Guild Wars 2

OP, the very least you should have is 20% not 4%, because you were sent consumables via in game mail to bring up up to 20%. This more than compensates for those specific stats.

As time goes on, and you do dailies and salvage blues and greens it’ll go much higher. It’s a small investment for a realtively short time, unless you don’t play at all.

I have two legendaries, enough mystic clovers for another, and 2.7 million karma. I suggest that the karma mechanic was completely out of whack in the first place.

I’m thinking of it a bit differently. People finished their MONTHLY on day two, mostly because of a specific LS event that made it super, super easy.

I’m pretty sure most people were quite happy to run invasions and farm farm farm and get the free month. It’s only the third day of the month. If you can finish it once while trying, just imagine how easy it will be to coast through the month and not worry about it, and get the monthly anyway.

I’m not thinking getting any of these four categories in a month is that hard for the reward offered.

Obviously the previous event artificially made the monthly even more easy than it already was.

Sirendor.1394:

Isn’t it about time we call the “back-on-topic-brake”?

Lets face the facts:

• An unknown percentage of players is fine with ascended.
• An unknown percentage of players considers it the step towards even more grinding.
• Group 1 disagrees with Group 2 and Group 2 disagrees with Group 1
• Group 1 is satisfied with Guild Wars 2 and will continue playing until they are bored.
• Group 2 has the feeling Anet lied to it’s customers (them) and is untrue to their earlier adopted viewpoints.
• Both groups have arguments for their position, based on their opinions and preferences. Both are correct in liking/disliking grinding.
• One thing that is undeniably true from Group 2’s viewpoint is that ArenaNet made Guild Wars 2 more grindy than it was in the beginning.

One way or another, Arenanet will loose part of it’s playerbase to this.

But you also can’t stay how much of their playerbase they’d lose if they didn’t do something like this.

Maybe they lose 10%, but maybe that would have lost 15% of they hadn’t done this. No one knows.

Saying they’re going to lose part of their playbase only has meaning if you know the alternatives.

cesmode.4257:

ophidic.1279:

People that keep falling back on that no grind statement are like people that take the bible literally. Annoying.

As annoying as those bible people are, they are entitled to voice opinions and whatnot.

This is the first MMO/online game that I have been so frustrated over due to broken promises or grey promises. No other dev has made such bold statements prior to launch. Other devs simply say “We will have dungeons, there will be raids. There are three factions where you can acquire better gear. There will be guild housing”. Arenanet said “There will be no grinding”…depends on your definition I guess? “There will be no treadmill”. Depends on your definition of treadmill? “The champion you killed wont spawn 10 minutes later” Oh, I guess you should have said you were referring to personal story.

No other dev aside from GW2 made such bold promises to the playerbase prior to launch to lure them in. Now that we see these promises or statements were just a few shades of grey, it infuriates a lot of people and people are walking away from it, especially with this patch.

How come you ignore the quotes like Eric Flannum saying there will be things to grind for for those who enjoy that play style, but there won’t be required grind? Because he did say that, or something very close to it.

The grind is optional. You don’t need that stuff, unless you’ve talked yourself into needing it.

Sirendor.1394:

Defiance? Never heard of it, what is it about?

I did try Neverwinter & Firefall but can’t say they were any better than GW2. Neverwinter was a grind for leveling up (killing mobs and doing pointless quests).
Firefall just left me wandering cluelessly.

I still hope there are better mmos out there than GW2 though. If GW2 is the best one there is, the whole genre is messed up.

The whole genre is messed up. That’s the problem.

MikaHR.1978:

Altair.6109:

You gotta admit that all the changes that Anet did over the year, indeed brought them lots of potential customers. They are making more money right now, so y should they keep their promises?

I don’t like the changes either , but y not relax and enjoy the best of ur 50$?

Revenues are down 20% from quarter to quarter. So, um…no?

Which it typical for most MMOs even successful ones. Most games (and books for that matter) sell in the first 90 day of it’s life span. I know this first hand. It’s not a guess.

There are exceptions to the rule, but they’re very rare.

Raine.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Raine.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Anet stated (I hate the word promise in this context) that if you grind for something in Guild Wars 2 it will be only cosmetic.

I don’t know at what point in time statements in interviews became promises. I see quite a large difference personally between a statement and a comment. After all, many statements are quite casual, where a promise implies something core.

I think I saw 3 mentions of the vertical progression thing during the years preceding the game, but it was definitely said and I’d have been happier with the game if Anet had stuck to their guns.

But I can also understand why they didn’t.

Edit: Here’s why I say it’s not a promise.

Father: Okay everyone we’re going to the zoo tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrives, it’s raining. Most of the kids don’t want to go to the zoo in the rain. The situation has changed.

Father: Let’s go to the arcade instead. That’s still fun.

Those who had their hearts set on going to the zoo naturally are angry, but I’m not so sure dad promised to go to the zoo. It was his intention to go to the zoo however…and circumstances changed.

We’ve already exhausted this in another thread, but I see you took nothing away from it so I’m game.

Promise: 1 : a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified

The source is http://www.merriam-webster.com. That’s all a promise is. It can be legally bound by a contract (which we are not talking about here), or bound by a vow or oath, but what you are binding is a promise. And, a promise is “a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified”.

One freedom I will not allow you is the freedom to give words meanings other than their plain dictionary definition. And, please don’t go to nuance again here as it’s not needed. Nuance greatly enriches language and it’s often necessary when dealing with complex issues for which the language finds itself poor. The promise is not in need of nuance. It is simple and provides the basis for many significant business, personal, and legal concepts. And, that is why everyone is upset around Anet’s reversal on vertical progression. They broke a promise. Not a legally binding one, but a promise.

Anyone can look stuff up in the dictionary. You claim I learned nothing from the other thread. I could say the same about you.

Promise, to most people (at least in America) has a different definition that statement. Saying something isn’t promising it, which is why when people say something, someone else might ask, “promise?”.

In fact that’s practically a cliche. Because of the connotations of promise, using it with regard to casual statements is at best ambiguous and at worst misleading.

And I don’t really care if you agree or believe it…it happens to be true.

Promise, to most English speaking people is the 1a definition of promise. That’s actually why it’s the 1a definition. Your argument is not with me, but rather with the language as a vehicle to transmit meaning.

Your statement about someone asking “promise” has to do with what I previously described a “binding” a promise, either legally through a contract or through the mechanism of a vow or oath. It doesn’t matter, the thing bound is a promise:

Promise: 1 : a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified

And, a manifesto is not a casual statement of intention, it is rather a formal statement of intention that is intended to guide, in this case, the game over time. Do I need to define ‘manifesto’ for you as well?

A manifesto isn’t a casual statement of intent…it’s a statement of intent. Which is considerably different from a promise. They intended to do something, they tried it, it didn’t work, they changed it.

There’s no way in any language I know you can call that a lie. You can if you want call it misleading. Is being misleading the same as lying? That’s a very different question. And then there’s the question of intent. Is being unintentionally misleading a lie?

Because of it’s connotations, whether you think this is true or not, lie is a bad choice of word. You can use it if you want. If you were one of my authors, I’d just change it before it went to print.

Firefly.5982:

Am I the only one who has long given up on ever going to the dragon fights anyway? Only lag, waste of time, no decent drops and the same boring fight over and over again…doesn’t seem like a ridiculous amount of players needed to succeed is going to do this any good XD

Did you see the new T’quatl fight that’s coming mid month?

Sirendor.1394:

Erick Alastor.3917:

Vayne.8563:

Sirendor.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Gobhoblin.7582:

Vayne.8563:

The funny bit is, you did have to grind to get the most power out of your skills in Guild Wars 1. They’ve changed it more recently after Guild Wars 2 was released, presumably because most people no longer play Guild Wars 1 to play Guild Wars 1. They play it to get cool stuff for Guild Wars 2.

But yeah, there was a ton of grind. People forget.

Ok – see the winky face on my post? On my planet, that usually means someone is joking. Calm down.

snip

…which is why I loved the game. I have no strong ragey feelings about the grind for gear in GW2, other than a profound sense of disappointment.

Guild Wars 1 had skill grind. Every time a new product game out, there were new skills to acquire. Take the skill Save Yourselves. A perfectly innocuous skill, until you realized that your paragon imbagon build was completely dependent upon it and that you couldn’t get into a DOA group if it wasn’t high enough.

That was a Luxon/Kurzick skill which had 12 ranks. Look up FFF in the Guild Wars 1 wiki for instructions on how to fast faction farm. People farmed those points forever, to get skills like that up.

The necromancer skill necrosis from NF was also like that. You want that skill more powerful you have to grind Sunspear points. Technobabble, pain inverter, the sin skill which the permasin build depended on, the norn skill ursan, which people wanted you to have rank 8 or higher in their norn title track.

It’s the same thing here. Do you NEED ascended gear to play this game? No. You don’t. And those skills were so kitten powerful they changed the balance of PvE completely. I mean a lot. Far more than ascended gear will affect this game.

But that was okay because that was skill grind, not gear grind.

That’s the difference. Skill grind > Gear grind. Skill grind is something meaningful, unlocking new skills the more you play and consequently allowing you to play in a more diverse and exciting way, developing your own new strategies etc.

Gear grind on the contrary means that you get a new set with your current stats + x, not really making any changes, except that you do more damage according to the stats, which is not even necessary because they can just make the monsters a little bit easier so you don’t need the + x gear (in this case ascended).

Except that the skill grind made more of an effect on power creep than this gear grind does, and power creep is one of the big bug bears of gear grind systems. The PvE content under skill grind got laughably easy, even with 3 heroes and 4 henchmen.

Meaningful is a funny word. A new skill that’s so powerful you have to keep it on your skill bar or be at a disadvantage isn’t better than a few stats that don’t add up to much. To me, ascended gear is far more easily ignored.

Are you serious?
First: You are talking about PvE-only skills.
Second: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/%22Save_Yourselves!%22 Grinding it from rank 0 to rank 12 = 4s to 6s. OMG crazyness, you clearly HAVE TO USE this kind of OP skills and grind for them.
Third: There were SO MANY skills that those you’re pointing out were not necessarly the best ones, although I do not deny they were very popular, but with so many choices you could have avoided the “pseudo-grind” if you were smart enough.
Think at the first invincimonk, was there a grind to be a 55hp? No, the guy who came out with that idea was just thinking outside the box.
In gw1 with creativity you could overcome any trouble.
In gw2 the build system is (still) too limited, the equip system make sense just for the legendaries (thanks to the switch), and more importantly, while you wear exo even if you’re smart you can’t be more proficient than another smart guy who is equipped with an ascended set.

Exactly these skills were only useable in PvE, so they made 0% impact in PvP, while ascended are useable in PvP. As Erick points out the progression in Guild Wars 1 came through creating your own builds and using them in your own way to win. That is something different completely from P2W-gear like Ascended.

Guild Wars 1 didn’t have WvW. Everything was structured PvP. You can’t compare WvW with structured PvP because it was never meant to be balanced…as per Anet. SPvP is structured PvP and designed to put everyone on even footing. WvW wasn’t designed for that, whether you want it to be or not.

Gehenna.3625:

Anet said they don’t make grindy games. They did. Whether you choose to go into that grind or not is another matter.

If you can just walk around and not get bored by it, well done to you.

Anet didn’t make a grindy game. They made a non-grindy game and people walked away from it. Go figure.

I guess if you invested millions of dollars into something that wasn’t working out you’d take the loss instead of changing it to make money. You’re just that kind of guy. lol

Raine.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Anet stated (I hate the word promise in this context) that if you grind for something in Guild Wars 2 it will be only cosmetic.

I don’t know at what point in time statements in interviews became promises. I see quite a large difference personally between a statement and a comment. After all, many statements are quite casual, where a promise implies something core.

I think I saw 3 mentions of the vertical progression thing during the years preceding the game, but it was definitely said and I’d have been happier with the game if Anet had stuck to their guns.

But I can also understand why they didn’t.

Edit: Here’s why I say it’s not a promise.

Father: Okay everyone we’re going to the zoo tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrives, it’s raining. Most of the kids don’t want to go to the zoo in the rain. The situation has changed.

Father: Let’s go to the arcade instead. That’s still fun.

Those who had their hearts set on going to the zoo naturally are angry, but I’m not so sure dad promised to go to the zoo. It was his intention to go to the zoo however…and circumstances changed.

We’ve already exhausted this in another thread, but I see you took nothing away from it so I’m game.

Promise: 1 : a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified

The source is http://www.merriam-webster.com. That’s all a promise is. It can be legally bound by a contract (which we are not talking about here), or bound by a vow or oath, but what you are binding is a promise. And, a promise is “a declaration that one will do or refrain from doing something specified”.

One freedom I will not allow you is the freedom to give words meanings other than their plain dictionary definition. And, please don’t go to nuance again here as it’s not needed. Nuance greatly enriches language and it’s often necessary when dealing with complex issues for which the language finds itself poor. The promise is not in need of nuance. It is simple and provides the basis for many significant business, personal, and legal concepts. And, that is why everyone is upset around Anet’s reversal on vertical progression. They broke a promise. Not a legally binding one, but a promise.

Anyone can look stuff up in the dictionary. You claim I learned nothing from the other thread. I could say the same about you.

Promise, to most people (at least in America) has a different definition that statement. Saying something isn’t promising it, which is why when people say something, someone else might ask, “promise?”.

In fact that’s practically a cliche. Because of the connotations of promise, using it with regard to casual statements is at best ambiguous and at worst misleading.

And I don’t really care if you agree or believe it…it happens to be true.

MikaHR.1978:

Algreg.3629:

and just like in Vayne´s thread the whole “defense” (which, quite frankly, I don´t think is necessary personally) you have is sophism.

Yup, its typical PR language:

How do you make something bad sound better – call it something else. Invent anything really or stupid reason will do.

Its typical gear treadmill no different than any other game similar game out there with exception that almost any other game does it better and with less grind.

Ignorance is not fooling anyone really.

The best part about your posts is that every time you call someone else ignorant, you show your own more and more.

Stop calling people ignorant because they disagree with you. It not only weakens your arguments (which are weak enough to begin with) but prevents even people who might agree with you from sympathizing.

Klawlyt.6507:

MrRuin.9740:

A tired MMO gear-driven endgame with a new gradual-paced face that only affects people without Legendaries? Yes.
Innovative? No.

This guy knows.

I’m off to bed.

Yes he knows. You agree with him, so he knows.

The other people who have different opinions don’t know.

Frankly, I think neither one of you know, you know? lol

Grinding is a state of mind. The game encourages people to grind, but people don’t have to. I don’t. I do what I want when I want.

tigirius.9014:

Tried coming back today. Spent about two hours on the game. Not seeing the improved drops in the slightest. Guess they still haven’t fixed the problem with the Wi Flag loot issues. Hit DR like multiple times just like normal while trying to do events for the daily. Not only did mostly greys drop from mobs but half of them didn’t drop anything even when I went to another zone.

Doesn’t look like much has changed since last I was online. It was a typical waste of time.

So I gotta say if they can’t even fix something this simple why should I, a player, a customer, believe anything they say about what’s coming or how it will be an improvement? Why should I come back permanently when they still haven’t fixed one of the biggest issues for some of us, loot acquisition? Some of us can’t even grind because of this problem.

I asked this before in another thread, no dev answered of course. Asked if the T7 drops would be in any way affected by DR or the typical loot algorithm because it would be an even greater insult if one of us who is suffering this loot problem comes back to the game beats the NEW improved Teq and then gets the chest only to find that DR set in somehow and made the whole thing worthless.

I can understand how your problem would be frustrating. On the other hand, not having that problem myself, I only have your word that there is that problem. Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t.

But with all such problems in a program this big, finding the elusive element could be beyond challenging. And if a small enough percentage of the population is experiencing it, it’s not even worth putting the resources into doing it.

It’s a business decision.

MikaHR.1978:

Harper.4173:

No matter how we look at it it’s very clear that the original design philosophy and what we have now are different things.
Gear progression that transfers in a small amount of grind with each new “gear grab” update.
Time gated content that makes you coming back because you have to.
Living story that you can’t redo so if you want to experience the game you’ve got to be there THEN otherwise you’re never going to get to play it.

This philosophy is designed to keep players playing, IN the game and spending on the gem store. And you know what? It WORKS.

Sadly enough – even though I hate this new approach which makes me feel like i HAVE to play the game in order to not fall behind ( dailies, guild missions, living story) this approach made me score in over 1.100 hours in ONE year after release as opposed to GW1 where I made around 1500 hours over 3 years or so.
It’s a BIG difference. And when I played GW1 I was in a less busy period of my life.

So – their approach works – people are playing and spending and the train of profit keeps rolling but sadly enough the experience is not the same.
I will never again experience the fun, exciting and enjoyable experience that GW1 was.
The best thing about that game is that you didn’t feel pressured – no need to grind, make cash, farm up or be there at a certain time unless you WANTED to.
I loved that game for that approach – it is exactly why I stayed away from WOW.

GW2 is exactly the opposite – making us feel the need to be in the game or " miss out " . It’s an odd feeling – feeling you’re going to get left behind.
Even if Ascended isn’t hard to get the fact that they haven’t released any official information on weather they will add new gear makes you always have that thought in the back of your head : " I better save up and farm up, who knows what they’ll add in next and I’ll need it ".

I hope they turn around on these decisions and make GW2 a rightful successor to GW1 but honestly I don’t think it will happen.
As proven by myself – this approach works. Even if I were to quit I’ve already spent enough on the TP to have made them earn the cash they wanted from me.

It works short term.

Ask all facebook games (Zynga in particualr) how it turns out long term.

I don’t think you can compare facebook games to Guild Wars 2 or any actual MMORPG.

For one thing, facebook players tend not to get invested in characters, story or lore. Whether you personally like the lore and story or not, some people are invested in all those things here. It’s a different dynamic.

By itself Zynga was doomed to failure but part of that was that they kept trying to get you to get your friends to play their game with their nonstop badgering. I have sisters that tried to get me to play those games, because they wanted neighbors to send them gifts.

Nothing like that here.

I don’t think anyone can say why Zynga is failing as a company…I think the issue is far too complex to boil it down to one or two reasons. In fact, competition might very well be a big part of it.

MikaHR.1978:

Gehenna.3625:

stale.9785:

Gehenna.3625:

HiddenNick.7206:

Guys… I’m still pretty skeptical about AN supposedly claiming that they don’t want any progression in there game. All those quotes you gave me are saying more or less that better stats are not going to be locked behind grind or difficult content. And people who never wanted any progression understood that as they liked.

There is nothing about stopping progression shortly after launch.

There is nothing like the claims of EQ:Next developers who strictly said that there will be no vertical progression in there game. And they are trying to sell their game with that! It’s not inconvenient for marketing by any means! It’s used rather as a sell point. So that’s why I can’t understand the acquisitions about AN changing their mind to sell more copies of their game.

This was the whole discussion when Ascended gear was announced. It hit like a truck for a lot of people who thought Anet wouldn’t do gear tiers. Anet then turned around and commented they never said they wouldn’t. They told us there could be more tiers but everything at a very slow pace and they said the level cap would get raised.

All in all, they didn’t say they were against gear progression but basically said that they’d slow it down and do it in such a way that, pardon the interpretation, every idiot could do it. So far they’ve been true to that.

Remember, absolutely everything BEFORE that implied there would be no gear progression. It was brought up post ascended, as they desperately backpeddled to not look like complete lying tools – which made them look like complete lying tools.

Oh I remember and I remember how angry I was about it. I wasn’t against gear progression but was against it in GW2 because I felt it has no place in this game.

The point is that they never said they wouldn’t and they also didn’t exclude the possibility of more tiers of gear afterwards.

I think a lot of people wanted just that game where stats were not the point and go along their happy ways enjoying the game for it’s interesting lore, challenges and cosmetics. Guess that wasn’t meant to be.

Yup, but since there are games that do it much better and properly (not half-arsed) why exactly stay in GW2?

Because the games that do it properly for you, don’t do it properly for me and other people. I want a very very gradual slope…not tiers of gear that matter. I want the choice to not go for tiers of gear and get them at my own pace.

So far, the game is doing it right for me and people like me. I came from other games that I thought handled it badly.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Gobhoblin.7582:

Ashen.2907:

Some of the PVE only skills tied to titles did provide a significant amount of power. They were easy mode approaches to powerful builds as top end builds without PVE only skills were capable of levels of performance at least comparable to PVE only builds.

You and I remember it quite differently. Lets agree to disagree, and let all these good folks get back to arguing about GW2, shall we?

I did give specific examples. Whatever your memory was of that, those skills existed and if you entered the meta game in PvE, you were expected to have them..and by many have them maxed out.

Anyone who played GW1 and has done things like DoA knows that Lightbringer levels were a requirement… but what I think he’s trying to tell you is that whatever happened in GW1 is irrelevant for GW2 and the manifesto and as a consequence for this discussion.

Now, I haven’t followed all posts here but is that relevant for this discussion?

GW1 did have grind but it had stuff I really wanted. GW2 has grind but for me it has no purpose so I don’t do it. I don’t mind grind always but the statement that they don’t want to make grindy games is a nice statement but I don’t think they managed to do it.

Most of the people who are complaining about grind are Guild Wars 1 veterans who claim there was no grind in Guild Wars 1. I’m saying same company, same game. It shifted from skills to gear, but there was still grind. It’s relevant because those who came from other MMOs, for the most part anyway, aren’t dying over this grind. Maybe they had time gating, which is another issue.

But the big discussion on this forums is that Anet lied to their core fans by having grind in the game, even though Guild Wars 1 that they loved had grind too.

This is a pattern over many threads, not just this one.

And now that the game has the stickiness that they were missing at launch (even I felt it), maybe it’ll turn out there won’t be more tiers of gear, because they won’t be necessary.

But to assume they’ll be more than this, just because this exists is just an unwarranted assumption.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

I think there’s a danger in categorizing everyone in a company as THE company. I think there are probably people who care very much about the game and others who care very much about the profits.

No doubt there are. But at some point the internal debates stop and decisions are made. When those decisions are made public, they qualify as having been made by “the Company”.

I’m not saying any particular individuals are in one camp or another. I’m saying that when the Company does something, it’s as a collective, regardless of who might have disagreed with that decision. So when I say “ArenaNet”, I’m referring to their corporate policy, not anything specific about any particular individuals.

Right, but comments like “they don’t care” well no company cares, because no company is sentient. Companies by themselves can’t care.

Decisions made by those in charge are made with data we simply don’t have. We can be so sure of something because we feel it ourselves, but without actual metrics, it’s still just our feelings.

Sure that’s a valid way to judge things. By your feelings. But in my experience, feelings tend to overshadow thought.

It’s not reasonable to assume that the company made a decision to release ascended gear just to kitten off players who like the game. What they did was guestimate how many people were in the camp compared to how many people were in the other camp. True or not, I think they believed most people wanted something to work towards.

At that point, comes the compromise. How slowly can they release it, so that it makes the minimal difference to existing players. Those who are fundamentalist in their views on both sides probably walked. But I think most players are in the middle.

There are still nice players in the world, but the not so nice players tend to shout over them. The nice players tend to recede into their guilds and make smaller sub-societies. That’s what happened to me.

I spend a lot more time talking in guild chat and a lot less time talking in the open world these days.

Chuo.4238:

Vayne.8563:

I think most of Anet is completely out of touch. I don’t think they have a clue about what people mean, because people really don’t communicate well.

I’m not so sure. I think enough people have put their thoughts here, and enough of those have been sufficiently eloquent, that they can’t help but get the point.

Lately I strongly suspect that they’re working some profitability equation that largely ignores the players that are going to quit or stop spending in the gemstore. I am thinking that if a small percentage of players are spending big bucks, and a moderate percentage are spending a little here and there, then that’s just fine with them, and fun is a very distant secondary or tertiary priority.

I truly don’t think they’re trying to make a really good, fun game any more. I think they’re trying to make one that’s just good enough to keep profits above a certain point. There’s no art to this any more.

Short answer is: as long as the credit cards are in use, all they’re going to do is try to make content that appeals to people who must have everything. Which, to me, has completely killed the spirit of Guild Wars. I’m not opposed to microtransactions, per se, and I certainly support a business trying to make a profit, but when that’s all the game is about, then I lose interest.

So as long as this is what the game is about, I’ll spend no more money on it. Which is a shame, because I’d cheerfully have put 15 bucks a month (or more!) into the gem store if the game was fun. But it isn’t. It’s not engaging. It’s just a grind. It’s just keeping up with the Joneses.

Trust me when I say: I’d be the most delighted person on these forums if ArenaNet came out and said, “we’ve made enough money that the pressure is off, now we’re going to focus on making GW2 the game it should have been.”

I don’t know. Some people found the zone wide invasions fun and I don’t think they needed to redo T’quatl the Sunless if you were right.

I think there’s a danger in categorizing everyone in a company as THE company. I think there are probably people who care very much about the game and others who care very much about the profits.

Having been in business in the real world, that seems to always be the case.

MikaHR.1978:

Its a textbook definition of gear treadmill.

Oh? Which textbook did you get this out of? I ask because I haven’t read many text-books that mention gear treadmill.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

So they launched the game, they didn’t have metrics before they launched. The situation that came up was that people were leaving the game before they introduced ascended gear. Not just a few people, a lot of people. Anet saw a situation they hadn’t counted on and had options. What options?

You see, that here is the problem. They really should have predicted that situation. Anyone that had any idea how MMO market works nowadays could have told them about the locust players. And that every new MMO gets hit by a lot of players leaving within first few months.
And, of course, those players left anyway. They would have left regardless of any choice Anet could have made.

So, in short, Anet had a choice: they could stay the course, counting on their loyal playerbase, and hope the numbers would stabilize once the locust leaves. Instead, they chose to panic. At something they should have predicted.

Actually it’s my belief the Fractals saved the game. I can’t prove it, but I believe it. Because I saw the before and after and even with the big exodus in November, there are more people playing today. I can’t prove that either but it seems quite obvious to me.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

I feel like I’m on a treadmill now even before asc weapons are introduced, thats the only valid thing to me. If you or anet want to ignore that feedback because you/they think I’m talking out of my kitten fine but they’ll have lost a customer.

If Anet can’t understand what you’re staying, it can’t be fixed. If they lose customers because customers can’t communicate properly their concerns then I’d say it’s the customers problem first and foremost.

My concerns and those of others have been clearly communicated, the fact that you dismiss them out of hand is a problem for you and anet if they think similarly.

Oh, so it’s clear to you, so it’s clear to everyone. I see. The number one complaint of people who have complaints is that their complaints aren’t listened to. There’s not a thought at all that their complaints aren’t clear enough and often even seem to contradict each other.

People who complain and aren’t clear in their complains (and in many cases that is the case) deserve neither sympathy or solution.

Such bullgravy. I know why they’re upset, ANet knows why they’re upset. The only one who doesn’t seem to know is you — or are you just being disingenuous for the sake of obfuscation?

What I will grant is that the loose terminology used makes the thread prone to tangents and sidetracks. However, that’s not because people are unaware why people are upset, angry or complaining. That’s people engaging in the international pastime of “proving” people wrong on the internet.

Actually I do know why they’re upset…but I’m not so sure Anet knows. There are tons of posts on forums. I’m sure Anet guys skim through some of them, but different people are upset for different reasons.

Some people are upset about the grind but, get this. STILL want new tiers of gear. Some people are upset about how the gear is acquired but not the gear itself.

I’ve seen as much, maybe more crying about time gating than about another tier of gear being added. These are different complaints by different groups of people.

Language obscures stuff sometimes. If you’re not communicating effectively, you won’t be heard. I’m not sure how much more logical I can make that.

Yeah, but people, including you, are not asking for clarification. They’re rubbing peoples’ noses in the “fact” that they used the wrong term. They’re not trying to improve communications, they’re trying to win on the internet.

As to whether ANet is really that discerning, or business savvy, I’m of two minds. Sometimes, I think they are in touch with the varied elements that make up the playerbase. Sometimes I think they make certain decisions because they want the game to appeal to the self-proclaimed good players, regardless of whether that group is a majority or minority. A lot of people used to enjoy responding to call-outs for help at Orr temples. Now, there aren’t any call outs in those zones at all, at least on some servers.

I think most of Anet is completely out of touch. I don’t think they have a clue about what people mean, because people really don’t communicate well.

I’m not rubbing anyone’s noses in anything. I’m saying, stop bringing up stuff that turns off minds. That’s it. If the grind it too much, complain about that. The grind. If you don’t like vertical progression at all, complain about that. But stay away from the turn off words that don’t really communicate and can be misunderstood.

The more people on the same page, the more likely Anet will get the message. We’re not on the same page here.

I’m not pro vertical progression, you know, but I don’t have anything against time gating.

I wish you better luck with your thread on this than I had on mine. lol

I agree with you.

Evans.6347:

Vayne.8563:

Yep, it’s a problem. This should be fixed.

It’s an annoyance, not a problem. It doesn’t take much to tap a button on your keyboard every couple minutes.

Annoyance is another word for problem. I didn’t say this was a serious problem and the end of the world. Stuff that annoys people is a problem. The more annoyances in a game, the more likely someone will walk. By itself, it’s not a major problem, but there are tons of little annoyances that push people away. This is one of them.

But I’m guessing this is a pretty easy one to fix compared to some of the others. I don’t see any reason why they can’t adjust it.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Vayne.8563:

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Vayne.8563:

Anet stated (I hate the word promise in this context) that if you grind for something in Guild Wars 2 it will be only cosmetic.

I don’t know at what point in time statements in interviews became promises. I see quite a large difference personally between a statement and a comment. After all, many statements are quite casual, where a promise implies something core.

I think I saw 3 mentions of the vertical progression thing during the years preceding the game, but it was definitely said and I’d have been happier with the game if Anet had stuck to their guns.

But I can also understand why they didn’t.

Edit: Here’s why I say it’s not a promise.

Father: Okay everyone we’re going to the zoo tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrives, it’s raining. Most of the kids don’t want to go to the zoo in the rain. The situation has changed.

Father: Let’s go to the arcade instead. That’s still fun.

Those who had their hearts set on going to the zoo naturally are angry, but I’m not so sure dad promised to go to the zoo. It was his intention to go to the zoo however…and circumstances changed.

That comparison doesn’t fit with what is going on here though. It was because of unknown circumstances that they couldn’t go to the zoo that day. Something that they could not help, that was forced upon them, that gave them no choice but to not go to the zoo. (plus zoos usually close if the weather is in unsuitable conditions) So it wasn’t because of their own free will that they couldn’t go to the zoo, it was forced upon them that they couldn’t go to the zoo.

What is going on with Anet is completely different. They had a choice. They weren’t forced by some mysterious act that made them have to go back on their word. They chose to change their direction. It wasn’t forced upon them because of a change they had no control over. They made the choice to do something else.

So they launched the game, they didn’t have metrics before they launched. The situation that came up was that people were leaving the game before they introduced ascended gear. Not just a few people, a lot of people. Anet saw a situation they hadn’t counted on and had options. What options?

Ascended gear was what they could implement fastest. Because for most MMOs once you lose the bulk of your crowd, the MMO drifts into obscurity. I’m pretty sure Anet thought cosmetic stuff would be enough for most people work for. I think they thought wrong…for most people.

So yes, the situation changes and they responded to it. The analogy holds.

It doesn’t though. It was still a choice, not something forced upon them.

1. Stay true to the original plan and deal with the losses, but keep the respect of your loyal playerbase by staying true to your original intent.

or

2. Add a new tier of gear for the traditional MMO players because they couldn’t accept GW2 for what it was advertised for. So you end up losing the trust of your loyal players and their money, in exchange for traditional MMO players who will never be satisfied with one new tier of gear and want more and more.

It still wasn’t forced upon them like your analogy so claims. It was a choice they made, not forced. Keep loyal players and keep true to want GW2 was advertised as, or abandon their loyal players and the original intent of the game to follow the traditional MMO route. They chose the latter. They weren’t forced to do it, they chose to do it.

Unlike your analogy which forced them not to go to the zoo. Anet wasn’t forced, they chose this.

I’m not saying ascended gear was the right choice, but I am saying they thought it was necessary. They didn’t sit down one day and say, he let’s kitten over all our most loyal fans. I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen.

Did Anet panick? I believe they did. Did the discuss many options? Again, I’m pretty sure they did. We weren’t privy to those meetings but this didn’t happen in some vacuum. What they did was, based on metrics they have (that we don’t), make a decision that they felt was right for the game, in spite of the number of people it would kitten off. And they KNEW people would be kitten ed off. It was obviously that important to the future of the game, at least in their mind.

I’m not sure my understanding if their business is better than theirs.

Sirendor.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Gobhoblin.7582:

Vayne.8563:

The funny bit is, you did have to grind to get the most power out of your skills in Guild Wars 1. They’ve changed it more recently after Guild Wars 2 was released, presumably because most people no longer play Guild Wars 1 to play Guild Wars 1. They play it to get cool stuff for Guild Wars 2.

But yeah, there was a ton of grind. People forget.

Ok – see the winky face on my post? On my planet, that usually means someone is joking. Calm down.

On the subject of grinding in GW1, maybe I am mis-remembering, but wasn’t all the grind cosmetic? Sure, they introduced the EotN titles that gave you a damage boost against certain beasties – but if I remember rightly they changed that after a massive outcry from the community?

Again, I’m probably looking back with rose-tinted specs, but I don’t remember a GW1 grind that wasn’t cosmetic or title related…no performance benefit, just pure kitten.

…which is why I loved the game. I have no strong ragey feelings about the grind for gear in GW2, other than a profound sense of disappointment.

Guild Wars 1 had skill grind. Every time a new product game out, there were new skills to acquire. Take the skill Save Yourselves. A perfectly innocuous skill, until you realized that your paragon imbagon build was completely dependent upon it and that you couldn’t get into a DOA group if it wasn’t high enough.

That was a Luxon/Kurzick skill which had 12 ranks. Look up FFF in the Guild Wars 1 wiki for instructions on how to fast faction farm. People farmed those points forever, to get skills like that up.

The necromancer skill necrosis from NF was also like that. You want that skill more powerful you have to grind Sunspear points. Technobabble, pain inverter, the sin skill which the permasin build depended on, the norn skill ursan, which people wanted you to have rank 8 or higher in their norn title track.

It’s the same thing here. Do you NEED ascended gear to play this game? No. You don’t. And those skills were so kitten powerful they changed the balance of PvE completely. I mean a lot. Far more than ascended gear will affect this game.

But that was okay because that was skill grind, not gear grind.

That’s the difference. Skill grind > Gear grind. Skill grind is something meaningful, unlocking new skills the more you play and consequently allowing you to play in a more diverse and exciting way, developing your own new strategies etc.

Gear grind on the contrary means that you get a new set with your current stats + x, not really making any changes, except that you do more damage according to the stats, which is not even necessary because they can just make the monsters a little bit easier so you don’t need the + x gear (in this case ascended).

Except that the skill grind made more of an effect on power creep than this gear grind does, and power creep is one of the big bug bears of gear grind systems. The PvE content under skill grind got laughably easy, even with 3 heroes and 4 henchmen.

Meaningful is a funny word. A new skill that’s so powerful you have to keep it on your skill bar or be at a disadvantage isn’t better than a few stats that don’t add up to much. To me, ascended gear is far more easily ignored.

MikaHR.1978:

stale.9785:

They repeatedly said, in development, in interviews, in random in-game posts, that ALL progression would be cosmetic, once you hit the gear cap.

This isn’t something the fanbase came up with on their own – for 5 years they beat the same drum, then a piddling 3 months into live release, they did a 180. Now they’re making it worse. I’m not surprised people are kitten ed – I’ve reached a point where not only can I not, in good conscience, recommend this game to friends – I advise them to avoid anything Anet or NCsoft has had their hands in. They’ve become worse than EA ever dreamed of being.

Yah, at this point id rather recommend WoW, and that says a lot lol

And based on your recommendation from the posts you’ve made before, I’d avoid it even if I didn’t know better. Ambassador material you’re not.

SpyderArachnid.5619:

Vayne.8563:

Anet stated (I hate the word promise in this context) that if you grind for something in Guild Wars 2 it will be only cosmetic.

I don’t know at what point in time statements in interviews became promises. I see quite a large difference personally between a statement and a comment. After all, many statements are quite casual, where a promise implies something core.

I think I saw 3 mentions of the vertical progression thing during the years preceding the game, but it was definitely said and I’d have been happier with the game if Anet had stuck to their guns.

But I can also understand why they didn’t.

Edit: Here’s why I say it’s not a promise.

Father: Okay everyone we’re going to the zoo tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrives, it’s raining. Most of the kids don’t want to go to the zoo in the rain. The situation has changed.

Father: Let’s go to the arcade instead. That’s still fun.

Those who had their hearts set on going to the zoo naturally are angry, but I’m not so sure dad promised to go to the zoo. It was his intention to go to the zoo however…and circumstances changed.

That comparison doesn’t fit with what is going on here though. It was because of unknown circumstances that they couldn’t go to the zoo that day. Something that they could not help, that was forced upon them, that gave them no choice but to not go to the zoo. (plus zoos usually close if the weather is in unsuitable conditions) So it wasn’t because of their own free will that they couldn’t go to the zoo, it was forced upon them that they couldn’t go to the zoo.

What is going on with Anet is completely different. They had a choice. They weren’t forced by some mysterious act that made them have to go back on their word. They chose to change their direction. It wasn’t forced upon them because of a change they had no control over. They made the choice to do something else.

So they launched the game, they didn’t have metrics before they launched. The situation that came up was that people were leaving the game before they introduced ascended gear. Not just a few people, a lot of people. Anet saw a situation they hadn’t counted on and had options. What options?

Ascended gear was what they could implement fastest. Because for most MMOs once you lose the bulk of your crowd, the MMO drifts into obscurity. I’m pretty sure Anet thought cosmetic stuff would be enough for most people work for. I think they thought wrong…for most people.

So yes, the situation changes and they responded to it. The analogy holds.

Anet stated (I hate the word promise in this context) that if you grind for something in Guild Wars 2 it will be only cosmetic.

I don’t know at what point in time statements in interviews became promises. I see quite a large difference personally between a statement and a comment. After all, many statements are quite casual, where a promise implies something core.

I think I saw 3 mentions of the vertical progression thing during the years preceding the game, but it was definitely said and I’d have been happier with the game if Anet had stuck to their guns.

But I can also understand why they didn’t.

Edit: Here’s why I say it’s not a promise.

Father: Okay everyone we’re going to the zoo tomorrow.

Tomorrow arrives, it’s raining. Most of the kids don’t want to go to the zoo in the rain. The situation has changed.

Father: Let’s go to the arcade instead. That’s still fun.

Those who had their hearts set on going to the zoo naturally are angry, but I’m not so sure dad promised to go to the zoo. It was his intention to go to the zoo however…and circumstances changed.

It’s been farming for one month. Before that we had mini games, and the Zephyrites. I agree, this farming stuff is not the game I want to play. I liked the patch before the Queen’s Jubilee a whole lot more.

But I won’t be taking a break anytime soon, because I still won’t farm unless I want to. I won’t let the actions of a few influence how I spend my game time.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

I feel like I’m on a treadmill now even before asc weapons are introduced, thats the only valid thing to me. If you or anet want to ignore that feedback because you/they think I’m talking out of my kitten fine but they’ll have lost a customer.

If Anet can’t understand what you’re staying, it can’t be fixed. If they lose customers because customers can’t communicate properly their concerns then I’d say it’s the customers problem first and foremost.

My concerns and those of others have been clearly communicated, the fact that you dismiss them out of hand is a problem for you and anet if they think similarly.

Oh, so it’s clear to you, so it’s clear to everyone. I see. The number one complaint of people who have complaints is that their complaints aren’t listened to. There’s not a thought at all that their complaints aren’t clear enough and often even seem to contradict each other.

People who complain and aren’t clear in their complains (and in many cases that is the case) deserve neither sympathy or solution.

Such bullgravy. I know why they’re upset, ANet knows why they’re upset. The only one who doesn’t seem to know is you — or are you just being disingenuous for the sake of obfuscation?

What I will grant is that the loose terminology used makes the thread prone to tangents and sidetracks. However, that’s not because people are unaware why people are upset, angry or complaining. That’s people engaging in the international pastime of “proving” people wrong on the internet.

Actually I do know why they’re upset…but I’m not so sure Anet knows. There are tons of posts on forums. I’m sure Anet guys skim through some of them, but different people are upset for different reasons.

Some people are upset about the grind but, get this. STILL want new tiers of gear. Some people are upset about how the gear is acquired but not the gear itself.

I’ve seen as much, maybe more crying about time gating than about another tier of gear being added. These are different complaints by different groups of people.

Language obscures stuff sometimes. If you’re not communicating effectively, you won’t be heard. I’m not sure how much more logical I can make that.

Gobhoblin.7582:

Ashen.2907:

Some of the PVE only skills tied to titles did provide a significant amount of power. They were easy mode approaches to powerful builds as top end builds without PVE only skills were capable of levels of performance at least comparable to PVE only builds.

You and I remember it quite differently. Lets agree to disagree, and let all these good folks get back to arguing about GW2, shall we?

I did give specific examples. Whatever your memory was of that, those skills existed and if you entered the meta game in PvE, you were expected to have them..and by many have them maxed out.

Siphaed.9235:

anzenketh.3759:

Siphaed.9235:

anzenketh.3759:

*snipped

Question 6: Just like it is now.

*snipped

As for #6, you say “as it is now”, I think you misunderstand the context of what I was asking. I’m wondering if they’re going to do something similar to the Scarlet Invasions, but with undead minions under the command of Te’Quatl throughout other zones (ones beyond Spark Fly Fen).

1. I understand your question now. I do not see this likely. It would be fun though for the effecting the world.

Is it “not likely” because the players will repeatedly fail it over and over again to farm Undead Champion #6,587 just to get the “phat lootz” as a sort of instant gratification for themselves?

I maybe coming off as perturbed, but that’s because this is how PvE has currently become in both the Meta events encircling the Scarlet Invasions, as well as those of Orr. I’m really hoping that they patch in several fixes to the permanent content -and the temp events- very soon. Hopefully something like a Champ Chest cap of 2 per Dynamic Event or something that would purposely encourage players to continue chains and finish one Dynamic Event to go onto another. That might be a negative form of encouragement, but the only other option would be to try to find ways to shift the Champ Chest off the actual champion mob, but instead place it on the Dynamic Event for the sake of completion (failing obviously wouldn’t produce a chest, mob killed or not).

See, I like what they’re doing with Te’Qualt that they’ve already done with The Claws of Jormag: Champion mobs tied to the event do not drop loot chests, thus aren’t profitably farmable. This keeps the focus off of trash mobs and instead on the main event: a giant skrittin’ dragon trying to kill you!

Mobs during the event won’t drop loot. In order to get the loot, you have to finish the event. I have no idea how it works if you fail though. Maybe you still get the loot for the guys you killed at the end.

Gobhoblin.7582:

Vayne.8563:

The funny bit is, you did have to grind to get the most power out of your skills in Guild Wars 1. They’ve changed it more recently after Guild Wars 2 was released, presumably because most people no longer play Guild Wars 1 to play Guild Wars 1. They play it to get cool stuff for Guild Wars 2.

But yeah, there was a ton of grind. People forget.

Ok – see the winky face on my post? On my planet, that usually means someone is joking. Calm down.

On the subject of grinding in GW1, maybe I am mis-remembering, but wasn’t all the grind cosmetic? Sure, they introduced the EotN titles that gave you a damage boost against certain beasties – but if I remember rightly they changed that after a massive outcry from the community?

Again, I’m probably looking back with rose-tinted specs, but I don’t remember a GW1 grind that wasn’t cosmetic or title related…no performance benefit, just pure kitten.

…which is why I loved the game. I have no strong ragey feelings about the grind for gear in GW2, other than a profound sense of disappointment.

Guild Wars 1 had skill grind. Every time a new product game out, there were new skills to acquire. Take the skill Save Yourselves. A perfectly innocuous skill, until you realized that your paragon imbagon build was completely dependent upon it and that you couldn’t get into a DOA group if it wasn’t high enough.

That was a Luxon/Kurzick skill which had 12 ranks. Look up FFF in the Guild Wars 1 wiki for instructions on how to fast faction farm. People farmed those points forever, to get skills like that up.

The necromancer skill necrosis from NF was also like that. You want that skill more powerful you have to grind Sunspear points. Technobabble, pain inverter, the sin skill which the permasin build depended on, the norn skill ursan, which people wanted you to have rank 8 or higher in their norn title track.

It’s the same thing here. Do you NEED ascended gear to play this game? No. You don’t. And those skills were so kitten powerful they changed the balance of PvE completely. I mean a lot. Far more than ascended gear will affect this game.

But that was okay because that was skill grind, not gear grind.

Yep, it’s a problem. This should be fixed.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

If they do exist, you’ll be paying a whole lot of money not to grind, which is where I draw the line.

No, “if,” about it and you are mistaken about the cost. Champions Online. One of the common complaints is that there is so very little reason to subscribe (it is a hybrid business model).

As yes, I have a friend who plays that. How are those content upgrades coming? My friend has done everything there is in that game bunch of times and keeps repeating content because there’s nothing else to do.

Yes, that’s a good choice. I’m not sure how grindy it is, I’ll have to ask. People who have been through the grind tend to forget about it.

Namu.5712:

Vayne.8563:

Gobhoblin.7582:

Vayne.8563:

Sirendor.1394:

People … it’s time to say farewell to Guild Wars 2. Tag me if you know another good f2p mmorpg to play instead (i’m 100% serious, can’t keep up with this grinding crap forever).

And you’re going to find a free to play MMO with less grinding?

That’s pretty funny. Good luck with that.

GW1?

If Guild Wars 1 was an MMO, yeah, I’d agree with you. But since even Anet said Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO, I disagree with you.

And there’s TONS of grind in Guild Wars 1….it’s just not gear grind. Anyone who says Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a grind fest wasn’t paying attention.

I think that people these days think that if you have to get new gear its a grind fest but if they added something like titles that have stats attached that you have to grind for 99% of the people kittening about gear would be cool with it lol…..

The funny bit is, you did have to grind to get the most power out of your skills in Guild Wars 1. They’ve changed it more recently after Guild Wars 2 was released, presumably because most people no longer play Guild Wars 1 to play Guild Wars 1. They play it to get cool stuff for Guild Wars 2.

But yeah, there was a ton of grind. People forget.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

And you’re going to find a free to play MMO with less grinding?

They exist.

Mmhmm. Not any of the ones I’ve tried, maybe. If they do exist, you’ll be paying a whole lot of money not to grind, which is where I draw the line.

Gobhoblin.7582:

Vayne.8563:

Sirendor.1394:

People … it’s time to say farewell to Guild Wars 2. Tag me if you know another good f2p mmorpg to play instead (i’m 100% serious, can’t keep up with this grinding crap forever).

And you’re going to find a free to play MMO with less grinding?

That’s pretty funny. Good luck with that.

GW1?

If Guild Wars 1 was an MMO, yeah, I’d agree with you. But since even Anet said Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO, I disagree with you.

And there’s TONS of grind in Guild Wars 1….it’s just not gear grind. Anyone who says Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a grind fest wasn’t paying attention.

I got a forum ban that ended early.

Sirendor.1394:

People … it’s time to say farewell to Guild Wars 2. Tag me if you know another good f2p mmorpg to play instead (i’m 100% serious, can’t keep up with this grinding crap forever).

And you’re going to find a free to play MMO with less grinding?

That’s pretty funny. Good luck with that.

morrolan.9608:

Erasculio.2914:

You can just look at the quote in my signature to see ArenaNet contradicting itself. Saying:

Mike OBrien

I think players are kind of maturing past the point of wanting to be on that treadmill – wanting to be in that obvious pattern of every time I catchup you’re wanting to put that carrot in front of me

[…]
What really amazes me is how there is no reason for those comments. We understand the direction the game has moved to. There is no justification for ArenaNet to say GW2 is a “game that’s not about continued vertical progression” when they have been telling us for quite some time that yes, they will continue to add vertical progression to the game. This kind of speech may have been fitting to the game by the time the Manifesto was released, or maybe with the release hype (does someone else remember the “Prepare for the revolution” marketing?). Saying it now… Is simply a lie. A pointless, transparent lie.

Yep this is quite frankly unbelievable and not remotely defendable.

Vayne.8563:

Lie implies intent. What evidence do you have that when Anet devs made these quotes they didn’t think them true.

They may not have lied then but the above shows that things are different now.

I agree with you 100%. Things are different now. That’s 100% true.

Every single MMO I’ve played at launch was vastly different a year later. Every single one.

I’m not sure why people don’t get used to that kind of thing. Maybe I’m jaded because it keeps happening.

Klawlyt.6507:

Vayne.8563:

snip

Any MMO that has a higher population a year later than two months after launch is probably doing something right, regardless of how I personally feel about the direction the game is going.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a household name for a reason. It’s because it was a game that targeted people who had a higher IQ and more thought process. I assure you, you’re in a vast minority there.

As soon as I saw the scale and scope of this game, I knew concessions would have to be made. That’s because if any developer ever made a game for me…my perfect game…five guys would play it. I’d probably know most of them personally. lol

If it were up to me, there would be no stats at all. No numbers. None. No level, no gear, no upgrades, nothing. Basically, you get the idea that your character is sorta strong, cause you’d know that…or sort of smart…or what have you. And maybe those things could grow in the game without putting a specific number on it. This way, you can’t min/max at all..you just play what feels right for you. And you get completely immersed in the world because there’s no numbers to pull you out of the world. There’s be no levels. Progression would be through story, not gear, not skills. The story would be never ending.

That’s my ideal game. Somehow I don’t see it happening, so I make do with Guild Wars 2. lol

I’ll admit, they had the intel, and we didn’t, but we still don’t have it. ArenaNet have done lots of things since November, (whether the majority of forum goers agree is another matter) and I still think it’s hard to just point to ascended gear as the biggest fix. During the first half of 2013, they added guild missions, fixed culling, got sPvP much closer to being esport worthy (from a technical standpoint, we all know balance is still a bit wonky), and took the living story from a party every month with some “meh” quests to a full-on new experience every other week.

While I’m sure that the data show that people are acquiring ascended gear, I’m not sure that means people are enjoying acquiring ascended gear. I’ll admit, despite my utter dislike of the whole tier, I’m still gearing up. I’m doing it because I primarily play WvW, and I want to stay competitive. I know there’s no such thing as my perfect game. (ok, there is, but we’re not talking about Super Smash Bros. Brawl Project M here.)

It still effects me negatively though. I had been playing my thief pretty much exclusively (outside of sPvP) since launch. I’ve finally decided to do my server a service, and am seriously leveling my guardian. We have just over a month until the WvW season starts. I have no doubt he’ll be leveled and in full exotics by then, but I also know that there literally no chance he’ll have all available ascended gear by then. I just have no way to make the laurels/cash needed between now and October. With the game that it sounded like ANet were presenting us at launch, this wouldn’t be an issue. This is my and many others’ complaint, and makes myself and others less likely to stick around in the face of upcoming competition.

I do get that you’re not defending it as good or bad, but simply as something that is. But it still irks me something fierce that ArenaNet have chosen to simply compete with that which has come before, instead of anticipating that which is coming. ESO has been touting max level progression as largely horizontal, and ironically, they plan to so this by having you continue collecting skills to use on your small hotbar. I remember a little CORPG that came out in 2005 that pulled that off pretty well. EQ Next is claiming that it isn’t even going to have levels.

So yeah, ANet made a business decision, because they’re a business. I just think they made the short-sighted one, and the one that alienates their core fanbase. I think they did it to make more money NOW, instead of continuing to build on the reputation they already had, and developing for the long run.

I’m not defending the choice to put ascended gear in the game, or the format Anet has chosen to put ascended gear into the game. And if people think I am, they’re simply wrong.

I’m saying that I simply don’t have enough knowledge or experience to actually know if this is good or bad. I’m not a developer. I’m not in the position to see five years and millions of dollars go to waste. I don’t have the same vested interest in the game as the people who brought it to life.

So I don’t judge very often..unless I really hate something.

I dislike this current event immensely. I think it’s bad for guilds. I think it’s bad for community. I’ve said so.

But I don’t think that’ll stop Anet from making more events like this.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

I feel like I’m on a treadmill now even before asc weapons are introduced, thats the only valid thing to me. If you or anet want to ignore that feedback because you/they think I’m talking out of my kitten fine but they’ll have lost a customer.

If Anet can’t understand what you’re staying, it can’t be fixed. If they lose customers because customers can’t communicate properly their concerns then I’d say it’s the customers problem first and foremost.

My concerns and those of others have been clearly communicated, the fact that you dismiss them out of hand is a problem for you and anet if they think similarly.

Oh, so it’s clear to you, so it’s clear to everyone. I see. The number one complaint of people who have complaints is that their complaints aren’t listened to. There’s not a thought at all that their complaints aren’t clear enough and often even seem to contradict each other.

People who complain and aren’t clear in their complains (and in many cases that is the case) deserve neither sympathy or solution.

Klawlyt.6507:

Vayne.8563:

snip

Because ultimately that’s the only way anything will be changed.

While we’re on the topic of semantics, there’s a reason people bring up three year old videos. It wasn’t a “statement of intent”. It wasn’t their “guiding principles”. It wasn’t their “business plan”. It was a manifesto. Who writes manifestos? People starting revolutions! People who want to change the way others think! ArenaNet boldly proclaimed that they were going to cast off the shackles of that which came before, and tread forth into new MMO territory.

Guild Wars 2, despite its fantastic sales, still had a rough opening couple of months. How long did it take to get the TP up and running? What was there for large guilds to do together? And yes, there were scads of people who just bought the game because the heard it was the next big MMO, and who hadn’t done their homework to find out what kind of game it was being marketed as. But these days, a large segment of the MMO market will just play the latest big game and move on, regardless. These people aren’t content locusts, they’re just folks who don’t like to be married to one game. I think had ANet stayed the course, and stood by their stated principles they could’ve continued to build the game they sounded like they intended to build.

While I have no concrete numbers, it does seem that with or without ascended gear, a fair number of people trailed off between November and February. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that over the summer, as ANet hit their stride, plenty of people have also returned to the game. If that’s true, did they return because ANet have been throwing more gear with higher stats in the game, or because GW2 started to become the game it always had the potential to be, with frequent updates, and lots of stuff to do that wasn’t locked behind a gear wall?

The fact is, people were leaving the game for all sorts of reasons, and just pointing to lack of progression as the problem was a short-sighted, knee-jerk reaction. While there are lot’s of folks pleased by the addition of ascended gear, there are also lots of folks displeased by it. Once ANet had committed to trying to appease those who wanted gear progression, they really had no choice but to keep rolling it out, at least untill you could put a pink in every slot. But really, did it go far enough to keep the WoW crowd happy? My launch guild still went back to WoW, because there were no analogues to raiding. This all happened around the end of November. And these are the people factals were made for. In my opinion, ascended gear merely ticks off those who want no vertical progression, and doesn’t go far enough to appease those who want it. As Bill Cosby said, “I don’t know the secret to success, but the secret to failure is trying to please everybody”

I’m pretty sure Anet’s intel on who was leaving and why is better than mine and very probably better than yours. Anet made the best decision they could with the data they had. Unless you claim to have better data than them, you’re another voice in a sea of opinions…just like me.

I think Anet had the metrics and the data and were able to interpret it. I think that a lot of people over ascended gear and many haven’t returned, but to me the game population is much higher now than it was in November BEFORE people started leaving.

Any MMO that has a higher population a year later than two months after launch is probably doing something right, regardless of how I personally feel about the direction the game is going.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t a household name for a reason. It’s because it was a game that targeted people who had a higher IQ and more thought process. I assure you, you’re in a vast minority there.

As soon as I saw the scale and scope of this game, I knew concessions would have to be made. That’s because if any developer ever made a game for me…my perfect game…five guys would play it. I’d probably know most of them personally. lol

If it were up to me, there would be no stats at all. No numbers. None. No level, no gear, no upgrades, nothing. Basically, you get the idea that your character is sorta strong, cause you’d know that…or sort of smart…or what have you. And maybe those things could grow in the game without putting a specific number on it. This way, you can’t min/max at all..you just play what feels right for you. And you get completely immersed in the world because there’s no numbers to pull you out of the world. There’s be no levels. Progression would be through story, not gear, not skills. The story would be never ending.

That’s my ideal game. Somehow I don’t see it happening, so I make do with Guild Wars 2. lol

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

If Anet has no intention of making a treadmill and you complain about there being one, then Anet can ignore the thread completely because they know they’re not planning on making a treadmill.

I feel like I’m on a treadmill now even before asc weapons are introduced, thats the only valid thing to me. If you or anet want to ignore that feedback because you/they think I’m talking out of my kitten fine but they’ll have lost a customer.

If Anet can’t understand what you’re staying, it can’t be fixed. If they lose customers because customers can’t communicate properly their concerns then I’d say it’s the customers problem first and foremost.

No one is saying not to have concerns. But voicing your concerns in a way that is easy to misintepret helps your cause how exactly? Because I’m not clear on that.

Essentially what you’re arguing for here is the right to express concerns in ambiguous ways and says screw you if someone can’t understand them.