add them to friends list.
It’s sort of like Facebook. People have specific groups for family and friends, and then there’s Friends of Friends, etc.
The friends list is to keep track of in game friends. That’s it. If you’ve superimposed some other definition of it, that’s your own doing.
I haven’t superimposed anything. Oddly enough, the UI shows it as Contacts and LFG, yet the tab shows Friends. So which is it? A contact or a friend? Because a friend is different from a colleague, a co-worker, a dependent, a contact, etc. As someone mentioned above, a revamp of the Contacts list would be nice, with the ability to classify people into lists. It really wouldn’t have been needed though if server communities were more stable, instead of fluctuating with every map change.
Friends lists in games are friends in that game. Not friends in real life. Presumably, if someone is your friend in real life, you wouldn’t really need to list them in Guild Wars 2. Because you’d have them on maybe facebook or your email program. The idea of a friends game in a game is for having in game friends.
You’re trying to apply English usage of a word into a game. It doesn’t really work that way. It’s to keep track of people you want to play with.
You should by Guild Wars 1 and try to map that…just saying.
No, I don’t think that Anet needs to make changes to the exploration achievements, but if they did, and it was up to me, I’d tell them to remove all exploration markers from the map and make people find them the old fashioned way.
Vayne.. you are in every single Forum Sub section.
do you just search through forums everyday?
i have a feelign you are some undercover ANET staff member trying to make this game sound amazing.. when we are all trying to discuss its faults.
So.many.people. have said this to him. I actually believe it more after reading through this thread and how he is jumping through hoops to try and disprove what others are saying. I’d say half this thread is of him finding 2 words in someone paragraph and saying “This isn’t true, so nothing in the rest of what you said is true”, or “They didn’t mean this, so you can’t take it as a fact”.
Or it could be that I’ve seen in my life too many people judging other people on completely insufficient evidence who are completely 100% totally wrong. Or hadn’t you considered that possibility.
I know this is the internet generation and everyone has an opinion on anything. However, saying anything you want about anybody publicly was considered…I don’t know…rude. Calling someone a liar meant something in my day. Calling them a liar because they made a change to a game you didn’t like wouldn’t have flown.
People, anonymously, sit in their chairs and sling mud. You don’t have to be a Anet employee to find it distasteful, or even more, find it simply wrong.
If I were an Anet employee why would I be trashing the new trait system, or even saying Anet needs to talk more here? Maybe you’re doing here what others in this thread are doing to Anet employees.
Jumping to completely unwarranted conclusions without a shred of evidence.
Actually I disagree completely because it was a question asked in an interview without preparation. There’s a difference between couching stuff in dipolmatic terms and saying screw you we changed it. No company would do that. What they did say was likely true.
I don’t know how many cons you’ve been to, but they’re very busy and you don’t get a lot of sleep. I’ve been on panels as guests at cons and you just perform. Sometimes well, sometimes not as well. This wasn’t some prepared statement. It was someone put on the spot and spouting off an answer, without too much forethought.
I’m not drawing any evidence from the statements at this point.
I’m drawing my conclusions from what was put into the game. At launch – simple systems for attaining max stat gear. After launch – complex, clumsy systems for attaining grind-based gear that took a year to be implemented in their entirety.
The statements made before launch could be erased from history and I would still be asking what is UP with that change in direction. I would still be calling it a bait and switch. And the clumsiness of the post-FOTM communication on the subject would remain.
For me the actions speak far louder. For you, you’re willing to write excuses into interviews regardless of the fact that what was said in the interview turned out precisely accurate on launch day.
No, you miss my point. No one has said they haven’t changed direction. People came into this thread and said Anet lied and did something bad. You’re saying they’ve been disingenuous. Based on a single interview for which they likely how no preparation.
If people wouldn’t say they lied and talked about how bad Anet’s behavior was on this point, there wouldn’t even be a conversation.
Vayne.. you are in every single Forum Sub section.
do you just search through forums everyday?
i have a feelign you are some undercover ANET staff member trying to make this game sound amazing.. when we are all trying to discuss its faults.
I’m in what, four threads, maybe five? How silly.
Actually I disagree completely because it was a question asked in an interview without preparation. There’s a difference between couching stuff in dipolmatic terms and saying screw you we changed it. No company would do that. What they did say was likely true.
I don’t know how many cons you’ve been to, but they’re very busy and you don’t get a lot of sleep. I’ve been on panels as guests at cons and you just perform. Sometimes well, sometimes not as well. This wasn’t some prepared statement. It was someone put on the spot and spouting off an answer, without too much forethought.
I’m not drawing any evidence from the statements at this point.
I’m drawing my conclusions from what was put into the game. At launch – simple systems for attaining max stat gear. After launch – complex, clumsy systems for attaining grind-based gear that took a year to be implemented in their entirety.
The statements made before launch could be erased from history and I would still be asking what is UP with that change in direction. I would still be calling it a bait and switch. And the clumsiness of the post-FOTM communication on the subject would remain.
For me the actions speak far louder. For you, you’re willing to write excuses into interviews regardless of the fact that what was said in the interview turned out precisely accurate on launch day.
No, you miss my point. No one has said they haven’t changed direction. People came into this thread and said Anet lied and did something bad. You’re saying they’ve been disingenuous. Based on a single interview for which they likely how no preparation.
If people wouldn’t say they lied and talked about how bad Anet’s behavior was on this point, there wouldn’t even be a conversation.
I make friends on megaservers too. I talk to people, I add them to my friend’s list. If I see them again I talk to them again. I’ve made friends. It takes some effort, but it always did.
This.
Everyone is well aware of how MegaServer SHOULD group players. If you run into someone you want to play with again, add them to friends list….how hard is this? If you don’t have time to add them, how much did you really want to see them again?
Not every person should be added to friends list though. The way i see it, the Friends list, is for people that i’ve met in other games or for people i’ve formed a more closer bond with. Then there’s the occasional familiar face you see in chat and near the banks, crafters, mystic forge, etc., that would always socialize in /say and /map, and you would get to know them better, and do events with them from time to time, but never wanted to add them to friends list.
It’s sort of like Facebook. People have specific groups for family and friends, and then there’s Friends of Friends, etc.
The friends list is to keep track of in game friends. That’s it. If you’ve superimposed some other definition of it, that’s your own doing.
There are a few shortcomings in your post, however.
First and foremost, no one said they were going to introduce the new tier of gear as they ended up introducing it. They only said they’d always planned another tier of gear. That’s a big difference.
I’m not claiming they didn’t change direction. I’ve always said they did. But that doesn’t mean they lied when they said they always intended a tier of gear above exotics.
But saying that they wouldn’t have had just one skin for it is the real error in the thought process. Look at racial armors, which are NOT exotics. The idea has always been to unlock the skins and get people to use transmutation stones.
I still say the number of methods and skins in the exotic gear tier is too great to have been anything but intended to be the final goal – it’s a sheer matter of scale. You dig up a 300 meter square building with gold decor and walls 2 meters thick, it belonged to royalty or aristocracy, QED. It ain’t no villager’s shanty house.
What’s most objectionable about it to me is what others in this thread have mentioned – not the mere fact of the direction change, but the clumsy and disingenuous way it was communicated.
I think perhaps ‘disingenuous’ is a better word for it than lying. Lying is something that depends on technicalities in language. Disingenuous, meanwhile, meaning they didn’t adhere to the spirit of the words. I think it’s fairly obvious they wheedled. And played definition games. Basically they tried a very immature thing – a kid with his hand in the cookie jar, twisting on his heels, trying to explain how he didn’t INTEND to eat the cookie just this moment, therefore it’s okay for him to have it in his possession until he’s permitted to eat it. That sort of deal.
The communication around the whole subject was clumsy and came out feeling false on multiple levels even if arguably within the definitions of previous statements. And it’s not like we haven’t seen companies skewer themselves like this before: making obviously false statements to sell goods, getting caught in it, then being utterly and humanly AWFUL at fixing it, chiefly by failing to admit publicly to error.
Actually I disagree completely because it was a question asked in an interview without preparation. There’s a difference between couching stuff in dipolmatic terms and saying screw you we changed it. No company would do that. What they did say was likely true.
I don’t know how many cons you’ve been to, but they’re very busy and you don’t get a lot of sleep. I’ve been on panels as guests at cons and you just perform. Sometimes well, sometimes not as well. This wasn’t some prepared statement. It was someone put on the spot and spouting off an answer, without too much forethought.
You won’t get it, and Anet is smart not to give it to you.
This entire thread is rediculous – half of it is bandying definitions in attempt for each ‘side’ of the argument to squirm out of accusations.
Let’s look at the facts.. pre launch they touted a more casual anti-grind design and cosmetic progression. At launch they had this. Two months after launch they tossed the apparent intention aside to put in an obviously hastily conceived gear-grind for max stats. They attempted to PR it into acceptance.
Why do I say obviously hastily conceived?
- Because they just finished this new gear tier more than a year after launch.
- The first iteration of it was so bad that it caused enormous uproar
- The FOTM level progression it was linked to was extremely unfriendly when it was first released, apparently by lack of forethought
- They cannibalized the ‘worth’ of the cosmetic system that was in place at launch – there so many nice, intuitive ways to achieve cool looks in exotic gear that are now relatively worthless.
The game at launch had systems in place that were obviously intended to be ‘the end game’ – exotic gear scattered all over the freaking place, LOTS of skins. I can not believe it was all intended from the beginning to all be a ‘stepping stone’ to a gear tier with one single look.
In addition, the ways to get that exotic gear were CLEAN. They were simple, easy to understand systems – karma, dungeon tokens, pvp tokens. What’s been put into place since except a hodgepodge of complicated methods to get ascended gear that’s obviously reaching deep into the barrel? You have to track the crap you have to accumulate on a spreadsheet to understand where you are in the process!
That’s why I think it was a hasty retreat to a different course and not the original intention: the sheer clumsiness of the execution.
Let’s not fudge words. Let’s not argue over definitions between god danged stupid stuff like the difference between ‘bis’ and ‘best statistical’. When an engineer announces his plans to put the wings on the plane in a certain orientation – and after it’s gone through a test flight, takes them off and puts them on backwards with duct tape – there’s obviously been a change of plans. Any argument to the contrary is sheer obfuscation.
There are a few shortcomings in your post, however.
First and foremost, no one said they were going to introduce the new tier of gear as they ended up introducing it. They only said they’d always planned another tier of gear. That’s a big difference.
I’m not claiming they didn’t change direction. I’ve always said they did. But that doesn’t mean they lied when they said they always intended a tier of gear above exotics.
But saying that they wouldn’t have had just one skin for it is the real error in the thought process. Look at racial armors, which are NOT exotics. The idea has always been to unlock the skins and get people to use transmutation stones.
You can argue about how many people left , play ,will be playing but anyway I still think that LS updates doesnt help gw becasue right now they are completly useless . 95% of my guild mates just speedrun through it and never come back .I think most people do that so I have no idea why Anet spends almost all their resources on developing it and completly abandon other game aspects where people play everyday . Really community which plays this game everyday can generate much bigger income then randoms who log in once per 2 weeks . The worst thing is that there is completly no information from devs side . Is it so difficult to write "hey community we are working on build templates , you can expect them in next month cya " anything !!!
But they said htey’re working on build templates.
The best we can really see about that is the NCsoft quarterly reports. Guild Wars 2 seems to be doing fine on that front and that was before China launched. Now I don’t know that China will actually show up on the report, it was suggested elsewhere that it may have another category.
In any event, I think the game is doing fine. I wonder what would happen if Anet actually announced an expansion. lol
@Persica
I think you underestimate how much time and energy those threads take. It would be easy to do if Anet wanted to just ignore them, but to really digest and think about what’s being said requires some degree of time and focus.
They take a break because they’re human and need a break. It’s why we all take breaks.
Based on the amount of players that purchased the game.
Everyone that has played since release knows that 3-5 months after release, huge amounts of people stopped playing because there was nothing to do. Even big guilds barely had any people online.
..
The playerbase has stabilized ofcource, so any numbers you get now won’t show a big decline of players, but yeah a very significant part of the playerbase stopped 3-5 months after release.So you’re saying since launch people have left? Well yeah. So what? This is a meaningless assertion.
Games often have a huge push at launch and lose players. That’s called NORMAL. Most games don’t retain their player base for 2 years.
What happens is people play a game, those who like it stay, those who don’t leave. And since people come back and new people come on, the population stays roughly stable, which is pretty much how I see the Guild Wars 2 population. People are expected to leave new games.
The “lost players” include lots of core mmo players, and most GW1 players.
GW2 works fine for the players that stayed after 2 years, but it could have done a much better job at keeping other kinds of players.
What evidence do you have that keeping those other kinds of players would have kept people like me though. Or that more people would be playing after 2 years?
As for losing most Guild Wars 1 players a whole lot of people in my Guild played Guild Wars 1 and still play. And I see GWAMM titles quite frequently.
I do agree a lot of Guild Wars 1 PvPers probably have left. But I’ve always felt that, despite it’s popularity, there are still far more PvE players in Guild Wars 1. The focus of the development would support that.
I wouldn’t mind if the cities were taken off the megaserver.
The thing is I’ve been tracking Guild Wars 2 on Raptr for a long time and it seems relatively stable. Which is a good thing.
This game has found it’s core playerbase and I don’t think most of us are leaving anytime soon. And I do think that it’s enough people to sustain the game indefinitely.
I make friends on megaservers too. I talk to people, I add them to my friend’s list. If I see them again I talk to them again. I’ve made friends. It takes some effort, but it always did.
So if players are abusive, they should be permabanned by the forums. I get angry at stuff too, but I wouldn’t abuse a developer or even another forum members. The most you could say is that if someone annoys me I might get snarky…for which I get infracted.
Real abuse should be punishable by a ban, and then the rest of us could have our communication.
@Danikat
You just can’t go by forums though. Games like ESO once they lose someone it’s harder to get them back, because it means them paying more money. People over all were disillusioned with the generic gameplay. It wasn’t enough like a good MMO or a good Elder Scrolls game to hold either group.
Just as if you go to these forums it doesn’t really give an accurate picture of how Guild Wars 2 is doing, which is better that most MMOs 2 years on.
You get points! Who knew? Maybe I should be doing that.
Only if you keep it on while playing whatever games you play. No sense in skewing results intentionally. I just find trends interesting in general.
Wanna know something funny? Its sad seeing FF14 and wildstar top GW2, especially the former. That game has been bleeding surscribers since launch.
I cannot take these data w/o a grain a salt since it does not show total player base, but if games like FF14 and heck even D3 have a larger player games like GW2….well kitten.
FF14 had a free weekend, which added to it’s numbers for this month. It’s up 5 spots. You need to read articles instead of just look at numbers.
Still FF14 is the, ready for this, 14th game in a popular series. There are long time die hard FF fans out there, who will play that game because they love that world. FF 14 has been in the top 20 for a long time. That makes it a successful game. Guild Wars 2 is right there with it.
Based on the amount of players that purchased the game.
Everyone that has played since release knows that 3-5 months after release, huge amounts of people stopped playing because there was nothing to do. Even big guilds barely had any people online.
..
The playerbase has stabilized ofcource, so any numbers you get now won’t show a big decline of players, but yeah a very significant part of the playerbase stopped 3-5 months after release.
So you’re saying since launch people have left? Well yeah. So what? This is a meaningless assertion.
Games often have a huge push at launch and lose players. That’s called NORMAL. Most games don’t retain their player base for 2 years.
What happens is people play a game, those who like it stay, those who don’t leave. And since people come back and new people come on, the population stays roughly stable, which is pretty much how I see the Guild Wars 2 population. People are expected to leave new games.
So the Raptr July rankings just came out. For those who don’t know Raptr is a gaming platform that some people use to play games and talk to people playing games at the same time, sort of like being on Steam. Since Guild Wars 2 isn’t on steam, you’re not going to see much use there, Steam works best for Steam games, but every month Raptr publishes not only a chart of their 20 most played games, but what percentage of over all time is spent playing that game by Raptr members. Guild Wars 2 seems to be holding steady. Well it went up a spot, but that’s no big deal. Here’s the article.
http://sknr.net/2014/08/11/raptrs-most-played-pc-games-of-july-2014/
Of particular note: Wildstar is not only down 7 spots, but lost 40% Playtime since launch. I strongly suspecdt Wildstar isn’t going to have major impact on Guild Wars 2. Also ESO dropped out of the top 20 this month, down to 26, and though Final Fantasy has moved up, according to the game notes a lot of this has to do with a free login weekend.
Raptr numbers only show trends and are indicative of pretty much nothing else. But it does show that two years after launch, Guild Wars 2 remains in the top 20 games played in Raptr by player hours (I’m not on Raptr btw, so I don’t figure into that lol), and that it’s remained relatively steady over time.
Sony went against the trend…which makes it a trend. So one game does something different and suddenly this game is a problem..particularly when it’s doing what most games are doing?
And you know, I think Anet should buck the trend too, but it’s too early to see where that trend will end up leading Sony.
Mind you I like what they’re doing with Landmark, part of why I made this thread.
Nobody has any numbers of the playerbase, but 70% gone does seem a good estimate.
Based on what? How can anyone estimate something like this? If you want to see numbers of players on anything, Guild Wars 2 has been hovering at the same place in the Raptr Top 20 for a relatively long time. The only MMORPGs that have more players than Guild Wars 2 for July of 2014 are World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy and Wildstar, which launched just last month. And Wildstar had a huge dropoff down 7 slots since launch month.
Guild Wars 2 stays on the top ten this month even though ESO, which is much newer, fell to #26 on Raptrs most played games.
So I’m not sure what people are basing this mass exodus on.
Soon this game will be in graveyard too . Around 70% of ppl already left this game and this trend still peaks down , reason always is the same "there is nothing to do " . People only log in once per 2 weeks to click through wall of text , clear all mobs in few minutes,click through wall of text , log out . Pve in this game has the most pathetic difficult level I have ever seen in any mmo . Braindead monkey can complete story and ls without any problems !!!just spamming all skills !!!!! dungs are the same running from one corner to another one , there is no harcore dung , only skipping mobs is more difficult on some like arah . I would preffer to dont get any LS for month but then recieve finally pvp patch , www patch ,getting rid of zerker meta from pve, better mob ai, no corner stacking . Ls doesnt help this game , it need patches to balance,fix parts which players use everyday
Did you know that 98.2 percent of all people make up statistics on the spot to try to support their arguments? Just saying.
I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of the situation.
Would you rather be a half-baked shop that sells everything but nothing really good, or would you rather cater to one small niche demographic better than everyone else. I’m thinking that’s the choice here.
Anet’s not going to out raid raiding games, and no amount of content they can reasonably provide will keep hard core people interested long term. I really believe that.
What they do have is something no one else has, or at least something I’ve not been able to find anywhere else. They need to improve that experience, because that’s the one that differentiates them from the herd.
At the end of the day, this is just back seat developing by the both of us. I’m pretty sure Anet has a plan. They simply haven’t revealed it to us.
just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one. The fractal reset is an example, its clear right now, that reseting people to 30 served very little purpose, and they will still have the same problems they were trying to solve (but did not) next time they want to add content/levels etc to fractals.
no one always has the right plan, one should not assume that people will always do everything right, just because they are paid to.
You’re 100% right. There’s absolutely no guarantee Anet has a good plan. However, I think it’s likely they have access to data you and I don’t. In fact, I’m 100% sure of that fact.
So who’s more likely to come up with a better plan? You? Me? Or Anet?
At this point, id say me (in concert with anet) but I may be biased
It’s very easy to say you can do stuff, without having to prove it. I’ve seen many people say they could write a book better than so and so, until I saw the book. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t.
But I wouldn’t bet money on it either way.
just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one.
In the end they play just try & error .. to see what works and what not.
Personally i have no problem with that .. there is not really much else you can do
if you don’t want just to copy again and again the same that has worked for years.Especially if you know that the same old stuff doesn’t work that good anymore.
Not really saying they should recreate raids, but the should develop the depth of high level/long term player content, imo
Which happens to be different for everyone. Most of the long term play options that exist in other MMOs didn’t interest me at all.
Every one may have different needs but they still have needs. In order to retain a large % of players and keep new players around longer, every game most solve this issue.
LS has its moments and has probably improved, but it doesn’t create great replayability or a desired goal for many players, it does give a reason to log in once a week, but is that enough for high retainment?
Like I said raids may not be anets answer to the question, but I wouldn’t say they have solved the problem
LS doesn’t give players who enjoy the game a reason to log in once a week. Not if you want the back piece. Not if you want insect weapons. Not if you want all the achievements.
The issue is, there is plenty to log in for that would take a week. I spent a week trying to get to tier 5 whenever I could, just because I enjoyed the challenge of it. By the second week, I’m actually happy to get back to other stuff I was enjoying that I wasn’t doing because I was busy in Dry Top.
Dry Top is a new zone coming out a bit at a time. So if in two or three months we have a new zone, or we got it at the end of that time and had it all at once, how it is really different. It’s the same new zone.
The living story isn’t just the instances. It’s giving you an opportunity to do other things if you like those things. You obviously don’t. Plenty of people do. Enough to keep the game going?
I think so. But I guess we’ll see.
just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one.
In the end they play just try & error .. to see what works and what not.
Personally i have no problem with that .. there is not really much else you can do
if you don’t want just to copy again and again the same that has worked for years.Especially if you know that the same old stuff doesn’t work that good anymore.
Not really saying they should recreate raids, but the should develop the depth of high level/long term player content, imo
Which happens to be different for everyone. Most of the long term play options that exist in other MMOs didn’t interest me at all.
So why if you move back and forth really fast, can you avoid most projectiles?
@phys
And what percentage of alienated people wouldn’t return anyway? I think it’s likely pretty high. Rift alienated me and I never looked back.
Exactly, which is why i think its a bad idea to simply go by what your current majority says when you are talking about polarizing/alienating descions. Its in your best interest to try to appease both sides and come up with mutually beneficial solutions, or at the least solutions that dont directly alienate groups of your customers.
Its not black and white, you cant ALWAYS please everyone, but you should attempt to please many types of people, and not simply distill your product, but also to expand its appeal.
Either that, or you just make a product you think is awesome and ignore everyone, and take your chances, appealing to no one directly, but that method does have real risks
The problem is, many of those people are already gone. At this point many of those people are not going to come back. It’s like closing the barn door after the horse is gone.
I think a lot of the people who were going to leave have already left which leaves a population of relatively like minded people to protect…including those who have come back.
I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of the situation.
Would you rather be a half-baked shop that sells everything but nothing really good, or would you rather cater to one small niche demographic better than everyone else. I’m thinking that’s the choice here.
Anet’s not going to out raid raiding games, and no amount of content they can reasonably provide will keep hard core people interested long term. I really believe that.
What they do have is something no one else has, or at least something I’ve not been able to find anywhere else. They need to improve that experience, because that’s the one that differentiates them from the herd.
At the end of the day, this is just back seat developing by the both of us. I’m pretty sure Anet has a plan. They simply haven’t revealed it to us.
just because anet has a plan, doesnt mean it is always a good one. The fractal reset is an example, its clear right now, that reseting people to 30 served very little purpose, and they will still have the same problems they were trying to solve (but did not) next time they want to add content/levels etc to fractals.
no one always has the right plan, one should not assume that people will always do everything right, just because they are paid to.
You’re 100% right. There’s absolutely no guarantee Anet has a good plan. However, I think it’s likely they have access to data you and I don’t. In fact, I’m 100% sure of that fact.
So who’s more likely to come up with a better plan? You? Me? Or Anet?
@phys
And what percentage of alienated people wouldn’t return anyway? I think it’s likely pretty high. Rift alienated me and I never looked back.
Well, no one is going to ever be able to prove who the majority is. You believe as you will, I believe as I will. I’m not sure how continuing this conversation will profit the thread.
Edit: Yes I certain do thank a company that makes my playing experience better. Why wouldn’t I?
Im a bit confused. How is the number of people playing from parts of Asia and through the Oceanic countries the majority anyway? The majority would play close to the server locations. Thats how servers would be placed ideally.
If players of your particular time-zone didnt have a valid server option to choose (thus setting a prime time of its own), thats bad, and should have been a point of concern right at release. If nothing else, then players could have nominated a specific server unofficially for their timezone (or playing style intentions, exactly as Roleplayers did with Piken Square and Tarnished Coast). If there was a valid option and you chose wrong, you still had the option to guest or transfer. At the case of a transfer, that was that.
Now if you dont like the shard you have been placed into, your only option is force joining. Each and every single time you enter a new map.
Or log out. Thats an option too i guess.
I’m saying the people who want to see more people are the majority. The people who want to scale up events. And the people who were on “dead” servers. And the people who work nights. And the people who are over seas. It’s not just people overseas. You need to read all the posts, not the ones you want.
Plenty of people play MMOs just to see other people. The percentage of people who play MMOs to not see people isn’t really all that high, I think. Oh there are some.
And if you’re not doing the top big quests, you don’t have that crowding anyway. You can go do anything and find people now. Before to see people you had to go to the places where people were.
This game, the entire dynamic event system, was really designed with people in mind. It wasn’t designed to have one person running around a zone solo. The entire game falls apart that way. You get the boring leveling complaints. Having people around, for a lot of people, make it interesting. Even some people who solo alot, like to see people.
I believe the people who want to be off on their own somewhere are probably a minority. The Oceanics was a comment on freedom. Two different ideas going on here.
Except for the freedom of people who live in like, I don’t know, Oceanic countries to find other people to play with in the open world at the hours they play. Because before the April 15th patch, I stopped playing my prime time altogether, because there was no reason to play. Why wander the zones alone? Didn’t matter what server you were on splitting up everyone made it a poor MMO to play…certainly for me. I don’t play MMOs to solo.
And while there were occasionally people to be seen even though I don’t play MMOs to occasionally see people. It’s all well and good if you live in the US, but not so good for Australia, New Zealand anyone who plays from Asia.
We have more freedom now. So do people in the US who work weird hours or are awake weird hours.
People on different servers used to have to guest to get stuff done and complained about it. What about their freedom?
Freedom is a funny word. Everyone assumes because changes were made that takes away their choices, it means that everyone has less freedom. Well some of us have more freedom.
what your are essentially saying is other peoples freedoms, are less important than your enjoyment.
Your freedom wasnt being taken away, your enjoyment was.Thats the distinction. Now, i am not against you getting your enjoyment, but they probably needed a more complex system in place in order to not have your enjoyment and another players freedom/dynamic world/etc become opposing forces.
Actually no. If you wanted to find people to do specific stuff you had to guest. And guesting at certain hours made no difference.
And I’m not saying that my enjoyment is more important than anyone else’s. I truly believe more people were aided by the mega server than hurt by it. There are plenty of things in this game that don’t really match my play style, but I know I have my own play style and I don’t expect anything just for me.
However, if the majority benefits even if some lose some freedom, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think the majority has benefited in this case. I think the people complaining are by far a minority, at least in the US. Again I won’t talk for Europe.
i have said this in other threads, but constantly appealing to the majority is a dangerous strategy, over time it creates more losses. Its a mathematical reduction, even when it is a high %
say you start with 1000 people
i do something that alienates 40% for the good of the 60% i now have 600 customersfor my next change i do something that alienates 25% and appeals to 75% i now have 450 customers
i do something which alienates 20% of my customer base for the good of 80%, i now have 360 customers.
and this is how you come up losing. you need to appeal to different markets, and look beyond your current playerbase, or maximize and dont drop your playerbase. And you cant do that by continously only looking at the majority.
you would lose less people from your initial pool of people interested by appealing to them all somewhat, than you lose by appealing to the majority over time.
You have said it. I still don’t agree. There’s a flaw in your math. You’re assuming everyone is leaving and no one is returning or starting to play. That’s a kittenumption.
I’ve seen a lot of people coming back to the game since the Living Story Season 2. The ones in my guild are certainly enjoying it and looking forward to the next chapter. But they don’t appear anywhere your equation.
The people who left, briefly, to play ESO or maybe try Wildstar, some of those people are coming back too. That’s the thing. Without a subscription fee, the barrier to trying the game again is very small. And some people come back and are happy and like it. And some leave again, because that’s what they do.
You can’t worry about pleasing every demographic, or you’ll end up pleasing no one.
What you’re saying here is very easy to say. However you don’t know how big the majority is and neither do I.
However, there are some demographics that if you cater to them you will ruin the game for your main demographic. Let’s say they added open world PvP. You’d certainly lose me as a player. I have no interest in it. Moreso the type of people attracted to that playstyle are people I’m not particularly interested in hanging out with generally. It would take the fun casual aspect of the game away and replace it with something very different.
Moreover there’s not one group of people asking for stuff. There are many. Working on doing something for each of those groups will take away what you can do for you main group. If Anet priorities PvP, WvW and dungeons and raids, they’d have to put a lot of time/energy, money and man hours into it.
And I believe most of those things don’t really help the core player base. If that is the case (and that’s if, I don’t really know, but I assume Anet does), then taking that amount of resources away from the main thrust of development would be more harmful to the game than helpful.
It doesn’t mean those parts of the game shouldn’t get any attention but it does mean that the content coming out for those times would take longer. We know for example that a new PvP game type is currently being worked on. But it’s going to take longer than it would to come out with the PvE stuff, because, in theory anyway, less people are interested in it.
Even if it’s the case that the people interested in those others things have left, putting it in won’t necessarily bring those people back. You have to work toward your strength to keep the primary population.
And a majority in this case doesn’t have to be 51%. It just means more people are playing this than anything else. Let’s say 45% of people are playing open world PvE/living story, but the other 55% are divded between RPing, playing the auction house, PvPing, WvWing, running dungeons, and minigames. each of those groups might encompass 15% of the player base.
Making stuff for everyone in enough quantity to please everyone is very easy to say. It’s not so easy to pull off, however.
its not black and white, you wont please everyone, but you can please many. There are obviously somethings that are mutually exclusive, or wont work, but the majority of things arent exclusive, and the ability to design solutions that work on many levels is the name of the game.
As far as everything being in competition for the same resources, (manhours of dev time) Streamline your pipelines, and come up with ways to better montetize the things that bring value to the game.
This is not easy, but this is the goal that an mmo/business of this type should be aiming for, even if they fall short. (as long as they dont fall short in money)
My feeling/educated guess based on various things is that playerbase is contracting. This is normal, but by constantly putting resources mostly to people who are currently satisfied you essentially guarantee to have yourself a shrinking market, until the point where you have distilled your highly specialized product so that no person who likes that flavor can resist it. However, thats a much smaller number of people than you could have reached.
Analogy inc:
becoming an ultimate master of angel cake guarantees you that the angel cake conessieurs wont be able to ignore your shop. However you will slowly lose everyone else, because even the people who like angel cake a lot will get bored of it and show up at your shop less often eventually.You d probably make more money making some really good angel cake, and a lot of other cakes decently, than being an angel cake master, unless angel cake-o-files are willing to pay enough for you to ignore all the customers you gave up.
I’m not sure I agree with your assessment of the situation.
Would you rather be a half-baked shop that sells everything but nothing really good, or would you rather cater to one small niche demographic better than everyone else. I’m thinking that’s the choice here.
Anet’s not going to out raid raiding games, and no amount of content they can reasonably provide will keep hard core people interested long term. I really believe that.
What they do have is something no one else has, or at least something I’ve not been able to find anywhere else. They need to improve that experience, because that’s the one that differentiates them from the herd.
At the end of the day, this is just back seat developing by the both of us. I’m pretty sure Anet has a plan. They simply haven’t revealed it to us.
Except for the freedom of people who live in like, I don’t know, Oceanic countries to find other people to play with in the open world at the hours they play. Because before the April 15th patch, I stopped playing my prime time altogether, because there was no reason to play. Why wander the zones alone? Didn’t matter what server you were on splitting up everyone made it a poor MMO to play…certainly for me. I don’t play MMOs to solo.
And while there were occasionally people to be seen even though I don’t play MMOs to occasionally see people. It’s all well and good if you live in the US, but not so good for Australia, New Zealand anyone who plays from Asia.
We have more freedom now. So do people in the US who work weird hours or are awake weird hours.
People on different servers used to have to guest to get stuff done and complained about it. What about their freedom?
Freedom is a funny word. Everyone assumes because changes were made that takes away their choices, it means that everyone has less freedom. Well some of us have more freedom.
what your are essentially saying is other peoples freedoms, are less important than your enjoyment.
Your freedom wasnt being taken away, your enjoyment was.Thats the distinction. Now, i am not against you getting your enjoyment, but they probably needed a more complex system in place in order to not have your enjoyment and another players freedom/dynamic world/etc become opposing forces.
Actually no. If you wanted to find people to do specific stuff you had to guest. And guesting at certain hours made no difference.
And I’m not saying that my enjoyment is more important than anyone else’s. I truly believe more people were aided by the mega server than hurt by it. There are plenty of things in this game that don’t really match my play style, but I know I have my own play style and I don’t expect anything just for me.
However, if the majority benefits even if some lose some freedom, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think the majority has benefited in this case. I think the people complaining are by far a minority, at least in the US. Again I won’t talk for Europe.