Guild Wars 2

Lisa.6102:

I still don’t know what “Activity participation” in the dailies is??

On the center of LA by the statue is an NPC with crossed swords over his head. He’s the activities NPC…every day it’s one of four activities that rotates…keg brawl, sanctum sprint, southsun survivor or crab toss.

Just play one game for the daily achievement. Each game also has other achievements under the activities tab.

The one guild per account thing and the names in WvW are bad ideas. The rest I can go along with quite happily.

On the one guild thing, in other games, people joined multiple guilds anyway…they just used different characters, or played on different servers. People have been joining multiple guilds in other games for ages. It’s useful at times. If your guild is good/fun enough, you wont’ have problems. Most of the people in my guild rep the guild most of the time. Usually 90% plus of our guild is repping.

As for the WvW thing, I don’t want to be singled out. I have no desire for that. I don’t want to have a bunch of people following me around and griefing me. I don’t trust PvPers enough to give them that information. And I’m sure some PvPers are mature and nice people but then you have the guys who camp the jumping puzzle, for easy kills.

Not my cup of tea.

Unleashed.6195:

Vayne.8563:

Changing your expectations doesn’t necessarily mean lowering them…..
Guild Wars 2 is a mixed bag for Guild Wars 1 players…but some of that bag is actually better.

I agree with the first sentence (as has been said a few times here) but found the second out of synch with the advice given unless you’re equally fine saying “Guild Wars 2 is a mixed bag for Diablo III players”. Part of the point is that it’s time to just let go of all comparison to Guild Wars 1. They’re not parent/child. They’re not siblings. They’re not even cousins. They’re third cousins by marriage that speak different languages.

Depends I think on your focus. I see this as more of a sequel than you do, because I don’t focus on mechanics. I focus on something completely different from mechanics. I’m not even sure what you’d call it. lol

I essentially play this game in much the same way I played Guild Wars 1 (and I’ve yet to find any other MMO I can play that way). I basically lock and load. I lose myself in the world. I could do that in Guild Wars 1 and I could do that here. I can’t do that in WoW.

I pull the same way, use positioning the same way, I focus on damage mitigation instead of healing the same way. And yes, I feel a part of the world the same way.

But more than anything, I think Guild Wars 2 is the spiritual successor to Guild Wars 1 for another reason. In Guild Wars 1, Anet innovated. They broke a lot of genre rules, even having a multiplayer game that didn’t charge a sub fee. That was huge back then.

Here in Guild Wars 2 they’re breaking rules again. Not having a trinity. Anyone can rez. These are MMO mores that Anet has moved away from. Whether you like what they’ve done or you don’t, they’ve iterated…not just on MMOs but on Guild Wars 1 as well.

Anet shakes things up. It’s what they do. They did it again. It would be a bit hypocritical to expect a company that innovated so much in their first game to not to the same in their second.

nethykins.7986:

@vayne
A whole lot is subjective. A whole lot may be casual language but casual language often caters to subjective phrases.
Here – this may help you get it… I hope:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_subjective_symptoms

While you say it doesn’t mean most of, it implies it. If it’s not your intention to imply a majority, then the comment becomes pointless.

I thought it was quite clear that gehenna referred to himself/herself when commenting on the content. I could not see dismissal, only preference. Gehenna even says it works for some and not for others. Not sure where that dismissal part is coming from.

Sorry, but “a whole lot” doesn’t imply a majority. It implies a whole lot. Check out this sentence.

I ate a whole lot of apples yesterday. Does that mean I ate the majority of apples?

I went to the stadium and there were a whole lot of people. Does that mean most people were at the stadium.

You can argue English with me till the cows come home, but you won’t often win. Casual conversation is casual conversation. If I wanted to say most, I’d have used the word most.

I was simply saying that a whole lot of people didn’t like Aion and that’s almost certainly a truth. You can argue semantics with me if you want, but I stand by what I said.

A whole lot of people didn’t like it. How many? No idea? Most who tried it? Possibly. I have no way of knowing.

But I do know that a whole lot of people who play PvE mostly games (and there are many) felt that when they ran out of quests and had to PvP, it was suddenly not the game for them.

And yes, I would qualify that as a whole lot of people.

Just like a whole lot of people left Guild Wars 2 when ascended gear was introduced. Was it a significant portion of the population? I don’t know. But it was a whole lot of people.

Casual language. Not everything needs to be dissected.

Changing your expectations doesn’t necessarily mean lowering them.

There are many things about this game that are superior (for me) to Guild Wars 1. For example, the lack of pathing and the auction house. I like to fight underwater. Like to dodge and yes, I love jumping puzzles.

Expecting everything to be one way and changing those expectations doesn’t mean lowering them. Guild Wars 1 was a great game…but it also had myriad flaws.

For example, standing around Spamadan to sell stuff was one of my least favorite things to do…and I don’t have to anymore.

Guild Wars 2 is a mixed bag for Guild Wars 1 players…but some of that bag is actually better.

Pace yourself. It’s actually easier to achieve some of this stuff if you wait a couple of days than if you try to do it all at once.

Take the holo-projectors from the Dragonbash event. You had to kill X numbers of holograms. Some people ran out and farmed projectors. The first couple of days, you had to really be on your toes. Because those guys spawned and went down so fast, people were complaining that you couldn’t get a hit on them half the time.

I didnt’ bother with them. I played Guild Wars 2 and ignored them. 3 days later, Anet had fixed them so the holograms stayed around longer and for the most part, people had their achievements and ignored them. And I still didn’t farm them.

I figured just running around the world, playing the way I always do, I could pop one every time I passed one. In less than a week, playing the game normally, I had every holo projector.

Same with pinatas. Everry time I went to LA I did a run. Maybe got 10-15. That was it. Done. Next time same thing.

By the end of the week, I was done. No grinding and very very little stress.

The new content requires you to do certain things, each of which take an hour, but none of which has to be done consecutively.

Pace yourself. It’s more fun for me to do this than to be done with all the content on day two anyway.

Daishi.6027:

Oh that is true. But I thought it was stated that everything was going to be unlocked via skill points? Other than gimmicky fun skills like “Tonic effect in utility with 1sec C/D” I don’t really see skills being content gated. Though I could be wrong, interesting prospect.

I used general terms, because I was talking generally not specifically. In games in general, I think it’s bad design to make people who are already better more powerful, that’s all. It’s the opposite of golf.

The better you are at golf, the higher your handicap.

I’ve often thought it was be interesting to see this sort of thing adapted for MMOs. The further you get, the harder your personal game gets…which means that people who really want a challenge can be challenged, but people who don’t need a challenge can be buffed.

It’s sort of like the idea behind gambits, in a way. It adds a layer of challenge for the harder core player.

Brutal Arts.6307:

Oxstar.7643:

Saying that the lack of trinity makes the game easier is incredibly stupid. The rules of a fight still apply, healing, taking damage, and outputting it. But to do all three in the more harder areas of the game, you need teamwork. If everyonr fights for himself, you will die in the more hardcore content.

No I’m pretty sure 5 zerker geared whatever can speed clear through all the content in this game. Teamwork in this game means being competent enough to not drag down your teammates.

Actually that’s not true. Teamwork in this game means playing with a team..based on the rules agreed to by the team.

If your goal is efficiency, then you’d be dragging your team down. If your goal is to have fun, then doing something in 5 minutes isn’t necessarily significantly more fun than doing it in 15 or even an hour. In fact, if I run a dungeon and it takes an hour and I’m having fun, I’m having more fun running it in an hour..because if I run it in 15 minutes my fun ends sooner.

I have a guild full of people and very few people play warriors in that guild. We do dungeons all the time. Every day. And we beat every dungeon…at our own pace. And yes, it requires teamwork.

If you want to trivialize content by thinking that’s how Anet meant people to play this game..go right ahead.

But I think you missed the whole point.

Daishi.6027:

Vayne.8563:

I think the OP has a valid point. I also think that there are far more people not interested in hard content than are interested in hard content, but I don’t see why we can’t have both.

The problem is, Anet isn’t likely to make more content for the smaller percentage of players…and lest you think people who like hard content are the majority, we know from past interviews with devs that that’s not really the case.

As an example, Ghost Crawler, the head dev for WoW, has said publicly that only 5% of the playerbase ever beat the hardest content in the game. That’s not a huge percentage.

There’s a reason why games are getting easier and easier. Obviously if everyone loved hard content, games would be getting harder…but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

But I think that there should be hard stuff in the game for people who like hard stuff…as long as it doesn’t reward them with power. That I’m dead set against.

I mean if you’re really really good, you don’t need more power. It’s the guys who are really bad who need more power. lol

I am completely against significant gear treadmills, check the link in my original post and tell me if you think that’d be to broken.

I said power…not gear treadmill. Sorry I wasn’t clearer, but power doesn’t only have to come from gear. Remember Anet is also about to release skills and traits too, and we don’t know how they’re going to be unlocked.

I believe the reward for challenge content should be stuff like titles, achievements, cosmetic stuff…but nothing that makes someone more powerful…gear or no gear.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Sorry, but I’m not being subjective when I say lots of people didn’t like Aion. That’s not subjective. Whether the game is good or not isn’t what I spoke about. You like to pick on me…why don’t you pick on the subjective guy I was first responding to.

It’s like you’re not even reading what I’m saying, so I’ll try again.

Example one…Aion is a bad game.

That’s opinion.

Example two… A whole lot of people thought Aion was a bad game.

I’m not saying it’s a fact, but it’s got a REALLY high probability of being a fact. Here’s another fact for you.

I didn’t personally mind Aion at all.

A whole lot is subjective. It means different things to different people. That’s why it’s subjective. What is a whole lot? 10k people, 50k people, 100k people, 2 million people? That’s different for everybody, hence subjective.

The point is though, what are you trying to say with “a whole lot of people didn’t like Aion”? What is that supposed to bring to the table? Since you can say that of any game that was ever made known to man, it’s a meaningless point. It’s just a generality that people use to imply something without actually saying it.

So either you had no point with it or you were implying something with it, which you probably can’t substantiate. But hey, at least you can claim deniability right?

Subject here is that there are people who find GW2’s philosophy flawed and those who don’t. Lots of people on both sides of that if you like. What’s more interesting is why.

So let’s bring it back to why people do or do not care for the GW2 approach.

My main point is that they present a constant stream of snacks. I prefer full meals, something more substantial that I can take my time in doing. I don’t like the snacks because they are often fleeting and gone before you know it. Then it no longer exists: content gone again.

Look at the game. It has a certain foundation that was laid that Anet doesn’t really have the means or possibility to deviate from, even if needed.

It’s an interesting idea to bring out small updates regularly, but what comes and goes puts pressure on people to do it now or miss out on it and what stays are small things here and there that never give you the feeling of a big renewal of the game, a revamp, a new beginning. All games become stale, MMOs for sure…after a while you want to renew it and be reinvigorated. An expansion can do this. Little bits here and there don’t give me that feeling.

I played the game at the start. Quit after the game was out, not even 3 months. I just came back 8 months later and leveled a toon to 80. Got bored again. So yeh, it had its value to some degree, but it doesn’t grab me to the point I want to stay and come back into the world for more than just a bit.

Apparently it works for some people, but I just don’t get that and that’s ok, but numbers aside…all games have lovers and haters. And a lot of the hate comes because people actually are engaged and what the game to be better as they see it.

This game is endgame from the start. Well, whatever happens when you are at 80 then…well it’s not there, you can already do all that stuff before. There is no real end level content because most of the dungeons can be done at lower levels already and gathering mats and money can be done before to. There really is no content for level 80. An interesting design choice but not one that works for me and at least some others as I can see here.

A whole lot is not subjective. It’s just not specific. It’s casual language. It means many or even a bit more than many. It’s not saying most. It’s casual language. When people are talking casually, casual language is allowed. Not every point in these conversations is going to be scientific.

Like your point about snacks and meals…the analogy doesn’t hold. This is where your opinion, which is completely subjective, starts to sound a bit disingenuous.

You have an opinion about what serious content is. But one man’s serious content is another man’s snacks. In real life, meals are important, snacks are not. In video games, you can’t really call one thing snacks and one thing meals, because there’s no nutritional value or what’s good or bad for you here. You’re simply using language as a way to dismiss the opinions of others.

In my mind, dungeons are snacks and open world content is meals.

I do agree with your point about having to do things quickly however. Which is why I’m glad achievement points mean so little.

Galtrix.7369:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Chuo.4238:

Xae Isareth.1364:

GW2 is a MMO, it has to have some time-gated content to keep you playing.

Yea so I suppose fun content is out of the question then. Oy vey. ArenaNet. I give up. There are enough new and shiny things on the horizon. I don’t need this crap.

Time. Gated. Grind. Is. Not. Fun.

Edit: I suppose I could just spend some cash, buy gems, convert to gold, and get them on the Trading Post instead, without having to wait, right? And then, with my shiny new gear go do….

…what?

I’m actually starting to laugh at the absurdity of all this.

So what would you do in Anet’s position? You have a B2P game catered for casuals, about to release a set of gear which isn’t just cosmetic. You aim this to not be something people just get with ease in 2 days, so you got 3 options

1. Make it an endgame RNG-fest where theres a 1 in ten trillion chance said weapon would drop. I’m sure we’d like more of those.
2. Make it a common drop from a very hard encounter. This ends up being even more problematic as it’s rather hard to design reasonable encounters which people dont end up clearing very quickly after launch, making you resort to 1). Not FFXIV l-esque bosses that are basically impossible to kill.
3. Making the content time-gated and use it to revitalise a ton of dead features in the game such as the whole crafting system and most JPs.

Casual players can do difficult content too. That’s what you’re forgetting here. Being casual or hardcore depends only on the sole amount of time you put into the game. I would never in my entire life try to be like Anet at this point in time, because all they’re doing is time-gating content and trying to keep players playing until they can please everyone. My solution? Make a bunch of very short, but very difficult dungeons where each completion of a dungeon run you can earn 1 mystical essence (my version of a token). A total of 10 mystical essences are required to get a new piece of ascended gear.

This is not time-gated. This does not limit the amount of runs you can do each day. This isn’t a grind because there are multiple, varied types of dungeons. It’s short enough for the casuals, but takes long enough to be hardcore as well.

And the people who don’t like dungeons, which is a relatively large percentage of the population? What about those people…or don’t they count?

@ the OP:

Content creation is actually a different skill set from fixing bugs. That is to say, some people are very good at creating stuff, but not editing it, and some people are very good at editing stuff, and not creating it. That’s why there are both authors and editors. That’s why there are game designers and coders. That’s why there are programmers who are trouble shooters.

And sometimes, often even, throwing more bodies at a problem increases the time it takes to fix something. You may not see how that can be, but it doesn’t make it less true.

Ever hear the expression two many chefs spoil the broth? It’s not completely untrue.

Then there’s the other side of the story you’re not considering. Your’e one person but you’re not all people. And a lot of people run out of content, get bored, and leave. It happens all the time. A lot of people are just looking for stuff to do. Which means that if those people left because there was no content, who would the programming team be fixing the bugs for?

I’m thinking that Anet probably has a pretty good idea on how to run a business, and I think they’re doing pretty well. I think if they stopped creating content to fix all the bugs, and put more people on it (which wouldn’t necessarily decrease the time involved), they’d have less people playing the game, and less income, and therefore less content moving on. Then more people would leave the game and they’d have gone and fixed all the bugs for nothing.

cesmode.4257:

Vayne.8563:

cesmode.4257:

Responding to a few posts saying that DEs do not add much to the game: That is the game/arenanets fault then. We were hyped that the game is ours, the world is ours, the choices we make matter, the champion will killed wont respawn 10 minutes later. Guess what? All of that is false. Success or failure mean little with regard to dynamic events. While a unique and refreshing way to approach content in an MMO space, they fall short of the goals arenanet set out with.

So following your logic, since DEs do not add much to the game overall, arenanet needs to pump this kind of content into the game? I love the amount of combat in this patch, love it! But this stuff detracts from other zones, from other things, and all of this is based around reward reward reward and not simply having fun. At least, most of us

The champion you kill doesn’t respawn ten minutes later refers to the personal story. I’ve proven that, it was said by Anet. It was clarified 3 days after the manifesto was released. 3 days. That clarification was up for well over a year and other stuff has been said since then.

If you can’t do the minimal research it takes to buy a game (because Anet said not only exactly how DEs work before launch, but gave examples), then I don’t really see how you can blame the company.

Id say I did enough"minimal" research a consumer would do for a 60 dollar product.

The fact that their vebiage in a lot of their interviews, videos, articles, and manifesto is so grey forces one to dig a little deeper than normal.

Id like to think that Ive read enough blogs and seen enough videos and interviews from official sources and fansites prior to the games launch to say that I did my homework. You are not one to tell me otherwise.

So with that confidence in mind, I did not see Arenanet confirming this 3 days after launch.. I did not see this. I might have been in game playing, but I have been a forum frequenter since they opened up the forums. I have been on their website here nearly every day, I read the patch notes. I can honestly say that I guess I missed that one…that little clarification that what they MEANT to say was “oops, this is for personal story, not in the world”. Again, I consider myself someone who did their homework and this one got by me…so what does that say about arenanet’s communication? (And if this was posted on reddit or facebook instead of guildwars2.com, thats the companys fault. I dont need to go to a third party site to get official information).

Awaits the inevitable “You consider yourself well-informed and you missed this? Hah! not as informed as you thought..” response.

Edit: I found what you are referring to. Buried somewhere in this forum in your post, you linked guildwars2guru..I went there and the link in that thread no longer works. Still, official clarifications, threads upon threads buried in forums and links to fansites for official information…Yeah, no wonder I missed it. And I still can’t read it. Overall, terrible communication. If companys wanted to use their forums for official communication, most create a sticky and leave it in the forum forever so you can read. “Clarification about manifesot”. Stickied. I can see it any time. But again, thats if I traverse the forums.

First they said it 3 days after the manifesto came out. They always said, over and over that DE’s would ping pong back and forth on a track. I honestly have no idea where you were.

The manifesto was relatively clear about certain things and people superimposed their own idea over it. Sure it was marketing. See that’s what companies do, they market their product. Your job is to look at the marketing for a product, and try to see what is actually there. If you buy into the hype (and a lot of it is fan generated, rather than developer generated), well, there’s not much I can say.

But the facts were out there. People simply chose to ignore them.

Edit: And you’re right, it’s a $60 game. Most $60 games last for 20 hours, if that. I’m sure you’ve got more than your money’s worth from this one.

I think the OP has a valid point. I also think that there are far more people not interested in hard content than are interested in hard content, but I don’t see why we can’t have both.

The problem is, Anet isn’t likely to make more content for the smaller percentage of players…and lest you think people who like hard content are the majority, we know from past interviews with devs that that’s not really the case.

As an example, Ghost Crawler, the head dev for WoW, has said publicly that only 5% of the playerbase ever beat the hardest content in the game. That’s not a huge percentage.

There’s a reason why games are getting easier and easier. Obviously if everyone loved hard content, games would be getting harder…but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

But I think that there should be hard stuff in the game for people who like hard stuff…as long as it doesn’t reward them with power. That I’m dead set against.

I mean if you’re really really good, you don’t need more power. It’s the guys who are really bad who need more power. lol

cesmode.4257:

Responding to a few posts saying that DEs do not add much to the game: That is the game/arenanets fault then. We were hyped that the game is ours, the world is ours, the choices we make matter, the champion will killed wont respawn 10 minutes later. Guess what? All of that is false. Success or failure mean little with regard to dynamic events. While a unique and refreshing way to approach content in an MMO space, they fall short of the goals arenanet set out with.

So following your logic, since DEs do not add much to the game overall, arenanet needs to pump this kind of content into the game? I love the amount of combat in this patch, love it! But this stuff detracts from other zones, from other things, and all of this is based around reward reward reward and not simply having fun. At least, most of us

The champion you kill doesn’t respawn ten minutes later refers to the personal story. I’ve proven that, it was said by Anet. It was clarified 3 days after the manifesto was released. 3 days. That clarification was up for well over a year and other stuff has been said since then.

If you can’t do the minimal research it takes to buy a game (because Anet said not only exactly how DEs work before launch, but gave examples), then I don’t really see how you can blame the company.

Cazio.2137:

Vayne.8563:

Except that achievement points, unlike gear grind, don’t provide enough of an in game advantage so that someone who can’t do the content can’t play the game. That’s the big difference between the gear grind in WoW and what we have here.

I have people in my Guild who’ve come back from a six month break and they just jump right in and start running dungeons with us, including the newest dungeons.

Try that in other MMOs.

The reason they are coming back from a six month break is due to the boredom GW2 has in the first place once you reach max level…

Because you know these people personally and you know that they were bored (as opposed to sick or busy with life, or having internet problems, or focusing on school).

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Forget server mergers. SWToR laid off half their staff when it was a younger game than Guild Wars 2. TSW laid off a third of their staff in less time than Guild Wars 2 has been out. And Anet is hiring. I know this because I know someone who lives in Seattle, who’s daughter interviewed at Anet.

I also remember Rift….it didn’t actually have server mergers…what it did was give people a free server transfer once a week and made the lowest pop servers test servers, without closing any servers. How long did that take? Less time than Guild Wars 2 has been out for now.

It’s okay not to like the game, but facts are facts. By the time Warhammer was this old, everyone knew it was over.

Fact is that Anet have been “hiring” for ages now. That you know somebody who says that someone went for an interview is not factual data for us. It’s hearsay at best.

I can put on a “now hiring” sign but not actually hire anyone so I am not sure what that means other than that they say they are hiring people.

On the other hand it is known that these other MMOs did lay off staff and that populations did dwindle quickly in all the games you mentioned. They all went to adding f2p options to bring people back which seems to’ve been successful as well.

But please, do not mix some facts with non facts and then make a general reference to facts. That is a tad misleading.

GW2 is not in danger of server merges as much as the other games were in my view because of the overflow trick they used. A very handy trick btw, I don’t mean that as a negative. Population in W2 probably has stabilised a bit by now and the bigger problem is that players are too spread out, but that’s another topic.

But the fact that matters here if you ask me is that Anet asked another company to make some figures for them. That’s something that makes this harder to take at face value. SWTOR also sold more than 3 million copies but what’s the significance of 9 months. A year would be a fairer indication. GW2 has sold pretty well I’d say, but this just feels like hyping again…wonder if it has to do with China opening and the 1 year anniversary of the game.

I think this is just all hype to get more people to try the game as sales are slowing down. Try GW2 for free…but hey, marketing is part of business.

I’m not referring to not facts. It’s a fact that Anet is hiring. It’s a fact that different jobs have been advertised at different times. And while I can’t say that Anet didn’t lay off anyone, I can say with certainty that if a mass layoff had happened, we’d most likely have found out about it.

The game is doing fine. This bit about it being the fastest selling MMO…. I don’t care about that one way or another. But people are saying the game is dead, that people are leaving in droves, that the game is in trouble for a long time and in a lot of threads…and that’s what I’m addressing.

As always, you want to try to twist what I say into something I"m not saying. Unlesss you say Anet is lying directly, then they’re hiring.

CrossedHorse.4261:

Palador.2170:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Here’s yet ANOTHER example of anet giving you skins without any goals/challenge for you to achieve them. That’s what casuals want and that’s all they’re listening to.

Actually, the casuals (including myself) want to DIRECTLY BUY the skins with gems. We’re fine with that. Hell, three of my characters have the gemstore quiver on them.

But if ANet thinks I’m going to spend real money on a CHANCE to get a skin, they can go … use their warhorn.

Agreed. I’d happily sink a few gems at the store for a guaranteed skin at a reasonable price, available when I have the cash to spend on gems. That’s what casuals like. Stuff available at a price that doesn’t make you blush and when we want it. Maybe that’s too much to ask.

However, RNG boxes that can only be opened by BUYING really expensive keys (yes, you can get them in game, but I’ve NEVER had one drop and I’ve got ONE from a storyline) for a random chance to get a tenth of one ticket (yes, a whole ticket might drop but that’s very, very rare and after a month you need 5 of them)? That’s ridiculous.

I know I can buy the skins of the TP, but just look at the aetherized skins – nobody has any tickets anymore and no one buys the skins to put on the TP, and so when they do they cost a minimum of 80g? Some people don’t have that. I can convert gems to gold, sure, but that works out to converting roughly 3500 gems (or it did last night), which isn’t cheap at all and far too much for a skin.

No, I don’t need the skins. But I’d sure as heck like a couple, and the point is that ANet fail to realise that people WOULD buy these things. As I said above, I’d happily pay for more than two in the gem store at, say, 500 gems. But using either of the two methods currently available? I see it as a great way to burn cash real quick. The only other faster way to do so would be to literally burn my cash.

Unless you haven’t finished the story, you’ve gotten more than one from the storyline. You can also get them from zone completions, as well. But there are at least two from every story line (and I’m thinking there are three).

In other words, beat the new dungeon.

Except that achievement points, unlike gear grind, don’t provide enough of an in game advantage so that someone who can’t do the content can’t play the game. That’s the big difference between the gear grind in WoW and what we have here.

I have people in my Guild who’ve come back from a six month break and they just jump right in and start running dungeons with us, including the newest dungeons.

Try that in other MMOs.

People complain because they don’t like stuff. That’s pretty much it.

I just wish more people that don’t like stuff understood that they’re one viewpoint of many, and they’re not necessarily in the majority…which is the assumption most people make.

There’s a lot of information you get on the character creation screen, but one thing you don’t get is the character’s birthdate. I think that’s a small enough thing to add, so you don’t have to go into each character and type /age to check birthdays. For a guy like me, with a boatload of characters, it’s a lot.

Draconicus.7564:

Vayne.8563:

Anyone who leaves the game over a skin, I feel bad for. Because it’s a skin. There will be more skins, different skins, perhaps even better skins. There are so many skins. Is one skin so important, really?

If you think it was only because of a skin…you are not getting the point mate!
it’s a little more complex then just a skin.

Sure, it’s more complex.

I don’t know that I necessarily believe or don’t believe in this unlucky account theory, but it would be interesting to test with a different character on the same account, I think.

Still, without some actual numbers and probably video, this is all just theory.

I had one guildy that always said he never got lucky because the times he did he forgots very fast.

It’s like people who say there are only cash shop weapons in this game, but they complete ignore the fact that a bunch of new weapons were added to the game in just the last patch. Does everyone remember that? Nope.

I’m not saying someone is lucky or unlucky but I am saying that saying you’re unlucky is just that. Someone saying something. Until I see some proof, I’ll reserve judgment.

knives.6345:

I’ve been playing since launch and never – repeat – never got a Precursor. The total exotic I got is probably less than give or take 15-20. And we’re talking about playing since launch (and taking 3 months break).

Now, whose unlucky?

lol

Precusors are that rare. I daresay most of the population by percentage has never gotten a precusor. I got one, and very few people put in the hours I put in. It’s just a very very small chance to get one.

Anyone who leaves the game over a skin, I feel bad for. Because it’s a skin. There will be more skins, different skins, perhaps even better skins. There are so many skins. Is one skin so important, really?

Galtrix.7369:

Vayne.8563:

In my opinion, the world is too big to expect a big increase in traffic without Anet directing traffic.

Ever since I played Rift and I saw how they handled events, I started to realize why they handled events the way they did. Because if you make everything good across the board, there will be far less people at each place and people will say the game is dying anyway.

Let’s say you made every one of the 1500 dynamic event award amazing loot. Anyone could do any event they want. Then start dividing the player base. WvW people and dungeon people will be doing their thing. SPvP will be doing their thing. And open world people will be doing their thing. But you have to divide the playerbase into Europe and US zones, and then into servers, and then into Zones and then spread them out in each zone. What happens to people who log in at off hours? What are they supposed to do?

I understand why you want the game to have people everywhere, but the world is too large to support that. By directing traffic, Anet is bringing players together.

And if you want to go out and have fun in the world, find friends or join a guild that likes that sort of thing. Mine does.

Umm, isn’t that what WoW did? They don’t have dynamic events to funnel players into. They spread players throughout the world, and yes, there are some dead zones, but I still see more people walking around in WoW in 5 minutes than I do in 2 hours in GW2. I think Blizzard spread out the players around the world rather well.

I know there are other factors such as the amount of players, but if there were no events, would GW2 be like WoW in this aspect? Would the players be spread out over different maps or would they just sit in LA and afk?

Depends on the server and the zone. I’ve spent time in WoW on one server where I saw no one for ages. So no, I don’t think that’s true.

Maybe on the busiest servers on WoW, which has 8.3 million subscribers still, you might see people, but I’ve seen plenty of complaints from WoW players about dead servers and dead zones.

In a game like WoW, though, it matters less, because you don’t NEED people in zones. Leveling up in WoW is a completely solo affair. Group events aren’t around every corner.

No. I don’t think you can compare Guild Wars 2 to WoW in any way. Unless you’re suggesting 8.3 million people are playing Guild Wars 2 or any other MMO besides WoW.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

1. Karma boosters work again with liquid/consumable karma. True until September 3.
2. Liquid karma is reverted to the old value. True until September 3.
3. People who used the new valued liquid karma — 50% more instead of 95% more — will be reimbursed. This won’t happen until regular ANet office hours (9 am – 5 pm pacific time).
4. Those who spent karma but didn’t drink any aren’t affected by this at all.

(1) & (2) apply to everyone. Those who didn’t drink karma are unaffected, whether they spent any or not.

So the only people who should still have any concerns are those who drank any liquid karma between the initial release patch this morning and the latest patch just now. ANet hasn’t done anything yet to address this, but they will tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if that karma was spent or not, although that might affect how they reimburse you.

I’m not sure what more we can ask them to do.

Yep, I drank all mine. I knew I should have waited. lol

I’m rewarded and I do play OP.

But I run dungeons and fractals a lot as well, which probably increases my chances of getting exotics.

In my opinion, the world is too big to expect a big increase in traffic without Anet directing traffic.

Ever since I played Rift and I saw how they handled events, I started to realize why they handled events the way they did. Because if you make everything good across the board, there will be far less people at each place and people will say the game is dying anyway.

Let’s say you made every one of the 1500 dynamic event award amazing loot. Anyone could do any event they want. Then start dividing the player base. WvW people and dungeon people will be doing their thing. SPvP will be doing their thing. And open world people will be doing their thing. But you have to divide the playerbase into Europe and US zones, and then into servers, and then into Zones and then spread them out in each zone. What happens to people who log in at off hours? What are they supposed to do?

I understand why you want the game to have people everywhere, but the world is too large to support that. By directing traffic, Anet is bringing players together.

And if you want to go out and have fun in the world, find friends or join a guild that likes that sort of thing. Mine does.

Grey Warden.2983:

Iconik.8712:

I do it, and have garnered a bit of attention for it because I was seeing people say “Yes! We failed! Good job all!” It’s so utterly ridiculous so I complete the event now and have even gotten a bit of a small army helping.

So you had no other reason to grief a group of people than you disagreed with them.

You are not a hero and certainly no savior. But you do admit to disrupting other players game play simply because you didn’t like what they were doing and thought it was great fun and would get attention for yourself.

I believe Anet should take a hard look at people doing these things, documenting them and posting pictures of their “good deeds”. Really what I am saying is you need a few days in time out for being disruptive to a large number of players.

Maybe it would give you time to wrap your head around the fact that the world does not revolve around you and your whims.

Finishing an event is playing the game the way it was designed to be played. Intentionally not finishing an event is playing the game otherwise.

And because of the depth of the obnoxiousness of some farmers, I see nothing wrong with completing an event…playing the game the way it was meant to be played.

If it inconveniences people who want to farm…my sympathies. There are 1500 events in this game and there are tons of champions. You’re not actually preventing people from farming. You’re preventing people from farming as fast as they want to. And that shouldn’t be my problem.

I can’t wait for Anet to fix this. Players shouldn’t have to.

Lol, I used all mine when I saw that buffs would no longer work.

I got a commander tag strictly for use during guild missions (or now keeping the guild together during zone-wide events).

It saves a lot of time trying to get people to bounties within the time limit. Anyone gives me a hard time in game because they don’t like what I’m doing is going to be given all the consideration they deserve.

What so you want to pick your enemies? We have dragons, but they’re not the only problem in the world. We dealt with the first of them, I’m not sure we even know where the others are. In the mean time we hold off their minions. I’m sure people are searching for them.

And during that time a new threat rears up and you want to ignore it?

Some hero.

Dubblebass.8519:

If they are getting MORE concurrent logins, then they must be on servers other than mine. I play in all levels of zones and I don’t see as many players as I used to.

Obviously they cannot lose players since, as stated above, we are all players for life once we have purchased the game.

What you’re saying here is not necessarily true. Less players in specific zones doesn’t equal less players. Anet is simply directing traffic much better than they used to.

Even on the busiest server in the game, you can find places where there aren’t a lot of people in the open world. But then you go to where the action is. You have different types of players who play for different types of reasons.

Farmers will end up going to the hot farming spot, achievement point hounds (like me) will go to where they can get achievements (ie the living story), WvW will spend much of their time in WvW, dungeon runners will spend much of their time in dungeons (which were made more lucrative recently), and people who RP often spend their time in RP hotspots like DR.

That there are less people in points A, B and C doesn’t mean there aren’t more people in points D, E and F.

Actually, I think Anet is adding stuff to lots of areas of the game, including the open world. The new content has open world events occurring all over the place, on a daily basis.

And how fast those people above me comment on the new RNG stuff, while ignoring that fact that a whole bunch of free new weapon skins were introduced with the last updated, in those champion bags everyone is farming.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Whether people like or don’t like a game is subjective. But I believe it’s a fact that a whole lot of people didn’t like Aion. A whole lot of people also don’t like WoW or Guild Wars 2.

While someone’s opinion of a game is subjective, the fact that a whole lot of people don’t like any game is probably more factual than opinion.

And if you look at the original post I was replying to, which was completely subjective, I don’t really see your objection here.

It’s simple…you accuse others of being subjective and then you turn around and do the same thing. Now you claim there’s nothing wrong with being subjective. So why accuse the other guy about it first if you’re gonna turn around and do the same?

And what exactly was your point with this comment because I can also say that a whole lot of people do like Aion and that would be right to, but it’s meaningless….so yeh, were you just typing for the sake of typing or was there an actual point there?

Sorry, but I’m not being subjective when I say lots of people didn’t like Aion. That’s not subjective. Whether the game is good or not isn’t what I spoke about. You like to pick on me…why don’t you pick on the subjective guy I was first responding to.

It’s like you’re not even reading what I’m saying, so I’ll try again.

Example one…Aion is a bad game.

That’s opinion.

Example two… A whole lot of people thought Aion was a bad game.

I’m not saying it’s a fact, but it’s got a REALLY high probability of being a fact. Here’s another fact for you.

I didn’t personally mind Aion at all.

Fill out a support ticket and make sure to include your attachments. You can do this from outside the game support.guildwars2.com

Include as much detail as you can.

Castaliea.3156:

GW2 is about gear, not fun.
GW1 was about fun, not gear.

You might think that’s the case, but I don’t find it so. I find both games to be fun and I don’t overly worry about gear.

Neural.1824:

Vayne.8563:

OP, it’s not competive. You’re not competing with other people to get the top score. As others said, you simply need to meet a minimum threshold of damage. It does help a lot if you’re in a party, because the damage threshold is lower.

Vayne, do you happen to have a link on that one? I’ve been hearing conflicting statements on the validity of being in a group while in the Crown Pavillion area. Some seem to think that the advantage of grouping was removed, while others say it is still part of the game mechanics.

I have no idea of how it works in the pavillion, but it does SEEM to work that way in Orr. I’d have trouble finding a quote…I only have annecdotal experience. It seems like I can hit something once or twice while in a group and still get some credit, but I don’t get credit if I hit something once or twice and I’m not in a group. Again, this is just personal observation and could be completely in my head.

Does it apply to the pavillion…no real idea.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t need numbers to say a whole lot of people. If 1000 people hated it, it’s a whole lot of people. A number like that can be used, because it’s going to be true. I’m sure if you polled everyone who ever played it a reasonable percentage of people wouldn’t have liked it, including the people who left it because you ran out of quests and had to grind when it first game out. There was a mass exodus from the game at around that time, presumably because people didn’t like it.

A whole lot of people don’t like ANY game. So you can say it. It’s really that simple.

But it’s still subjective.

Whether people like or don’t like a game is subjective. But I believe it’s a fact that a whole lot of people didn’t like Aion. A whole lot of people also don’t like WoW or Guild Wars 2.

While someone’s opinion of a game is subjective, the fact that a whole lot of people don’t like any game is probably more factual than opinion.

And if you look at the original post I was replying to, which was completely subjective, I don’t really see your objection here.

I have a lot of characters. I was going to list them all here, but I’m too lazy to write them all down. My mains are:

Sylvari Mesmer for dungeons
Sylvari Ranger for open world
Human Necro for farming and open world
Human Engineer for PvP/WvW
Norn Guardian, another dungeon main

The only characters I’ve yet to get to max level are thieves and eles (and I’m working on at least one of each).

I agree with the OP to a point. I do think Guild Wars 2 discourages experimentation. You have to go to some NPC, reset your traits, and even change your armor and jewelry at times.

The only thing I disagree with here is that the OP says you need full sets of armor to try stuff out. This I disagree with.

I generally look at the totals of my stats and I generally weight them. On some of my characters I’ll weight to power, precision and crit damage, on other characters, power, toughness vitality, depending on their ability to survive. When I want to change stuff, I don’t worry about exactly numbers, I slowly change one piece at a time, raising on stat at time.

Because the truth is, you’re never going to KNOW that this is absolutely the best thing it can be. This isn’t a game of exacts. It’s a game of approximates. As long as I lean toward what I’m trying to do, my builds work fine, without specifically have X or Y.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Galtrix.7369:

Mujen.5287:

GW2 is a grind? I played Aion for almost 3 years, I will show you grind.

And yet Aion is still more fun than this.

Subjective. Aion sucked for a whole lot of people. If Aion was more fun than this, more people would currently be playing Aion than this…and that’s not the case as far as I can tell.

Your comment is also subjective. What is a whole lot of people? Do you have numbers to quantify this?
What numbers do you have to support the player numbers of each game as it is?

That’s right. You don’t have numbers.

I can tell you that in the financial reports, Aion is not far behind in sales compared to GW2 this year, but even that doesn’t tell you anything about the number of players.

But Aion is still getting big content updates… 4.0 being around the corner for example. Again no evidence of player numbers but one could argue easily that Aion is still alive and well and not doing as poorly as you seem to suggest.

Certainly you must admit your comments here are also very subjective.

Is it not much fairer to say that just like beauty, fun is in the eye of the beholder? Fun is not a static concept that is the same for everyone.

So if one person thinks Aion is more fun, they are right. If another thinks GW2 is more fun, they are also right…because opinions are always subjective.

I don’t need numbers to say a whole lot of people. If 1000 people hated it, it’s a whole lot of people. A number like that can be used, because it’s going to be true. I’m sure if you polled everyone who ever played it a reasonable percentage of people wouldn’t have liked it, including the people who left it because you ran out of quests and had to grind when it first game out. There was a mass exodus from the game at around that time, presumably because people didn’t like it.

A whole lot of people don’t like ANY game. So you can say it. It’s really that simple.

I use mine to get exotic armor for new alts from the WvW vendor, using the badges of honor I have that are stacking up to suplement the laurels. BTW, ascended amulets can’t be gotten from guild missions…only from laurel vendors.

Klawlyt.6507:

Astralporing.1957:

Everything you have stated there is just your belief – even the “logic would dictate” part. It’s exactly as (un)supported as every other claim you attack on basis of no evidence. Please, use the same measure for your own posts as you use for the posts of other people.

It’s well documented that in business, when a customer receives, in their opinion, bad service, they will tell an average of 8-10 people. When a customer receives, in their opinion, great service, they tell an average of 2-3 people. Extrapolate that out, how you want, but the way I read it is people just expect “good service” and go out of their way to make sure everyone knows they received “bad service”.

How does this apply? Well, it’s not much of a leap to assume that the game’s own forum makes an excellent place to vent people’s perceived bad service, and thus the forums would skew toward the negative. Read any restaurant or hotel’s comment box, or online profile. The ratio of bad comments to good comments nearly always average out to 3 to 1, given a large enough sample size. It’s just life. Most folks don’t give much positive feedback beyond continuing to use the service.

And before you ask, I have a degree in business management. I’m not just making this kitten up.

I managed a computer store, we had feedback cards. Most of our customers were satisifed…probably upwards of 80%, but 90% of the people who filled out feedback cards used them to complain.

It was a tiny percentage of our client base, though.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

It is 100% my belief that I’ve read psychological studies at some point during my research that said straight out that given a choice, more humans by percentage will complain about something than compliment it. That much I remember. Finding those studies now, at this point in time, that’s another matter.

Nothing to do with what you were claiming.

Vayne.8563:

It’s also not my belief that many many people left that other forum I moderated because of the amount of negativity they had to deal with.

Anectotal evidence. I have a lot of anecdotal evindences to the contrary. I’m not going to use those, because they are worth about as much as yours (meaning – not much)

The people who don’t want to play, those not enjoying the game, have a place to vent here.

Those people mostly don’t vent here, for the simple reason that they have left this game long ago.

Those enjoying the game have less reason to stay here and argue.

This, the core of your argument, is the unsupported belief i was talking about earlier.

Vayne.8563:

And even here, people have contacted me to tell me they’re not going to post as much because they’d rather be playing and enjoying the game.

Again, anecdotal evidence that doesn’t actually prove anything. As you are very fast to point out anytime someone mentions their guild friends that are unhappy with the state of the game yet do not post here.

Vayne.8563:

Definite proof? Surely not. A decent reason for an educated guess. I think so.

Yes. You think. Belief again.

Basically, if you are going to shoot down everyone that bases their assumptions on their feelings and what they seem is an educated guess, then you should not base your arguments on equally unsubstantiated claims.

If you can find 2 active MMO forums for any MMO that aren’t mostly negative, more power to you. Any active MMO forum tends toward negativity. The ones that tend NOT to negativity are the games no one plays anymore, because everyone who still plays is a fan of that game. The games that are popular, tend to have negative forums. If you don’t believe me, go and look. I’ve yet to see one forum for a popular MMO that wasn’t negative. And since those MMOs are popular, it stands to reason someone likes them.

Sure it’s annecdotal evidence, but I’m pretty sure most people who have spent a lot of time on MMO forums would agree most of them are cesspools. Does that mean most people don’t like most MMOs? Maybe.

But you can believe what you want.

jwaz.1908:

Vayne.8563:

kokiman.2364:

Dedicated Players want better gear —> dedicated players play the game frequently --> some “content” is timegated

I really don’t see the problem.

I’m a dedicated player and I have no problem with time gating. It gives those who can’t devote their lives to the game a chance to stay current.

Giving more casual players a chance to catch up is perfectly fine, but having such a copious amounts of daily/time-gated content is very unhealthy for the longevity of GW2 on the whole. There’s also the problem that all the new content is very trivial and unrepeatable.

I don’t think there’s that much evidence that time gated stuff is unhealthy for the longevity of a game. If anything, I think the opposite.

kokiman.2364:

Dedicated Players want better gear —> dedicated players play the game frequently --> some “content” is timegated

I really don’t see the problem.

I’m a dedicated player and I have no problem with time gating. It gives those who can’t devote their lives to the game a chance to stay current.

Astralporing.1957:

Everything you have stated there is just your belief – even the “logic would dictate” part. It’s exactly as (un)supported as every other claim you attack on basis of no evidence. Please, use the same measure for your own posts as you use for the posts of other people.

It is 100% my belief that I’ve read psychological studies at some point during my research that said straight out that given a choice, more humans by percentage will complain about something than compliment it. That much I remember. Finding those studies now, at this point in time, that’s another matter.

It’s also not my belief that many many people left that other forum I moderated because of the amount of negativity they had to deal with. The people who don’t want to play, those not enjoying the game, have a place to vent here. Those enjoying the game have less reason to stay here and argue. Even I’m tired of it.

And even here, people have contacted me to tell me they’re not going to post as much because they’d rather be playing and enjoying the game.

Definite proof? Surely not. A decent reason for an educated guess. I think so.

Astral Projections.7320:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Yes, people assume grind means gear grind, but to older MMOers, that’s not the original definition

Which older MMOers ? You seem to be claiming to speak for a lot of people here. I am an older MMOer and yet what you say is off target for me.

Vayne.8563:

And there was vertical progression in this game from day one (and Anet has said that ascended gear was always supposed to be in the game).

When someone opts to say something like that after the fact rather than before, when they supposedly had it as their intention all along, it makes the statement seem suspect. This is particularly the case when those making the statement have made other statements that have since been shown to be untrue.

Vayne.8563:

I know there are a lot of people who want no vertical progression and expected that to be in the game. But that still has nothing to do with the manifesto.

Except that the manifesto told us that there would not be gear progression in GW2.

Vayne.8563:

If the poster said that I didn’t expect vertical progression, but that’s what I got…I’d have a lot less problem with that. My problem is people blaming that belief on the manifesto.

Except that the manifesto told us that there would not be gear progression in GW2.

Grind meant to kill things to level. That’s what it traditionally meant. Gear grind came much later. Most of the early MMOs were grind fests, not talking about gear but talking about leveling.

As I’ve pointed out, even if you look up grind in Wikipedia, it gives that definition first. Sure grind has come to mean a whole lot of other things but NONE of that is mentioned or referred to in the manifesto. There’s a whole thread about it, several in fact.

People can only repeat over and over again that there’s a line that says “We dont’ want people to grind in Guild Wars 2.” And all those people ignore two lines before that when Colin says precisely what grind he’s referring to. In most games there’s this “annoying grind” that you have to get through to get to the fun stuff.

How anyone can say that talks about vertical progression is beyond me.

And here’s the whole quote again.

The “no grind” comment refers to combat only. People take the no grind to refer to the game as a whole. But if you read his statement, that’s not what he said.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ArenaNet's_MMO_Manifesto_trailer

Colin Johanson: “When you look at the art in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s visually stunning. I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ and then when you play the combat in our game, you say ‘Wow, that’s incredible. I’ve never seen anything like that.’ In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. We just don’t want players to grind in Guild Wars 2. No one enjoys that. No one finds it fun. We want to change the way that people view combat.”

The key phrase here, right after saying that they don’t want people to grind is “We want to change the way that people view combat”.

He is not talking about grind in any other part of the game. He did not say the game would not have grind, only that you wouldn’t have to grind mobs to level.

Let’s say it’s a given there’s more than one definition of grind. I’ll go say grinding mobs to level and gear grind are the two most common definitions.

What in the paragraph posted above led anyone to believe Colin meant gear grind? I just don’t get it.