Guild Wars 2

Salvage pit should have been an instance like Haywire Punchomatic. There’s no reason to design an event where the more people participating the harder it gets.

You’re not missing anything. You have to do 1 apple at a time. I don’t think the achievement was meant to be grind. That is, there are dailies on the island anyway. People farm stuff there. So if you do a couple every time you go there, by the end of 25 times, you have an achievement.

It took me a couple of months to get it done, and I never felt it was a grind because I didn’t care that it took a couple of months.

Djinn.9245:

DarcShriek.5829:

Djinn.9245:

There are probably a large number of players who figure they should just be able to play the game and never go to forums, wiki, etc. who think that DS and lots of other content is just broken. Cause really if you have to go research content outside the game it is kinda broken.

This is kind of like saying “if you have to read the manual to figure it out, it’s broken.”

Is GW2 the first MMO you’ve played? In MMOs there is no manual. The developers manage to make the game intuitive or they supply in-game hints if it isn’t. A gaming company should want players to spend time in the game…

I’ve played a ton of MMOs and I"ve never played one where I didn’t have to go outside the game to find stuff out. Not once ever. Not in any game I’ve played. Some things just didn’t make sense.

The only exception is when I have someone in game teaching me things I wouldn’t have known.

Xiahou Mao.9701:

Every time I’ve done the fight as the creator of the instance, even when I brought another player with me, the boss aimed every charge attack at me. Sometimes its agro between the charge attacks was directed at the other player, or at Braham/Garm, but without fail it would turn and charge at me once it came time for that attack.

Different bosses have different aggro mechanics. Do you have high toughness by any chance?

I guess people interested in one game mode only are at the mercy of what happens to that one game mode.

It’s good you lost weight, at any rate. Always good to look at the bright side.

From another point of view, HoT revitalized the game for me, and I spend most of my time in HoT maps. I spend more time playing now than the months before HoT was released, and almost all that time is in new zones.

I play 32 characters. I’ve maxed out my shared inventory slots. I couldn’t be happier. The price is fine for me.

I’d say it’s in a better place than it was back when Colin was here, but that doesn’t mean that Colin was at fault for what was going on. Anet has a long history of putting stuff out and reacting to fan comment after the fact.

For example, HoT wasn’t well received but many complaints about it were corrected at least for a lot of people in last April’s patch. Colin was still here at that time. HoT got better at that point for a lot of people.

I think the game is in a better place than it was when HoT launched. I think it’s probabliy going to get better over time, but there’s some work to do to bring it back to what it was before HoT launched.

Keep in mind also that some of us really like HoT content.

Healix.5819:

AliamRationem.5172:

Honestly, it seems to be working fine. I didn’t like it at first because I felt you shouldn’t have to play the LFG game to find an organized map. But I don’t see how else you can have organized meta events without them being on a timer and players using LFG to organize. You see the same thing with world bosses in core Tyria. Why is this any different?

In the old world, LFG is really only required for the wurm and certain achievements. The problem is, most people simply want to show up and play, but that’s currently only possible with AB. It’s why WoW’s LFR was the only thing to crack raiding, because you can simply queue in and do your thing. When people say to use LFG, that’s a major red flag for most people who have yet to buy it.

LFG is only needed because HoT is dead, but using it is also worsening the problem because it’s killing off the other instances. HoT was simply too challenging for most and a lot of players stopped showing up because the metas would always fail. As people stop showing up however, even more stopped because the maps were dying out. What was left was people expecting to see a hint of organization (commanders), otherwise they wouldn’t even try. Full maps are also desired because overpopulating will greatly reduce the difficulty. One full map is however enough for at least 2 maps, 4 if the players were any decent or even more considering the other partial maps, meaning everyone could potentially participate.

There are many potential ways for ArenaNet to improve the situation…

People think the map is dead because there’s no commanders. People don’t know how many, or even if there’s anyone out there. What if player activity was highlighted on the map and events showed nearby numbers? Showing the minimum/current scale would also help, since people zerg stuff, then think that’s how it was meant to be done.

Normal open world maps are bad for high pop events. People are simply too spread out and doing their own thing, so they can’t guarantee if there’s 1 or 100 people willing to participate. They only made it worse when they started designing for the zerg, where instead of only needing 1 group, you now need 4. What if these events played out more like an activity, or simply put, organization was automated? Take Dragon’s Stand for example and make it something you queue in to. Instead of the various lanes, those would be the set teams.

Metas simply shouldn’t fail. They removed the cost of repairing because death was already a punishment. In this case, wasting my time is already bad enough, so “failing” should be as simple as taking twice as long. Why should I get rewarded for AFKing in a full map, yet get nothing for putting in far more effort, but ultimately failing due to numbers? If numbers are going to be the primary factor, overflow the maps or link them together (think phasing, with everyone actually on the same map). Either everyone wins, or no one does.

ArenaNet has always wanted to have a higher difficulty however, where core was originally more deadly than HoT. They seem to want to use numbers as a workaround, as in zerging or grouping for solo content, but that’s not sustainable. You could say join a guild, but the average MMO player just wants to jump in and play, so they play solo. That was one of the core designs of GW2 after all, solo players coming together for events. Without offering some way to trivialize older content, such as nerfing everything or vertical progression, more and more players are going to quit. Some people do find even Orr too challenging. I’ve even seen mythic WoW raiders that have ragequit GW2.

I just show up and play in VB. The problem is people are only focused on meta. VB is a great zone, meta or no meta.

In Orr, I can’t solo temples, but I can still show up and play.

AliamRationem.5172:

Baldrick.8967:

My staff ele can manage just fine on most things, it just takes longer than most of my other toons to kill things.

The annoying things are the numerous gates and not being able to access large parts of the maps at various times.

They don’t appeal as anywhere I’d actually go back to.

That’s odd, since DS is the only HoT map that features large areas that are inaccessible outside of the meta. AB has a few small areas that are part of events and are blocked by vine walls. TD and VB have no such restrictions.

Are we playing the same game?

AB only has one single POI you need an event for. The other two POIs locked behind events you can glide to at any time, though not many realize it.

First use a timer site, like gw2timer.com

When the dragon stand meta is up go there about ten minutes early. Open up your LFG and look for a group that’s going to do the new event.

I do dragon stand at least a couple of times a week. Tons of people doing it. But you can’t just drop by randomly. The whole zone is pretty much on a timer.

IndigoSundown.5419:

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Why? Serious question; for a while there no reward was given to any player, masteries maxed or not, and … the game didn’t die, players didn’t revolt, nobody wept themselves to sleep every night over it.

Complaints on forums hardly constitute a revolt or weeping over the issue. Hyperbole serves no one unless it’s in sarcasm or satire, and you posited a serious question.

So, why did we see so few complaints before, yet we see more now?

Post 80 Level Tick Iterations:

1. Everyone got skill points, which were used to buy things shards now buy. Everyone got a minor reward.
2. No one got anything. A minor reward got taken away from everyone.
3. XP was used to fill mastery bars. Once masteries were done or if a player was stalled due to lack of interest or points, neither group got anything.
4. Completionists get a level tick reward. Non-completionists do not. Minor reward restored to one group, but denied to the other.

In iterations 1 through 3, everyone was treated the same. With 4, that no longer applies. The fact that there were few if any complaints about iteration 2, and more about 4, suggests the issue is not the shards, per se, it’s that 4 is perceived as unfair.

I agree this is very much the case and really needs to be fixed, even though I’ve maxed out mastery points myself.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Before masteries were introduced, a while back, there was a period of time where you got to 80 and got nothing anyway and people still played the game. This was before the expansion. The experience bar was only ever originally designed to get you to 80.

Not quite. For 2+ years, in the first iteration, XP accrued post 80 and on level tick, players got skill points. There was a point to the XP bar post 80. When they removed skill points from the game, they introduced spirit shards to replace skill points as currency for MF recipes, etc. Shards came via content and it was at that point no one got anything from XP. The third iteration was Masteries, and XP only mattered for mastery tracks. Neither the completionist nor anyone else got anything once they were no longer pursuing Masteries.

Vayne.8563:

With the mastery system, horizontal progression was introduced. The idea is you only need to earn the masteries you care about. Fractal masteries are irrelevant to a person who has no interest in Fractals.

Precursor crafting is irrelevant to someone who doesn’t want to do collections.

Therefor the OP only has one core Tyrian mastery line that could possible interest him. Then, as it was long ago, you don’t get XP anymore.

Not quite again. In iterations 2 and 3, no one got any benefit from XP except for the mastery lines. Now, there is a benefit, but it’s only for some.

Vayne.8563:

Frankly, I do believe Anet needs to do something like provide a toggle so you can stop earning mastery experience altogether and just work on getting spirit shards.

It would solve a lot of complaints.

I agree. Not the first time I’ve agreed with you, probably not the last.

Vayne.8563:

But this particular complaint…I’m not feeling it. Seems like someone who’s unhappy with the game and looking for an excuse to complain. Because if you were having fun before getting pretty much nothing anyway, I don’t see how the bar moving or not moving has actually changed the game.

My take is that it’s that iteration 4 (XP tick rewards only for completionist players) feels unfair. Of course, I could be projecting.

It’s unfair only because it doesn’t have a toggle. Thanks for the corrections. I think my memory is going. I’m sure it has to be the pain meds.

I virtually never do a daily zone event daily because they take too long. It’s much faster not to. There are other, better options.

Before masteries were introduced, a while back, there was a period of time where you got to 80 and got nothing anyway and people still played the game. This was before the expansion. The experience bar was only ever originally designed to get you to 80.

With the mastery system, horizontal progression was introduced. The idea is you only need to earn the masteries you care about. Fractal masteries are irrelevant to a person who has no interest in Fractals.

Precursor crafting is irrelevant to someone who doesn’t want to do collections.

Therefor the OP only has one core Tyrian mastery line that could possible interest him. Then, as it was long ago, you don’t get XP anymore.

Frankly, I do believe Anet needs to do something like provide a toggle so you can stop earning mastery experience altogether and just work on getting spirit shards.

It would solve a lot of complaints.

But this particular complaint…I’m not feeling it. Seems like someone who’s unhappy with the game and looking for an excuse to complain. Because if you were having fun before getting pretty much nothing anyway, I don’t see how the bar moving or not moving has actually changed the game.

Khandro.8439:

Thank you for all replies and comments!
We have relocated irl and I have not been able to monitor this thread until now.

comments: Well, ‘casual’ might be a somewhat wrong word. ‘Not a skilled player’ is more accurate and that’s the problem. I’m working on it, lol.

We usually try to team our chars to complement each others strategies.
I had an old sleepy necro and a 50 lvl ranger in my army, so I am working on them atm.
Practice makes perfect…

We have just now joined a very nice guild with members around same age and pace. Unfortunately, it turns out most members live in Australia.
We are in Sweden, on Aurora Glade Server, so the timing is a bit difficult.

I love this game and want to get better at it, I’ll take all of your suggestions to heart. Hopefully, we can find a ‘senior-oriented’ guild in our ‘hood’.

Happy New Gaming Year!

Thanks again for taking the time to read and answer.

Actually most guild members are in the US I’m pretty sure. You just talk to the Aussies more. lol

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

I didn’t see Anet advertise them that way. They advertised them as horizontal progression, leveling is not horizontal progression. They compared them to games like metroid, which I don’t think is quite accurate either.

But no, I never got the idea that they were going to be like leveling, and I’m not sure why you got that idea.

How much of a stretch is it to say, “No level cap increase.” and “Horizontal progression system.” and determine that one is a substitute for the lack of another. Still, it really doesn’t matter. I’m not going to stop disliking the system and you’re not going to stop defending it. It wouldn’t take much to satisfy me. If ANet cba to do that, then they’re telling me they really don’t want my business. <shrugs>

That’s fine, as far as it goes. However, do enough of that across enough demographics and sooner or later it bites one in the kitten. None of us know when or if that point will come — however I think it’s safe to say that enough people were cheesed off about HoT for one reason or another that the game is in a worse place than it might have been if different decisions had been made.

See, I think a lot of people were cheezed off at HoT, but it was a lot of small groups, and for all different reasons.

I think the reason you’re cheezed off at hot, is one of the minor ones.

However, the conclusion that we’re adding a horitzontal progression system after you’ve finished leveling, I could never make the logical leap you did. Maybe because I’ve seen them in other games, and they’re always substantially different from leveling.

I got a flax node from a chest last week.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Most people will never need to use a raid mastery because most people don’t raid. So you don’t have to get every single mastery point there.

If you’re not going to make a legendary or if you don’t run fractals you don’t need those masteries.

That was true at some point, but unfortunately eventually Anet decided that xp gain and rewards for continued leveling past 80 (skill shards), are unlockable only after finishing all mastery tracks in HoT/core.

You’re right, of course, except the system wasn’t created that way. Anet added spirit shards well after the fact, because people complained about experience points being useless after you got your last mastery. It was a change in response to player request.

I agree, it needs tweaking so that everyone gets them if they choose not to level masteries. There needs to be some sort of toggle.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Masteries simply aren’t the same as levels though and equating them to levels is a misnomer, even if Anet decided to show them as mastery levels.

Most people will never need to use a raid mastery because most people don’t raid. So you don’t have to get every single mastery point there.

If you’re not going to make a legendary or if you don’t run fractals you don’t need those masteries.

This is very different from leveling.

Obviously if you choose to get everything you’ll need to do more. It’s a different system.

Then ANet should not have marketed masteries as the “instead of” for a level cap raise. That creates expectations.

As to not completing some masteries, that’s exactly what I’ve chosen. Pity that that means I’m a second class citizen. I can do without Exalted crafting and raid masteries. Still, it seems a shame that I have to be a completionist to gain a trivial benefit from the tons of XP that are awarded for doing content.

ANet is of course free to do whatever it wants. Fans of the game are also free to think this system is fine as is. However, there are consequences for everything.

While I believe emphasizing completionism may not be not a huge source of lost customers, it certainly has cost ANet some. Maybe the pay-off in keeping active players busy a bit longer was worth whatever customer bleed did occur. Maybe it wasn’t. It’s certain though that the game is not doing as well as it was. Maybe it’s aging, but I have a hard time thinking that telling any group of loyal customers, “This game isn’t for you anymore.” is a good thing.

I didn’t see Anet advertise them that way. They advertised them as horizontal progression, leveling is not horizontal progression. They compared them to games like metroid, which I don’t think is quite accurate either.

But no, I never got the idea that they were going to be like leveling, and I’m not sure why you got that idea.

There’s always PvP dailies which you can do in a daily room without PvPing, in addition to usually two easy dailies that anyone can do.

They also now provide 2 gold for dailies when before the reward was minimal. And three spirit shards. And you only have to do three of them. Takes less than ten minutes most days.

Honestly people will complain about anything.

IndigoSundown.5419:

OriOri.8724:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If one doesn’t want to do adventures, raids or story achievements, one can still gather 119 MP’s.

…

What I want is for the stand-in for basic XPac progression to not require niche content. There should be enough points in story and exploration to more than complete the tracks.

You’re asking to be able to max your masteries without even playing most of the PvE content introduced with HoT. Don’t want to do story, don’t want to do raids, don’t want to do adventures, don’t want to explore the world.

163 – 119 = 44. So, those 44 MP’s are suddenly ‘most of the PvE content introduced with HoT’? What we have here is your failure to read. See the bold/italic portions of your post and mine.

Vayne.8563:

Well but see now you have it where I don’t like mini games, or story achievements or raids. That becomes problematical. It’s like saying I want all my mastery points the only way I want all my mastery points. Open world commune or achievements only I like and I’m not so sure that’s reasonable.

The mastery system is a stand-in for level progression. How does one level in any MMO out there, including this one? One gains XP. How does one gain XP in any MMO out there, especially this one? One can do almost anything the game offers. GW2 gives XP for doing almost anything there is to do. It’s an open progression system. One does not have to be a completionist. One does not have to be a completionist for masteries either, but the points make the system a lot more restricted. How is it unreasonable to expect the stand-in for a wide-open progression system to not require niche content?

Masteries simply aren’t the same as levels though and equating them to levels is a misnomer, even if Anet decided to show them as mastery levels.

Most people will never need to use a raid mastery because most people don’t raid. So you don’t have to get every single mastery point there.

If you’re not going to make a legendary or if you don’t run fractals you don’t need those masteries.

This is very different from leveling.

Obviously if you choose to get everything you’ll need to do more. It’s a different system.

You can go to the zone, unlock the mastery and then go to another zone to train it, whether the zone is dead or not, not that any of them are so dead you can’t play them (I know this because I play them).

But since you only need to enter a zone to unlock the mastery and it can even be trained in VB or AB, I’m not really sure what the OP’s problem is.

IndigoSundown.5419:

OriOri.8724:

Welp you just showed that you aren’t even reading what I’m writing. You don’t need a single one of the MPs that are behind adventures or JQs. Not a single one of them.

Except you do, if you don’t care for raids and the silliness that is story achievements.

Well but see now you have it where I don’t like mini games, or story achievements or raids. That becomes problematical. It’s like saying I want all my mastery points the only way I want all my mastery points. Open world commune or achievements only I like and I’m not so sure that’s reasonable.

Most of the story achievements are easy enough to do, and if you don’t like that you can do adventures or even raids. There are options.

If you don’t like any of the options, then you’re out of luck. But since a lot of those adventures are relatively easy, you should be able to get enough mastery points to unlock the masteries you need, surely.

FRoZeNooB.1629:

I could totally use some help on Drydock scratch or trolls revenge NA. I made it 3/4 of the way on both of them and ended up falling and didn’t feel like wasting another 15 minutes to get back to the same spot…

Please someone who has a Mesmer parked hit me up

You can’t actually do Drydock scratch wtihout running the puzzle, since there are checkpoints throughout. You have to run it. You’d need four portals to get to the end of trolls revenge.

It’s 100% chance from weapons and armor.

I own HoT. I have no dailies that can be done in HoT today. If you log in, you’ll see there are no HoT dailies today. Posting a public service announcement is well and good, assuming what you’re saying is correct. In this case, it isn’t.

Aside from the fact that for the last several weeks,. Wintersday dailies could be done every single day, including just opening 4 gifts and giving stuff to orphans on every day, today’s daily doesn’t include one single HoT daily.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. Someone wanted proof there was a statement about player housing; I provided it.

I neither confirmed nor denied it was a promise. In fact, I didn’t even post the statement, letting others make their own decision on how much weight it carried, should they be interested enough to follow the link. And, since player housing did not happen with Guild Halls, I guess the statement did not hold true. /shrug

I’m not sure how you took what I’m saying as shooting the message. My comment was aimed at the person who claimed it was a promise. This too is the only mention I ever saw from an Anet employee. It’s not even close to a promise. It’s a casual remark, made on a non-official forum by a community manager before the game even launched about something that might come with guild halls in the first expansion.

Actually I’m even surprised half of that eventuated.

Vyrulisse.1246:

I know they don’t have infinite money or resources but nearly every suggestion I see made someone has to bring up the fact that it’ll be “too costly” or “too hard” and sometimes even A.net themselves have done so. Does anyone else get tired of hearing that?

It makes them look bad in my view, like they can’t seem to do anything worthwhile in a decent amount of time and the fact that players seem to push that narrative is really troubling to me. It’s a tricky line to walk I admit… I dunno. Just get sick of hearing how things people want would be too hard etc. Most things worth doing aren’t easy. :P

So there are like hundreds of suggestions. Not every one can be done, which is logical. By my count they’ve released three new maps and about half a year. That’s pretty good. Another map presumably coming with another living story.

Will more people use new maps than houses? Most likely.

The stuff that people say that about is generally stuff they don’t personally care about. But it’s also true. Anet already had fractals coming out, raids coming out, PvP maps coming out, changes to WvW and there’s probably very little room to add new projects on top of that, particularly while working on an expansion.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

It was Martin K. that stated housing would be implemented (some day) with Guild Halls.

You can probably Google for it.

Or I can, and did: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/18447-guild-info-discussion-thread/page-7#entry887047

Good luck.

Hardly a promise though. Just an answer to a question at the time. If anyone took that as a promise, they should probably give up forums altogether.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Why are the chickens in Ebonhawke so … robust?

Not sure if you’re really asking but it’s a tip of the cap to Legend of Zelda.

Astralporing.1957:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

It’s just a game, take a step back relax and breathe, also this JP has Checkpoints throughout it so it is by far one of the More forging JPs in the whole game since if you mess up you get to start partway to most of the way through it.

If only this worked right. It doesn’t. Not to mention if you didn’t know those checkpoints are there (from a guide), you most likely wouldn’t notice half of them. And there’s nothing telling you that you missed one (it’s laughably easy to miss the very first one, the one in the lava entrance, for example). Which is weird, because they have done the checkpoint thing before already, in SW, and then it didn’t have any of those problems.

And this is in addition to a “JP” that’s not really based on jumping, but on guessing which textures are bugged correctly (allowing you to stand on some invisible pixel) and which ones are bugged incorrectly (and would throw you off a flat surface).

Vayne.8563:

I disagree with this. I enjoy puzzles more that have to be solved (hence the name puzzles) rather than just making hard jumps.

This one is not like that. The solution has been found out by hundreds of people trying every pixel on the walls. In Drydock Scrath it was possible to figure your way through it on your own. Here, you check a guide or don’t do it at all.

I know that. The person I was responding to made a broad statement. I contradicted his broad statement. It doesn’t imply I love everything about this jumping puzzle. But broadly speaking I disagree with what was stated.

Though it’s not in the game anymore, I always wondered how someone can be a veteran novice.

I"m as pedantic as the next guy, often more, but when I know what people are actually talking about, it doesn’t really matter. This is just nit-picking . It’s pointless.

It’s like people talking about the meta and not knowing what a meta really is, or people calling a champ a boss. For all practical purposes it changes nothing.

You need to do the first two stories in the Heart of Thorns stoory quest.

Go to your hero panel. The fourth icon down is the story journal. Click on Heart of Thorns then click on begin story. Follow the green stars.

Once you’ve done the first two stories, you have unlocked the ability to train masteries.

This game is already developing image problems with casual players. People think this raid and PvP stuff doesn’t affect the game, or the bottom line. It does. Because people who might be interested in a fun, casual PvE focused game will simply stop looking this way.

Some casual people walked during the long hiatus when the only updates were Raids and PvP. That didn’t help the game, it hurt the game.

Each hard core step we take, particularly visual ones, make the game look less and less like a game for casuals. It doesn’t matter that the bulk of the game is casual.

People go to reddit and see posts about raids and PvP and substantially fewer posts about casual stuff, and they don’t buy the game.

There’s already been at least one post I saw on reddit where a group of casual friends wanted to buy the game, but they though it was too hard core because everyone was talking about raids.

Open world PvP is an image this game doesn’t need. It would invite players I don’t want to play with and chase off the players I do want to play with.

Most triple A MMOs charge a monthly fee at launch for quite a bit after launch. WoW, FF XIV, ESO, SWToR, hell even TSW charged a monthly fee for quite a while.

This game didn’t. You got an entire MMO for free for years, and you’re worried about the stuff you don’t get for free later?

As for what new players get, that’s another issue. It’s hard to start an MMO late. New players are way behind the curve in so many ways. There are items and experiences they can never have, but you may have.

Every company needs to find new ways to get new blood into the MMO or the MMO dies. The best thing Anet could possibly do for veteran players is to bring new players into the game. That helps everyone.

You’re entitled to your opinion but it seems to me that people who play or even just log in are rewarded for doing so. People who don’t even follow the game enough to know they should have been aren’t all that loyal to begin with.

Buying an MMO doesn’t make you loyal. Sticking with it does.

It’s like saying I bought a boxed album of the beatles and I bought a disc later, so therefore, I’m a huge beatles supporter.

No, I bought products, which I got my money’s worth out of. If I want another album I have to buy it.

@Devata

You seem to be under the impression that lack of content cant’ be the reason that the game isn’t doing well, because there’s content now and the game isn’t doing as well. This is just bad logic on your part.

Lack of content means people stop playing. Not everyone who stops playing comes back. The combination of lack of content and emphasis on specific content like raids and the PvP seasons, is what drives a lot of casuals from playing this game.

Once people saw the game was less casual, they stopped playing, which has nothing to do with cash shop and has nothing necessarily to do with grind, since many casual players will just farm or grind because it’s an easy solo activity.

It has everything to do with the image of the game and who it’s for.

There was a post on reddit, where someone said just about every post is about raids, and so me and may casual friends are scared to start playing this game. It’s a real problem. There’s evidence that people felt the game became too difficult for them.

At the end of the day, the content drought could very well have caused a downturn in sales, because people who leave games, they sometimes find other games.

Two of my guildies went to BDO and they’re still there. They didn’t come back even though the content drought ended.

Edit: You’re pretty much arguing that stuff taht has been wrong the whole time has finally., after four years, caught up with the game. My argument is that changes to the game have caused people who had been enjoying it more to become more disillusioned with it?

Which do you think is more likely and why?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Can you not hit other Guildies with the snowballs from the current piles of snow in the Guild Hall? I’ve only ever picked them up when alone in the Hall.

You can indeed. I often get snowball slinger dailies in the guild hall.

Palador.2170:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Can I send him home and replace him with someone whose behavior is not going to detract from the important business of saving Tyria? No, I can’t. If he is going to act like a five year old throwing a tantrum, I should be able to give him a time out.

Well no. You can’t because he’s not listening to you. Even if that was a choice of dialogue, his actions would be the same. lol

Then can we replace him already? And when he messes up, can we call him a disgrace to his mother’s legacy and refuse him entry into the guild? Both guilds, DE and DW? (Let’s face it, in Arah it’s pretty clear that they consider you a part of Destiny’s Edge. And I’m sure both Rytlock and Caithe would back us up on this.)

We know what’s going to happen. He’s going to come walking back over a pile of corpses, and ask to rejoin us. And, because we won’t be allowed a choice, we’ll accept him back and forgive him. We all see it coming, and I for one hate it.

We have no control over DE, we’re not even in it, and as far as I can tell he’s not joined our guild either.

Change to a ranged pet, profit.

@Devata

Nope, working with no information and drawing conclusions isn’t the best you can do. That’s literally the worst thing you can do.

All you can do when given not enough information, really all you can do, is say I don’t have enough information. You don’t have enough information period. Not a guessing game. Not a theory. Not an opinion. Enough information to draw your conclusions doesn’t exist outside Anet themselves, and maybe not even there. It’s entirely possible that even with their information they don’t know what went wrong.

But since you’re only guessing and since you came back here with a clear I told you so post, when you did no such thing…basically I’ve not seen many arguments stated as strongly as yours with less evidence on these forums.

You lack evidence. The conversation is over.

I’m not making any kind of definitive statement except for the fact that you lack the evidence you need to support your pet theory, a theory you espoused long before any evidence at all back you up.

In thread after thread in this conversation people have given you alternate ideas that would explain the sales downturn just as well, but you continue to ignore all those people.

What you have here is a pet theory, very little to back it up that you’re treating as fact, because you believe in it.

But what actually backs it up besides a sales downturn? That’s surely not enough.

Particularly when it seems your entire theory about how successful Guild Wars 1 was is now questionable. Surely if Guild Wars 1 wasn’t that profitable or wasn’t particularly profitable, this game has already done better than that for four years, with a different model.\

How can you not acknowledge this?

Devata.6589:

1/2

@Devata
Now if only your simple modelling took into effect things like the lack of competition Guild Wars 1 had in the non-subscription multiplayer market. It was alone. By itself. It had no competition, so there really can’t be a comparison or at least any comparison is likely to be deeply flawed.

How so? It would have no competition in the B2P market right now as well. So that is a perfect comparison. I also mentioned this multiple times and it is also one of those things you keep repeating without once saying what is wrong about my statement. Simply because you can’t. It correct. GW1 had no competition with it’s B2P model back then, and it would not have any competition with it B2P model now. Then again, with the cash-shop model it uses now it has a lot of competition.

I am not sure why I even keep answering these comments of you. I have been doing that for years and you keep repeating the same for years. Without once explaining why my comment is false. You simply ignore it and repeat it again a few days later and that year after year.

It’s useless. In your dream you are right and you refuse to wake up.

Vayne.8563:

What you have is a theory and at best extremely incomplete evidence. That’s all you have. It’s all you’ve ever had. Nothing has changed except that there have been two slow quarters.

With Q2 you said the same about 1 bad quarter and then we should look at Q3, as that would likely be better. Now suddenly Q3 is also not interesting. As long as numbers don’t fit you, it is not interesting is it? What if Q1 is bad as well. Or do you want to base your ideas on Q4?

And you are right. I have a theory. I have minor data to proof it. I can’t help that I have no better data. Then again, the theory by itself is correct in that lower but more steady income means more income over a longer term. And a game that does not have to be compromised can be better what might help to retain more players overtime.

That is the theory is it’s most basic logical form.

Vayne.8563:

And since the expansion wasn’t well received by Anet’s own admission,. that doesn’t mean anything at all.

Again you repeat something that has been proven wrong. Most active players did buy the expansion. (And likely many old) So the expansion itself did fine. The F2P approach did not work out. You try to squeeze that problem into the expansion-sales.

You’re really stretching what was said. I said that one bad quarter does not represent a trend, two bad quarters would certainly start to represent a trend. I stand by that. I see a trend. I see that this game isn’t doing as well now as it was a year ago.

Now, it just so happens that that tiny little bit of information that supports what you believe exists. But it’s only a tiny bit of information. You can see elsehwhere where I’ve complained about the image of the game which used to be casual, becoming harder and harder core due to the focus or seeming focus on raids and PvP. The most visible parts of the game.

What you’re doing here is completely misrepresenting something I said to try to prove a point, I now agree the game has issues with either player retention or getting people to spend money in the gem store compared to a year ago. That’s obvious.

That has nothing at all to do with this argument and trying to make it so makes you look terribly desperate. How does that one fact even begin to prove what caused it?

You’re stretching it. Guild Wars 1 didn’t make the money you think it did, that’s one of your biggest sources of evidence and it turns out you were incorrect. How are you even still arguing this?

@Devata

Now if only your simple modelling took into effect things like the lack of competition Guild Wars 1 had in the non-subscription multiplayer market. It was alone. By itself. It had no competition, so there really can’t be a comparison or at least any comparison is likely to be deeply flawed.

What you have is a theory and at best extremely incomplete evidence. That’s all you have. It’s all you’ve ever had. Nothing has changed except that there have been two slow quarters.

And since the expansion wasn’t well received by Anet’s own admission,. that doesn’t mean anything at all.

For all we know, had Anet priced the expansion differently, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

It’s a fact that there’s not enough information out there to draw the conclusions you’ve drawn. You could be right, you could be wrong. Either way, the evidence isn’t there.s

The difference between what I’m saying and what you’re saying is that I didn’t come to the forums and try to use a very small set of data points to prove anything because I know it’s not possible to prove anything from the data points we have.

You keep insisting with no evidence. I can play devil’s advocate without proof, showing where your logic doesn’t make sense in the big picture because I didn’t make a statement in the first place.

The conversation goes something like this.

Person 1: I know for a fact that the yankees would have won the world series if they’d traded Player A earlier, because his stats are lower.

Person 2: But we don’t know who would have replaced him or what their stats would have been if they replaced them. There’s no evidence.

Person 1: You have no evidence.

You don’t need evidence to back up what person 2 is saying. All he’s really saying is there’s not enough evidence to draw the conclusions person 1 is drawing and that’s ALL I’m saying.

But yes, if you do a bit of research you’d say that Guild Wars 1 had a LOT less competition than Guild Wars 2 does. Do you really need me to find evidence to suppor that, or are you finally going to accept it.

Unless you can prove that competition doesn’t change the big picture, this whole conversation loses any kind of meaning.

You don’t have the evidence to back up your point. I don’t need to prove it, because it’s obvious. You’re making the statement you need to back it up. Lower sales for two quarters without knowing why those sales are lower does not cut it. Again, a statement I don’t need proof for.

DoctorDing.5890:

Vayne.8563:

And does VB suck too…

Yes, but not as much and for different reasons.

And Vayne, take a step back and listen to yourself for a moment. You’re saying TD is ok once folks have had a couple of training sessions. When training is required for open world PVE you know that the devs got it very, very wrong. I know you love these maps and defend them to the hilt but open your eyes and look around once in a while mate!

Actually I didn’t have training sessions and neither did a lot of other people. They learned by trial and error.

Would you try to navigate VB without glidiing? Of course not.

Nor should you try to navigate TD without nuhoch wallows. The zone was made for them. Once you make that leap of logic it’s much much easier.

DoctorDing.5890:

Vayne.8563:

I have people in my guild who have beaten the Ocotovine dozens of times but have never even attempted TD. Why?

Ah, I know this one. It’s because TD sucks.

The end of ML will do nothing to change that.

If people knew TD the way they knew AB it wouldn’t suck. It’s all training. People in my guild get around TD just fine after they’re shown a couple of times. Half of it is just knowing where the nuhoch wallows go. But once you have Nuhock Wallows, it’s not the same.

And does VB suck too because that gets a whole lot less attention than AB too.

Saying it can’t be done is not only acceptable, but it’s the only truth in this thread. No one has managed to do it with an MMO and no one will ever be able to, for reasons I’ve already outlined.

This game launched with a very specific vision and there are some brilliant technical people working for this company as well. Evidence of this is the server system which has remarkably little down time for an MMO. But there’s always going to be an issue of man hours and budget, both in time and money. No MMO is ever going to overcome that.

WoW has plenty of bugs and probably has ten times the income of Guild Wars 2. That’s my point.

And yes of course the game must improve where it can. My argument with you is that I don’t really think you know where it can. That’s my whole argument.

There are other things you mentioned that others have disagreed with over time. One of them is zone wide currencies. There are already a ton of currencies in this game. I mean a lot. Now if you hate Dry Top and you’re forced to go there to get a currency, you’re being forced to play content you don’t like to get something. That’s why the new legendary system for HoT legendaries allows you to farm components in one of many zones. Giving the players choice about where they want to farm, rather than restricting them. Plenty of people have expressed displeasure being forced into specific zones, and every time it happens, someone brings up the whole Anet said we could play as we want. While that’s often taken out of context, the fact is, the game has become in many ways more limiting than it used to be.

But at the end of the day presentation is everything. Your belief that it can be better than it is is just that, your belief. Without working at Anet or any other software gaming company, without knowing the challenges they face, including budget and time constraints, without knowing the specific situation, saying it’s not good enough isn’t really good enough.

For example in the last couple of years, Anet has lost quite a few of their top level employees to Amazon, who have started making games. Amazon’s studio is close to Anet’s and so it’s an easy poach for them. They can certainly afford to pay the money to get people they want.

So Anet is not just trying to make a game with new content and maintain a game, but they’’re also constantly filling gaps, having to train new people to take over new roles and having to adapt on the fly.

In an ideal world, you might well be right, but game programming is anything but an ideal world.

And then you have the fact that no two groups of people ever really agree on what you’re saying. Out of your entire list, the one thing I think most people agree with is the ability to save builds. People have been asking for that almost since launch and I’ve not seen one single person who disagrees that that would be a good addition to the game.

But the rest of the list, much of it has been discussed already and there are cons for every pro.

And yet even in your later responses you ignore many of the points I’ve made.

You say well Anet can just fix the stuff that’s not working. Of course they can. That’s assuming several things.

1. It’s a reproducable error. Many errors don’t happen all the time and if they only happen rarely they’re much harder to track down. Those types of bug fixes take more time. So how much time should they devote to each bug before moving onto the next tone.

2. Some bugs were fixed and either reappear, or different bugs appear. Anet has fixed bugs before, but again, when you fix one thing, other things break. This is one of the biggest issues in writing a huge program over multiple years. No company has ever really found a way to deal with this. It’s not like there’s one blueprint made by one architect and everyone is working to spec, with a one time design goal in mind. People are working on different things without one giant blueprint and one group programming one thing affects other groups programming different things. No company has been able to make games without bugs. Anet fixes dozens of bugs a month, maybe more. To fix all the bugs or even most of them, they’d have to shut the game down, because if you keep added stuff, you’re also going to be adding more bugs. That’s why bugs get prioritized.

At the end of the day, what you’re asking for, simply isn’t reasonable. You’re entering a room and saying you guys should fix the bugs. Like no one has thought of that. No one at Anet has come up with the idea that bugs should be fixed. Even just listing that makes me question the rest of the list.

Anet knows bugs should be fixed. Anet has fixed many bugs. Anet hasn’t fixed all bugs. No company that makes an MMORPG has fixed all the bugs, or probably even most of the bugs. No one has that kind of budget.

There’s little in your original post that hasn’t been suggest before, or even suggested many times before. But there are people who dislike those suggestions that have also posted in each of those threads.

For example there was a thread about hearts a while back and I’m sure more than half the people posting in that thread disliked hearts. You say you want them repeatable. They weren’t even supposed to be in the game at all.

To ask a company to go back and make all hearts repeatable, hearts that are for the most part carbon copies of each other with no depth, that were introduced in the game strictly to get people to areas where dynamic events spawn, is ludicrous. Going back and reworking stuff isn’t in the cards. Moving forward, sure, make new hearts. Though it’s my opinion even in the new zones, the only reason people complete hearts is the rewards. I do it too. And you know what? I think it’s dull and boring. I don’t enjoy two two or three hearts to buy petrified wood every day. That’s not exciting. It takes five minutes for each heart, so I waste ten minutes a day with absolute busy work, strictly because I want the reward.

Most people I know don’t like hearts. They don’t enjoy hearts. They don’t care about hearts, which were never really intended to be content in the first place and didn’t even exist in the first two betas. But you want Anet to go back and fix this and make them all repeatable.

I hope they don’t do it. I don’t think it’ll make the game better. I don’t think it’ll make the game stronger. And I don’t think the repeatable hearts that are in the game now have made the game more enjoyable…certainly not for me.

Nah. Long before Vayne was a chic in LoL, Vayne was a bad guy in Final Fantasy. But yeah, I get asked that a lot.

Thats’ pretty much it. Season 2 isn’t part of the expansion. It’s it’s own content. If you log in you get it for free and if you miss it you have to buy it. It was never marketed as part of the expansion.