Guild Wars 2

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Vayne.8563:

MikaHR.1978:

Ooooh, they said plenty of something like ascended not existing in GW2 pre launch.

Yet here we are, them turning 180 2 months after launch.

And si that was ONLY gap to fill….yah, filling non-existing gaps doesnt make any sense. Yah, sorry if filling non existing gaps but widening existing ones doesnt make any sense.

And here you are, ten months after two months after launch still trying to turn people against the game. Those that don’t like it have left. And some of those that stay around to complain are simply here to stir the pot.

And why do you care?

You’re clearly here to malign the game. You don’t like the game, you don’t play the game. You’re not interested in anything except something that was changed ten months ago.

Those playing the game, are talking about stuff that is pertinent to the game as it stands.

It’s lovely that you want to quote quotes that are years old, advertising them as if they were carved in granite…but you know…stuff changes in MMOs. People who don’t like the changes leave, people who like them stay…it’s like every MMO in that way.

You don’t like the changes…fair enough. But what you actually do is sabotage every thread with this continual negativity, none of which is actually constructive. I’d be much happier to see constructive criticism instead of a stream of single line pot shots at a game you’re no longer interested in (considering you say there are better games out there).

No one says anyone should love or like this game. But heckling anyone with a different opinion isn’t constructive.

And I don’t really care, but I do have some time to kill (which unfortunately ends now, so I won’t be able to reply to your response).

Ahhh, so indeed you have more interest in these forums than the game itself.

Thank you

And yes, awfully lot of words and posts for someone who dont care rofl

Words are my business…they come cheaply.

Again, check my achievement points if you think I don’t play. It’s just at this hour, my guild isn’t on, so I play less. I don’t play MMOs to solo and I don’t pug.

MikaHR.1978:

Ooooh, they said plenty of something like ascended not existing in GW2 pre launch.

Yet here we are, them turning 180 2 months after launch.

And si that was ONLY gap to fill….yah, filling non-existing gaps doesnt make any sense. Yah, sorry if filling non existing gaps but widening existing ones doesnt make any sense.

And here you are, ten months after two months after launch still trying to turn people against the game. Those that don’t like it have left. And some of those that stay around to complain are simply here to stir the pot.

MikaHR.1978:

Ooooh, Vayne getting mad again rofl

Truth hurts….some people rofl

What makes you think I’m mad? As usual, you’re clueless about what I think. And that amuses me no end.

MikaHR.1978:

Razor.9872:

MikaHR.1978:

Razor.9872:

Beast Sos.1457:

Razor.9872:

Beast Sos.1457:

and this is y gw2 ( guild wars 2) became gw2 ( grind wars 2). seriously look at all that kitten u need for ascended items, nothing is skill based and its a bunch of grind grind grind grind grind. this game is becoming f***in garbage bc of all the f***in grind they r adding. WHERE THE F*** R THE CHALLENGES TO GET ASCENDED ITEMS?! there is none everything is kittenin grind grind grind grind grind grind grind grind GRIND! this game is becoming f***** up.

Skill based stuff is coming. They’ve been testing the waters with things like Liadri. As for the grind, yes, sadly, that’s what many players want. If you have any suggestions for A-net,I’m sure they’d love to hear them in the suggestion forum.

I hope ur right about that. Ive suggested many things but anet doesnt listen. the best way to have dealt with ascended armour was to give them the same stats as exotics but just give them a few infusion slots. this will not force ppl to get ascended items if they do not want to do fractals and will allow those who want to max/farm fractals to do so. gw2 was a mmo where u can get to max lvl gear urself out in exotic and take a 4 months break if u wanted, then come back and not be behind anyone. ascended items ruined that, and by the looks of it kitten is going to be expensive which = more grind grind grind grind and GRIND!

Well, sort of. Keep in mind that ascended will be the last teir A-net implements forever (at least for years). In addition, you’re not being forced to get this stuff, unless you want to do high lvled fractals or WvW. Because of this, you can go at your own pace — there is no need to grind. That’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and I’m only a precursor and a few T6 mats away from Frostfang. I’ve only really grinded once or twice, and that was because I felt like doing so. Personally, I’m going to take my time getting ascended weapons, and only work on them as I have the resources to do so.

Really? You work for ANet or sumeing?

They said you wont get new tier….THIS YEAR. Next..probably, eithr that or level cap raise to obsolete all your gear.

Of course, there will also be new infusions, infusions are at blue tier so quite a bit of room for grind there and sigils/runes, and then some more infusions.

Enjoy, because from now on most of your time will be spent by chasing ever bigger and bigger stats.

aka gear tradmill.

No, I don’t work for A-net; I’m simply understanding. A-net said they wouldn’t be implementing a new tier because they didn’t think they had to. However, as was stated by them, they felt the need to because the gap between exotics and legendaries was too crazy big — so they decided to fill that gap. I do believe they also said they had the intent to have ascended in the game from the start originally, but for whatever reason decided against it — until they ran into this problem. Now that the gap has been filled, there is no reason to add more.

On another topic, you say you are worried about infusions growing more diverse & expensive. While I never thought of this before, I doubt it will happen.

I don’t know if you read what I said, but I said I don’t really “chase” after anything — especially stats. That’s the reason I got GW2. I know you’re worried, but there’s no reason to be paranoid. A-net doesn’t want to turn this game into a gear treadmill any more than you do. The grind for these items was mostly implemented to fill the progression gap, not to start a treadmill.

So stop worrying you silly goose.

Theres already gear treadmill. I dont know what have you been doing lately.

They even said there will be gear treadmill, you are getting new gear to grind every few months and that wont stop.

Ascended WIDENED the gap between exotic and legendary since it uses same resources.

And new tier can appear as easy as ascended did, but they will make you grind so much with ascended (and infusions) that indeed level cap raise will most likely come first. But theres always possibility of new tier especially if they are late with expansion – bam – new tier that makes you grind launch content ad nasueum just like ascended does.

No worries at all, kinda GW2 is 99,9% of my radar since if i want what they decided to offer there are plenty of games that do it much much better.

There aren’t any games that do it much much better. There are games you BELIEVE do it much much better. You state it as a fact, but it’s only your opinion.

And since I haven’t agreed with a single opinion of yours (not one), I don’t believe any of the games you think do it better actually do it better.

Delryn.7235:

Vayne.8563:

Right because quest rewards in other games, like Guild Wars 1 even were so friggin fantastic. Not to my recollection.

I remember getting a variety of gear I didn’t care about,. or gear that didn’t fit my profession or play style. I remember getting hammers, when I was specced for swords. I remember getting items way below what I was already using (which if you bought the game of the year addition was quite easy). I remember thinking, what a weird thing that this guy just gives me a hammer I didn’t ask for and I don’t need. Those were the good old days.

At least with hearts, you get some karma, which you can spend on the reward you want, or save and get no reward at all.

I think you’re glorifying what quest rewards in most games were.

And again, hearts weren’t designed to take the place of quests, dynamic events were. Hearts are there to keep you in areas where dynamic events happen. Comparing them to quests is pointless.

So that’s not even remotely close to what I’m trying to say with quests. Giving example of common weapons which are rewards for “kill X things” quests in other games adds nothing to the current discussion.

Also at no point in any of these posts did I say we should copy quests and/or quest rewards from other games, in fact that’s the opposite to what I’m saying. We should have epic quests with fulfilling rewards.

Another thing, there are no grounds for a GW2 player to criticize another game’s less than thrilling rewards on basic quests, when GW2 offers the weakest and most pathetic rewards of any MMO I’ve ever played.

Events give you no rewards beyond a small amount of exp and currencies, hearts give a pathetic amount of silver and copper (the true reward for hearts are the shops they open but still, not actually a reward). While Story Missions give the same type of rewards as basic quests from other games, things such as blue hammers or green boots which are usually way below your level since Story Missions are such a boring chore after the first couple times you do them.

Lastly, all you’re doing is knit picking bad examples of GW1 quest rewards and ignoring the fantastic ones such as new skills and spells. That’s not a nice thing to do.

Actually the true reward for hearts is exactly that…the shop they open. That is the reward for them. And you can get stuff you want/need or save your karma for the next shop. Why say it’s not a reward, when clearly that IS the reward for finishing a heart.

And I did comment that the game could use longer and more involved quests in my very first post. Not sure why you think I’m against that.

I’m only against comparing hearts to traditional quests when they were never meant to fill that role in the first place. You compare dynamic events to quests, because that’s what replaced them.

Kryta is not in ruins and looks relatively like the old Kryta but more developed.

And try not to talk for all the Guild Wars 1 players, some of us love what they’ve done…even if it’s just adding a trading post to a game that previously didn’t have one.

There are plenty of little tidbits for Guild Wars 1 players in the game. I spoke to Anton’s ghost as one example. Stuff like this is scattered throughout the game.

I do agree the game is a very different animal than Guild Wars 1, but I ask you to remember that the Guild Wars 1 community like the Guild Wars 2 community was a fractured community. Not everyone felt the same way about stuff.

So stop trying to paint us all with one brush.

The cash shop is a mixed bag. The armor…that’s just horrid. I don’t love how most of it looks anyway, but even if I did, the way it’s laid out is just silly. I have no idea what Anet was thinking with that.

I feel sort of the same out town clothes. I find them pointless because you can’t stay in them. Not much enjoyment there, for me anyway.

But I do like some of the toys and novelty items and the unlimited gathering tools, so as I said…a mixed bag.

Then again, I got to the cash shops for pretty much any MMO that doesn’t have a sub and I’m pretty much disgusted.

This one isn’t so bad.

Delryn.7235:

It’s a very real issue in GW2, a lack of direction.

I got a friend of mine to start playing a couple of days ago. I told him to make a character and play alone for a little while so he can discover and learn things on his own a bit more, and get used to the mechanics.

A day later I go to check up on him and he says he doesn’t understand what he needs to do, he’s just running around killing things.
Said all there really was of interesting for him to do was the Personal Story Missions. Of which he said weren’t too fun either since you had to do a lot of traveling to get to a place, to either have a minute of conversation or two minutes of mindless combat and just move on.

Is it bad that I feel like I have to make excuses for why GW2 is fun?

It’s a real issue, lack of depth and direction. If they made the personal story more like the instanced story missions in GW1 it would have ended up much better.

GW1 missions were in a large open area, usually like small dungeons or just a large part of the map which you had to traverse yourself, find the objective on your own. Instead what we have now is a very small and limited location in which we need to stand still and kill things that approach.

It’s very restrictive, not enough interactive.

As for the Heart system not being quests because they have multiple objectives, so what? It’s still the exact same thing, think of it as 3-4 quests put into one with the reward of none.

Seriously, reward in this game is another big issue. Imagine having to play a traditional MMO with traditional quests. Now imagine if all of those quests just gave you a few copper, maybe a silver. That would get very boring very fast.

That’s what both the heart and events are, they have virtually non existing rewards. It’s nice how completing a heart opens up a little shop, I like to think of that as the “quest completion rewards”, still shallow though.

Right because quest rewards in other games, like Guild Wars 1 even were so friggin fantastic. Not to my recollection.

I remember getting a variety of gear I didn’t care about,. or gear that didn’t fit my profession or play style. I remember getting hammers, when I was specced for swords. I remember getting items way below what I was already using (which if you bought the game of the year addition was quite easy). I remember thinking, what a weird thing that this guy just gives me a hammer I didn’t ask for and I don’t need. Those were the good old days.

At least with hearts, you get some karma, which you can spend on the reward you want, or save and get no reward at all.

I think you’re glorifying what quest rewards in most games were.

And again, hearts weren’t designed to take the place of quests, dynamic events were. Hearts are there to keep you in areas where dynamic events happen. Comparing them to quests is pointless.

I did read your whole post (and based on your response, I now remember why I stopped responding to your posts in the first place).

You basically have one, maybe two positive responses to this topic in days. Maybe the minigames aren’t as popular as people thought they would be…that would probably include Keg Brawl.

Bots were really rampant at one point and then there were less of them. Then they get smart and there are more of them, then Anet figures out what they’re doing and there are less of them. It goes in cycles, because botters get smarter and it takes time for the team working on it to figure out how they’re doing it.

Botters can also be using stolen accounts so banning one means they just move to the next one.

How about they’re a business looking to expand? Players leave MMOs all the time, they have to replace them somehow.

I still play and enjoy the game. Frankly, there are some changes I’ve been against, but that’s always been the case in any MMO. Stuff changes and some you’ll like and some you won’t.

Like the living story..that I like. The ascended weapons…not so much. I don’t like the skins, I don’t like the grind (and I won’t grind…so it’ll be a long time till I get another one).

In the end, any MMO is what you make of it. If you don’t like this one, that’s cool. If you don’t like it and you’re going to beat it into the ground for ten months after ascended items first came out…well…have you ever heard the enough already law?

The more you run over a dead cat…the flatter it gets.

stormdragon.4932:

I always am suspicious of Blue skies posts like these…they smell corporate backed spin.

I’m suspicious of negative posts about the game, they smell like competitors trying to tarnish the game’s reputation.

See how easy that is?

Serelisk.6573:

Another issue I have which I’ll just add to this thread is that the activity rotation has had damaging impact on a lot of the things that I think make mini games fun.

With the exception of maybe Southsun Survival, which I never really liked, mini games offer a competitive form of entertainment not unlike SPvP, and given the right attention, the ones available now could make compelling e-sport for a niche community.

What they are now is excuses for a daily achievement. The overwhelming majority of players in every single mini game currently only play one game. And there’s a noticeable contingent of players who afk the whole game as well. I get no satisfaction out of being randomly assigned 9 other players who have no interest or investment in playing the activity well, who’re only there for the daily participation.

Almost the entire point of a race, for example, is pure competition. The goal is to win. I do not believe there is enough intermediate player agency to make up for the fact that I can smoke every single person off the line and have full minutes in front of the next guy by the time I hit the finish line, 90% of the time… it’s just not fun at that point. I’m just running a course.

It doesn’t mean that I’m particularly good, it’s just that constantly cycling in or unpracticed players without any way for players to be challenged turns off a lot of the people who would otherwise play more and get better because the enjoy the activity. Instead, in an effort to increase the overall population of people who play at least once a day, the game is actively pushing away hardcore fans that would make a community website or lfg tool or something solid to rally around, to build from.

I think for activities to be successful, they should not be purely casual in the manner they are. I will wager that the majority of people who enter activities do not enjoy them anymore than they do running around chopping down wood or rezzing NPC’s at the port in Kessex Hills. No offense intended, at best they’ll consider it neat but in no means compelling or we wouldn’t have seen such abysmal participation pre-rotation.

It is a fools errand to attempt to enjoy these mini games in the long run unless you really like beating on the weak, because it’s abundantly clear that the average skill level drops immensely when funneling tons of uninterested players through randomly matched games. There weren’t a lot of people who played Keg Brawl pre-rotation, sure, but there was enough for a game. For a GUILD, even. And the average skill level was far higher. I firmly believe this has transcended opinion, though it is still anecdotal. But now I can’t even play Keg Brawl for more than 4 games before I’m bored to tears trying to slow down and let other people enjoy the game. Otherwise, my team wins 100% of the time.

The only content that was negatively affected by the rotation is Keg Brawl, since all the others were meant to be temporary in the first place and wouldn’t be in the game at all right now, if there was a rotation.

Scar Rufo.7935:

I am one of the folks that only log on to these games to get a daily achievement. I do not like any of the games and pts are the only reason I am there. There are good suggestions here but since they give points I will continue to play. I think that the best way for improvement is to get rid of achievements for them; then only those that like them will play them.

And those that don’t know about them at all (which is still lots of people) will never try them.

HiddenNick.7206:

Vayne.8563:

perilisk.1874:

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

There are things like that hidden in caves in this game. Even something as simple as a rich ore vein, or some character you can talk to.

It doesn’t happen all the time (because if it did, it wouldn’t be special) but it does happen.

But there is no lore or story tied to that vein or chest is it? And is that vein a start of a longer and more complicated story? No… It isn’t.

There are other things I’ve found in caves besides Ore veins. That was but a single example.

I mean it would be really REALLY stupid if every single cave had an NPC in it, that would give you a story about the world. But there are things in this game off the beaten track that you can find that give you some sort of story or information or whatever.

I’ve found most of the jumping puzzles in this game by exploring as well.

perilisk.1874:

“When I’m walking down a road and I see a small cave in the distance and there’s no point of interest, vista, skill point or heart in there, I have literally no motivation to explore there. Now, if there was the possibility of me finding a quest in there which would nicely reward me I might have the motivation to explore the world a bit more.”

Why do you need some sort of reward? Sure, if there’s nothing there but a couple of mobs, that’s boring. But just adding something of interest, a neat sight, a little story played out in the environment, some NPCs talking, an easter egg or unique mob, etc. would be enough for a lot of people.

There are things like that hidden in caves in this game. Even something as simple as a rich ore vein, or some character you can talk to.

It doesn’t happen all the time (because if it did, it wouldn’t be special) but it does happen.

MMOs pretty much all suck for me…because the perfect MMO for me, no one else would play. lol

There is no heart system. There are 300 hearts in the game and 1500 dynamic events. Hearts were added for one reason and one reason only…to keep people in the areas where events happen. They are there to serve a different purpose than quests, not to act as quests. It’s DEs that are meant to be the quests in this game.

In fact, hearts were added very very late in the beta stage, because people were just running through zones and not encountering anything.

morrolan.9608:

Galen Grey.4709:

Wildstar has a lot going for it and I will probably check it out myselkittenda nice that its scifi and the humor seems awesome.

But seriously I am confused how people annoyed with Gw2 for introducing a single tier with a promise that others arent going to be introduced for years to come if ever would think thats unacceptable and say they’re switching over to a game that has a gear treadmill part of its core design.

Cause Carbine are being upfront about their intentions. Cause BiS equipment in Wowish games is actually easier to obtain than ascended items in GW2. Cause the game design is driven by endgame content.

How do you know Carbine is being honest if the game isn’t out yet? What if two months into the game they change something? Will you go rage on their forums?

Seriously people should have learned by now not to make comments about games that aren’t even out yet.

You do remember stuff they said about SWToR right? lol

Vaxx.3178:

People keep saying the Living World added a dungeon. Let me clear this up for you guys….

1. Replacing one path in an existing dungeon is not adding a dungeon to the game.
2. This content was finished for me personally in one run through, more or less in an hour.

yawn

I stand by my view on expansions. A good expansion gives more than all the temp content we have been given so far.

It did add a dungeon. It also took away a dungeon. You can see those two things as related, but I don’t, since I experienced both dungeons (and hope to never have the pleasure of experiencing F/U ever again).

It would be like a theater having two shows in it, one after the other and seeing both shows. You don’t say that the new show doesn’t exist because the old show left.

I agree with the OP. We need longer, more intricate quests in this game. Scavenger hunts with clues you can figure stuff out,. stories that evolve as you play them. Some of that is covered by dynamic events…in some of the bigger chains. I mean the event chain in Malchor’s Leap isn’t very different from a quest chain in other games.

But I disagree with the OP that hearts are like standard quests for two reasons. First, very very few standard quests have multiple ways to complete them and very few standard quests can be filled by completing dynamic events nearby. Virtually all the hearts I do now, I finish without even trying to do the hearts.

Veltoss.9135:

It would be real great if the devs made a post about the following lines:

“We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that, no one finds it fun”

“Everybody around you is doing the same thing you’re doing, the boss you just killed respawns ten minutes later, it doesn’t care that I’m there.”

“- you affect things around you in a very permanent way.”

“Cause and Effect. A single decision made by a player cascades out in a chain of events.”

“You’re rescuing a village that will stay rescued, then remember you.”

ArenaNet seems to have abandoned all of the above ideas, many of which were the same parts that brought people to the game.

All bosses just respawn later, they don’t care that you’re there or what you’ve done. How many times have people killed the champions in Frostgorge Sound and Queensdale? Tequatl is a recent example of this, he comes back a little over an hour every time, he doesn’t care that you’re there or not. The world does not change in any way when he is killed except that some exploding fish don’t spawn.

Villages don’t stay saved, they go through the same cycle every time. If it was attacked by centaurs once, it will be attacked again. It doesn’t matter who saves them, or if no one saves them for days, it will continue the same exact cycle. They don’t remember you, they don’t care about what you did, unless being able to buy items from the heart NPC is what they mean here.

You don’t affect anything in a permanent way. The only case I can think of that fits this is perhaps the Cutthroat Politics, but that wasn’t in the hands of one player. I have never done something in the game by myself that affected anything in a permanent way. Sure, I single handedly went through the major event chain in a zone the other day and saved several towns, but so what? It will happen again, and again, and again, and it doesn’t matter what I did.

And I don’t need to remind anyone about the ascended grind, or the dungeon gear grind.

First, they have made at least one post about some of that which has been posted in this thread.

Essentially, there was a clarification of the manifesto published three days after the manifesto that made it abundantly clear that Ree was talking specifically about the personal story and Colin was talking specifically about dynamic events. So when Ree says “the boss you killed respawns ten minutes later” she was talking about the personal story. Since most games don’t have a personal story that was completely fair game. You should read clarifications, they help. It’s why Anet put it out there in the first place.

As for the “we don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2 line”, I’ve covered that in great great detail elsewhere. What you’re doing is taking a couple of lines out of a paragraph and trying to assign meaning to them….without taking into account the rest of the paragraph. That’s called taking information out of context and it’s bad for a reason. Because you change the definition of what is being talked about. If you read the whole paragraph, you’ll realize that Colin actually defined the kind of grind he was specifically talking about a mere two sentences before…and you’re just completely ignoring those sentences and assigning your own definition to grind.

I saw the manifesto and I knew exactly what he meant. Oh and what he meant was repeated and clarified many times in many interviews after the manifesto went live.

Amadan.9451:

they never said it was a sand box though they advertise it as a living breathing world… i hardly noticed when it was night or day in this game…
and yes i forgot to say that is not living and breathing for my personal taste, you made it already clear that it is fine for you countless times.

for this and many more reason i’m not playing it anymore, and in time i will stop bother reading and commenting the forum… it was just a lazy morning

edit: true gw1 wasn’t a sandbox and it wasn’t even an mmo for some people. although i never had to log off to learn lore and story about the world i was playing in. if i know something about gw lore i learned it there. what i learned here is to press h and see what was asked me to do and learn nothing. just seeing at filling bars

Plenty of people played Guild Wars 1 without learning a kitten thing. And the later stuff in Guild Wars 1, particularly the War in Kryta and later, certainly required you go go to additional websites. In fact, the War in Kryta content was so hard to start, someone had to make a flow chart for it, and Hearts of the North required the wiki to find where to go next, because if you just looked around, you’d never have found what you needed.

Guild Wars 1 was a themepark, Guild Wars 2 is a themepark. However, Guild Wars 2 is far less linear than Guild Wars 1 and most MMOs are.

After all, you can level to make level in Guild Wars 2 without ever leaving a starting zone. It’s a lot lot harder to do that in Guild Wars 1, and virtually impossible in most MMOs.

Sorry but what part of Guild Wars 2’s advertising led you to believe this game would be a sandbox? I never really saw an evidence of that. Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a sandbox. I’m not sure they ever claimed it would be a sandbox, but certainly I never expected it to be a sandbox.

And yes, I find this, compared to most themepark MMOs to be a living breathing world.

Yep, it’s unfair to advertise a game a certain way and then change the way you advertise the game. By the same token, the amount of “advertising” that was done on no vertical progression was minimal compared to everything else that was advertised. The no grind comment from the manifesto wasn’t talking about gear grind or vertical progression in my opinion and I never took it that way. So I wasn’t surprised when grind was introduced into the game. For that matter, I found Guild Wars 1 relatively grindy as well.

In the end, Anet’s game spiel was built on dynamic events, personal story, dungeons and a living breathing world. Visiting their website you almost never found a mention of no vertical progression. In five years, you might have seen it mentioned 3 times. It’s NOT what they advertised their game on.

It was what people wanted and focused on, but if you look at the bulk of advertisement, that wasn’kitten

I don’t know…that’s the truth of it.

I quite like the Living Story but I also like Expansions. However, the Living Story is just getting started. Today we had a dungeon release. It’s a good dungeon. I’ve beaten it twice already. It was fun. I have most of the achievements.

If they can keep adding stuff like this to the game, over time this will give me more content than an expansion….content I’m not paying for.

Nope,. it won’t be the case for Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 already has in less than a year, half the sales that Guild Wars 1 had in it’s entire lifetime and it hasn’t released in China yet. By the time this game is two years old, it will have probably more sales that Guild Wars 1 had a 7 years.

Beyond that, I like this game MORE than I liked Guild Wars 1, and I liked Guild Wars 1 quite a lot…but there were always things about it that really annoyed me and most of those things have been fixed.

I’m really sorry you guys don’t like the direction the game changes have taken…and in truth, I don’t like all of them either.

However, I do know the difference between a promise and an intention. I do know that all MMOs change and evolve. I do know that Anet was very public about how it iterated things and sometimes changed them completely.

You can cry all you want about a three year old video that was five minutes long, but it remains just that. A three year old video that’s five minutes long.

Oxe.6142:

This thread shouldn’t die because Anet has NEVER lived up to what they promised and they continue to get farther and farther away from it.

This thread shouldn’t die because the more people that see it, the more people realize how ridiculous it is to bring up 3 year old videos that have been supplanted time and time again by new information that players have completely ignored.

Virtually all the living story so far…up until recently, has been doable by lower levels. Most of boss week could be done of course…and before that, you were leveled to 80 to do the pavillion and the Scarlet dungeon.

There are actually very few activities that were brought out in the Living World that a lower level can’t do.

And when you consider that probably upwards of 90% of the players (and probably much more) have an 80th level character, it’s not bad to have some of it for 80s.

I’m not sure this was the game where challenging content…to the level you’re talking about, was ever supposed to be the main feature. The challenging content we have now is probably too much for most of the player base.

I’m sure the new TA dungeon is too hard for a lot of people.

Sarrs.4831:

Vayne.8563:

Well, unless you work in Anet’s accounting deparment, I submit that you have no clue at all about what it takes to run that business. I think you don’t know how much they have in place and how much what they have in place makes. You don’t know their overhead, you don’t know how much money they’re taking in. You don’t know how much profit the parent company or investors expect to pull in either.

Essentially, you’re talking in a complete absence of fact or information.

Complete absence? NCSoft is required by law to publish quarterly earnings reports. They’re kind enough to include individual games. They include their general overhead costs in the reports. It’s not hard to get a rough estimate of how much each employee at ANet would earn, and how many employees they have. I haven’t done this legwork because frankly this is an internet argument and I don’t care enough about it to somebody who thinks they need to explain to me the concept of money, but it would be conceivably possible to piece together a very good analysis of how much money ANet needs and how much of a profit it’s making.

It is your opinion they have plenty in place to make a profit that will keep the company sustainable. It’s not a fact.

And, of course, I don’t know either. The difference is, I’m not accusing anyone of anything.

Again, earnings reports. And I’m not accusing anyone of anything either. If you mean me asking you whether you suggested that their design decisions are driven by incompetence rather than stylistic choice, that was not me accusing you of calling them incompetent, and my apologies if that’s what you took from it.

Mattargul.9235:

Sarrs.4831:

SWTOR’s cash shop model is more friendly to consumers than GW2’s in most places because of how they’ve set up their account-wide unlocks compared to GW2’s.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAH!!!!

TOR is a game built around hotbars. I had 4 up all the time, 99% filled. For the F2P conversion, they were going to give you one (1) hotbar, which is not even enough to get all your class skills on. After a humongous backlash from… pretty much everyone, they caved and gave you 2 to start with.

Yea, I agree some of the ANet calls on what’s account vs soulbound are questionable, but saying TORs cash shop is more customer friendly? Really?

I said ‘most places’; the hotbar area is the most painful spot. Even then, you pay $5 and you’ve got your hotbars. If I were to think of the things that SWTOR’s cash shop really crushes you for, it’s the very early account unlocks; hotbars, legacy name, colorswapping, all of which you can buy on the GTN with ingame credits, or you can spend less than GW2’s box price to get.

Just about everything costs less in SWTOR than it does in GW2, and it has a swathe of QOL features. Those hairstyles I was talking about cost two dollars to permanently unlock on your account. A friend of mine on here accidentally deleted a character to which gemstore gear was soulbound, so he couldn’t access it- That wouldn’t be a problem in SWTOR because of the systems they have in place.

You haven’t done the homework, therefore it’s a complete absence of fact. Their quarterly reports don’t show them as this bloated money making machine. They don’t show you what they need money for coming up either. You’re guessing. Without the research it’s not even an educated guess, but even with the quarterly reports (which I have seen) it’s STILL a guess.

Companies give exactly what the law requires them to give in a quarterly report. It almost never tells the full story.

Paulytnz.7619:

Adry.7512:

as far as i know, GW2 is still a temporary game to play (just like its content lolol). you play it, enjoy it, and now moving on with something else. doesnt keep me around.

This all depends on how many hours you can play each day tbh. If you are the type that can and does sit down to play 10+ hours everyday then yes GW2 will become boring for you – fast and you will run out of content.

On the other hand if you can only spare a few hours a day or less and/or like to explore everything in the game (all content, classes, game modes etc) then the game can last a bit longer for you with the living stories filling any gaps in between.

Speaking for myself I am the type that can and does spend 10+ hours a day and yet I still have tons left in this game to do. :P

Not really true. I spent hours a day playing, every day and still enjoy the game.

It’s not for some people, but it’s a kitten good game for others….people like me.

Devata.6589:

eisberg.2379:

Ellisande.5218:

eisberg.2379:

Devata.6589:

Because GW2 is not really a B2P game that focuses in sale of the game and expansions for income but more of a F2P game (that you need to buy) that focuses on cash-shop as income.

So now they do this sort of bad thinks to make money.

Try not to buy any gems, that might help them to shift back to a real B2P system where everything is available ingame but where you pay for an expansion every year year and a half.

What real B2P MMOs are there out there? Please do not say Guild Wars 1, that is in fact not an MMO, so it doesn’t count and cannot be used as an example since they are 2 different genre of games.

Guild Wars 1 is in fact a B2P MMO.

Just because you don’t know what a MMO is doesn’t mean GW 1 isn’t a MMO. It just means you don’t know what a MMO is.

Arenanet must not know what MMOs are either

Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game). Guild Wars was designed from the ground up to create the best possible competitive role-playing experience

Also from the Official Wiki:

Guild Wars is a CORPG, or Competitive/Cooperative Online Role Playing Game developed for Windows by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars

Doesn’t matter if other people call it an MMO, when the developers themselves did not call it an MMO and marketed it it as not being an MMO but rather as a CORPG. Therefore judging on how an MMO does thing compared to something that is of a different genre is not fair, and irrelevant.

I also don’t see GW1 as a MMORPG. But it has some similarities and that is that they host many people at once (maybe in different instances but still they need the servers to do so) and it’s something that can run for years, needs getting patches and attention for an ongoing period.

And it are these aspects people are referring to when they say a specific payment model fits or does not fit an MMO. So in the discussion if GW1 proves that GW2 also could work as B2P (so focus on expansions) yes it does.

GW1 is mainly from a gameplay viewpoint not an MMO. Technically is has very, very similar aspects and fits in the same category.

Guild Wars 1 might not have been able to survive if launched today though. No one really knows that.

When Guild Wars originally launched, every single other multiplayer fantasy game had a subscription. There weren’t dozens of free to play games everywhere you look. There weren’t even mobas. There was nothing in the multiplayer free to play market to compete. So of course they did well. They were alone in their niche.

But if that same game with that same strategy launched today, there’s no way you, or anyone, can know if it would be successful.

It’s really dangerous for any business in a fast changing area of business to depend on examples more than a couple of years old. This business changes way too fast for that to be of particular use.

Sarrs.4831:

Vayne.8563:

Nope I’m saying that the reason companies exist is to make money. People seem to forget this. Now you’d say box sales cover everything. Well no. The game was in development for five years, during which time they paid hundreds of devs, office space, etc. The box sales usually covers the cost of the creation of the game. So where’s the profit.

Companies do not exist to produce a profit. Companies exist to produce a product, and the profits are there to keep the lights open. If you truly believe that a company, and every worker within it is there just to make money and not to provide a service, especially in a luxury industry like video games, then you really should withdraw your patronage of that company.

In a game with monthly fees the profit often comes from monthly fees. In a game without monthly fees, profit generally comes from the cash shop…and that’s not unreasonable.

Now, if Anet wasn’t working on the game at all, and they weren’t still paying programmers, coming out with new dungeon paths and new mini games and new content for free, maybe you’d be right. But considering they’re working on the game, they need to pay programmers and electricity bills and telephone bills and rent, and corporate taxes.

If they had a subscription for the first several months they’d have an influx of coin to pay staff that they don’t have. It’s not unreasonable to think they’d want to make money.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t list their company as a non-profit organization.

How stupid do you think I am? Yes, I am aware of the existence of money. I am aware that people need money to survive. I am aware that ANet needs money to keep the lights on. What’s wrong with you?

I’m saying that they already have plenty of mechanics in place to generate money, like character slots and hair stylist kits, which were already in the game, and that forcing people to buy hair stylist kits for new characters is overly ambitious of them and will cause more damage when it comes to their reputation with the community that it will generate cash. 95% of the people using these new hairstyles are already cap level, so you can bet your britches that they paid for those hair stylist kits- so what harm would it be to open the hairstyles up for fresh characters?

And I’m not even suggesting that they give it up for free to everyone! I’m suggesting they offer it as an account-wide unlock, and not for free. If they had it as an 800 gem unlock I would probably cough up the gems as soon as it went live. Chances are, with the current implementation, I will never use these hairstyles on any of my characters unless I manage to pull a hair stylist kit from a Black Lion Chest. Nobody wins there- I don’t get to play around with fancy new hairs, ANet doesn’t get my money.

Well, unless you work in Anet’s accounting deparment, I submit that you have no clue at all about what it takes to run that business. I think you don’t know how much they have in place and how much what they have in place makes. You don’t know their overhead, you don’t know how much money they’re taking in. You don’t know how much profit the parent company or investors expect to pull in either.

Essentially, you’re talking in a complete absence of fact or information.

It is your opinion they have plenty in place to make a profit that will keep the company sustainable. It’s not a fact.

And, of course, I don’t know either. The difference is, I’m not accusing anyone of anything.

tagos.8946:

Vayne.8563:

There are plenty of social guilds you can join. Just find a group that plays the way you do and join in.

What? There are Guilds specifically for the clueless?

Cool.

;-)

Spam control is preventing me from answering you for a day for some reason.

Yes, everyone in my guild is clueless. Probably why they’re in my guild. lol

tagos.8946:

Vayne.8563:

tagos.8946:

If I get 3 months of the level of fun I’m having at the moment then I’ll consider it money very well spent compared to spending the same money for a week of mediocre plodding through the latest LOTRO expansion.

The game should last at least that long. I mean I’m playing a year and there’s still plenty of stuff to do.

I expect I’ll be the same. Having read the Barnes (?) e-guide I realise I’m only scratching the surface. I’m dying to get home and try out new stuff. Heh – I only realised L0 sigils worked on L20 stuff this morning and that Ranger pets have different skills that suit different builds. I bet there’s a ton of other dumb mistakes I’m making but it’s fun finding out.

I carried a lot of stuff over from LOTRO I’m having to unlearn. I should have jumped ship months ago instead of waiting to be pushed.

Most people here are probably more MMO-wise than me but the contrast between the two is dazzling. I simply have not had this much MMO fun in years.

The only LOTRO thing I miss is the Kinship and social side. Given how crap I am I haven’t dared try group content of any sort as I’m bound to just let people down so I need to find a good, patient lot to fall in with.

There are plenty of social guilds you can join. Just find a group that plays the way you do and join in. There’s a guild for everyone, from super casual to ultra hard core. From WvW to SPvP to PvE to a mix of all of them.

Honestly if it weren’t for my guild I might not have lasted as long as I have…certainly not with the hours I play anyway.

tagos.8946:

If I get 3 months of the level of fun I’m having at the moment then I’ll consider it money very well spent compared to spending the same money for a week of mediocre plodding through the latest LOTRO expansion.

The game should last at least that long. I mean I’m playing a year and there’s still plenty of stuff to do.

Sarrs.4831:

Vayne.8563:

The relevance is the huge influx of money for the first 9 months. There’s no way you can convince me that a game that charges a monthly fee is less profitable than one that has a cash shop…if the game has enough subscribers. If SWToR had box sales of over 2 million and most of those people paid for subscriptions, I’d say that they had a lot more income. A lot meaning A LOT.

That’s relevance. It means a bigger programming team, and more money being thrown at problems.

There’s no way you’re going to convince anyone that Anet is a bigger company than Bioware, or that NcSoft is a bigger company than EA. Bigger company means more resources to throw at problems.

So you’re saying the reason they don’t add the new hairstyles to the character creation dialogue is not a ‘decision’, but something they are incapable of doing. Granted, it might gel with some of the other nonsensical decisions they’ve made, like replacing TA F/U rather than just adding the new dungeon, and not adding account-wide WXP, but… This is a pretty terrible defense of what they’re doing.

Nope I’m saying that the reason companies exist is to make money. People seem to forget this. Now you’d say box sales cover everything. Well no. The game was in development for five years, during which time they paid hundreds of devs, office space, etc. The box sales usually covers the cost of the creation of the game. So where’s the profit.

In a game with monthly fees the profit often comes from monthly fees. In a game without monthly fees, profit generally comes from the cash shop…and that’s not unreasonable.

Now, if Anet wasn’t working on the game at all, and they weren’t still paying programmers, coming out with new dungeon paths and new mini games and new content for free, maybe you’d be right. But considering they’re working on the game, they need to pay programmers and electricity bills and telephone bills and rent, and corporate taxes.

If they had a subscription for the first several months they’d have an influx of coin to pay staff that they don’t have. It’s not unreasonable to think they’d want to make money.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t list their company as a non-profit organization.

Lolindir.3518:

This is ridiculous, what we really need is to be able to switch any build/trait with a few clicks like it was on GW (no need to say, for free..). We need to have more variety of builds, otherwise the game becomes utterly static.

You mean like only in outposts, but not between encounters out of combat. Because that’s how it was in Guild Wars. You couldn’t change attributes in the open world, or even skills.

Sirendor.1394:

Rithrinn.5921:

Hey, just wanted to say that i am really happy you guys did a one week free trial and that i found out about it and tried it out..

I have been wanting to try Guild Wars 2 out for a while but never managed to try out the previous free trials..

I am really enjoying the game right now and i actually bought it yesterday =)

There is just soo many things to do and a large variety of what you can do, i’m still not quite sure on a few things but i look forward to checking them out soon as well,

So yeh, just wanted to show my appreciation, i hope this is the right place

Now i’m back off the Kessex Hills to level up my Ranger some more
=)

I really thought you were serious here, good to see you aren’t. Level 1-20 is fun… from there it goes steeply downhill.

Unless of course you’re me and you’re still happy (relatively) after a year of playing a lot.

I disliked guru immensely. I only dislike this forum moderately. lol

Sarrs.4831:

Vayne.8563:

Maybe because SWToR charged a $15 fee to every single player for 9 months or more. And maybe because event now, SWToR’s cash shop is pay to walk. Give me a break.

Relevance? They are both currently relying on their existing customer base and not box sales, effectively reducing them both to cash shop sales.

SWTOR’s cash shop model is more friendly to consumers than GW2’s in most places because of how they’ve set up their account-wide unlocks compared to GW2’s.

The relevance is the huge influx of money for the first 9 months. There’s no way you can convince me that a game that charges a monthly fee is less profitable than one that has a cash shop…if the game has enough subscribers. If SWToR had box sales of over 2 million and most of those people paid for subscriptions, I’d say that they had a lot more income. A lot meaning A LOT.

That’s relevance. It means a bigger programming team, and more money being thrown at problems.

There’s no way you’re going to convince anyone that Anet is a bigger company than Bioware, or that NcSoft is a bigger company than EA. Bigger company means more resources to throw at problems.

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

eisberg.2379:

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

eisberg.2379:

ArmoredVehicle.2849:

The hassle here that most people don’t take into consideration is the loading times between areas just to do something so small such as this.

I guess people that have never played GW1 (or didn’t play it much) will never understand why the controversy of this item.

ANet is not a charity organization and people should get that straight but for goodness sake this is a feature I would have never expected them to charge for.

It’s not Nuka that’s exaggerating here but ANet, for going so low on such a thing, even more that was present for free on GW1, they should be ashamed for charging on something like this.

You couldn’t respec in the middle of nowhere in Guild Wars 1. But just like in Guild Wars 1 you can go to a city and respec there. This new item is no where near the same as charging for something that Guild Wars 1 had, because Guild Wars 1 didn’t have respec anywhere you wanted.

Your point is invalid, first of all GW1 was all instanced, secondly GW1 wasn’t designed with skill change in mind, can you imagine what PVE would have been with dual classes, skill and attributes swap? A total recipe for disaster. It was built from the ground up to allow 8 skills at a time.

On the other hand GW2 was designed with skill change since the beginning and if you require trait changes during an instance all one has to do is > go to LA from the Mists and back to the instance area, meaning he has to load 4 times. That is all this item does, eliminate loading times.

In GW1 you can change your attributes in every outpost you’re in without paying anything or speaking to an npc, because it was designed that way.

The only comparable feature here is the Attributes/Part part, the rest is totally invalid. You can’t compare a heavily instanced game with an open world design.

And yes they are exaggerating, this isn’t a feature they had to spend days coding to get in game, if you ever stepped in heart of the mists you’d notice there’s a “Refund Traits” button in the traits section, all they had to do was add it in the PvE section of the game but instead they chose to abuse the situation.

Not gonna bother discussing this any further, I’ve stated my point.

EDIT: corrected spelling

So it is ok for you to compare this situation to Guild Wars 1, but I can’t? is that because my point is actually valid. You brought up Guild Wars 1 as a comparison, I brought up how Guild Wars 1 had nothing like the reset trait item, and all of the sudden I can’t use Guild Wars 1 for comparison because it is a different game?

What’s so valid in your point? The fact that you can’t see that what you call Traits in GW2 were called Attributes in GW1? Apparently you can’t see that. There was never a need for such an item in GW1 cause all you had to do was press K and adjust the attributes and it worked fine all those years.

Kindly note that as I’ve said above, the feature in GW2 was always present in PVP, they didn’t have to go so far for a simple button. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t see how this was a good idea on their part.

AntiGw.9367:

Nothing in GW2 was designed to require respec. No instance requires it.

Brilliant!…or maybe not. If that’s how you put it then maybe we shouldn’t be allowed to change Trait Skills either.

Nice way to ignore my comment. You’re wrong about Guild Wars 1.

Guild Wars 1 NEVER allowed you to change traits or even skills in an explorable area. No how, no way.

You couldn’t retrait between boss encounters in a dungeon. You’d have to go back to town which would reset the instance.

So saying this was in Guild Wars 1 is 100% incorrect, even if a trait is an attribute.

In Guild Wars 2 you can swap skills and major traits out of combat anywhere in the world. You don’t have to go back to an outpost to do so. You don’t have to restart a zone or dungeon to do so.

Now they’re just adding the ability to retrait everything else outside of combat.

It’s all theory. If you really think the new dungeon is aimed at that crowd…or the Tequal encounter, or the Queen’s Gauntlet, I’m not even sure what to say.

The latest content patchs, all the way back to the Aeather Blade retreat dungeon are NOT geared for older players at all, and most of the older players in my guild don’t do most of that content.

So I have no idea what you’re on about.

Welcome to the mad house and don’t let the naysayers get you down. We have a few of them.

Sarrs.4831:

If they really need to suck money out of the playerbase with new hairstyles, why not do what SWTOR did and have them as permanent unlocks in a pack? Seriously, I’m not going to pay more gems on top of the character slot when I roll an alt. This is kind of a kitten thing to do.

Maybe because SWToR charged a $15 fee to every single player for 9 months or more. And maybe because event now, SWToR’s cash shop is pay to walk. Give me a break.

McWolfy.5924:

its a pure shame… they made it for a consumable item and in gw1 it was a basic…

Untrue…in Guild Wars 1 you could ONLY retrait in a town or outpost. Not anywhere in the open world.

Lunar Sunset.8742:

Vayne.8563:

Many of the Guild Wars 1 players refuse to use charr because of what they did to Ascalon. I know it sounds silly but seriously, there’s a group of players who decided before the game ever launched they’d never play a charr.

Haha, on a side note, I had a legendary defender of Ascalon in GW1 and recreated her with the same name as a charr. Ahhh, the irony.

LMAO! That’s awesome!

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

fellyn.5083:

Anthony.7219:

lol, clipping issues/etc. isn’t why MOST people aren’t playing a Charr engineer.

So you managed to ask everyone who plays the game and is not playing a charr character how they feel on the subject?

Impressive.

I don’t know. I seem to remember reading stuff about humans in most MMOs being the most played race. I’m pretty sure that the further something diverges from a human, the less people play it.

I should try to find the references, but it’s late.

All I know is that I’ve seen quite a few comments from people who said they rerolled their charr because of all the clipping issues (mostly tail and horns/main) and armor stretching over the last year.

I’m am in no delusions that these comments represent any sort of majority or even a minority but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter who plays what or what their reasoning is/was.

It’s pure laziness and they should be held accountable for it. It really is that simple. I fear the kitten storm that will take place when they make a new beastlike race (lookin at you tengu). If they can’t get it right a year after release they won’t bother getting it right in the future.

Having more work to do than you can do in a requisite amount of time does not equal laziness. It equals being understaffed. You can call them lazy if you want, but really,. how do you know? Are you suggesting they’re not hard at work on other things? And if they are hard at work, are they really lazy?