Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Most who come to forums, come to complain.

Not to be nitpicking, but that is also an unsupported assumption. You don’t have any data about the reasons why people come to those forums.

Is it an unsupported assumption? I suggest we both do some research on human nature. When you put out cards that allow people to complain or compliment, those that complain are always in the majority. You can research that if you like.

On a more annecdotal note, I ran guildwarsforum.com when it was still around. And it died because negative posters, and there were only a few of them, drove positive posters off. People who enjoyed the game continued to enjoy the game. How do I know? Because many of them ended up in my guild.

But they didn’t post anymore? Why? Because it started to affect their enjoyment of the game.

Unsupported or not, I’ll let each person decide for themselves whether it’s true that most people who come to the forums come to complain.

But logic would dictate that if you’re enjoying the game, you have less reason to come to the forums.

This place pretty negative for people who are having a good time. I think anyone could see that.

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.

Gizmo.8623:

Vayne.8563:

It hasn’t evolved in the direction the majority of players like? What majority? Where do you get your information? Have you polled all the players?

Comments like this are much weaker, because you can’t substantiate your point. It’s true you might be right, but you can’t know, and saying you do brings the entire post into question.

Ok – majority of ppl who answered in latest big topics related to the issue

Sure, because the majority of people playing don’t post on the forums. And while that’s not a “fact” the percentage of any population that does post has always been laughably small. Most who come to forums, come to complain.

So how can you count them as a majority?

Shockwave.1230:

Vayne.8563:

aocypher.9172:

GW2 should have stuck with their original manifesto and never introduce ascended gear. Without ascended gear, there would be no need for laurels (in daily). Without laurels, dailys would have been totally optional.

Their original design was good. They’re just dealing with the fallout of their ascended gear hack.

Since the manifesto never mentioned gear grind at all, ascended gear has nothing to do with them sticking to it. People can say what they want, but if you don’t take a single sentence out of context, and ignore pretty much everything else, you can’t say that Anet was talking about gear grind at all in the manifesto.

The number of times you’ve gone to this argument and the numerous amount of people you bring it up to will at some point hopefully help you see that ANet’s overall message and impression they left on people was that gear grind wouldn’t be a factor. Yet it is, and everyone knows gear grind is grind and saying they didn’t want people to grind in the manifesto, even with the context that goes with it is still saying you don’t want people to grind.

Some people view fun content as rewards. Not having to grind to get to the fun content means not having to grind to get rewards to some people. Saying 1 dungeon run will give you a piece of dungeon armor and not giving people an exotic piece of dungeon armor isn’t cool, but it’s what happened. Some people want to do something challenging once and get a reward for it.

Impressions or not, this has nothing to do with what the manifesto is saying. And as long as people keep saying it does, I’ll keep refuting it.

Yes, people assume grind means gear grind, but to older MMOers, that’s not the original definition, nor does that definition fit with the rest of the sentences around it.

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).

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.

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.

Gizmo.8623:

Zayd Akira.1942:

Not trying to be a fanboy or anything. just getting ready for the “the new LS update sucks! GW2 is dead!!” posts surly to come later today, because face it, no matter how awesome the new update is, there will always be whiners.

I don’t even know why I’m answering in another topic – it must be that I really hate the term “whiner”.
Look, I’ve played this game for a year, have 1k hours in it (and it isn’t much). I’ve played and liked every aspect of this game. The main problem is that after this one year, almost kittening 365 days the game haven’t evolved or at least in a direction that would be appreciated by majority of players and this is alarming (are vets from GW1 happy with GW2? – it’s like Diablo 3 again).
If you are ok with reality then cool! I won’t try to convince you.
But for me it’s not cool. Many important aspects, many bugs haven’t been touched and it seems that they won’t be in a long way because we are being fed with LS that brought nothing good to game in general.
I consider this post as objective.

It hasn’t evolved in the direction the majority of players like? What majority? Where do you get your information? Have you polled all the players?

Comments like this are much weaker, because you can’t substantiate your point. It’s true you might be right, but you can’t know, and saying you do brings the entire post into question.

aocypher.9172:

GW2 should have stuck with their original manifesto and never introduce ascended gear. Without ascended gear, there would be no need for laurels (in daily). Without laurels, dailys would have been totally optional.

Their original design was good. They’re just dealing with the fallout of their ascended gear hack.

Since the manifesto never mentioned gear grind at all, ascended gear has nothing to do with them sticking to it. People can say what they want, but if you don’t take a single sentence out of context, and ignore pretty much everything else, you can’t say that Anet was talking about gear grind at all in the manifesto.

gurugeorge.9857:

Vayne.8563:

Some people play for rewards and some people play to have fun.

While I agree with your position on these boards on the whole, just a small correction – for many people who play for rewards in games, playing for rewards is their fun.

/rumination on

Generally, I think fun in videogames can be divided into two broad aspects. Obviously a person can do both, but usually people have a preference for one or the other, spend more time on one or the other:-

1) on the one hand, many people find challenge, and the beating of challenge, to be fun (self-challenge, challenge from other players in PvP, or challenge from the Environment in PvE).

2) on the other hand, probably just as many people, if not more, don’t want to be challenged but want to relax, kick back, get into a trance state.

For those who love 1), the prospect of doing 2) for longer than 10 minutes seems insanely boring, for those who love 2) the prospect of doing 1) is usually more trouble than it’s worth.

The question of reward intersects with these two in interesting ways. For example, “risk/reward” is a rubric often used in design. But 2)-lovers aren’t so interested in risk, but still want reward, at least for time put in if nothing else. On the other hand, people who are into 1) sometimes want to be rewarded, but not all the time, often the thrill of beating something is rewarding enough.

It must be one of the biggest challenges in MMO design to find ways of attracting both kinds of players (generally, MMO designers want to attract as many different types of players as possible, by default).

/rumination off

Sorry to disagree. Fun is fun. Rewards are rewards. One is a goal, one is an activity. While you’re doing something, it’s either fun or it’s not fun. If you’re doing something not fun to get a reward, while the reward itself you might enjoy you don’t have fun getting it. You can’t not have fun to have fun…that doesn’t work. And that’s the problem.

If the stuff you’re doing is fun to you, the reward will matter less. Even reward centric people probably enjoy sex. They’ve having sex because sex is fun. You can play games for reward, or you can play for fun, but if you’re rewards are your fun, you’re not playing for fun…you’re playing for rewards.

@OP

Certainly I can see why you have your opinion… but I disagree with your conclusion. If the game is made for people who feel they must grind, then those people will grind. I don’t feel I have to grind so I don’t grind. I just do what I find is fun.

Mostly the same people over and over again will complain about how unrewarding the game is, or how you have to grind. By the same token, the same people on the forums will say I don’t feel this game is a grind or I don’t feel like I have to grind.

Some people play for rewards and some people play to have fun. Those that find the game fun, people like me, aren’t playing strictly for rewards. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy getting the occasional cool drop…it’s just not that important to me.

So you then have to ask the question how many people are like me and how many people are like you, OP. And no one can answer that question.

But I can say that the number of overflows I have been on every single time there’s a new patch, increases. I find it harder and harder when doing living story content to get to my server.

The first week after a patch, I’m not on my server at all these days, I’m always stuck in overflow. Someone must be enjoying the game.

Toward the end of the second week after a patch, eventually, I’ll have the option to get to my home server. That says something to me.

I agree this game isn’t for everyone. But that doesn’t make it a bad game…it makes it a game that’s not for you. I think it’s quite good as it is…and it keeps getting better.

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.

Zindrix.1750:

Mungtra.6728:

Vials of Powerful Blood could be obtain by opening bag or looting from monster.

I’ve been playing since November and I’ve farmed quite a bit. Still don’t have 250 Vials of Powerful Blood. Even did the skelk farming during the SS event and I haven’t sold any.

Right, and I have a legendary which requires 250 vials of powerful blood. I farmed some and bought the rest from the market with money I made doing everything else in the game. It’s not required to farm every single item you need. Sort of why the market place is there.

If people insist on farming everything, then they’re going to spend a much longer time than they have to getting what they need.

AntiGw.9367:

Vayne.8563:

The reason I’m not suspicious of this, is because I’ve offered nothing (nor is anything asked) that can be used against me.

One thing I’ve learned on the internet is that everything can be used against you in one way or another.

Sorta like being married. lol

Love the graphic. Good job to both of you.

The reason I’m not suspicious of this, is because I’ve offered nothing (nor is anything asked) that can be used against me. My name is already shown all over the forums. The answers don’t ask anything that anyone could use to hack an account or scam me. Not even so much as an email addy.

I don’t think it’s a problem.

Dante.1508:

I know this is in the Tin foil hat area but could those bots be run by the company that made the game designed to up the economy?

Either way it shows how broken the Trading post is.

Sure, the bots could be run by the company.

I could sprout wings and fly too.

I know you don’t like the game (as anyone can see from your post history) but it is really necessary to personally try to implicate Anet in some sort of activity for which you have less than no evidence?

Like all MMOs, this game offers different kinds of experience for different kinds of players. Like all MMOs, the casual players get mad if something is too hard for them. There is no such thing, nor should there be, of uniform difficulty in an MMO.

That said, the difficultly level can be uneven at times.

But as a general rule the dungeons are relatively hard and the open world is relatively easy.

From most casual point of view, dungeons are hard because you have to know what you’re doing and to some degree coordinate. Sometimes you die. Some of the group events are hard as well, which is why they’re called group events.

The personal story should always be soloable, at least until Arah and that’s a design decision I still disagree with.

I’m no uber pro player, but I can play comfortably in most areas of the game. Most of the game is super casual.

What I see here is someone complaining about the areas of the game meant not to be. Orr was meant to be end game content…it was never meant to be easy. Same with explorable mode dungeons. Same with fractals.

They represent a very small percentage of everything there is to do.

I’m not particularly upset that they’re adding harder stuff in the game for people to do that want challenge…even if it means some of it will end up too hard for me to do.

I had one of my guildies who was on another server transfer to TC tonight…he was so happy…I don’t know why.

It’s not like we WvW that much in the first place.

I don’t think it will remove your achievements, but it will let you choose a new home server. I don’t know of any way to reset your achievements. You’ll keep your gold and karma too as far as I know.

I’m not sure you understand the concept of overflow. Overflow servers don’t exist until they’re needed. You can’t move an account to overflow, because there is no overflow, or at least, overflows disappear at times.

Also overflows are comprised of multiple servers. There’s not overflow per server. Therefore it would be impossible to take inactive accounts out of the main server and put it in overflow.

However, I’m not so sure those accounts count to overflow. I think it works generally on concurrency rates rather than number of people passively on an account.

The threshold is a percentage of damage. What it’s there to do is this. If you’re fighting a champion and some guy comes along and takes a couple of shots at it and then leaves, hoping to get a reward….letting you do all the work…well that protects you. Otherwise, people would do the least amount they could for the reward. It sucks that we need stuff like this, but we do.

There are still people that will run tag stuff in a bunch of events, but finish none of them, thus getting credit for everything while doing minimal work. They make loot faster than I do. I just don’t care. I’m not going to scale up an event other people are doing for my own profit and then leave them to handle the problem. I don’t think that’s fair.

I tend to do those types of farms with my guild, so we’re all doing what we do, forming our own zerg so to speak, in parties, where we dont’ have to worry so much about thresholds.

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.

Konrad Curze.5130:

Vayne.8563:

Konrad Curze.5130:

OP got it backwards

the reason why most people doesnt even bother with the combat that ANet designed, and instead all use glass cannon builds is to AVOID teamplay and coordination

ANet might aswell admit they dropped the ball here with so much innovation and give us the trinity back. its obvious their combat design failed to catch up.

They put the trinity back in this game, I’d be done with it. I’ll never play a trinity game again. The trinity doesn’t foster team work. It fosters each person doing their own thing….playing roles separately. DPS guys in a trinity all try to top each other. Healer watches green bars. The tank can have a sandwhich in most games while tanking. The trinity doesn’t promote good game play.

The trinity also doesn’t promote creativity. The no trinity thing, as it stands in Guild Wars is far from perfect, but it’s still a whole lot better than the trinity.

basically what you have here is Unity
all DPS, racing to burn down the mob before it kills them

I’ll take the trinity instead of that, tyvm.

GW2 combat and group dynamics are AWESOME. but 99,999999% dont even bother with it

Sorry this is what you have here, not what I have here. Why? Because my guild is a casual guild and people play what they want. We barely ever have a warrior in our group. Today was the first time in ages. We have pretty much every other profession in profusion. Lots of necros and rangers. Some engies.

So we’re not going into a dungeon trying to figure out the fastest or most efficent way to beat it. We’re taking our characters, who we enjoy playing, into a dungeon to beat the dungeon. It makes dungeons somewhat more challenging, but I promise you, we’re not just beating down bosses as fast as we can.

I do agree many people are. Those are the people who want the trinity back. They can have it.

Konrad Curze.5130:

OP got it backwards

the reason why most people doesnt even bother with the combat that ANet designed, and instead all use glass cannon builds is to AVOID teamplay and coordination

ANet might aswell admit they dropped the ball here with so much innovation and give us the trinity back. its obvious their combat design failed to catch up.

They put the trinity back in this game, I’d be done with it. I’ll never play a trinity game again. The trinity doesn’t foster team work. It fosters each person doing their own thing….playing roles separately. DPS guys in a trinity all try to top each other. Healer watches green bars. The tank can have a sandwhich in most games while tanking. The trinity doesn’t promote good game play.

The trinity also doesn’t promote creativity. The no trinity thing, as it stands in Guild Wars is far from perfect, but it’s still a whole lot better than the trinity.

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.

I’m not sure I agree, OP. I think Guild Wars 2 succeeds at getting the community to play together…but I don’t think that’s the same thing as playing as a team.

Sure individuals can rez each other or even buff and heal each other, but team work usually required some kind of coordination and that’s lacking from the open world part of this game.

I do agree when me and my guild go into an instance, that there’s definitely teamwork going on…but in the open world, with strangers, not so much.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Nothing much because in 1 year we still have nothing challenging all the ‘hardcore’ crowd been asking since first month of game’s release.

So they didn’t take YOUR suggestions. It could be because you suggest things so negatively.

TwoBit.5903:

So as long as one popular criteria isn’t met, then D3 can’t be an MMORPG? I see! Well then, I posit that GW2 can’t be an MMORPG because it lacks the trinity. Every since EQ1 and WoW the trinity has been a def feature of MMORPGS. The design of MMORPGs simply leads to the trinity. It is a highly specialized type of play to supplement gameplay in the open world. GW2 also lacks raids. Raids are why only a small part of the overall gamer population play MMOs, because Akittengg around people while using one or two abilities is highly specific type of play.

Actually it’s not “a popular” criteria, it’s been the criteria all along. Lobby games aren’t MMOs because you’re not actually PLAYING with the masses. Trading with the masses is something else entirely.

The point of a persistent world is that hundreds or thousands of people are all playing at the same time. Even Anet has said Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO, in spite of the fact that you could have 100 people standing around in a city…but they couldn’t PLAY together. They couldn’t use skills, quest, or do anything other than chat or trade. Sell some stuff.

Anet’s devs said Guild Wars 1 was a CoRPG (a cooperative RPG). They said Guild Wars 2 would be a true MMO.

The industry standard wasn’t designed by people on this forum. It was designed by people who make the games in the first place. If you spend any amount of time researching this, you’ll find that coop games aren’t generally considered MMOs, because you can’t PLAY WITH the masses as the same time…even if you can trade with them. And even that’s not true.

You can only trade with one person at a time.

I have a legendary (and my precusor was from a drop) and I still don’t like the way legendaries were implemented. I know why it was done. It was done to slow everyone down…because people were burning through content too fast. As the content increases, the need to slow people down will be less and less. Then Anet will change it.

I’ve been playing with the mystic forge trying for a precusor with rare weapons that I get. Three rare weapons and a mystic forge stone. And while I haven’t gotten any precusors doing it, I get reasonably interesting exotics often enough to make it worth it anyway.

To be sure, I’m not probably making much more profit than if I sold them…but it’s not really costing me a ton of money either.

In any event, I’ve gotten some great skins out of it, so I’m relatively happy.

Thanks Gaile, customer service refunded my gems after all, so it’s all good. I knew it was just a misunderstanding.

I’m quite happy to keep buying gems to support the game, as I have from day one.

Thanks for that. I didn’t expect an answer till then anyway…I just felt compelled to post because I couldn’t accept what was being said to me by CS. I just don’t see the reason for the decision.

I had, at one point, accidentally linked the wrong account to a Guild Wars 2 account, and customer service was able to help me (allowing me to switch the account linked to my Guild Wars 2 account), so it’s possible customer service can help you.

I just had an interesting incident with customer service, and I’m not quite sure what can/should be done about it.

I accidentally transferred to another server, instead of guesting. I readily admit this was my fault. I got distracted by something in real life while I was guesting, and ended up transferring. I realized what I did immediately and sent in a service ticket immediately.

The customer service rep saw fit to place me back on my server, but it was apparently not possible to refund the gems I spent. $25 is a pretty big mistake to ask a customer to eat….particularly one that spends quite a bit of money on gems…specifically to support the company.

The thing is, this happened to someone else in my guild about a month ago, and they were refunded their gems, so I wonder why this can be done for them and can’t be done for me.

I’ve already decided not to buy gems until I’ve paid myself back four times over, but that’s not really the solution I’d prefer. I don’t want to punish Anet for one customer service decision. By the same token, I know of no business on earth with someone buys a product accidentally and can’t get a refund for it a minute later. More to the point, they’re not even giving me back cash…they’re refunding gems that I’d just spend anyway.

Frankly, I’m not sure what the policy on this is, but I’m very dissatisfied with the way customer service has handled this complaint.

Edit: [Incident: 130815-000460]

Nuka Cola.8520:

Chore is too good for how boring gw2 exploration is. In gw1 it was much harder to get the 100% and when you did it felt like an achievement, here its not only boring but way too simple and easy

Mhmm. It was a great achievement scraping the corner of every single area of every single map. It was also stupid. The stupidest most annoying title I can even image.

That’s not exploring. That’s insanity.

Worst title ever (even though I know some people liked it). I’m pretty sure more people hated it.

1. What is your age and gender?

51, male

2. For how long have you been playing Guild Wars 2 and other MMORPGs?

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 since the first beta, official since August 25, 2012. I’ve been playing MMOs for about six years.

The Following questions will focus on your main male character:
3. What are your character’s race, profession and personal story and what are your reasons for choosing them?

I choose race/profession even gender based on my interested in that race’s lore. I do tend to play characters that I find interesting from a story point of view. I chose Sylvari as my main race, because I loved the lore surround them. I chose a male character for one of my mains, but I don’t see him as particularly masculine. Of course, he’s a plant anyway. lol

4. What are the things you enjoy doing the most with your character?

I tend to prefer open world content and minigames over things like dungeons and PvP. Mind you, I do pretty much everything in the game. I actually spend more time running dungeons than hanging around in the open world because someone always asks me to help out, so I do.

5. What aspects of your character would you consider masculine, if any?

I don’t really think in terms of masculine and feminine. I mean, what’s masculine? Big, strong, muscle-bound? My character is slender, agile and strategic. He’s not particularly aggressive. He’s not “macho”. Though he’s direct in action, he still thinks things through before doing stuff.

6. Are there things in the game you would like to do with your character but are unable to? Can you give some examples?

I can’t really think of anything I’d like my character to do that he can’t.

It’s a cultural thing as well as anything else. People don’t see the people they’re affecting. It’s not just anonymity, it’s the inability to empathize.

It’s easy to press a button knowing someone will be hurt when you press it. It’s much harder to press a button and watch someone being hurt. Most people won’t think if they don’t see the reaction, but if you show them the hurt, they wouldn’t do it.

This is something you don’t see online. If someone gets hurt by what you do, you can’t see their pain. It’s not just that you’re anonymous, it’s that the other person doesn’t exist in a practical way.

Of course, everyone on the other end of the computer is a person and has feelings. Consideration would be easier of people simply remembered this.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Nuka Cola.8520:

All this money made and we got nothing in return but more gem store items, awesome.

Yeah.

Except for all the content they’ve released since launch. But wait, you didn’t personally like any of that content so it doesn’t count as content, right?

What content? Where are they at? Oh wait, i know, deleted because they were temporary.

I saw the play Phantom of the Opera. It’s not there anymore. I can’t see it again. Does that mean I didn’t see a play?

Temporary content IS content.

Unleashed.6195:

A concept artist is often given a spec to follow as well. They do not then get to toss a few random pencil scratches across the paper and call it a day.

I saw your post. You could rewrite the entire script of the game without impacting setting, gameplay, outcomes and make dramatic improvements to it in the process. Even silly things such as self sacrifice at Claw Island become rewritten as unintentional death where some craven guard closes the gate before allowing everyone to get through.

I would feel infinitely more sympathy for the companions they gave me if I thought some terrified guard doomed them to die so he could close the gate but somehow I made it through ok.

If someone sees those tweaks and says, “No, I want it done the terrible way.”, then the blame shifts but the blame remains. I won’t say I’d ever expect a writer to give up a paying gig, that’s as tough a business as there is, but now the blame is on the person demanding it be done terribly rather than well.

I find that to be terribly unlikely, but also irrelevant. There is no excuse. Tens of millions of dollars spent on development… the story deserved more attention and love.

It is perfectly acceptable to both respect and admire a company and enjoy the game while at the same time leveling fair criticism to the components that are not up to the same quality as the rest. There is no special honor in seeking out every excuse for why the things that are below par can remain that way.

I’m just saying that blame should be put where the blame is. I doubt very much writers say down and wrote this stuff without being told pretty much exactly what someone else wanted to say. It just doesn’t seem very likely.

My issue is it’s easy to blame the writers…but the writers aren’t necessarily at fault.

I allow anyone in my guild to represent anyone they want…because this is a game…not a job. People play games to have fun.

I try to make the guild a fun place to be, and those who like what we do usually do represent. Some people have very good reason for representing other guilds at different times. For example, we don’t do much WvW, but some people like it. So they have a WvW guild. Why should I care? Why should their WvW play give me influence?

I’d say 90 plus percent of my guild represents 90% of the time….but even in the past when that wasn’t happening, it was fine. We still got enough influence to do what we needed with those who did represent.

Edit: Maybe it’s because I see the guild is serving the members, I don’t see the members as serving the guild.

I just wrote an entire post about why the line “there is no excuse for bad writing” is totally incorrect. There would be no excuse for bad writing if writers were in control of the creative process…which is very seldom the case.

When you write on spec, you’re given something to write, and you can write it to the best of your ability. But when that writing is time sensitive, and under control of another department….a department that specifies what you have to write, how long it has to be, and has the final veto on it…writers simply have to stay within their brief.

So if someone came to me and said, I need 10,000 words of dialogue by tomorrow that say this, and I approached them with some ideas and they said, no, stay on the brief….well…the fault then lies with the direction not the writing.

And since this very sort of thing has happened to me (not exactly that but close enough), you can blame the writing all you want, but I suspect project management has a lot to do with it.

Writers when part of a team are seldom in charge of projects.

Astralporing.1957:

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

knives.6345:

---

Quote is somewhat broke, so here’s my response.
You can’t please everyone. So, they’ll please the majority instead.

Then why they are aiming and tuning all their content thinking about the hardcore crowd that “can chew through all the content faster than anet can make it”? Everythink they do to slow down that group (which is a tiny, tiny minority) affect casuals (your majority) many times stronger.
They don’t please majority. They ignore that group completely. All they think about are Vayne’s – people with over 10k achievement points and 3k hours of logged time. The top 1%.

I don’t know about this. I have a casual guild with tons of people who can’t log in hardly ever. It doesn’t matter to them that there’s new content every 2 weeks…they haven’t finished the old content.

It’s like going on a walk in the woods. For them, there’s always something new and different to do…some of it fun for them, some not. But they’re never going to compete with achievement points, so they just play for fun.

So? Anything that comes their way is pretty much accidental. At the same time, the game is being designed more and more according to what the top percent can and wants to do. The gap between that top percent and the group you described (which likely is this game’s average) is getting bigger and bigger (and any timegating intended to slow that process down actually aggravates the problem even more). Sooner or later the gap will become so big that even those not paying attention will be forced to notice. And by that time bridging that distance will become impossible.

I guess we’ll see. I don’t suspect that will be the case. Or rather, it’s not that those people won’t notice the gap, it’s that they won’t care about the gap. Because they’re not as goal oriented…they’re just walking in the woods.

This game is designed, quite intentionally in my opinion, to appeal to that kind of player. You’ll never get every achievement.

For example, if you look at historical achievements, the only ones that show up there are ones you got points in. If you never logged in during the Dragon Bash festival, those achievements don’t even show in your window.

People do what they can. If you have a life, if you work a lot, you can’t worry that you can’t keep up with people who can play 24/7. But in other MMOs, you also lose touch with the guild. I have people that haven’t played for 3 months, log in and they can start running dungeons again immediately. Out of the entire game, only higher level fractals are a barrier, and that was intentional. For the rest of it…this game was made for people to come and go to.

And now Anet is trying to give those who play all the time (ie me) something to do as well.

Yep, I remember Althea’s Ashes with great fondness…and what was that note that you needed from the pirates in Hiju Lagoon in Factions…from the kid you were sent to find? That’s another one of those.

Okay…the big thing missing in my opinion, is flow. In other words, the story is chopped up so you cant’ really do it all at once and when you do do it, it’s broken into 10 level sections where one section has little to do with the one before it. Furthermore, most of the characters from the early story vanish and move on, without figuring into the later story..and the one character that does move with you, most people don’t like.

In Guild Wars 1, we had heroes and henchmen who were there…throughout the entire game. They started with us, they stayed with us, they grew with us. But there really is nothing like that in Guild Wars 2.

In order for a story to be successful it needs characters. If you’re a human and you save your sister, where is she?

The Charr story does have characters that stay with you, but only in the personal story…they’re never with in the world. This makes it very hard to tell a story. And this design decision means it’s unlikely we’ll ever really get attached to the NPCs on the story. After all, we never see them anywhere except for the story.

I don’t have a solution for this, because clearly they can’t stay with you in the open world. This is one reason instancing is so much better to tell a story.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve had more people returning to my guild than were leaving it.

This is physically impossible.

Okay let me rephrase it so you actually understand. Some people left the guild. Some people came back and others joined. The guild is now 25% bigger than it’s ever been.

What I was trying to say before is that though a lot of people did leave, many are back playing.

The bottom line is that someone is saying people are leaving the game in droves…but a lot of those people are coming back. Some because they want to give the game another chance, some because they found the grass wasn’t greener after all, some because they actually like having new content every two weeks, some because their real life gives them more time to play…but they’ve come back.

So when I used to post and talk about the 90 some odd people in my Guild and I know have 117 people, they have to have come from somewhere.

Its not a matter of rephrasing it so that I understand. The statement was inaccurate.

I am glad, however, that your guild is growing.

The statement was said as humor. It wasn’t supposed to be technically accurate. One of the things I often say is that at my age, I’ve forgotten more than I’ve ever known. It’s just the kind of thing I say.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

I’ve had more people returning to my guild than were leaving it.

This is physically impossible.

Okay let me rephrase it so you actually understand. Some people left the guild. Some people came back and others joined. The guild is now 25% bigger than it’s ever been.

What I was trying to say before is that though a lot of people did leave, many are back playing.

The bottom line is that someone is saying people are leaving the game in droves…but a lot of those people are coming back. Some because they want to give the game another chance, some because they found the grass wasn’t greener after all, some because they actually like having new content every two weeks, some because their real life gives them more time to play…but they’ve come back.

So when I used to post and talk about the 90 some odd people in my Guild and I know have 117 people, they have to have come from somewhere.

DigitalKirin.9714:

Vayne.8563:

Basically, if you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewerage, you still have sewerage. If you add a teaspoon of sewerage to a barrel of wine…you get sewerage.

Mind. Blown.

I’m going to use this some day.

I wish I could take credit for this, but it’s from a list of interdisciplinary laws (like Murphy’s Law) that I read many many years ago. Some things just stay with you. This made a ton of sense to me.

It’s just easy to break something down than to build it in the first place.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Mirta.5029:

Nuka Cola.8520:

But people been suggesting lots of things to anet, end game is out of them. What did they do? Add more Living Story cutsceens and gem store items. Its not important what i or some1 else suggests, its all about money, and if their musical gem store instruments is making them money, this is what they’ll be creating instead of a new dungeon for the ‘hardcore’ crowd. This is their main problem, they chase money without giving anything to those who want to do something called ‘play the game’.

really? So we should completely disregard them saying that in 2014 they’ll be adding more permanent content, because the rotation of temporary celebrations has already been established? And we should completely forget that they’re working on GW2s version of raids?
I would want more things now myself, there are a lot of quality of life updates that are needed, not to mention all of the content ones that have been asked for, but give them time.

Game came out in 2012, we should wait 2014 for something to play? Doesn’t this sound ridiculous to you? Sure this is an mmo and its more of a marathon than anything else but they had one year, nothing been done. To me this is really bad because even gw1 received TONES of awesome things in that same year.

I guess all the people playing around me are just my imagination. YOU don’t have something to play…some of us feel we have too much to do. I’ve read some threads about that. Maybe you have too.

What sounds ridiculous to me is a guy who says things that are patently one sided without any acknowledgment that there are others who feel differently.

I know there are people who don’t care for this game and I acknowledge that. I’m fair-minded enough to understand the game isn’t for everyone. You don’t seem to care that a whole lot of people are logging in and playing this content.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Justdeifyme.9387:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Mirta.5029:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Every day there’s more and more people are disappointed with this game but anet does nothing to change the situation, i mean why would they care about hundreds upon hundreds complaints?

“more and more people” want to prove it?
It’s obvious that there are more people happy with the game then disappointed by it, otherwise the number of people playing wouldn’t grow and we would see server merges.

To the OP – when rerolling take a breather and create your character calmly, there’s no rush. Maybe reroll as a different race, because those have their own starting zones and different personal stories, it might make it kitten ring to you. If you want money and levels just reaching 100% map completion is easier, and your personal story does describe things, you just need to listen

i don’t need to. you visit this forum often enough, i’m sure you noticed.

You can’t judge by the Forum Posts how a game is doing. People only use the forums to complain and criticise, not to compliment and say what went good, because this game does enough good to grow, even though you don’t like to see that.

No, on forum you find people that care the most about your game and when they’re disappointed i let you guess how those who aren’t on the forum feel.

How do you know that on the forum you get people who care most about the game. My son posts on this forum and he doesn’t care about the game at all. Many people post on forums just to troll…do they care about the game too?

I don’t think anyone can say most people who post on forums care about the game. I have many people in my guild who care deeply about the game and don’t post on forums (and in fact avoid the forums altogther, because of all the negativity).

Basically, you don’t know what percentage of people who care about the game most post on the forums.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Mirta.5029:

Nuka Cola.8520:

i don’t need to. you visit this forum often enough, i’m sure you noticed.

In my experience forum population was always a minority and the “I’m quitting posts” have always been in here in about the same amount.

not very true. about ~3 months ago this was a fanboy fest where when you said something negative, you had a mob of fanboys proving you how wrong you’re. Now you mostly see Vayne and couple of others, that’s all.

I agree. Many people who used to post here are so offended by the negativity of the forum that it ruined their fun. I’m in contact with some of those people. They don’t want to spend their day arguing with people who they feel don’t get it. So they stopped posting.

They’re still playing and having a good time.

And the same thing happened on the forum I moderated. It only takes a couple of “bad apples” to ruin an entire forum if they’re diligent enough. Most people aren’t stubborn as me.

Basically, if you add a teaspoon of wine to a barrel of sewerage, you still have sewerage. If you add a teaspoon of sewerage to a barrel of wine…you get sewerage.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Every day there’s more and more people are disappointed with this game but anet does nothing to change the situation, i mean why would they care about hundreds upon hundreds complaints?

Maybe because they have numbers and you don’t. And in your attempt to find people who think like you, you’re exaggerating the number of people who don’t like what’s going on.

Again, to make sure you get this…every day you post negative one liners in multiple threads, saying how the game is bad for various reasons, or acknowledging the people who don’t like what’s going on (while completely ignoring all the people, and there are plenty, who actually do like what’s going on).

But you have zero numbers. None. And I don’t. But Anet does. Obviously, the living story is producing results, if Anet has added teams to it.

I mean why add teams to it, if it’s not producing the desired result?

Gmr Leon.1846:

Vayne.8563:

Gmr Leon.1846:

Snip

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Then provide them? That aside, do you actually expect me to believe the, “I have experience in the field,” line on the Internet? Come now, there’s no need of that here, especially since I’d have to have been born a moment ago to believe it. There’s no denying you can say how a thing’s done, you can talk about it all day long. That won’t make your statements accurate unless they’re of your own work, since they won’t exactly fit others’, and it’s those small differences that can alter the end results.

Also, to my knowledge, there actually was a separation between writing teams on the personal story and the regional/ambient dialogue. Check out this article that I, honestly, only incidentally ran into while checking some other stuff, it’s an interview with Bobby Stein. What’s a bit curious is that it seemingly conflicts a little with an earlier interview where he talks about having worked on the conversational cinematics, but I suspect it means he helped on them, while the majority of the team he heads worked on the ambient dialogue.

That would help readily explain the discrepancies in quality. Bobby’s team stole the decent writers leaving the other writing teams, let’s just say, a bit frayed. =P

Edit: I’d also heavily advise anyone interested in the development of the living story and what’s to come to read that interview. It really helped to revitalize my interests and hopes for where the game may be headed. Mr. Stein does a very good job at acknowledging the existing issues they face with the living story, while pointing out they do have a decent tracking system planned that should help to alleviate some of the problems with it.

First of all, I don’t care whether you believe me or not. It’s not relevant to me. I’m talking from experience and if people don’t believe me that’s cool. They don’t have to.

>_> So…Nothing to say about the meatier parts of my post? Just gonna react defensively out of apathy? Okay then, if that makes sense and is fun for you. I’m not gonna say I understand it, but I am gonna say you have a strange sense of fun.

thisisavtest

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Then again, you might make a good religious figure, they seem all about the truth claims on faith alone kinda deals.

Might be a good hobby for you, if in no other form than roleplaying it out in-game. =P

“I have read thousands of the divine scriptures, thus I know the ways of our gods, and you may believe as you please, but that does not alter the true nature of the divine. Present the scriptures to you? They are too sacred to be seen again, and to commune with the divines to let them speak through me is too taxing.”

Well then...

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…if you respond only to the above part, you might be going out of your way to have fun screwing with people with defensive responses, and you might be a polite below the bridge dweller, I’m afraid. I did, after all, give plenty else to respond to in that other post, you know?

Tai Kratos.3247:

And in reference to the whole Vayne debate over the way in which content is written, I think that how the content is written is irrelevant. I’m not really directing blame on the writers only, because anything they write is due to a trickle down effect of what needs writing. But I’m just pointing out that something has to change in the whole process – no matter where the error lies – to fix this issue.

Pretty much agree here. If the interview I linked is any indication, hopefully we’ll be seeing some changes towards that relatively soon.

I didn’t say anything about the meatier part of your post, because I have no comment on it, as odd as that might sound. You found an interview, you made some comments. I haven’t gone and read the interview, because I’m pressed for time, so I commented on the stuff I did have time for.

Not sure why you feel you have to make something of that.

And redoing characters is easy enough with a cash shop purchase, if you really want to do a makeover instead of starting over.