Guild Wars 2

Tru Reptile.6058:

Of all the things I’d call GW2, “a worthy sequel” would certainly not be one of them. I’m glad you enjoy it, though.

Btw, the endgame in GW1 is PvP as its primarily a PvP game.

I don’t agree that PvP was the end game of Guild Wars 1, though it was originally intended to be.

But when you consider that Anet released the last two products for Guild Wars 1 (Nightfall and Eye of the North) without any PvP in it, you have to ask yourself if the direction changed.

There are a whole lot of people who never PvPed who played Guild Wars 1 for years. The achievements are mostly centered around PvE, the cash shop items are pretty much all centered around PvE.

PvP was the originally intended end game, until Anet realized how many PvE’ers were playing the game. They adapted to meet the need.

End game in Guild War 1 was achievment farming, ecto farming, The Underworld, the Fissure of Woe, The hard mode dungeons, DOA, The Deep and Urgoz’s Warren.

PvP remained the end game for many players but it ceased being the focus of Guild Wars 1 long before Guild Wars 2 came out.

Gibson.4036:

Not sure how many people are aware, but dyes were originally intended to be unlocked across the entire account. Kristen Perry, who was responsible for designing the dye system, blogged about it in late 2010.

Then, in 2012, a post announced that ArenaNet had changed their mind, and were going to make them unlocked per character. The reasoning given was that they wanted dye unlocks to feel like a part of individual character progression. Oddly enough, this was not posted by Kristen Perry or another game designer. It was posted by Crystin Cox, the “monetization manager”, known for her previous work in developing Maplestory’s cash shop.

Ah the short memories of people.

Actually the ENTIRE dye system changed. So you’d get dye seeds and you’ve had to grow them in the old system, but you could only grow one per day, unless you put money into buying plant food from the cash shop. That was FAR FAR greedier than the system they have now.

The whole system changed for the better, not the worse. If the price of me of having dyes not account bound means I don’t have to buy plant food for real money to get more than a single dye a day, I’d say it was a good trade off.

Otherwise you’d have to wait 365 days to get 365 different dyes, assuming every single dye you opened was unique (which wasn’t going to happen). Basically the old way, you’d either have to spend real money, or it would take you years to get all the dyes unlocked.

cesmode.4257:

Vayne.8563:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

killcannon.2576:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

azizul.8469:

manifestos are the things of the past….

Sadly so is Guildwars 2 it seems, especially with 2014 just around the corner..

I’m not saying this in malice, i feel their manifesto was the right direction and listening to the “end gamers” back then was misdirection.

One of which has had repercussions to this day..

snip

It’s so easy to make comments like this, but they’re usually based on people assuming that more people share their opinion than is actually the case.

WoW is shedding players pretty quickly. What is sad though? Their fix is to copy game mechanics from GW2 which the players don’t want in that game. Timeless Isle is a bit of a joke. And they plan to produce their next expansion around those ideas. smh.

Starting to think there is just one big water cooler that all mmo devs drink out of.

Such as? What’s wrong with Timeless Isle? It allows new players or players who’ve come back after a significant break from the game (like me) to experience the current raid content.

Sigh. When they decided to start being “nice” to all the casual weekenders, and instituted the lfr system, and the lfg system, and welfare epics is when the game started shedding players.

There’s a timeline some poster made up over on their forums. It’s pretty telling that when WoW started being casual friendly was when their sub numbers tanked.

The moral here is that instead of chasing players, just design a quality game and stay true to your design philosophy….whatever that may be.

WoW started being “casual friendly” during Lich King and subs were at an all time high.

And? They didn’t remove anything. They added tools and ways for more people to see the content. You know, those things called raids that the vast majority of people never even set foot in during Burning Crusade. Raids, which they spend significant resources in order to create.

By the way, WoW, a 9 year old game, has more active players than this one does.

Wow is a game that was released to almost no competition with a war chest a mile high from sales of other games. They spent more money on advertising than Anet could hope to.

So this comparison is beyond meaningless. A game comes out with no competition, and a fortune to advertise and does well. No big surprise there.

If WoW was released today, no one would care.

Interesting thoughts, but not sure I agree or disagree yet.

WoW had a few things going for it: no competition, cartoony dull graphics that could work on a myriad of machines, and they jacked some core concepts from other games.

While WoW did not have competition at its release, they have been “tested” over the years with many releases claiming to be the WoW killer and all of these games bounced off of WoW like a rubber ball.

The last sentence, I have to ask a question:

‘If WoW were released today, no one would care.’

My question is this.. Is that before during or after WoW stamped its mark into MMO history? By your statement, no one would care if WoW were released today. But if it were released today, was there an MMO giant that would have filled its shoes for the last 8+ yrs? Or would people look at a game like WoW, compare it to all the predecessors in aion, warhammer, swtor, etc..and say “woah, polished gameplay, lots of things to do at end game, huge raiding capacity..I like”.

Curious to think about it the other way. By the way, the last sentence in the above paragraph describes what Wildstar is/might be. I dub it, WoW 2.0 in space with all the trimmings of the modern day MMO style.

What games came out? Warhammer, that was so buggy at launch it was almost unplayable?

Do you know why so many people go back to WoW? Because they’re already at max level or close to it, with a ton of gold and they’ve put all that time and energy into it. Most of the games have have come out were released too early, were too buggy, were too small, or were just plain too poor to advertise.

So tell me, how many MMOs have William Shatner and Chuck Norris advertising for them?

People got into the game early. they played it, there was STILL no competition probably until Rift came out, and by then, it was already too late.

People go where their friends are and where they have history. If it was reversed, if any other game came out then that was relatively playable, backed by an advertising budget like Blizzard’s and it would probably be in the same place now.

So my name is Steve. We’d just finished a dungeon and left out the gate, and one of my guild mates hears an NPC say, “You’ll pay for what you did to Steve.”

And he’s on mumble with as and he’s totally baffled. He says, “What are you talking about. Steve’s right here, he’s fine”.

Only after he looked at the dialogue did he find out it was saying, “You’ll pay for what you did to Steeg.”

I was hysterical.

killcannon.2576:

tolunart.2095:

killcannon.2576:

My point is, vaguely, that devs need to pick a direction…a flow….an overarching philosophy and stick with it. As you said earlier in the thread, the game was designed around DE’s; exploration; personal story; and active, skill based combat.

They don’t need the CDI threads. They just need to watch their own marketing material and do what it says. Games start shedding players when they can no longer follow a binding design philosophy.

They have picked a direction. For nearly a year now, they have concentrated on the LS and rapid release of content in small bits that collectively tell a story. It’s just not the direction that you want.

They’ve had a year to collect data about player habits, and it’s pretty obvious that while everything isn’t perfect, they are satisfied with the way the game is going. If it wasn’t working, they’d be doing something else.

……..Right. Is the CDI threads, the promise of adding permanent content, and trashing Scarlet not a clue for you there? They are doing “something else”. The LS isn’t retaining or growing their player base.

They said from the beginning the VERY beginning they’d add more permanent content as time went on. That wasn’t something they only recently decided. People are simply impatient.

The Scarlet story was planned to run as long as it’s running. They’re not cutting it short.

You have no idea whether or not the living story is retaining it’s player base or not. I don’t either.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

killcannon.2576:

Dark Catalyst.1028:

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

azizul.8469:

manifestos are the things of the past….

Sadly so is Guildwars 2 it seems, especially with 2014 just around the corner..

I’m not saying this in malice, i feel their manifesto was the right direction and listening to the “end gamers” back then was misdirection.

One of which has had repercussions to this day..

See this is particularly the kind of comment this forum doesn’t need. You don’t know how healthy the game is. You don’t know how many people are actually enjoying it. But you say that the game will be a thing of the past, with no evidence whatsoever.

This is not a post that’s helpful or constructive. It is, in fact, just a future prediction based on the fact that some people don’t like this game. Well some people don’t like WoW, but they seem to be doing okay.

It’s so easy to make comments like this, but they’re usually based on people assuming that more people share their opinion than is actually the case.

WoW is shedding players pretty quickly. What is sad though? Their fix is to copy game mechanics from GW2 which the players don’t want in that game. Timeless Isle is a bit of a joke. And they plan to produce their next expansion around those ideas. smh.

Starting to think there is just one big water cooler that all mmo devs drink out of.

Such as? What’s wrong with Timeless Isle? It allows new players or players who’ve come back after a significant break from the game (like me) to experience the current raid content.

Sigh. When they decided to start being “nice” to all the casual weekenders, and instituted the lfr system, and the lfg system, and welfare epics is when the game started shedding players.

There’s a timeline some poster made up over on their forums. It’s pretty telling that when WoW started being casual friendly was when their sub numbers tanked.

The moral here is that instead of chasing players, just design a quality game and stay true to your design philosophy….whatever that may be.

WoW started being “casual friendly” during Lich King and subs were at an all time high.

And? They didn’t remove anything. They added tools and ways for more people to see the content. You know, those things called raids that the vast majority of people never even set foot in during Burning Crusade. Raids, which they spend significant resources in order to create.

By the way, WoW, a 9 year old game, has more active players than this one does.

Wow is a game that was released to almost no competition with a war chest a mile high from sales of other games. They spent more money on advertising than Anet could hope to.

So this comparison is beyond meaningless. A game comes out with no competition, and a fortune to advertise and does well. No big surprise there.

If WoW was released today, no one would care.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

azizul.8469:

manifestos are the things of the past….

Sadly so is Guildwars 2 it seems, especially with 2014 just around the corner..

I’m not saying this in malice, i feel their manifesto was the right direction and listening to the “end gamers” back then was misdirection.

One of which has had repercussions to this day..

See this is particularly the kind of comment this forum doesn’t need. You don’t know how healthy the game is. You don’t know how many people are actually enjoying it. But you say that the game will be a thing of the past, with no evidence whatsoever.

This is not a post that’s helpful or constructive. It is, in fact, just a future prediction based on the fact that some people don’t like this game. Well some people don’t like WoW, but they seem to be doing okay.

It’s so easy to make comments like this, but they’re usually based on people assuming that more people share their opinion than is actually the case.

WoW is shedding players pretty quickly. What is sad though? Their fix is to copy game mechanics from GW2 which the players don’t want in that game. Timeless Isle is a bit of a joke. And they plan to produce their next expansion around those ideas. smh.

Starting to think there is just one big water cooler that all mmo devs drink out of.

Even at WoW’s height, when it had grown to 12.4 millions subs, there were people who didn’t like it or even hated it. But it didn’t mean the game didn’t do well, that’s my point.

Whether WoW is shedding players or not isn’t really relevant here. What is relevant is people who really don’t know, don’t like this game, and predict the downfall of the game because of it.

Unless they have a crystal ball, or have knowledge we don’t have, predicting that the game will fail when game X, Y or Z comes out is not constructive, servers no positive purpose and frankly doesn’t help anyone.

It’s just random. My wife got one years ago, when we played Guild Wars 1. They randomly select people, I guess because it’s too expensive to send a printed card to everyone.

We thought it was a great gesture.

Dante.1508:

azizul.8469:

manifestos are the things of the past….

Sadly so is Guildwars 2 it seems, especially with 2014 just around the corner..

I’m not saying this in malice, i feel their manifesto was the right direction and listening to the “end gamers” back then was misdirection.

One of which has had repercussions to this day..

See this is particularly the kind of comment this forum doesn’t need. You don’t know how healthy the game is. You don’t know how many people are actually enjoying it. But you say that the game will be a thing of the past, with no evidence whatsoever.

This is not a post that’s helpful or constructive. It is, in fact, just a future prediction based on the fact that some people don’t like this game. Well some people don’t like WoW, but they seem to be doing okay.

It’s so easy to make comments like this, but they’re usually based on people assuming that more people share their opinion than is actually the case.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

And as long as people continue to bring the manifesto into an argument about ascended gear

You have it backwards. This is a discussion thread about the manifesto. Did you not read the title and OP ?

Sure I read it. I also read the previous threads and the answers to the OP’s question there. I respond to threads, not just individual posts very often. I’m more of a forest person than a tree person. I know what people are saying and I’m talking about what people are talking about.

In the manifesto lied comments, there are usually two maybe three lines brought up. I comment generally on those lines.

I don’t comment on the “everything you loved about Guild Wars 1 line”, because it’s marketing pure and simple. Anet can’t know what anyone loved about Guild Wars 1, much less everyone.

But the other lines I do talk about. This is about the manifesto. There have been multiple threads about it. The first few posts in this thread talk about the other thread.

I’m simply continuing a conversation started there for the benefit of the OP who asked about it.

I haven’t read the whole thread, but I thought I’d weigh in with my opinion.

I truly hope ascended gear is the last tier of gear we see. I don’t think the ascended gear, in and of itself, is too hard to get. But I do think that leveling a crafting profession from 400-500 is punishing, particularly to more casual players. That said, it punishes longer term players too.

I was very very close to getting my third legendary. I already had the precusor. I had the dungeon and WvW components. In fact, I essentially had everything but the T6 mats.

Now the T6 mats I needed after the few I’d saved ran me about 400 gold. That’s an awful lot of gold for most people and it nearly made me broke. Sure I can make the gold back. What I can’t do, however, is work on ascended armor and leveling my crafting professions because I was forced to make a choice.

In a game where ectos are used for EVERYTHING, and T6 mats are needed too, there’s simply too much to spend them on. People are being forced to choose.

And this is from a player who was here day one of head start. What do you think someone who’s here two or three months is going to do. Unless they’re massively hard core (and most players aren’t), they’re going to feel that they are so far behind the curve, there’s absolutely no point in playing. New players in this game right now are going to have a really hard time “catching up”. Legendary weapons weren’t much of a problem when they had the same stats. They’re a problem now.

I don’t prefer vertical progression, I prefer horizontal progression. I even prefer story progression. I will play a game just to see what happens next (though I acknowledge most people won’t).

I’d rather see more skills and not only ways to make builds, but ways to have a couple of builds I can swap out on the fly, so I can easily go from WvW to open world PvE to a dungeon. It’s not the cost that’s really the problem for me, it’s the lack of the ability to save the old build. It’s just too annoying to do it often.

If you add more build diversity you need to add the subsystems to back it up. Give people the ability to have multiple builds and they’ll feel their characters are progressing.

Lord Kuru.3685:

My take:

The game came out and was far more successful than anticipated, with tons of sales. Anet saw the dollar signs and decided to change the game away from what they originally designed (low grind, easy to get top level gear, horizontal progression) into a more traditional MMO — in order to keep these customers.

So we ended up with a game that was designed one way, but supported after release in a completely different way.

In the end, those who came for the original game were turned off, and those who want
a traditional MMO will surely leave when a new traditional MMO, one designed to be such from the bottom up, comes out.

I don’t buy that at all. I think more likely. the population dropped far faster than they expected. They saw tons of sales and then saw tons of people who stopped playing. That seems to me far more likely.

Because if you’re doing really well, you don’t change what you’re doing. That’s a risk. You only take a risk when you’re not doing well.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Anet has a 3 year old video on their site that doesn’t say anything at all about gear grind or ascended gear or vertical progression. Not one word. It doesn’t matter if you personally interpreted that way.

I didn’t say that it did.

Vayne.8563:

As for no required grind, there are people on this forums besides me who maintain there is no required grind in this game.

I did not say that there was.

Vayne.8563:

Keeping an old video on a website along with dozens and dozens of other videos is not supporting an old video. It’s just not removing something which some people still think didn’t stray far from the mark.

Continuing to display an advertisement is supporting that advertisement. It is completely irrelevant that there are other videos present as well.

Vayne.8563:

Your opinion that vertical progression was somehow talked about in the manifesto isn’t backed up by the manifesto video itself.

What are you talking about ? I expressed no such opinion.

All I said there was that so long as ANet chooses to support and display the manifesto it is a valid topic of discussion.

And as long as people continue to bring the manifesto into an argument about ascended gear, it will remain completely irrelevant, which is what has been happening. People are muddying the issue by claiming the manifesto video talks about vertical progression, when it doesn’t. They’re claiming it talks about gear grind, which it doesn’t.

So what has changed that people are talking about.

If something in the game isn’t to someone’s liking, the way to change it isn’t to bring up a very old video, whether it’s on the site or not. Let me put this another way completely.

I have the Guild Wars 2 strategy guide in print. In the guide it talks about planting dye seeds to get your dye. That’s not in the game anymore. It’s a document that’s official…I still have it, but how is that relevant to the discussion today?

Just about every MMO has things on their website that are eventually untrue. Almost none of those games delete old videos, even if they have an error or two, because they still have value. Saying that Anet should delete every single thing they ever said from every article they’ve ever posted that no longer holds true is bordering on ludicrous.

They wrote an article on the blog which you can still get which said that WvW matchups would be chosen one way, then they went to a different way and not they’re moving back to the original way.

Half the stuff about the SPvP blogs as the game develops is probably outdated. Maybe they should hire special people to edit old stuff? I’ve yet to see an MMO do that.

Videos that are many years old are many years old. There is value in having them on the site. Talking about them now after they’re three years old is pointless. Unless you think someone has said something in this conversation that hasn’t been said in the last two dozen threads about it.

Exactly what does bringing it up yet again accomplish? What has it ever accomplished? How is it productive? If you’re truly a fan of the game why would you want to waste your time rehashing something unproductive?

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

More ways to get ascended gear, for example, would make it better for people who don’t want to craft.

I agree.

Vayne.8563:

The manifesto argument is a distracting side show that will change nothing. I’m happy to hear people complain about ascended gear all day if they don’t like it. At least that has a chance of being constructive. Manifesto posts…not so much.

I would agree if Anet was not still officially presenting/supporting the Manifesto. I don’t think the arguments about it will go away as long as it is a current matter. If Anet is still presenting it on the official site its not some ancient video that we shouldn’t bother with any longer.

Anet has a 3 year old video on their site that doesn’t say anything at all about gear grind or ascended gear or vertical progression. Not one word. It doesn’t matter if you personally interpreted that way.

There’s enough information out now for people to make a decision on buying this game based on what’s on the website.

As for no required grind, there are people on this forums besides me who maintain there is no required grind in this game.

Keeping an old video on a website along with dozens and dozens of other videos is not supporting an old video. It’s just not removing something which some people still think didn’t stray far from the mark.

Your opinion that vertical progression was somehow talked about in the manifesto isn’t backed up by the manifesto video itself.

Grind is a mindspace. If you think/believe you need ascended armor, you’ll feel you have to grind for ascended armor. Most of the game, practically all of it (probably all of it) can be completely without any ascended armor at all. I’m in no rush to get ascended armor.

Some with a legendary. No one needs one, but if you want one bad enough, you’ll grind for it.

But the grind isn’t mandatory. Want to run a dungeon, you can do it in rares. Gear means less in this game than most others.

The only exception to this is high level fractals….and I mean like top level. I’m pretty sure only a small percentage of the community does that though.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve become less of a “fan boy” as time goes on…but I remain a pragmatist. I don’t even post much here anymore…because it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I spend far more time on reddit than here, for a number of reasons.

But I still think if people really care and they really want change, they’ll abandon the manifesto argument and go to something relevant to the game today.

Honestly, while I still think the pre-launch hype was advertising, I’ve accepted that the game has changed enough that it no longer really appeals to me. I hope that this changes, at which point I might return. Thus, I still post thoughts I think are relevant. I’ve been an analyst for a long time, and so I get analytical. For example, I post my negative thoughts about vertical progression in the hopes that there won’t be an additional tier at some point in the future. I’ve posted in most of the CDI posts, but not in the latest one (yet).

I don’t think you’ve said this, but for those other posters who just want critics to dry up and blow away, I don’t think you realize that critics often care about the game as much as or more than the fans do, and complain in hopes that things they don’t like will change. Sure, there are trolls on the internet, but not all the people who complain are trolls.

I don’t want the critics to go away. I want the critics to post meaningful, helpful, thoughtful criticism. I don’t think the manifesto threads fall into the category and probably never will.

Either the game has changed from the manifesto or it hasn’t. Either way it’s changed. Clearly their stated intent changed if it has changed. So arguing that the manifesto exists and its changed is pretty much a matter of record, for those who believe it changed.

So we have a several year old video. And since then the game has changed. The question isn’t whether it’s changed and that’s a problem. The question is how has it change, what would be better than the current system. How can the current system be modified to be better.

More ways to get ascended gear, for example, would make it better for people who don’t want to craft.

The manifesto argument is a distracting side show that will change nothing. I’m happy to hear people complain about ascended gear all day if they don’t like it. At least that has a chance of being constructive. Manifesto posts…not so much.

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve become less of a “fan boy” as time goes on…but I remain a pragmatist. I don’t even post much here anymore…because it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I spend far more time on reddit than here, for a number of reasons.

But I still think if people really care and they really want change, they’ll abandon the manifesto argument and go to something relevant to the game today.

It’s more about how others view you, “Vayne-baiting” has been a popular sport on the forums this last year or so. Just the other day I was thinking how I haven’t seen you posting as much any more, then someone mentions “manifesto” and boom! Two pages of various posters arguing with you and nothing that hasn’t been said a hundred times before.

I think anyone truly interested in making the game better has moved on to other subjects. There is a better chance to be heard by posting in the CDI threads, for example, than beating on the bloody spot where the manifesto horse used to be.

Pure chance. I happened to log on to check my mail. I’m back off of here once this conversation I’m having via mail is over. lol

tolunart.2095:

Vayne.8563:

But hanging around after the decision has been made and implemented for an entire year….I’m just not sure what you think it will accomplish.

They thrive on the attention that posting about this stuff creates – whether that attention is positive or negative. The issue will only go away when no one – not a single person – feeds into the rage by responding to these threads.

When it’s no longer fun to stir up the “fanboys” by pushing their buttons, it’s time to move on to somewhere you can get a reaction, like the SWTOR forums or something.

I’ve become less of a “fan boy” as time goes on…but I remain a pragmatist. I don’t even post much here anymore…because it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I spend far more time on reddit than here, for a number of reasons.

But I still think if people really care and they really want change, they’ll abandon the manifesto argument and go to something relevant to the game today.

Calae.1738:

I let go of Rift, because it wasn’t the right game for me, because of design decisions made by the company. I also acknowledged, even at the time, that I understood their design decisions.

We’d like to let it go but, some of us are passionate enough to not be afraid to tell the developers that their design decisions are self destructive. When a serious competitor emerges and GW2 is still the same old daily grind; that’s when we’ll all disappear.

And people were just as passionate over a year ago. Do you know the enough already law? The more you run over a dead cat, the flatter it gets.

I understand, and the devs understand I’m sure, that a percentage of people don’t want vertical progression in this game at all. They didn’t want ascended gear. There is no way conceivable the devs could have missed it.

Those who felt strongest left the game over a year ago. They left when ascended gear was introduced. Those that remain are no longer in a vast majority (in my opinion). But you can and do make a lot of noise.

Being passionate about a game doesn’t always mean having things your way. There is a time to acknowledge that other ways are possible and perhaps even better for most people. Posting here for the last year has not stopped ascended weapons and armor from being released with higher stats. So when is enough?

When does a player say, this isn’t for me and move on. Because the core game HAS changed.

I don’t think I’m any less passionate than anyone else and I too don’t like the ascended gear. But I get why it was done and I’ve chosen to live with it. That doesn’t make me less passionate, it just shows me as a pragmatist.

But hanging around after the decision has been made and implemented for an entire year….I’m just not sure what you think it will accomplish.

Edit: You know, I’m still not sure after all this I’ve been clear about this. So…if you want to complain about the current implementation of current stuff like the ascended armor, by all means, that’s fair game. It’s current and it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is continually bringing up a video or article from well over a year ago (and in the case of the manifesto video several years) and continue to use it as a reason to make changes to the game now. It didn’t hold water when people made this thread a year ago, so why keep making the same thread?

Be passionate. If you are worried about stat creep by all means, talk about it….but stop making it look like a broken promise because that won’t change the game for the better at all.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

I’m pretty sure that cost wasn’t the over-riding factor. I think speed of execution was far more important.

It’s not like Anet had no devs. The people that are developing these things already existed. It didn’t cost them more to remove them from project X and put them on project Y.

I think the thing here was get something in the game fast, possibly because of panic, possibly because they knew something we didn’t.

Cost may have been a factor but the biggest factor was speed.

One of the big questions that’s been asked over and over is why did Anet not go for a more creative solution, but the answer to that is simple. They went with something they know worked from other places.

I don’t believe they felt they could afford to wait to develop something more creative to see if it might work. And I think if it was “your” company (not yours specifically but the general public yours), most people would look at the time and money already spent and go for the non-gamble way to fix it.

From a business perspective it was the right thing to do.

Think of it this way. If they tried some better/more creative/more acceptable solution and it didn’t work, where would they have been then?

I’ve little doubt that speed was also an issue, but remember that time needed to program is also a cost issue. Making a robust cosmetic progression might have meant adding more graphic artists.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569

Art Progression

Art progression! It’s horizontal why not do it more!!! Well we do this a lot all ready and a lot of it’s constraints comes down to costs. Every single piece of art we make is not liked by everyone and so the amount of art you have to make to give everyone a smooth art progression curve is very high. The cost of making some pieces of art is also very high (Armor especially) sense very pair of gloves = 10 pairs of gloves due to race/sex. We think art is a great horizontal progression system but not something that can stand 100% alone due to constraints of creation.

If you look at the cosmetics that have been added to the game since launch, the armor — with the exception of back items — has been mostly a few gem store sets. There seem to have been a lot more weapons added than armor.

Vayne, I understand business imperatives. I also know what I like — and I don’t like the direction GW2 has gone since launch. When Rift did not meet your expectations, you criticized TW. I’m criticizing ANet because GW2 no longer meets mine — and mine were at least in part based on their advertising. I don’t hold anything against them, but I would prefer it if they’d change their direction some — which is why I’m following the CDI.

When Rift didn’t meet my expectations, and I realized it wasn’t going to meet them, because the direction was clear, I stopped posting on the Rift forums. The company was going somewhere I had no desire to go. I’d played the game, I’d more or less gotten my money’s worth and I moved to another game, first trying AoC and then Lotro. Both had glaring issues.

What I didn’t do was hang around and say that 3 years ago this company said something and then went back on it a year ago. Even if they did go back on a core promise (and I think it’s more core in player’s minds than Anet’s considering how much coverage they gave it), they did it a year ago. A full year. It’s here and it’s not going to change.

So if you want to stay here and continue to complain about something said well before launch, that’s certainly your prerogative.

But it’s not likely to help the situation. It’s not going to change the direction of the game (I don’t believe that group is any longer a majority of the playerbase if it ever was) and it’s not going to help you, as far as I can tell.

I let go of Rift, because it wasn’t the right game for me, because of design decisions made by the company. I also acknowledged, even at the time, that I understood their design decisions.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Xae Isareth.1364:

The thing everyone seems to imply in this thread is that Anet just made Ascebded stuff to screw over their own manifesto and annoy everyone.

As a fairly large studio with hundreds of staff, working with millions in budget, in sure they probably weighed the benefits and costs of adding Ascended gear before introducing it.

FWIW, I agree that cost-effectiveness was a major factor in considering how to respond to the complaints of “nothing to do/work for.” It was a lot more cost effective to create a shallow stat grind than to fix cosmetic progression to enable an ongoing, robust cosmetic endgame.

However, I think that the initial negative reaction to Ascended prompted a shift in how Ascended was rolled out. After all, this gear type started as “available in fractals only,” and has since evolved into “put time into the game in a way that utilizes the content that was already developed.”

I’m pretty sure that cost wasn’t the over-riding factor. I think speed of execution was far more important.

It’s not like Anet had no devs. The people that are developing these things already existed. It didn’t cost them more to remove them from project X and put them on project Y.

I think the thing here was get something in the game fast, possibly because of panic, possibly because they knew something we didn’t.

Cost may have been a factor but the biggest factor was speed.

One of the big questions that’s been asked over and over is why did Anet not go for a more creative solution, but the answer to that is simple. They went with something they know worked from other places.

I don’t believe they felt they could afford to wait to develop something more creative to see if it might work. And I think if it was “your” company (not yours specifically but the general public yours), most people would look at the time and money already spent and go for the non-gamble way to fix it.

From a business perspective it was the right thing to do.

Think of it this way. If they tried some better/more creative/more acceptable solution and it didn’t work, where would they have been then?

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It is easy to be best MMO of the year when you are the ONLY MMO of the year. This year will be much more telling of the games health.

Though we should be able to get a good idea of the games health when they release the fractal leader boards. Since they aren’t retroactive we can just count the number of players on the leaderboard and that will give us a decent idea of how many people are playing.

I think you’ll find a good portion of the people playing don’t do the fractals at all, period end of story. I have a guild are 150 people, and I think less than 50 of them have ever set foot in a fractal.

I just want to know when I’m in the mists, if I leave the mists where I’m going to end up. I mean a lot of times when I go AFK or even when I log, I go into the mists first, so I don’t log in in the middle of some event I’m not prepared for.

So I come back the next day (I have a lot of characters) and I’m in the mists. Do I go to LA, or do I leave, because that’s where I want to be.

I’d rather know where I’ll end up when I leave the mists.

Lambros Augustus.6594:

I dont care if there is vertical progression as long as its not too hard and/or excessively time gated though the solutions found are extremely unbalanced atm.

The questions around the balance of vertical progression are myriad. If everyone can get them fast, then they serve no purpose, since everyone can get them fast. They don’t solve the problem they were introduced to deal with in the first place….ie the type of player who needs something to work for.

Put in something that’s easy to get that anyone can get and those players won’t be satisfied and the whole exercise is a waste.

The trick is to put it in in such a way where it’s not actually necessary to play the game (which I think Anet did okay on).

That is, they made it hardish to get, without making it impossible. Many people got ascended weapons in two weeks and there are already people walking around in ascended armor.

I’m not the kind of guy who needs stuff to work towards…but I recognized there are others who are. That’s why I believe Anet had to compromise.

The problem with a good compromise is that no one ends up happy. But I’m not sure I see a better option either.

The easiest way to get completion is to use the wiki. The wiki lists in each area the points of interest, way points and everything else.

But when you look at zones you’ll notice some areas have no points of interest in them, no way points, no vistas. They might have a jumping puzzle they might have nothing at all.

Those are the ones you’ve missed.

I agree with KillCannon on this. The manifesto is a dead issue. Since it’s a statement of intent and since we know that things can change in the development process of an MMO, what’s the actual value in bringing up the manifesto? How does it make your arguments stronger? How does it make your point of view stronger?

Because I’m personally against vertical progression. I don’t particularly like it and I don’t think it’s necessary.

But if I bring up the manifesto in that regard to try to say this is what I like or don’t like, it simply weakens my argument.

It would be better to say that vertical progression is something that creates a problem of stat inflation which will negatively affect the game in the future. That’s assuming that Anet makes the world harder due to the higher stats.

Because if they don’t, the ascended gear trivializes content that was already easy enough and didn’t need to be easier. That’s an argument I can get behind.

But implying that Anet lied to or misled their players? That’s going nowhere and accomplishing nothing.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

They also said that ascended gear was always supposed to be in the game but we didn’t have time to include it at launch. You may or may not believe that, but they did say it.

That claim is inaccurate.

What was said was:

Chris Whiteside

First of all in retrospect it would have been better to have included Ascended Gear at launch.

---

For what it is worth:

It does not matter what percentage of the total discussion of GW2 any one aspect of the game represented. If you claim X in order to convince people to purchase your product it doesn’t matter that you discussed Y at greater length. The discussion of Y is irrelevant to the claims made about X.

I’m forced to disagree with this. The amount of time spent talking about something indicates its importance.

There isn’t anyone on these forums who believes that MMOs don’t change and evolve. Anet had the word iterate in so many posts in a row, it became an inside joke between me and my wife. They iterate. They change things. They made a blog post about it.

So, if they went and changed something they spend months and years talking about every time they appeared in publicly, like taking out dynamic events and replacing them with traditional quests, one could then claim that’s core to the game.

Because there are many many people here claiming the lack of gear progression was core to the game…but the amount that Anet talked about it and brought it up makes it sound more like an aside.

Anet made a half a dozen statements, maybe, about vertical progression and gear grind. They changed it. They made more than a dozen statements about energy potions, which they also changed…but no one is saying they made this huge change and went back on their word about that.

Anyone who plays MMOs SHOULD expect them to change. And anyone who’s saying that this is a core centerpiece of the game would then go and have to prove that’s the case. If it was, I think Anet would have talked about it a lot more.

You can still get rings from level 10 fractals, and I got a fractal skin from a level 10 fractal as well. That much I can tell you.

Thalador.4218:

@Vayne & lordkrall: how much are you being paid for this sort of stuff? You see, I’m a bit low on money and I’d need the cash to pay my university tuition, so I thought I could earn a bit by defending lies like a blind zealot. You’re doing it great, guys!

P.S.: This refund thingie…. is it still available?

The refund thing is a relatively normal policy, but Anet kept it going for a long long time. I assume if you bought the game recently you could request a refund. I also assume if you bought the game before the initial launch of ascended gear, you’d have long past your time for a refund, but you know, if you’re interested, the only ones who can really answer you are customer support.

As for the payroll comment, most games have some people who enjoy them. That you can only believe that someone who disagrees with you must be on Anet’s payroll doesn’t speak much for you approaching the topic with an open mind.

Someone must like the game. I’m always on overflows on patch days.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

They also said that ascended gear was always supposed to be in the game but we didn’t have time to include it at launch. You may or may not believe that, but they did say it.

I know. They also said ascended items were put in when they saw how quickly people earned exotics. So which is it? You can’t put something in before launch but run out of time, and decide it put it in as a reaction to something after launch?

Anyway. I digress

what it is and isn’t is irrelevant to how people feel. It’s clear from this issue coming up again and again and again that people feel aggrieved and upset. When dealing with people perceptions are waay more important than facts. Feelings are much more important than definitions and expectation management has more effect than technical information.

The world and customers operate by expectations and their perception of value.

The above statement above while factual(in a facetious way) does nothing to address feelings, expectations and perceptions. So therefore would do nothing to resolve the situation and because of the tone would probably make it worse.

As I also mentioned above. Explain why parts of the manifesto couldn’t be met, then express regret and acknowledge the disappointment the change caused.

It’s customer management 101 stuff.. really..

How many people? What percentage? Six guys on a forum who are still hanging around a year later? I don’t think most people in game are still carping on about this. I know no one in my guild is. Because the people that cared the most left and the people who came in after, well this was the status quo.

As to what Anet said about ascended gear, what I believe (and can’t prove) is this. Anet always intended for a gear higher than exotic gear to be in the game, however, they didn’t intend for it to be in the game in its current form. That would make both statements more or less true depending on the perspective of the person making the quote.

They may very well have discussed ascended gear before launch and decided they didn’t have time to put it in. But during that discussion they may have also said that it was going to have the same stats as exotics, and it would just be skins. We don’t know for sure, but it seems to me at least, likely that both things are true.

They were going to include ascended gear but ran out of time, however due to what they saw, that gear was different than their first vision of it.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Vayne.8563:

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Regardless of all the to’s and fro’s about the manifesto, it’s pretty clear there’s still a large amount of ill feeling around it. Some people still feel disappointed and let down about it, still feel like they were bait and switched and still hanker after the game they thought the manifesto was describing.

it’s become the focal point for what many perceive to be the failings of the game, even if that’s not always the case.

Because it’s people’s feelings and expectations that have been expressed it’s rare facts or simple ‘it was an expression of wishes and it was bound to change’ statements will ever be enough.

I feel that those feelings ought to be dealt with by Arenanet , directly, compassionately and with understanding otherwise I fear the manifesto will continue to be a rock around the games neck for years to come and in my view will continue to suck players and potential customers away.

The manifesto and what it represents to some is an open wound in the community and perhaps it’s time to start healing it

How would you like Anet to deal with this?

They offered refunds to people who didn’t like the change and gave refunds for people, even after they played the game for six months. That is when the ascended gear was introduced a year ago. A whole year.

People are still talking about this. Those who didn’t like it could have gotten a full refund, even after playing the game for months.

Those who didn’t mind it, or wanted to see were able to keep playing. Anet has already said what will happen going forward and in fact, even back then said there will be a new tier of gear added, namely ascended gear. Obviously they don’t want to promise that will never happen again, because they didn’t necessarily expect it to happen the first time. You can’t make promises you can’t guarantee you can keep.

So four years now after the original manifesto video was released and a year plus after ascended items were released, what should Anet say?

Say sorry. Offering refunds, stating that stuff changed isn’t the same as actually showing remorse and regret over something. To some it read like it a stroppy ‘well you don’t like it! take your money back we don’t care’.

It reeks of hubris.

To admit something would allow people to move on, accept what’s done is done and would imho restore a lot of trust and faith that people lost.

For example. in reply to a question about the manifesto at Eurogamer 2013
“Still hold core values but had to make some adjustments during development. Sometimes we have to stray away from what we have said in the past. "

There’s no sign of regret, or dealing with how players felt about it. Now look at what they could have said

“We really wanted to deliver on our manifesto promises, and for a long time it looked like we really could. Then we hit a number of snag’s we just couldn’t find away around and we had to change it. I know people were disappointed, a lot of us were too but y’know sometimes it just doesn’t work out and we’re sorry for it.”

Companies, for the most part, don’t do that. Unless they do something completely ludicrous like selling a monocle for $90 in the cash shop, it’s just not what they do. They DID offer refunds.

They also said that ascended gear was always supposed to be in the game but we didn’t have time to include it at launch. You may or may not believe that, but they did say it.

But an apology isn’t going to cut it. It won’t put a gear cap back in the game and if they apologize that’s the next step. If they’re really sorry, people will say, they should put it back to the way it was.

Let’s pretend, as an argument, that the game wasn’t doing well and they had to make this change. What company is going to say, sorry the game isn’t doing well?

This isn’t a person we’re dealing with, but a company, that has to look after it’s own interests. And I agree they kitten ed off a lot of people, we’ll never really know how many.

They offered refunds, they tried to explain, they didn’t apologize because that might have done as much damage as good.

If you can’t live with gear progression an apology achieves very little. If you can live with gear progression, you’d still be here.

I don’t know how many people an apology would have affected, but I do know that a three year old video is three years old, the current situation has pretty much existed since a year ago November, and if people don’t want to move on, that’s okay.

But of the playing population of the game, I suspect most people are tired of hearing about this.

Shanaeri Rynale.6897:

Regardless of all the to’s and fro’s about the manifesto, it’s pretty clear there’s still a large amount of ill feeling around it. Some people still feel disappointed and let down about it, still feel like they were bait and switched and still hanker after the game they thought the manifesto was describing.

it’s become the focal point for what many perceive to be the failings of the game, even if that’s not always the case.

Because it’s people’s feelings and expectations that have been expressed it’s rare facts or simple ‘it was an expression of wishes and it was bound to change’ statements will ever be enough.

I feel that those feelings ought to be dealt with by Arenanet , directly, compassionately and with understanding otherwise I fear the manifesto will continue to be a rock around the games neck for years to come and in my view will continue to suck players and potential customers away.

The manifesto and what it represents to some is an open wound in the community and perhaps it’s time to start healing it

How would you like Anet to deal with this?

They offered refunds to people who didn’t like the change and gave refunds for people, even after they played the game for six months. That is when the ascended gear was introduced a year ago. A whole year.

People are still talking about this. Those who didn’t like it could have gotten a full refund, even after playing the game for months.

Those who didn’t mind it, or wanted to see were able to keep playing. Anet has already said what will happen going forward and in fact, even back then said there will be a new tier of gear added, namely ascended gear. Obviously they don’t want to promise that will never happen again, because they didn’t necessarily expect it to happen the first time. You can’t make promises you can’t guarantee you can keep.

So four years now after the original manifesto video was released and a year plus after ascended items were released, what should Anet say?

killcannon.2576:

I don’t care one way or another, unlike some, I have no strong feelings about the manifesto.

To get BiS gear…either cosmetic or stats there is a lot of repetitive gameplay, whether that is grind or not to a player is subjective. MMO’s in particular, are competitive games. If you’re not trying to be the best you can…then I dunno.

And combat is the same thing over and over again, just like any other MMO. There are accepted strategies, builds, ways to go about combat. The only thing that augments combat here, is again, gear.

They talked about both gear grind (wasn’t going to be included. is in fact included), and vertical progression (same). Whether or not it’s “necessary” doesn’t matter. It’s in there and they talked about it.

Just wanted to say they mentioned it. Continue your pointless debate.

I played Rift. I had pretty much all of my skills macros to two keys. The macro handled 99% of the combat. I had no active dodge. I had no active anything since most of my spells rooted me. I’m sorry you can’t see a difference between this combat and the other, but the difference is night and day.

High level fractals don’t let you spam one, unless a whole lot of people are carrying you. Open world stuff was never going to be hard hard, because why would it be. But this game’s combat is so far different from WoW’s and Rift’s and SWToRs…simply the introduction of an active dodge is a huge difference. You can not believe it if you want, but many many people do like the combat in this game more than the combat in traditional mmos.

And I didn’t say Anet NEVER mentioned gear grind. I said the percentage of the mention of gear grind doesn’t equate to advertising the game or selling the game based on it. It’s a different statement. I said Anet mentioned gear grind and vertical progression a handful of times.

You pointed out one of them. It’s a tiny, tiny percentage of the literature and information they provided. If someone were to get all that literature and graph it and compare it to how much they talked about dyanmic events, personal story and dynamic combat, you’d undoubtedly see that I’m right about that.

As for my argument being pointless? That’s a matter of opinion. I think it’s perfectly acceptable to enter a thread talking about the manifesto and talk about how most people misinterpret it, particularly the video manifesto, as well as how people exaagerate the importance of the conversations Anet had about it, considering how rarely it was talked about.

You may have talked about it. Anet spent very little time talking about it.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

WoW has low pop servers too.

Oh, but haven’t you heard? Guild Wars 2 has no low pop servers!

That was sarcasm, by the way.

Vayne.8563:

Not sure what this intends to prove.

That the population isn’t all roses and sunshine as you always like to claim it is.

Vayne.8563:

And there really isn’t anything to debate.

Then stop posting.

Vayne.8563:

The video manifesto, the one people keep quoting, mentions neither gear grind nor vertical progression directly.

And then there’s killcannon’s post…

But do go on.

Vayne.8563:

We know for a fact that Anet didn’t have gear progression at launch and we know for a fact that that situation changed a couple of months after the game was released.

Those are the facts. Everything else is supposition.

So then your constant claim that the game wasn’t doing well and the sudden shift was necessary is also supposition and guesswork? Cool. Thanks for finally admitting it.

Now where did you see me say that the population is sunshine and roses? I said, and have always said, that my server is busy and I’ve also said that only Anet has the numbers. I’ve maintained no one but Anet knows those numbers. You can go back as far as you like, and that’s what I’ve said. It’s usually in response to other people saying the game isn’t doing well, which they can’t know…they can only guess at.

The conversation is simple and it’s being repeated so this will be my last post on the subject. You can have the last word if you want.

I’ve already answered Killcannon’s post and I don’t have a problem with what’s quoted there. This game is significantly different from other MMOs. Know how I know? I don’t like most other MMOs and I do like this one. So it would be hard to prove they were the same.

I also see people from other MMOs all the time coming over to this MMO and telling me how different it is. One new player from WoW in my guild today commented on how different this game was than WoW, when he didn’t realize we could all harvest the same node. When he didn’t realize we can all get experience and loot for killing something.

The combination of factors such as that make the manifesto a truth statement, not a false one.

The fact that people have fixated on gear grind as the only basis for comparison doesn’t factor into the argument at all.

killcannon.2576:

Vayne.8563:

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

You don’t have a clue as to the population of the game. No one does except Anet.

And yet you always put yours forward as fact, without numbers.

Vayne.8563:

But Anet didn’t make this decision likely.

Oh, I think they did.

Vayne.8563:

Are you suggesting the game population was fine, everything was going swell and so Anet drastically changed direction, over night?

No. Rather, I suggest that things may not have going entirely as planned and instead of actually giving the game some time to properly grow, Anet made a horribly snap decision without truly looking into the actual data.

I think they hit the big ol’ PANIC button without actually thinking through just what that would mean and the consequences it would have.

You may be right about that, but without numbers, you simply don’t know. I’m not putting anything forward as fact, except for the fact that this lack of vertical progression took up only a tiny tiny percentage of the amount of information Anet released about Guild Wars 2. That’s a fact.

And I’m relatively certain that the manifesto mentioned nothing about gear grind at all, or vertical progression.

People hear what they want to hear, or what they expect to hear.

It mentions both.

Entire paragraphs quoted for context:

So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

Finally, since combat is such a core part of the gameplay of any MMO, we’ve put a lot of emphasis into rethinking combat. So much of traditional MMO combat is rote and repetitive. You execute the same strategy over and over again, just augmented over time with better and better gear. After a while it starts to feel like you’re playing a spreadsheet. Combat needs to be about making creative choices, and it needs to feel immediate, active, and visceral. So we’ve put a huge focus on strengthening our combat, giving the player limitless choices, and providing the thrill and joy of being in combat.

First of all, in this regard the manifesto is still true. That is to say, Guild Wars 2 doesn’t force you go grind because, with the exception of high level fractals, you can do all the content in lower level gear…which is not the case in most MMOs. In fact, gear in this game is far less significant than it is in most MMOs.

Likewise, in most MMOs the combat isn’t dynamic. You’re not moving around reacting. You’re using an established rotation that never changes.

So from what you’ve posted here, I have no problem with what Anet has said.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not putting anything forward as fact, except for the fact that this lack of vertical progression took up only a tiny tiny percentage of the amount of information Anet released about Guild Wars 2. That’s a fact.

You know what else is a fact? The percentage that information took up is meaningless. It’s something that people really latched on to when it came to their decision to purchase this game. It’s one of the things that helped push people to purchase this game.

That’s a fact.

Vayne.8563:

And I’m relatively certain that the manifesto mentioned nothing about gear grind at all, or vertical progression.

I’m not even going to get into this part. I’ve seen what happens when people try to discuss the manifesto with you. It never ends. It just devolves into a worthless debate of he said she said, and at the end you go on your merry way continuing to defend decisions that have hurt and divided this game and its community.

Again, I invite you to DR. The server that is eternally among the lowest in WvW. The server that, last I checked, still hasn’t killed Tea Kettle since the big ol’ revamp.

WoW has low pop servers too. Not sure what this intends to prove. And there really isn’t anything to debate.

The video manifesto, the one people keep quoting, mentions neither gear grind nor vertical progression directly.

So what exactly is to debate?

We know for a fact that Anet didn’t have gear progression at launch and we know for a fact that that situation changed a couple of months after the game was released.

Those are the facts. Everything else is supposition.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

You don’t have a clue as to the population of the game. No one does except Anet.

And yet you always put yours forward as fact, without numbers.

Vayne.8563:

But Anet didn’t make this decision likely.

Oh, I think they did.

Vayne.8563:

Are you suggesting the game population was fine, everything was going swell and so Anet drastically changed direction, over night?

No. Rather, I suggest that things may not have going entirely as planned and instead of actually giving the game some time to properly grow, Anet made a horribly snap decision without truly looking into the actual data.

I think they hit the big ol’ PANIC button without actually thinking through just what that would mean and the consequences it would have.

You may be right about that, but without numbers, you simply don’t know. I’m not putting anything forward as fact, except for the fact that this lack of vertical progression took up only a tiny tiny percentage of the amount of information Anet released about Guild Wars 2. That’s a fact.

And I’m relatively certain that the manifesto mentioned nothing about gear grind at all, or vertical progression.

People hear what they want to hear, or what they expect to hear.

Gene Archer.8560:

Vayne.8563:

We don’t know. But the forums back then,

But the forums are just a minority of the playerbase.

After all, that’s what everyone says now in order to dismiss any criticism of the game that is brought up. Even you have said as such. Why do the forums matter back then, but not now?

Because population drop? Come on over to my server. We’re the only server to not have any Tea Kettle kills. Tell me how great and vast our population must be and how it hasn’t dropped, good old DR.

You don’t have a clue as to the population of the game. No one does except Anet. But Anet didn’t make this decision lightly.

Are you suggesting the game population was fine, everything was going swell and so Anet drastically changed direction, over night? Because that doesn’t ring true to me.

I only know what I see on forums, but Anet has actually data. So me saying I think Anet should have done this or that is pointless, because they have more information than I do….which is all I’m really saying.

We can all guess. We can all think. We can all predict.

But Anet has the numbers.

If they added dwarves to this game, they might as well add elves, hobbits, and Sauron. Fantasy is more than just dwarves and elves and I, for one, I’m thrilled they’re not in this game. The only two MMOs I accept them in is Lord of the Rings and DDO, because I feel they have a right to be there.

But the rest of the fantasy could do a lot better than trying to copy Tolkien. Better writers have already done so.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

No one says the game is without problems. Sure it has problems. But saying that Anet advertised something, when all they did was mention it in a couple of interviews is overstatement for the sake of trying to prove a point.

Sorry, when a game development representative talks to a fansite while the game is in development, they are advertising the game. That’s how these companies advertise their games. Maybe you were extremely casual about advertising your business(es), but that doesn’t mean companies spending millions of dollars to produce a game are.

The game is advertised on several main points. Let me ask you a few questions.

1. Does anyone expect MMOs to be static and not change?
2. What percentage of time did the devs spend in talking about these items specifically. From recollection, they spent FAR MORE time trying to sell us on energy potions before they removed energy potions from the game. It doesn’t mean they were advertising energy potions. A statement of intent is just that, a statement of intent. If something doesn’t work, and you can fix it, you fix it. The energy thing wasn’t working and they made a drastic change. But there’s no one on this forum saying that Anet advertised energy potions and they lied. Not one person. Because it was a change people liked.

So changes people like don’t affect how the game was “advertised” but changes you don’t like do? I’m not sure how to read that.

It all has to do with how much time they spent talking about each thing. This game was sold on dynamic events, personal story, dungeons, and stuff like no trinity. That was first and foremost on their website.

You couldn’t go to their website and look around and find articles about vertical progression or gear grind, because it wasn’t what they sold the game on.

They did answer some questions about it. That’s not advertising, even if you want to use the word.

No one is denying things changed. I’m simply saying people took four or five lines out of tens of thousands of lines and they focus on those lines to the exclusion of all else, as if this is what Anet was focused on.

If you look at everything said, and look at the percentage of time they devoted to the concept of vertical progression, I don’t see how you can say the game was sold based on that.

Dynamic events, sure. It was the big push. Personal story, sure. That was the big push. If those were removed that would have been a major change to the way they sold the game. Something mentioned in a couple of interviews? Not so much.

Guest to a busier server. Try Tarnished Coast. Guesting is free, there are likely more people around.

And for bigger events, you can try calling out in map chat. I do that all the time and it seems to work.

IndigoSundown.5419:

chemiclord.3978:

IndigoSundown.5419:

chemiclord.3978:

They promised. Players bought in… then players left in droves because there was “nothing to do” or “no endgame.” They didn’t want to go back into “newbie zones” for dungeons. They wanted raids. They wanted phat loot. They wanted vertical progression.

GW1 veterans WEREN’T ENOUGH. I’m sorry you hate it; but it’s true.

We’ll never know, because ANet bailed on the cosmetic endgame. Dreary stat boosts without the phat loot and the raids was cheaper to produce.

What I can tell you is from my experience, an initial guild of 20… I’m the only one left. The other 19 got bored because there was no reason to play after they got their exotics. There wasn’t any raids or any better loot to be had, so they left.

You may question the wisdom of catering to those players (I do), but from my experience, they represent the bulk of the MMO market.

From my experience, my initial guild of 50 is down to 1/2 (I’ve got one foot out the door). None of them left due to lack of loot. Most left because they found PvP to be lacking. One left because of Ascended.

How many of the traditional MMO crowd who bought GW2 were willing to give cosmetic progression a try? That’s what we’ll never know, because cosmetic progression was not given the robust options and ease of switching looks that would have made pursuit of multiple looks desirable. There’s also the lack of any prestige in getting most of the looks that are available. This was, I believe, a killer.

We don’t know. But the forums back then, even the forums I moderated, were a bastion of there’s nothing to do at level cap. People had nothing to “work for”, and they were used to that.

I remember a huge drop off in population before Fractals came out and the game was only a couple of months old. I’m not sure how long I’d have waited before making drastic changes.

Nope. That’s because there are no traditional quests. Quests in this game are dynamic events. Don’t worry about being most efficient. It’s a terrible way to play this game anyway. In WoW you wanted to level to get to raids. There’s a lot less of that in this game.

Basically, look for hearts on your map, talk to the heart people (or not you don’t have to) and start helping out. Doing stuff around hearts helps you fill them.

The hearts are there to keep you in the area where dynamic events spawn. That’s your real bread and butter. Events are repeatable, and often chain into longer chains, so don’t run off immediately after finishing one.

I’d also recommending joining a friendly, helpful guild. It can make your experience much better in game.

Jski.6180:

So play it? The gods where eaten by the dragon at least that what the undead mobs are saying. Cantha become super xenophobic so no one is allowed in i do not know about Elona.
GW2 is about 200 years (or 250 i am not sure) after GW1 a lot changed in that time and GW2 is still very new mmorpg it takes time to add in new maps to for new lore. More then likely the Gods will not come into play until after we get all the dragon out. The new maps will come in time but as things stand GW2 is too big so i am not sure how well they will work out.

We can’t get to Elona because Palawa Joko has said up camp in the desert between us and them. And he’s a whole lot more powerful now than he was when we released him. In fact, he hunted down all the sunspears and made them his servants. There are no sunspears anymore, largely because of our actions in Guild Wars 1. I sorta like that. lol

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

How come no one brings up the Iteration blog post that Anet posted that spent the entire post talking about how they change things that don’t work, including completely throwing out entire systems if necessary. Seems like a curious omission to me.

• Condition damage caps in PvE making multiple condition users redundant
• Ranger and Necromancer pet AI
• Designing Engineers so that the ultimate prestige item in the game is unlikely to be seen during combat
• Particle spam which makes herd play a melange of color and light rather than a game where you can enjoy seeing what’s happening
• Still cannot filter on armor weight on the TP

Pity they don’t throw out these systems rather than a feature they advertised.

They throw out what they can. They don’t throw out what they can’t. Remove the condition cap, and the game won’t work. Period. It simply won’t work. Calculating that number of conditions on a single large boss, and having to keep track of it will slow down the server to a crawl. Throwing out something means having to replace it with.

As for something they advertised, I don’t believe the manifesto says what most people are saying it says, I don’t believe they “advertised” this game in the way most people are saying they did. I believe that they adertised this game based on dynamic events, personal story that branches, active combat, and great art. There were a handful of quotes, you can count them on one hand, that talked about gear grind or vertical progression. Most of them were answers to questions. That’s not advertising. That’s answering questions.

No one says the game is without problems. Sure it has problems. But saying that Anet advertised something, when all they did was mention it in a couple of interviews is overstatement for the sake of trying to prove a point.

People are very vested in their ideas of where the game should be and where the game should go. There are never any guarantees in any MMO, because on company can say how design decisions will be received until the game goes live.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Vayne.8563:

I’ll never play another subscription game again, because of the design decisions that make subscription games work are the very design decisions that make subscription game suck. Everything has to be slowed down. They want you in that game and they don’t want you to leave. Sub games all seem to have dailies. They also seem to have rep grind. They also seem to be focused on raids and dungeons which frankly are not why I play an MMO.

Eve Online.

I should have qualified. I’ll never play another theme park MMO that’s sub based. Eve Online is in a space all by itself.

Though I don’t know a whole lot of people who play Eve Online for PvE, and I’m chiefly a PvE’er. Love the concept though.

I’ll never play another subscription game again, because of the design decisions that make subscription games work are the very design decisions that make subscription game suck. Everything has to be slowed down. They want you in that game and they don’t want you to leave. Sub games all seem to have dailies. They also seem to have rep grind. They also seem to be focused on raids and dungeons which frankly are not why I play an MMO.

The manifesto remains to this day 90% true. The two or three lines people take out of context to quote are just that. Two or three lines out of context.

But most importantly, there are plenty of things in the game that I do think are fun and many of them have been introduced recently. As an example, I think Southsun Survival is fun. I think many of the mini games that come around have been fun. I understand a lot of people enjoy the music game over Christmas.

I certainly like the new TA path, the new fractals and the new Teq encounter, even if I had to join another guild to take down Tequatl.

And I really like the instances in the new living story. I like how the living story has changed the world. Waypoints gone, hearts changed to compensate. Things have changed in the game due to the living story. I find that fun.

The problem here is that people want to interpret each sentence of a paragraph as a separate entity but that’s not how reading works. When Colin talks about grind in the manifesto, he defines it. He says in most games you have this boring grind BEFORE you get to the fun stuff. He’s talking about that when he refers to grind again. Once you define a word in a paragraph, that’s the definition it takes.

He subsequently spoke about how you have to level up in most games to get to raids at end game and you don’t have to do this here. They put encounters like Shadow Behemoth and the great jungle wurm right in starter zones, so people could get to some fun stuff, instead of just boring stuff.

Naturally fun is subjective, but I think they did exactly what they said they were going to do.

The only line I question in the manifesto is the line about “everything you love about Guild Wars 1”. Of course, everyone might love completely different things, and that’s clearly a marketing line, but the rest of the manifesto…I think they pretty much did what they said they were going to.

There’s no mention of gear grind in the manifesto, it’s clearly not the kind of grind being referred to. I think people need to stop quoting three year old documents and move on with it. If you don’t like the game, that’s cool. If you don’t think they’ve stuck to the letter of the word of a document even a year or two old…well, MMOs change all the time.

How come no one brings up the Iteration blog post that Anet posted that spent the entire post talking about how they change things that don’t work, including completely throwing out entire systems if necessary. Seems like a curious omission to me.

The problems with stories in this game isn’t the stories. The problem is the design decisions around how stories were to be implemented.

Take the personal story as an example. Anet wanted everything to be equal no matter what race or option you chose. That meant breaking the story into 10 level bit sized chunks. It’s not cohesive, because after ten levels you move to the next part. This to me as a bad design decision.

Because of this, writers have to write to a very specific spec…essentially five story instances to tell one complete story which has to have a beginning middle and ending.

I do understand why you can’t have bad or evil characters. The amount of options Anet could create is directly dependent on how much time and effort could be put into the story. Take the SWToR example being given. Even though you could make choices, within the choices you make, none of them affects the game at all. They’re meaningless in the big picture no matter what you do. Unlike single player RPGs which can change the world just for you. MMOs aren’t really good for single player storylines.

But there’s more. SWToR put huge effort into their storylines and the game didn’t do nearly as well as people thought it would…because there’s such a thing as putting too much emphasis on story at the expense of gameplay. SWToR overbalanced to the story, and Anet overbalanced to other concerns.

But once that decision of making stories into bit-sized micro stories was made, the game was going to have a fractured personal story that didn’t build effectively. In my opinion this was a bad decision.

I also dislike how the story of Destiny’s Edge is told through dungeons. Because people don’t usually end up doing every dungeon in order or even that often, so you lose the whole thread of it. It’s not really a very good vehicle to tell a story.

Of all the story aspects, I find the story telling in the Living World better than the story telling in either the personal story or the dungeon story mode instances. For example, in the current Kessex story, the opening and closing instances really did give me a good feel of what was going on. The characters are better than in the personal story (particularly some of their side dialogues if you listen to them) and I felt more involved in what was going on.

I don’t see any way for the personal story to be fixed at this time, because it wouldn’t be worth the resources to go back and fix it. But the Living Story is definitely improving, Scarlet hate aside.

Just add friendly fire to dungeons and people won’t be able to stack. I’d be all for that. lol

There were definitely a lot of bugs at launch. There are bugs now too, of course, but significantly less.

I think it’s true of most MMOs that they’re so big and so complex they have to launch at some point, and there’s always a boatload more work that needs to be done that waits until after launch. It’s just hard to predict how things will work when games actually go live.

There have been so many changes in the game, many say it’s not the same game at all. I’m not one of those people, but some say it.

Those who are saying you should log in and see for yourself are probably right. I’d also recommend joining a guild. Find some people to play with. This game is significantly different from many MMOs, particularly with respect to stuff like breadcrumb quests, and as such, it can be confusing when you first log in.

A lot of people didn’t like the game at first, gave it a second chance, saw that they had to look at it differently and enjoyed it.

And of course, some came back and saw it wasn’t for them. But no one can say how you’ll feel, OP, when you try it. But I think you’d be better off finding a nice helpful guild to give you a bit of a roadmap.

A LOT has happened since launch.