A couple of things. First of all, I wouldn’t assume most people hang out in LA. It’s probably the worst place to hang out in. The only reason to go there is the mystic forge, and that’s only if you don’t have a portable mystic forge or a pass to one of the elite areas.
Try Divinity’s Reach or Rata Sum, both are busier than LA.
Secondly free to play players can’t use map chat at all.
HoT maps tend to be more active than core maps, because a lot of people are doing HoT.
But Lion’s Arch is just a godawfully long load screen that leads to pretty much a zone that’s less convenient than other zones.
You’ll need to grind out those mastery points again though but yeah, it’s pretty darn nice. This is why I’m afraid of being an alt fanatic.
You’re confusing mastery points with hero points. Mastery points are account wide. Once your alt turns level 80 all the masteries you have unlocked will be unlocked on that character. You can even glide on new alts before they’re 80, if you have gliding unlocked on another character.
By getting to level 80, you have every single specialization and skill unlocked, even if you never do a hero point challenge. After that it takes about 2 hours to unlock your elite spec in Heart of Thorns.
Not sure why anyone thinks that’s so arduous to unlock an entire character to max in a couple of hours.
I’m still utterly confused by how to unlock masteries – and I’ve leveled my level 80 character up naturally. I don’t understand what I’m meant to do or where to go – I have 8 Tyria masteries but they are locked. I don’t think it’s been very well explained at all.
You’re right. It’s not well explained at all. 100% True.
In order to unlock masteries, you need to do the first two stories in Heart of Thorns. Go to your hero panel, the fourth icon down in the story journal. Click on it and you’ll see options for different stories. You should probably do Scarlet’s War first, as it’s a recap of Living Story Season 1 and it takes about five minutes. Then click on Heart of Thorns and click start story.
When you do the Prologue and the first story instance, it unlocks masteries on the account.
There are two types of masteries, those from the core game and those from the hot game. Mastery points and mastery experience are completely separate. In other words, you can’t level core Tyria masteries in HoT and vice versa.
At any rate, you level masteries by leveling the skill bar, just like when you were trying to get to 80. The difference is, when the skill bar is full you need mastery points to spend.
The first mastery in any line only requires one skill point but as you get further in the line it requires more. Mastery points are generally gotten by doing achievements. In HoT you also have strong boxes (which are achievements anyway) and communes in the world. In core Tyria it’s all achievements.
The reason you have mastery points already is that some of the achievements you’ve done already award mastery points and you’ve received them retroactively.
Hope this helps.
That’s a good explanation, if I had known it just a little sooner. It would have spared me some time… Still hard to find decent guides for HoT.. Maybe I’m a terrible searcher in that part…
I give HoT tours/explanations in game quite frequently. If you’re on a US server, talk to me in game. I’ll be happy to explain the logic behind the zones. HoT is a lot more than just go here and do this. There’s a lot going on. Understanding the underlying design principles just makes the zones a lot more fun.
I’m still utterly confused by how to unlock masteries – and I’ve leveled my level 80 character up naturally. I don’t understand what I’m meant to do or where to go – I have 8 Tyria masteries but they are locked. I don’t think it’s been very well explained at all.
You’re right. It’s not well explained at all. 100% True.
In order to unlock masteries, you need to do the first two stories in Heart of Thorns. Go to your hero panel, the fourth icon down in the story journal. Click on it and you’ll see options for different stories. You should probably do Scarlet’s War first, as it’s a recap of Living Story Season 1 and it takes about five minutes. Then click on Heart of Thorns and click start story.
When you do the Prologue and the first story instance, it unlocks masteries on the account.
There are two types of masteries, those from the core game and those from the hot game. Mastery points and mastery experience are completely separate. In other words, you can’t level core Tyria masteries in HoT and vice versa.
At any rate, you level masteries by leveling the skill bar, just like when you were trying to get to 80. The difference is, when the skill bar is full you need mastery points to spend.
The first mastery in any line only requires one skill point but as you get further in the line it requires more. Mastery points are generally gotten by doing achievements. In HoT you also have strong boxes (which are achievements anyway) and communes in the world. In core Tyria it’s all achievements.
The reason you have mastery points already is that some of the achievements you’ve done already award mastery points and you’ve received them retroactively.
Hope this helps.
I wish they had more than 1 JP per map, and it didn’t have to be extremely difficult… just silly, maybe long, and fun to play. I love Sharkmaw Caverns, it’s ellusive.
There are four jumping puzzles in Caledon Forest, three in Lion’s Arch and three in Diessa Plateau. Two in Southsun. Of course some maps don’t have one at all, but there isn’t just one per map.
I think it greatly depends on the situation. I almost never say this. However, if a person comes in asking for aspects of the game to change that were major selling points of the game in the first place, then obviously that’s something different.
For example, this game was never supposed to have gear grind, or vertical progression. Those asking for it, are indeed playing the wrong game, because this game was sold on not having it. It’s not really even a matter of opinion at that point.
However, saying it by explaining it and saying if this is what you’re looking for you won’t find it here, is very different from saying WoW is that way.
As with everything it’s in the delivery.
Anet said directly that expansion sales didn’t meet expectations, mostly due to free to play players not picking it up. It’s not a secret. It’s not some deeply buried conspiracy theory. The expansion didn’t do well as expected.
Anet has made mistakes, and NcSoft even admitted “mistakes were made”. What those mistakes are we can only guess, but the odds are the lackluster sales was attributed to many things, not just a couple.
@Just a flesh wound.3589 (and forum-bug-fix in one)
After my last comment to you I did a little google-search and found something I expected no to be available. But it was.A chart that shows what the average user spends on a free to play game in a year. It even includes Guild Wars 2.
https://mmos.com/editorials/whats-a-free-to-play-user-worth
https://cdn.mmos.com/wp-content/gallery/editorials/MMO-ARPU-table-mmos.jpgThat is $3,88. (And that was a lot, GW2 was third with that number)
Now lets say that you sell an expansion once every 1,5 year and price it at €50,- (What is reasonable for a true B2P game). That means you could do with 1/8th of the player-base to earn about the same amount of money. (3,88 * 8 = 31,04 * 1,5 = 46,56).However you can make a better game because you don’t have to mess with the games because you try to get people to sell stuff in-game. That means that overtime you are likely to lose less people (as we did see with GW1). So you can maintain that healthy income over a longer period of time.
Better game, and over-time better income. If the game is any good obviously.
For the millionth time, Guild Wars 1 had virtually no competition. You keep going back to it. Guild Wars 1 did it so we should be able to do it today.
There are a lot of things that happened ten years ago that couldn’t be repeated today.
Let me ask you this. When Guild Wars 1 was lauched, how many multi-player fantasy games existed that didnt’ have a monthly charge?
As with all MMO expansions, the new content is an expansion, that is an extension of what has already come before. Jumping into the new stuff without going through the old stuff is a bit like studying algebra without having learned mathematics.
The idea of a level 80 boost is not meant for a new player, so much as an old player who has already been through the process.
No one should be playing HoT content without first having learned how to play core content.
Hmmm, I partially agree with you. I think the lvl80 boost is meant for new players who want to experience more content, then just the free-to-play content. Otherwise people wouldn’t buy HoT, only if they had all the other expansions. So a lvl80-boots would be otherwise just be ridiculous wich is probably your entire opinion.
Actually level 80 boosts are there to compete with games that offer them, having nothing to do with who should use them.
The argument should go something like this. I haven’t experienced any of the content before 80 and I don’t know how to play the game. All the content is new contnt to me, so I might save the level 80 boost for a second character once I actually learn to play the game. That’s how I’d think about it.
But there are people playign the game who want instant gratification. They want to run before they walk. They think they’re better at learning than they are. I’m smart, I’ll pick it up. I’ve played lots of MMOs.
So they boost because they have no patience, maybe because in other MMOs leveling was just crap and everyone just played to get through it, and they not only have no waypoints to get anywhere, because they didn’t run through the zones, but they have no experience of how to play or knowledge of the world or lore. They’re essentially starting a game at the end and hoping to just muddle through with what they know.
Leveling in MMOs is generally just one long training mission anyway. You skip that at your own risk.
As with all MMO expansions, the new content is an expansion, that is an extension of what has already come before. Jumping into the new stuff without going through the old stuff is a bit like studying algebra without having learned mathematics.
The idea of a level 80 boost is not meant for a new player, so much as an old player who has already been through the process.
No one should be playing HoT content without first having learned how to play core content.
@Devata
Guild Wars 2 doesn’t live in a vacuum. This idea that there’s going to be some MMORPG holy grail at this point is ridiculous because there are not only too many MMOs, but the day of the MMO has passed and it’s no longer the cool game type. This has happened many times in the past.
There was a period of time where strategy games were very popular and they got replaced at that time by RPGs who were later replaced by a different type of game. Those old single player RPGs gave way to games that were more adventure games like Tombraider, and on and on goes the cycle. This isn’t the age of MMOs. What WoW did won’t be repeated until the cycle comes around again. This is the age of mobas.
Anet made a bunch of mistakes that had nothing to do with your prediction at the time and trying to take credit for that prediction as a prediction is ludicrous. Because all you were really talking about was the cash shop did this and there’s no evidence at all that that’s the case.
Anet’s biggest mistake was pricing the expansion at $50 which people felt was too much for what they were getting. Then they didn’t provide a character slot with the cheapest version. Those two hits to credibility made them seem greedy. Of course most games of this quality have either subs or “optional” subs, and so it’s not as greedy as it looks, but Anet forgot image is important. What your fan base thinks about you is important.
So Anet then went on to nerf dungeon rewards, add a WvW with too much PvE in it that a lot of people didn’t enjoy, made the new zones grindy, much of which they fixed in April, but the horse was already out of the stable by then. Add the content drought to that and only raiders and SPvP people felt catered too. It was a perfect storm for casuals and veteran players to feel neglected. And when you add to that the problems with small guilds, that’s a whole different group of people.
Anet made a lot of mistakes, and if they hadn’t, they’d probably be about where they were, and your “prediction” would have come to nothing.
You’re taking credit in making a prediction you say you made, which you can’t back up, leaving out all the stuff you said which didn’t happen. You made hundreds of statements, pick one you believe you said from memory and you’re going to insinuate you’re some sort of pyschic or genius who knew exactly when the downturn would be and why.
Once you get the why wrong, the rest of it is pretty much just a guess. Without knowing the date of what you said or exactly what you said, all you have is the information that the game has lost a step…which it has. It’s lost a step. I’ve listed many of the reasons why. Mistakes were made.
At the end of the day, that’s what happens to most MMOs. Too many groups of people want too many things and the loudest most insistent groups tend to be the ones that have the least amount of people in them. The casuals, by and large, don’t get involved in posting on forums or reddit.
(edited by Vayne.8563)
@Devata
Edited to make it correct.
I predict one day Donald Trump will no longer be president of the United States. At some point, the prediction will be right. Saying you predicted something that applies to virtually every single MMORPG on the planet isn’t really anything to crow about.
You made a very general statement that the sales wouldn’t maintain their current level. That they’d go down at some point. I could have predicted the exact same thing, since it’s happened to Eve and World of Warcraft and Guild Wars 1, in fact, virtually every game that’s ever been created.
Sales go up for a while sales go down eventually. That’s sort of the whole deal with expansions.
During our numerous conversations in the past, where you pushed an expansion model, I made comments that there’s more risk involved in an expansion, because if an expansion doesn’t do well, its’ a huge investment for little return.
Look, my prediction came true too. Anet came out with an expansion that didn’t do as well as predicted and Anet has lost money.
Your “prediction” and I hesitate to call it that, is practically meaningless in the scheme of things and the odds of it suggesting what you suggest, in my opinion is probably quite low.
(edited by Vayne.8563)
Take your comment that HoT isn’t good for solo players. I have a guild full of people who solo and many of them play HoT without a problem. They don’t have to group. They figured out how to get around and do the zones
That doesnt really change the fact that HoT zones has a much different design philosophy compared to first generation zones.
I know tons of people that solo dungeon bosses. Does that mean dungeons arent designed as group content?
But we’re not talking about people who solo dungeon bosses here. I run a casual guild filled with casual people who aren’t really good at the games.
I agree that a change was made, but for some people that change revitalized the game. HoT is bad for people who don’t want to learn how to play their profession that’s probably true. But it’s not bad for solo players “in general”.
And you don’t need to be the type of person to solo a dungeon to do well in HOT solo. This isn’t really a good analogy.
Nope, it won’t change this year.
The problem with western thinking generally is everyone is looking for one big reason…and a lot of times it’s not one big reason.
~
Because you have to plug lots of little leaks, rather than one big one.There is a difference between one big reason and one main reasons with additional smaller reasons that might increase the problem. Again, also I did not only mentioned the grind / cash-shop focus but also other things like lack of traditional quests, no seamless zones and in the pass the temporary nature of content, that they luckily fixed.
Yes all those things should be addressed and there more smaller things that are an issue. For example I do think the HoT maps are not so good for solo-players.
But it’s less useful to plug lots of little leaks in a dike when the foundation has a fatal flaw. In fact imo that flaw was there for a long time and I have been here asking for 3 years to fix that flaw. We are now at a point where that flaw has resulted in the collapse of a part of the dike so plugging all the little holes won’t do much anymore. In fact, you can still fix the dike but an even then a bigger challenge is to repair the damage done by the flooding. Many people have left the area and are settling somewhere else.
This whole thread is a Devata “I told you so” thread. It tried to make sense of why the game was not doing as well as it did and said the game could do better.
In a way that is true, but the reason that I made this thread was because I did feel that I also had to come back to take resposibility for my claims (being correct or wrong) after being so active for multiple years here. However it’s also people directly or indirectly asked me to come back. You where one of the persons that basically did that indirectly.
You always said things along the line of ’it’s false logic, things can go different’ and ’it’s not a fact that results will keep going down’. So now we have the factual data I did come back.
I would also have come back if the results would be great, in fact I made the Excel before the results of Q3 where availible and was simply waiting for the results of Q3 to complete the file. Honestly even I expected Q3 to be a little better, not a great improvement that would undo / fix the bad quarter of Q2 but a little higher. I also think that Q4 will be higher, Halloween, S3, Wintersday, more inside hours for most people and simply the fact that it is Q4 should surely help to get the numbers up. Still I don’t think the problems will be over simply if the numbers are a little higher (they must be way higher). I think there is a problem, but also if numbers had proven me wrong I was here. Else I would have not made the Excel while waiting for the last results.
I geuss I expected some people to at least look at things a little different when they had the full picture. To late, but it’s better to open your eyes to late then to not open your eyes. I figured you simply was somebody who was very critital of logic and common sense.
But your comments in this thread have shown different. I mean, not only did you say such things to me 2 years ago, even last quarter you told somebody “It’ll be more interested to see the next quarter, since they put the game on sale for half price. That might have a positive affect on sales, particularly with the LS 3 coming out.”
And now we have the numbers, they are lower and still you somehow manage to see the numbers as supporting your theory. While the numbers did something else as you predicted.
Really that proofs to me it is and always has been completely blind love from your perspective, that also puts all your comments ever on this forum in another persective. It basicaly removes any value of them imo.
Also what you might forget is that you are not an everage player. Most people will not (like it to) complete VB on 20 characters.
If Anet makes this game so it would be good for you it would probably be a huge failure because it’s not something most people would like.
I like how you try to make this about me, instead of what I’m saying. Other people have seen me complain about things I don’t like. There is definitely blindness here, but I’m not sure I’m the one who’s actually blind.
Take your comment that HoT isn’t good for solo players. I have a guild full of people who solo and many of them play HoT without a problem. They don’t have to group. They figured out how to get around and do the zones.
You had an idea in your head, to start, and then you use evidence to back up your ideas. That’s not really the way research works.
Answer me this one question. How can you possibly know that the game wouldn’t have done worse with the changes you’ve suggested all along?
It’s always easy to be right when your theories remain untested.
snip
Fun isn’t a static value. I’m almost 100% positive that the stuff you’d find fun, I’d find unfun.
I get that. But there’s absolutely no denying a majority of the content in the expansion blatantly disregarded the wants of GW2’s core audience, downright failed a substantial portion of the community, and has very obviously led to more people leaving and/or complaining than joining. You can like the new content, and that’s fine, nor will I discredit your likes, but I speak more about the underlying systems in the game and how HoT marked a very obvious down-turn for many.
There’s also no denying that right now the profession design – and I mean that by the mechanical design-level – is simply poor, is unsustainable, and does not follow what was announced about the expansion’s goals.
Unless you’d like to tell me about all the people playing core professions in highly-competitive environments, or that the several ESL players which outright publicly complained to ANet that the elite specs are poorly-designed were lying “to get views” for GW2 PvP lol.
I almost never talk about balance or builds. Very rarely. It’s not my game and I seldom interfere in people playing it.
I can go by comments on the forums and I can go by the behavior of people in my guild. Very few people in my guild had issues with HoT, because we’re a relatively casual guild and we enjoy playing together. None of the issues of HOT affected our guild and I suspect there are a lot of people like the people in my guild.
I have a guild of over 200 people and three of us post on the forums. That means well over 200 people don’t post on the forums.
Out of my guild, there were a handful of people who didn’t like HoT but overwhelmingly the experience was positive.
It’s very hard to get a real idea of what’s going on, because I don’t believe the biggest part of the Guild Wars 2 player base is hard core.
HoT suffered the sin of being to light for heavy work and to heavy for light work. The hard core people had stuff to complain about it and ultra casuals had stuff to complain about. The solo people had stuff to complain about. It wasn’t one group complaining.
I’m in the HOT zones and I always see people there doing content. But not just metas. That’s the thing. People who go to forums and think about farming tend to think about metas. I play the HOT zones much the way I played the core zones, with very little different.
The metas are like World Bosses to me. I show up for them if I can or if I’m in a zone, but I just enjoy the zones. I’ve completed VB on 20 different characters. I even love TD which a lot of people don’t.
The point is saying a lot of people are unhappy is misleading if they’re all unhappy about different things, and that seems to be the case.
The hard core PvP players are unhappy about balance and build diversity. The hard core PvE players are unhappy that legendary armor isn’t in the game yet. I think most Fractal runners though are generally happy and most dungeon runners aren’t. Small guilds aren’t happy but my guild is max level and has upgraded everything and we love the guild hall.
This whole thread is a Devata “I told you so” thread. It tried to make sense of why the game was not doing as well as it did and said the game could do better. The problem with western thinking generally is everyone is looking for one big reason…and a lot of times it’s not one big reason.
Saying most people are dissatisfied with HoT (which I’m still not sure is true) is only half the story. But it’s not one big group. It’s lots of little groups. Dungeon runners, small guilds who can’t afford upgrading guild halls, some solo players or players who don’t like more challenging open world content, people who don’t like the power creep in PvE, WvW players who hated the new zone. Having a lot of different smaller groups dissatisfied is very different from having one big reason why everyone is dissatisfied and fixing the problem requires a different approach. Because you have to plug lots of little leaks, rather than one big one. It takes a lot of time to identify how and what to change.
I mean adventures were not universally well received, since mastery points were locked behind them. But every new zone since that has contained more mastery points than you need, meaning more and more you don’t need to get gold on adventures. Anet went in and made the game more solo friendly more rewarding and less grindy. There have been changes and most of them have made a significant difference to one group or another. Even changes to the Fractals, and the new dungeon rewards have helped.
I know I’m still enjoyingthe game, though I’ve given up on PvP completely now, and I don’t raid.
Considering we will be able to purchase a whole slew of new licensed merchandise, I don’t think we have to worry about ArenaNet’s business model.
ArenaNet isn’t likely to close its doors anytime soon.
ArenaNet is indeed not likely to close its doors anytime soon. But that does not mean GW2 is in the pace it could or should be. Especially from the gamers perspective.
Nor, again, worry about its business model. Unless, of course, you speak for all gamers. I know lots try to do so.
Devata, you simply have no evidence at all that the reasons you’ve stated previously are the reasons Anet is in this position and I strongly suspect if they launched the game the way you suggested they launch it, they probably would have done worse sooner.
The bigger problem isn’t about generating new content fast enough but instead making that content enjoyable enough to keep coming back for.
Right now, a majority of the game’s systems simply aren’t fun, and the few that may be are locked behind ones which aren’t fun.
They could start with profession design considering most elements of combat aren’t even a good time anymore.
Fun isn’t a static value. I’m almost 100% positive that the stuff you’d find fun, I’d find unfun.
@Devata, yes, I did defend the LS approach. Anet changed that approach with the expansion which I never claimed to be in favor of, though I understand why they did it.
The FACT remains, there’s a trend that the game isn’t doing as well, but there’s not even nearly enough data to suggest anyone one cause or even any major cause for it.
However, whether the forums are a vocal minority or not, it stands to reason that the more people complaining on the forums, the more likely it is to be a problem to more people not complaining.
So, if a bunch of people are complaining that the game is too hard, for some people it is. We’re not seeing and have never seen major complaints about the cash shop.
There’s simply no evidence here except that the trend is less income,. after an expansion that didn’t do well.
But you were the one arguing for the expansion model and I was the one arguing against it. As it stood too many people on the forums spoke too loudly about having an expansion, Anet changed it’s path mid-way leading to all sorts of issues, including a content drought and the result is less sales.
My guess is, and it’s just a guess, that the shift more toward your philsophy is what hurt the game, rather than the living story focus, which was gone for the content drought.
In other words, your numbers seem to back up my theory a whole lot more than they back up your theory.
All dynamic events, the orange events, are repeatable. Some of them chain.
Shields are defense events, skulls are boss events, buckets are collection events. Circles usually refer to an event range in which things you need to find or kill are inside.
All those things make her a great community liaison, but not necessarily a good game director. That’s like saying because someone is an entertaining TV presenter they would also be a great financial advisor, it’s a completely different skill set.
For all I know Gaile might be qualified to be the game director, but not because of the reasons you gave.
We just elected an entertainer to be president. So it can work.
And it might not. The jury is still out.
Well, according to the Wiki, there are all those bugs and they still are. Granted, if you know a few things you may prevent them from happening but in my opinion, this is just questionable. It’s the pinnacle of a story arc, the culmination of the first expansion and they managed to deliver a bugged boss fight and they managed to still not fix them.
The problem is, no one will edit the wiki to say bugs are fixed, because the bugs don’t affect everyone. So if I’ve been through 20 times without a bug, I still can’t edit the wiki to say those bugs aren’t there. But those bugs don’t affect everyone and some people who said it was bugged, when I played with them, simply didn’t understand what to do.
It’s definitely finicky and some bugs probably do still exist. It’s just that they’re mostly easily avoidable.
Btw, I want to make clear that I am not blaming HoT for where we are now. HoT simply did not fix the problem. Imo without HoT we would be at a similar point today. Simply take the down-going trend from before the announcement of HoT (so until Q1 2015) and continue that. If you do that we would now probably be at the similar place.
HoT was imo not the problem, but it should have been the cure for the problem. Sadly whatever was the problem with GW2 (you know what where the main reasons for that according to me) did not get cured with HoT. That resulted in the people who came back for HoT leaving again and the game simply returning to the ongoing downward trend it was on before HoT.
Still not really sure why the actual complains we see about HOT are ignored by you to fill in the pet theory you’ve been shopping for years now, with relatively little support.
Your statement is sales are down. Sales are down in lots of games. You still can’t compare a ten year old game to a current game and you’ve given me no reason why you should be able to and expect congruent results. The entire playing field is difffernt, but you keep ignoring that.
There were tons of complaints about HoT. Not just a few, but a lot. Considering how many complaints their were, I’m not sure how you can conclude that HoT isn’t one of the reasons sales are down.
Aside from the fact that there’s almost never one reason for anything, in this case we have a bevy of reasons that have been covered again and again on these forums, from content drought to the price of the expansion, to the power creep to the dungeon nerf to the new WvW map to the small guild issues…it’s all been covered in excrutiating detail.
We rarely see complaints about the cash shop. Certainly not in any kind of numbers.
All this bears out is that the game is struggling with player retention and I’m pretty sure a content drought combined with lacklustre expansion sales is more than enough of a reason to cause that kind of drop in revenue.
Wait… since I haven’t done this ordeal in a year and you want to tell me that they haven’t fixed any of those bugs? Are you kidding me?
It was much buggier at launch. I know the bugs with the platforms that spawned in air at least was fixed and a couple of others as well. There’s a chance also some of these bugs are newer bugs.
The fact is, for each person complaining about a bugged instance, there are people running this over and over who don’t have these problems.
I’ve probably done that instance 20 times. I can’t remember the last time I experienced a bug in it.
Nice strawman there!
Just because it was buggier, or just because you personally can’t remember when you last experienced a bug, or just because there are people running this over and over doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. How can you be so dismissive?
My wife and I gave up on this for now. Between the bugs and horrible mechanics we’d both like the two hours of frustration back. It’s kitten like this that makes me scratch my head and wonder, when will GW2 ever be fun and unbroken again?
I’ve helped many people through that instance, and I’d be glad to help you wand your wife too, so you can get it done, assuming you’re on a US server.
I can be dismissive because I’ve taken so many people through who said it was bugged, only not to have it bugged. Because I have done this, and I’m willing to do it again (and again) just to prove it means that I can be dismissive.
Because the facts being reported don’t match my personal experience. Or the experience of the dozens of people I’ve run it with in my guild.
You may have tried it five times. I’ve done it a lot more than that. One would think that having done it that much I’d have a better view from the top.
But I’m not saying it to be argumentative. I’ve offer help in the new zones and in this fight on thread after thread and if people on US servers want help with it, free, no charge, I’m happy to help them.
(edited by Vayne.8563)
@Devata
No Devata, you’ve been the one using flawed logic.
The stuff you’re saying you’ve been saying for years. You had to wait four years before you could even post that oh look, I’m right. Sales are down. You draw the conclusion they’re down because of the gem store or because of the way Anet didn’t make a buy to play game in the exact image you said would work. There’s no evidence, not one shred of it, that your way would have provided greater sales even now, but there’s more.
You went in looking for the flaw. Looking for it. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Let me ask you the simplest question.
How do you know the content drought isn’t responsible for lost sales. How do you know the dungeon decision isn’t responsible for lower income? How do you know that the difficulty change between HOT and the core game aren’t the issue?
All you can state is that sales have dropped. That’s it. You can’t offer any real evidence of why they’ve dropped.
The fact is, the cash shop and the system in place has been around since launch and you’ve had to wait four years to “prove your point”.
That’s not how logic works. Logic works by taking facts and they figuring out how those facts came to be. It is absolutely a fact that Guild Wars 2 has had it’s lowest quarter profits since launch. You don’t have to prove that, because that’s right.
But there have been many many complaints on these forums about a multitude of issues, including balance issues, the game becoming more grindy and less casual, the price of the expansion for the amount of content offered, the perception that casuals have been left behind, the way dungeons had been nerfed, there are so many ways to explain a loss of income (which probably coincides with two things, loss of a player base combined with veterans finding ways to farm that allow them to buy gems with gold instead of cash).
There’s no way you can actually draw the conclusions you draw, unless you’d already made up your mind that was the reason in the first place.
If you were right, you wouldn’t have had to wait four years to make your post.
I would need 100 keys to open all my chests, and really I have no interest in spending the money to open them. I wish I could sell them.
You can sell chests on the TP.
The gliding allows you to glide, assuming you own HoT. If you only own the core game, you can’t glide.
This is where words are dangerous. Autoloot is indeed a feature of Guild Wars 2. You can set your account to autoloot and even group loot a feature that not every game has. What you’re talking about is actually quick loot a feature most games don’t have.
I’m not sure why you think autoloot isn’t a feature everyone gets, because everyone does get it. All they have to do is enable it in their options panel.
I’m almost 100% certain Guild Wars 1 had a rapid fall of as well four years after lauch, because, get this, it was a four year old game.
Four years after GW launch? Yeah, in all likelihood the game made very little, but not just because it was old. At that point, ANet was 1.5 years past the release of Eye of the North, which was 1.5 years after they stopped development on the game. GW was on life support.
Guild Wars Beyond did come out with several chapters after that, though. We’re only a year off the last expansion, which wasn’t as well received as expected, and the next expansion hasn’t come out yet.
But as I said, this data is pointless data,. because it’s comparing a 10 year old non-MMO with a new MMO with a completely different set of sensibilities.
Suppose for argument sake that Guild Wars 1 had 20 free competitors. Not buy to play, but free to play? Do you really think it would have had the same sales anyway?
Pointless comparison is pointless. It proves nothing. Literally nothing. It suggests that ten years ago, there was less competition for the gaming dollar.
My experience with customer service has been positive as well. Glad it worked out for you.
There are new items in the black lion chest. If nothing else, the thing you get for jotun weapons is a new item.
The basic research is yours to do. The black lion chest always gave a random reward. New items are available as part of that reward.
New items are in the chest. But you don’t get everything in the chest.
Most people realized long ago that black lion keys are simply gambling. Of course, some people like to gamble.
If you don’t want to gamble don’t buy them.
In fact, if you’d bothered even so much as mousing over the black lion key in the trading post you’d see it says this: “This key will unlock one Black Lion Chest containing random GEM Store merchandise, including some rare items not sold seperately.”
Why would I want to play a game where everything I worked for was worthless 6 months later. Do I need to be on some sort of hamster wheel to have fun? Nope. I don’t.
The whole I need better gear to slay these monsters that didn’t exist in the game six months ago has always annoyed me. It always felt contrived, much like the trinity which I also dislike.
The thing you’re complaining about was one of the main selling points of this game.
In fact, when ascended gear was first introduced, a lot of people walked away altogether and many felt betrayed.
This community has very strong feelings against vertical progression.
Replacing a trinity with a different trinity would solve none of hte problems for me. I don’t get why people need roles. I think a system without roles is much better.
I don’t get the kind of confusion in dungeons because I play with my guild and we’re usually on voice. Which means that we all have all the roles and we switch them around as needed. In some cases that means one person rezzing while others distract the boss.
If the price of pugging is having to have defined roles, I’d rather they remove pugging.
Unfinished and yet probably the most polished mmo out there and is 4 years old in a genre with mmos actually very rarely fade away in comparison to any other genre, in fact the lifespan of a AAA mmo is going on for 10 years+ I suspect you have not played GW2 very long as you argue for the very things that GW2 champion (e.g horizontal growth etc etc. What MMORPG would you say gives you all these things you refer to?
Well, I’ve had GW2 since the beta, and I can say I agree with OP in some aspects. ArenaNet develops new and improved systems for new maps and for HoT, but the original maps and content remain largely unchanged. It would be nice if all the upgrades that are used in the new content would be applied to the old content as well; it would make for a much better experience, imo.
What upgrades are you talking about?
Wait… since I haven’t done this ordeal in a year and you want to tell me that they haven’t fixed any of those bugs? Are you kidding me?
It was much buggier at launch. I know the bugs with the platforms that spawned in air at least was fixed and a couple of others as well. There’s a chance also some of these bugs are newer bugs.
The fact is, for each person complaining about a bugged instance, there are people running this over and over who don’t have these problems.
I’ve probably done that instance 20 times. I can’t remember the last time I experienced a bug in it.
I agree OP, it can be disheartening. The good news is, you really don’t need those gold medals. I don’t have most of them, and I still have every mastery trained.
A lot of fights are easier when people try not to DPS everything down. There are strategies for a lot of fights that involve more than just trying to do damage. Some are listed in this thread.
I can’t tell you the number of times someone in my guild told me something was impossible until he was shown how to do it.
While it’s true some encounters do require huge numbers of people, this isn’t one of them. In fact, more people can make this fight harder if they don’t know what to do.
It is cute when people defend behaviour of NPC character, to be rude, but when real people get rude they see it is a toxic behaviour.
It was always surprising to me that NPC characters could be rude, toxic, say nasty things and that was okay…
And instead of developers to show how someone should act they go with this hypocrisy!Nice way of showing how someone should act when they lose a parent! I was never rude to anyone when I’ve lost mine!
I’m pretty sure the situations was different. What’s the point of playing a fantasy game if you’re going to assign human cultural values to other races? Are norns actually humans? Do you feel this is out of character for a norn?
First of all, game companies, and in fact all fiction and literature, are going to show flawed characters at times, because flawed characters are more interesting than characters without flaws. People don’t watch or like that kind of fiction any more.
There’s no more “good guys” in wrestling. All the good guys, well most of them anyway are dark. It’s more interesting. It’s more “realistic”.
It would be hypocritical of any artist to only portray one side of humanity while ignoring the darker side.
Well tbf the Mursaat tablets seem to imply that they went head on with Zhaitan, whereas the Pact took a much more thought out approach of cutting off his armies, starving the dragon itself and then blinding it (taking out the mouth and eyes) before fighting Zhaitan. Overall its much easier to fight anything if you starve and partially blind it first, especially if you can take away its source of renewing its armies.
Not to mention Dr. Gor worked on a very specific anti dragon magic energy ray the he tested on minions of Zhaitan.
After we weaked the dragon by starving it of it’s food, took away part of it’s ability to make more undead, and partially blinded it. Zhaitan was hurt by a fleet of ships before we finished killing it.
Yup, we had a strategy. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re able to kill them at all . In my opinion the difference lies in defeating them completely.
Even if we let Zhaitan starve and blinded him, the anti-dragon-magic-energy-thingy shouldn’t be able to kill an Elder Dragon. It may weaken him or put him to sleep for another hundreds of years. The fact that we killed 2 Elder Dragons extremely fast and we’re about to defeat the other ones in the near future makes all of the past lore look ridiculous. They’ve always been a part of Tyria. They were able to push complete races away from their homes and take control over Tyria. In the end of GW1: EotN we were just able to kill a champion of Primordus, the Great Destroyer.Now we’re killing tons of those champions as a routine every hour, how many Claws of Jormags did we already defeat, how many Shatterers? And after the personal story and HoT, killing Elder Dragons is now routine. It’s just ridiculous how easy it is after everything we heard about them.
However, I’m highly entertained that there are people in this thread that would have been find having a boss fight and killing Zhaitan with their tiny swords, where as a giant airship with five giant anti-dragon magic guns are apparently not enough to do it.
It’s understandable that players want to see an actual fight. We are clearly talking about the gameplay here. If you’re fighting them with a real army, gathering all of the races of Tyria to fight together, each of them contributing their strengths (asuran technology, charr artillery and warriors, etc.) it will feel much, much more legendary and epic than pressing “F” out of harm’s way. The anti-dragon-magic-cannon would be a small part within a large battlefield. We want to see how tiny we are individually compared to an Elder Dragon but yet huge as an army.
As I said, I would be happy if we weren’t able to defeat them at all, but as it is right now, I’d like to see an actual battle instead of Taimi pressing a button and sending the message “Jormag is defeated” through the communicator. Great interactive storytelling…
See that’s like saying in the past it would take weeks to destroy a city but now we can destroy it in one minute with a bomb.
Asurans and magitech like the Asurans use didn’t exist back then, nor did waypoints. Technology changes and makes things easier. We were able to defeat Zhaitan using that, but we tried the same trick with mordy and it didn’t work. We couldn’t even get close that way.
I agree that people were disappointed that it wasn’t a fight. The fact that it wasn’t a fight was disappointing.
However, I think a lot less people were disappointed with the entirety of the Modremoth fight. I believe at lot of people like Dragon Stand and in combination with the fight in the personal story it’s much more satisfying over all.
There’s a ton of stuff to do. The thing is, no one can tell you what you like to do.
In most games it’s about gearing up. This game is more about unlocking skins. Getting your armor here is easy. Getting the best skins, not so much.
This game is best with goals but you have to set your own goals. No one is going to tell you this should be your goal. A lot of people do like raids, but I’ve been playing this game for four years and I don’t touch them.
My end game is skin collecting and achievement point hunting. I love exploring the HoT zones and finding all sorts of fast and interesting ways to get around.
Dungeons aren’t dead, people still run them. Groups fill fast, so there’s almost never a group in the LFG, but if you make you’re own group it usually fills pretty fast.
Lots of people run fractals as well. Lots of people also play WvW or PvP.
If you want ideas of stuff to do, try looking through your achievements.
Try to imagine how you might feel if you’d been largely estranged from your mother for most of your life, spent 3 years getting to know her and realising you actually have a lot in common and then just as you were starting to get close you thought she’d been killed, found out she was alive and then she was killed, right in front of you.that.
Yes, she was killed in front of Braham. And he had his vengeance. He was there, he helped killing Mordremoth. And his behavior then, right after his mother death, was a ton more reasonable. After taking down Mordy Braham was in depression or even acseptence. And nor he is back to pure mindless anger. People brains don’t work that way! How can you write a grieving character and screw up 7 stages of acsepting grief?
Except that Braham was estranged from his mother for a long long time and only recently got to talk to her. All the years he blamed her no doubt stokes his guilt and thus his anger.
Anyone who tries to boil down human behavior to the steps of grieving needs to get out and meet more humans.
For one thing, not everyone reacts the same. There are people still greiving over dead relatives or spouses for years. It does happen.
Braham is still relatively immature and he’s a norn. I’m relatively sure beating stuff up is now Norns deal with grief anyway.
Hearing that the old guild, his mother’s guild is being disbanded and replaced with a new guild isn’t going to make him much happier either.
Not to mention Dr. Gor worked on a very specific anti dragon magic energy ray the he tested on minions of Zhaitan. People who don’t do that asuran story don’t get the full picture of how the ships killed him.
However, I’m highly entertained that there are people in this thread that would have been find having a boss fight and killing Zhaitan with their tiny swords, where as a giant airship with five giant anti-dragon magic guns are apparently not enough to do it.
After we weaked the dragon by starving it of it’s food, took away part of it’s ability to make more undead, and partially blinded it. Zhaitan was hurt by a fleet of ships before we finished killing it.
There are places where I think CC against the player is overdone. and it can get a bit annoying, but over all I don’t see much of a problem.
Bah! Humbug! Just kidding. This is a great idea. lol
I suppose that’s possible, but since groups are listed half an hour early when I’ve done it, it’s unlikely and hasn’t happened to me yet. The trick is to keep checking the LFG while you’re doing stuff. It’s a bit inconvenient, I agree. But it’s not worse than something like Triple Threat where you pretty much have to join a giant guild event to get it done.
Or you can arrive early, do the event chains and farm the zone currency and use your chak acid.
I mean when I had to do certain dungeons I did pre-events before them that barely rewarded me at all. Not sure why you have to do nothing. I don’t.
I haven’t gotten into LW3’s story yet, but I am really hoping it’s not just one dragon after another after another. We need other, more creative story draws.
They’re you’re commenting prematurely. It’s like saying there’s a murderer on the lose, who’s a serial killer and they’ve found five bodies and the writers are uncreative.
We know there are X number of elder dragons and we know they all function the same way more or less but we knew this at launch. That’s not the plot of the story. That’s the setup. Now you have to actually compare what happened. WARNING SPOILERS BELOW:
When the game launched we knew that icebrood were dragon minions of Jormag and that risen were dragon minions of Zhaitan and that destroyers were Dragon minions of primordius. This is known stuff. It’s background not plot.
Now, with Zhaitan we form a huge alliance and we beat it. Straight up in a fight with a fleet.
But then we go to the second dragon and we don’t beat it in a flight with the fleet, because the fleet was destroyed. Also an entire race, which was once thought to be immune to dragon corruption because they were immune to Zhaitan’s corruption (there were no risen Sylvari), turned out to be creations of Mordremoth and that race, and least some of it, turned on the other races. This is new and twisty. The backdrop of dragons isn’t the whole story. This is about a race, an entire race that’s been in the game since launch, being protected by the Pale Tree, and as they get closer to the dragon, they start losing control. That’s not the same plot.
Nor is the way the second dragon is killed the same. Fighting it in it’s mind at the same time that an army is fighting it in the zone is not the same fight or the same concept at all.
Now, as the story progresses, and I wont’ see more about it, we get more detail which makes it far more interesting. And we have some interesting characters show up that change a lot of the stuff going forward.
Since this game has launched, we haven’t only fought dragons. For a year and a half we fought Scarlot. You might not count a year and a half out of the game’s history,. but I do. So we havent’ been fighting dragons for four years. For almost half that time we were fighting a mad Sylvari and her strangely crafted alliances.
You might not have been here for the Nightmare Tower, or the the Battle for Lion’s Arch, but I assure you it didn’t feel like we were fighting dragons. But the dragons have been there.
Now, as the Living Story Season 3 has progressed, we have other enemies showing up that aren’t just dragons and even a guy who was once an enemy to humanity who may or may not be an enemy to humanity now.
Those family with Guild Wars 1 lore see a huge call out to that lore in what’s happened since.
The complaint about the game being repeated is grossly overstated.
It would be more repeated if we had different enemies that were just powerful bosses that we beat in the same sort of fight, but that’s not what happened.
I’m wondering of the OP has actually played any of hte Living World after the HoT story. Seems it might be a bit more creative than he thinks.
Nice data, but I’m guessing there’s confirmation bias there.
It’s simply the data directly coming from the NCsoft quarterly reports. I made the data available in the Excel, so you can easily check it. So far there cannot be any bias.
The calculations I did you can also see back in the Excel, and if anything, I did use multiple methods to make GW2 look better! by reducing the initial spike.
So not bias here, it’s just raw data and math.
Again, as I’ve said many times in the past, Guild Wars 1 is a 10 year old game that existed in a very very different marketplace than today. Comparing what Guild Wars 1 did ten years ago with what games do today is going to be meaningless because the entire industry has changed.
You did indeed say that. Nonetheless we can conclude now that what I suggested that would happen, did in fact happen. The question if another approach would work better we can never know for sure. On the other hand.. 10 years ago GW1 also used a model that was completely out of place back then as most of these games used a payment-model now. Now most of these games used a cash-shop model. So why would a different model then what most use now, not work? In both cases it’s a different form the status quo.
Do with it what you want. I always made claims, and it seemed just fair to come back now and look how far those claims came true. And yes, I would also have come back if I turned out to be wrong.
Maybe it’s time that people defending GW2 in any way, and trying to dismiss any negative feedback try to look objective at the numbers. Because with all respect, defending some of those decisions might have helped getting to where we are.
Anyway, like I said. Do with these numbers what you want. I delivered on my part. (Some people explicitly ask me to come back in the future to stand by my claims. I have done that now.)
I don’t even expect people to be willing to look at the numbers, as most people who would back me up, will have most likely left by now.
Even after 2 disappointed quarters, Guild Wars 2 is one of the more successful MMOs of the last five years.
I did not put GW2 next to a lot of other games, but I think that if you take out those first 2 quarters, this is false. A game like AION seems to be able to keep a more stable income.
It’s great that GW2 sold so good at the beginning, but with an MMO it’s important to look at it in the long run. That is also what I have always been focusing on as you know.It’s also not at all about those last two quarters. I put up all the numbers and you act as if I only talk about those last two results. I don’t. If you look at all the numbers you basically see a never-ending drop, until the announcement of HoT, but then half a year after HoT it did come into a free-fall again. Basically picking up the downward line it was following before the announcement of HoT. This is exactly what you would not want to see.
It doesn’t matter if you agree, or if you think it could have come closer to beating WoW, because there’s no evidence to support that doing it differently would make more profit.
No, but these numbers are the closes we can get. You have been using this argument since the beginning. Only difference, we were then also talking about the future. Well at least we know have the numbers of ‘the future’ and know that part came true.
You can never know an alternative reality, or future. Nonetheless, a lot of decisions are based on calculating possible outcomes for that future or alternative realities. Simply ignoring them (because you can never know for sure) is to say the least being stubborn.
Actually we can’t really conclude that you were correct. or rather, we’d have to look at Guild Wars 1 four years after launch and compare.
I’m almost 100% certain Guild Wars 1 had a rapid fall of as well four years after lauch, because, get this, it was a four year old game.
Now I’m pretty sure if you took every single MMO every made and looked at their numbers four years after launch you’d see similar falls.
The only thing maybe you’d find is that it took Guild Wars 2 far longer to drop after launch than most MMOs. That’s a success not a failure.
All your I told you so figures probably proves is that Anet was right all along.