Guild Wars 2

Kaaboose.3897:

AntiGw.9367:

Kaaboose.3897:

AntiGw.9367:

Kaaboose.3897:

And I while I’m not expert I still am waiting for somone, ANYONE, on this thread to explain to me how a business modle that alienates new and returning players is going to work in the long run.

Such a “modle” is not going to work. Fortunately, GW2 is not based on such a “modle”.

Bad spelling aside, would you care to explain?

GW2 is based on a model where some people will like it, and some won’t. Arena.net knows how to balance it.

As for the bad spelling, you are paying so little attention to making any of your posts readable, that it looks like you are paying as little attention to the content of the post itself. After reading a zillion of them, I can’t find any of value.

We’ll have to agree to disagree there, If there’s one thing Anet has demostrated so far it’s their lack of ability to find a comfortable balance of anything in their game for me.

There’s nothing to disagree with then. He’s saying some people like it and some people won’t. He and I like it….you apparently don’t.

You’ve made his point.

PSX.9250:

Valento.9852:

Eladriel.7295:

Valento.9852:

HiddenNick.7206:

Valento.9852:

philosophy they chose.

What philosophy?

Well, no gear treadmill and no sort of progression, many people like the way it is now (explore and redo stuff), but many others don’t.

<————————-WOW and Rift are back that way. If continuing gear treadmills and constant progression is what you want then go back to wow or play rift cause you are in the wrong game. You people are a fickle lot.. Rift was bashed to no end for being similar to wow and here you all are wanting to turn GW2 into wow… The day they turn this game into wow is the day I quit. Anet were very up front and informative at the beginning and long before launch that gw2 will not have a gear grind, so you people have no excuse to complain. You knew when you pressed that play button that this is a no gear grind game.. What? You thought you would just cry and whine til they give you your gear grind like a bunch of spoiled brats? pfft!!!! Get over it and stop trying to ruin this game. GW1 has the same philosophy.. Once I had avatars in their prestige armor those days of constant searching for new upgrades were over and that is the way I like it. I don’t want to change my armor like you change underwear. I like concentrating on playing the kitten game instead of having to constantly worry about gearing up every freakin frackin level..pffft…

I don’t want GW2 to turn into WoW-clone, I just said I have no solution to create a better endgame given what the game stands for… actually all my suggestions have been posted in Suggestion Forum, while respecting the ideas behind the game, some people just should stop nerd-raging. lol

Ermm.. Sorry to burst your bubble but it already has.

I’m sorry is it a WoW clone because of the new tiers of gear every few months, the static wall of text quests, or the fact that you can use taunt and hold aggro to keep everyone else in your party save, while the healer heals the tank? Or maybe you were talking about flight paths and mounts? Or was it the monthly fee? Or the jumping puzzles?

Maybe you should look up clone in the dictionary. I’m not sure it means what you think it means.

Raine.1394:

Vayne.8563:

Shiren.9532:

Raine.1394:

OP, if I thought all the future held was mini-game platformers I’d pull the plug now. And I think that the AP system introduced was important as an enhancement to perceived reward for play which was lacking in the game. I believe the next frontier for GW2 will be a move to focus on an evolving, permanent living world, which I think is the best thing they can do. It’s the alternative to the expansion, which I really don’t want. I don’t know their plans but Colin’s statements have contained enough to give me hope for the future of GW2. (Colin, correct me if I’m wrong.)

Did you follow any of ArenaNet’s statements before GW2 launched? They’ve backtracked on so many of them, their talk never matches their walk.

Anet made tens of thousands of statements before launch. The percentage they’ve “backtracked on” is neglible.

If that’s all you focus on, that’s fine. But to say that game developers who claim to have an iterative process might change things as they go…oh yeah, that’s right, they wrote whole articles about how they iterate and change things.

I guess that means that you CHOSE to listen to some things that were said while ignoring other things that were said.

Vayne, you didn’t even mention the irony in seeing me being educated on the fact that they’ve backtracked on promises. Just when you think you’ve built a solid reputation on the forums.

Backtracking on promises, overall, is negligible and nothing that should define Anet’s name. VP, in fact, is the only area i feel is worth continued comment. And, my thought there is only to work to eliminate it or minimize it. It would be a better game without it.

Anet didn’t backtrack on PROMISES. Anet said a few things which changed. I don’t understand how you can say a change is a promise. This is what I don’t get.

Every MMO makes changes. The try things, they don’t work, they try different things. They experiment. Something doesn’t work they modifiy it. Before launch they said they had energy and energy potions. They later ditched that.

But most people aren’t calling them on getting rid of energy potions. Why wasn’t that a promise?

Backtracking on a promise is simply hyperbole. Anet designed a game and during the design of that game they made sure everyone knew they were iterative. They said straight out there were times when they tried something and threw the whole thing away. Did you read that article? Did you see just how many articles Anet used the word Iterative and Iteration in? I even named a character Iteration, when the game first lauched, because my wife and I had a personal joke about them overusing the word.

So if I come to you and say I try all sorts of different things and then I change them…when I try different things and change them, I’m proving what I said.

You can use the word promise from today till doomsday but all Anet did was see what they thought worked. See what didn’t worked and make changes.

If you want to feel like a jilted lover over it, be my guest. It doesn’t change the reality of the situation.

Aramean.2354:

Vayne.8563:

People are simply too focused on dungeons. I don’t really think that was ever Anet’s focus, not even in Guild Wars 1. They’re focused more on the world. When they released War in Kryta in Guild Wars 1 it wasn’t a dungeon. Nor was any of the other new content after Eye of the North came out.

So you ignore the meta event and other new events, the new jumping puzzle, the moa racing and the new drinking game all of which are staying. You ignore that Cragstead has indeed changed and so has Southsun (Southsun has actually changed quite a lot).

You even ignore the guild missions that have changed those areas an added content.

And the new PvP map.

You can say the game hasn’t changed, but what you’re really saying is there hasn’t been a permanent DUNGEON.

That’s only one type of change. And I think you’d be very surprised at how few people actually focus on dungeons out of the entire playerbase, just as many who raid on other games doesn’t see how few people by percentage actually like raiding.

A lot of these discussions are just running in circles, but why not continue it

First let me level set….I am in no way saying ArenaNet is wrong. Whether or not they are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ will be proven out by their longevity. I never said that game hasn’t changed. I am only pointing out what type of content I would personally like to see.

I don’t speak for every player. I speak for me. Do I think ArenaNet should change the game to suit what only I want? Of course not. But the whole purpose of these forums is for each player to say what they want individually and hope that the entirety of opinions have a chance to drive future game design.

So yes…I am focused on dungeons. And you are right that I ignored guild missions which I haven’t had a chance to experience. But you can’t say I’m too focused on dungeons….just as much as I can’t tell you that you are too focused on enjoying temporary content. We each enjoy what we enjoy and that is what makes us individual players. The content that I personally enjoy most in these games is typically dungeons or open world content that tells an overarching story. Something that makes me feel like I am part of a bigger mission. That I am part of a bigger movement. So I would personally like to see more of that type of content stay around so that I have a longer chance to experience it….and experience it more than once.

One last piece of advice. Another game that I’ve played some is League of Legends. The game designers ended up adding a significant amount of PvE content in a patch after they surprisingly discovered that a significant portion of their player base was not interested PvP. So I would hesitate to state with certainty which types of players make up the majority…..only ArenaNet has enough information in hand to know that.

I can tell you you’re too focused on dungeons. Why? Because Anet has said their focus is a living world. And a living world isn’t really about instances it’s about the open world. It was always going to be their focus since the days when they said the game is centered around events.

Now, there are a lot of very good games out there that center on dungeons and Anet wanted to do something different. It’s never going to be their focus.

So at best you’ll be playing part of a game that Anet isn’t focused on. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s like I tell people who played Guild Wars 1 who wanted to jump…and they couldn’t. The game really isn’t being designed around it.

Sure there are some fun dungeons in the game, but I think it’s pretty obvious that this game isn’t being designed around dungeons. It’s pretty obvious other games are being designed around them.

That’s what I mean when I say you’re too focused on them. You have a right to like anything you want…but to come and judge a game that was never going to be focused around dungeons for not having more of them, would be like me going to see a Star Wars moving and complaining there aren’t enough love scenes.

It’s not really Anet’s focus and I doubt it will become Anet’s focus any time in the near future.

Jemmi.6058:

Im Mudbone.1437:

AntiGw.9367:

Shockwave.1230:

I could login to Guild Wars and in start a new character, play for about 30 hours and be max level with max gear having earned the gold for it in that time, and just play the game after that for it’s stories and challenges without ever having a thought cross my mind about am I playing with handicapped stats.

That’s no where near a possibility in Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars felt much more about enjoying well thought out quality content and stories. Guild Wars 2 distracts from that way too much with it’s grind.

You could login to Guild Wars 2 and start a new character, play for about 30 hours, and be max level with nearly max gear (green) around which the entire game was balanced.

Then if you like you could play for a few more hours and get exotics.

Hear, Hear. Best response yet, except, to use several instead of few.

Actually, you can have all exotics within minutes of hitting 80. If you sell all materials, loot bags and drops that you get while levelling you will have more than enough gold to purchase all exotic gear on the TP.

However, for me, it took more like 40-50 hours to hit 80 on my more recent characters. (This is without crafting and only doing events, story and hearts)

And if you save your daily karma jugs and don’t use them till you’re 80, you could probably buy exotic karma armor from the temples in Orr without spending any gold at all.

Shockwave.1230:

AntiGw.9367:

Shockwave.1230:

People who don’t know would like to be enlightened on how to play and get to level 80 in 30 hours. If it involves crafting I’m sure they’d like to know how to get the gold it would take to craft while playing a new character in 30 hours.

Basically, do dynamic events.

The chains to be done may differ from time to time. I leveled my thief almost entirely on Molten Alliance portals.

If it’s really possible to level from 1 to 80 via DEs in 30 hours then example of it being done would great. When areas had players running around them at launch and I was contributing to get bronze jumping between events while they were parallely in progress bcs multiple bronze rewards provide more exp than single gold rewards I couldn’t level at a pace of 1 lv in under 30 minutes. I was getting about 1 per hour on average.

And player’s would still be playing handicapped at lv 80 when it comes to gear. Grinding to reach maximum combat efficiency is not fun. Playing challenging content without being handicapped figuring out the most effective way to overcome a challenge and executing it is fun.

This post more than anything else shows the difference between how you play and what you find fun and how I play and what I find fun.

While I can enjoy challenging content, I don’t care at all about maximum combat efficiency. I managed a retail store for a long long time. the last thing I want to be in my game time is efficient. I want to get lost in the world, explore, have fun, fight some stuff…and the occasional challenge is welcomed at times when I want it.

But in general your idea of fun sounds pretty unfun to me. The thing is, there aren’t many MMOs (I can’t think of any) that support my style of play. There are tons of MMOs out there that support your style.

I just don’t get why people want to change this game to be more like so many other games, when those games are already out there.

Because if you guys succeed in changing this game into something you like, it’s extremely likely that those of us who like what this game is will have no MMOs left to play.

Shiren.9532:

Raine.1394:

OP, if I thought all the future held was mini-game platformers I’d pull the plug now. And I think that the AP system introduced was important as an enhancement to perceived reward for play which was lacking in the game. I believe the next frontier for GW2 will be a move to focus on an evolving, permanent living world, which I think is the best thing they can do. It’s the alternative to the expansion, which I really don’t want. I don’t know their plans but Colin’s statements have contained enough to give me hope for the future of GW2. (Colin, correct me if I’m wrong.)

Did you follow any of ArenaNet’s statements before GW2 launched? They’ve backtracked on so many of them, their talk never matches their walk.

Anet made tens of thousands of statements before launch. The percentage they’ve “backtracked on” is neglible.

If that’s all you focus on, that’s fine. But to say that game developers who claim to have an iterative process might change things as they go…oh yeah, that’s right, they wrote whole articles about how they iterate and change things.

I guess that means that you CHOSE to listen to some things that were said while ignoring other things that were said.

TwoBit.5903:

Vayne.8563:

TwoBit.5903:

The question is, if it’s so inconsequential why have ascended gear at all? Given the general arguments of those defending the game, GW2 can surely compel players to play on its own merits rather than coercing them with vertical progression, can’t it?

I’ll tell you why.

Because the illusion of something can be greater than a think itself.

There are people who don’t like this game and won’t play it, because it doesn’t have a full on gear grind. To them, cosmetics aren’t worth their time at all.

By the same token, there are people who absolutely want NO vertical progression at all. Not even a hint of it (in spite of the fact that vertical progression existed in the game at launch).

But the people who’ll leave over extremes is still a relatively small percentage of the population.

By creating a compromise, those that are just uncomfortable with vertical progression or those who thought it would be nice to have some grind are both still playing the game….maybe not quite as happy as they would have been, but the game has now had the time to get going.

It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if Anet now didn’t release ascended armor or weapons. They may, but they’ll be very careful about how they do it.

The main point is this though. Before they released the fractals and ascended stuff a lot of people finished the game, didn’t go for cosmetic skins and they were done. They left. Anet saw what was happening, had to make a fast decision and they did so. They made the fractals. They released it fast, they screwed up how the gear was released, but they made that compromise.

And since then the game, from my point of view, has more or less remained strong. Some people see it as a bargain with the devil, but it really hasn’t hurt or affected the game that much.

That’s why it’s not more than it is, but it’s also why they couldn’t not do it.

You’re stating it as though the illusion is necessary. If the MMO genre is to evolve as you constant bring up, then I think that design mentality has to go. It’s baggage, and one that’s derived from false interpretations. The “illusion” you speak of is actually a quality of item scaling games of yore, where items have procedural randomization of stats. The illusion of there always being something better was due to the fact that getting fully optimized stats was impractical due the random nature of loot. It’s a powerful system, but it’s intricacies are taken for granted in GW2’s treadmill. In GW2 it’s a straight up “do this x times for max gear until the devs decide to give higher stat gear” or in other words the WoW model that GW2 was supposed to get away from, or implied to anyway.

Your statement about the game remaining strong is a rather dubious. You’re stating conjecture as fact without data to back your statements. The language is vague, almost as vague as, dare I say, this game’s manifesto. How much is “strong” anyway? Who else but the speaker is able set the criteria for it, especially when there are no facts?

Sorry I can’t agree with this. Too many changes too fast and you lose too many people and nothing evolves. Evolution is a slow process not a fast one. It takes time. For the genre to move forward, you have to give some people a bit of help…because they’ve spent years in other games learning what to expect from the genre. You can’t just expect people to say well okay it’s all changed now..good. It doesn’t work like that.

So Anet compromises. They give them a bit of what they want, but not so much since and that was a long time already. Essentially, Anet is weening people off gear progression. It won’t happen for everyone and it won’t happen right away, but it will happen over time for some people.

Making changes and expecting people to deal with them all at once…probably not the best way to run a railroad.

marnick.4305:

JustTrogdor.7892:

marnick.4305:

I’ve got two opinions on the matter.

On one hand, forum people not qualified to treat people with OCD, they should find help from the proper channels.

What makes you think people that like to get all the achievements meet the diagnostic criteria for OCD? Achievements and accomplishments are synonymous. For many doing all the achievements gives someone a sense of accomplishment by completing them through game play. Believe it or not, not everyone just does the achievements for a shiny. Sorry it is kind of a pet pieve of mine when people label others based on misconceptions of mental illness.

A lot of threads about achievement hunting start with “I have OCD and that’s why I have a problem with this”. Well… my general response to people with OCD is that we’re not qualified to help them. For people who don’t have OCD, missing a few shouldn’t be that big of a deal. It’s a game after all (point #2 which you failed to add in your quotation)

Misquoting isn’t a nice thing to do, especially because I covered both cases if you put that specific quote in context. Please read and quote an entire post before you pass judgement.

I think lots of people, including myself, use the term OCD not as a medical condition (which I don’t have), but as a description of my behavior. I know for a fact I don’t have OCD because not that much bothers me. If I miss something I miss it. I’m pretty relaxed about most things.

But a lot of people confuse other things and symptoms for OCD and to communicate with people, people use the word. I seriously doubt most people who say they’re OCD are actually people who have been diagnosed with it.

I have the same problem in most MMOs. Leveling is usually fun for me and end game stuff usually isn’t.

However, I still think my guild has a lot to do with how entertained I am. There’s always someone that needs help in the open world and I go help them and boom, I find something I’ve either never seen before or an event that I’ve not entered from that point in time, or some detail that I either overlooked or perhaps forgot.

I still spend a lot of time in the open world doing events and enjoying them.

I guess the difference is, I really like some of the new stuff that’s come out.

I understand what the OP means, and I don’t completely disagree with it…but I think the argument runs a lot deeper.

There’s a standard fantasy trope that everyone lives by. Rangers must use bows. Why do you think the first weapon you get as a ranger is an ax? Aragorn was a ranger in Lord of the Rings and he used a sword.

A lot of the sensibilities we have in this genre are based on how we experienced the genre in the first place. To me, guns have no place in fantasy and it took me a long time to get used to the fact that they were going to be around. The first book that really broke me into that was The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny, but even after that, it took me a long time to adjust to firearms in fantasy.

Today, genre lines blur as more and more stuff becomes cross-genre. So we have Asuran technology in this game, which brings an element into the game that feels like scifi.

And casters in most early games were rooted in place while casting. But this wasn’t done because that was most fun or made the best games. It was done because the older MMO servers needed to cut down on server calls or fighting would have ground to a halt.

Times of changes, technology has changed. And our view of what is a fantasy trope…that’s going to have to change too, because genres evolve.

All of them.

bri.2359:

knives.6345:

But it’s not required to compete equally, right? The BiS is what? A few stat points up?

Basically, the people looking for BiS, aka Ascended are like people looking for Legendary – they “want” it but they don’t “need” it – they can be equally competitive without it.

Sorry, but a full set of ascended trinkets is more than just a few stat points up …

I used to think the same until my guardian was kitted out with a full set. And yes, it did make a noticeable difference, since I waited until I had all the pieces before using them.

Are they necessary? For most content, probably not.
Do they make a difference? Most certainly!

Sure, but most of the stuff comes quite easily, even if it does make a small difference. For example, there are probably very few people right now who can’t get two rings and an amulet, reducing the difference the earrings make drastically.

From my calculations, if a new person started playing today, they could easily have two rings and an amulet after playing for three months. Faster if they do the monthly and or Fractals.

In other words, the difference it’s required and part of the difference is quite easy to get, even for a newcomer to the game.

AntiGw.9367:

Jesus Christ, Vayne. I’m petitioning that your posts are restricted to 3 small paragraphs :P

Sorry, it’s an occupational hazard. When you write professionally, you put stuff down and worry about editing it after the fact. Stories that are 5000 words can be taken down to 3000 words sometimes.

I make too many posts to edit them. lol

I used to be a completionist, but then I missed a point, the Halloween Jumping puzzle. So I said, oh well, screw it. Nothing I can do about it, until maybe next year.

It probably is a touch of OCD, but what can you do. That sort of thing is what made me a successful editor.

It’s not whether or not you have flaws, it’s how you use them to your advantage that counts.

Edenwolf.6328:

Galen Grey.4709:

Edenwolf.6328:

I’m harmed, I mean I come back after a few months break, and I can’t even buy or work for the Sclerite Karka Shell. I want it bad, I’m quite disappointed and certainly not excited to wait around till next year, or perhaps never to get it :S

You’re disappointed sure but not harmed. You’re perfectly fine without the karka shell. It might be a good idea to keep an eye on whats going on while on break from the game.

Oh I’m harmed, it stings every time when I walk by a necro with the shell on, knowing I won’t be able to earn one for my own, kitten temporary content, it goes against the principles of an MMO.

No it doesn’t go against the principles of an MMO. Lots of MMOs have rewards for specific events that you can’t get again. Rift had them. It goes against something you want, which has nothing to do with the principles of MMOs.

And there’ll be more, different stuff later on the piece, as time goes on that will look awesome too. Maybe something you’ll get that no one else will get.

Because to me, nothing ruins an MMO more than everyone wearing the same thing. And that’s how it was six months into Rift.

Shifty.5187:

AntiGw.9367:

A month of guild missions gives you two ascended accessories. A month of laurels gives you an amulet plus some leftovers for a ring. A few runs of fractals can get you your back piece.

That doesn’t go against anything Arena.net described. On the contrary, they constantly introduce new ways to get these things – consider that at launch all we had was karma farming for exotics if we didn’t want to do dungeons.

Coming from Guild Wars 1, I did not expect these things to be in the game and I believe they’re detrimental to having fun.

I just do not understand why they did not continue the philosophy behind Guild Wars 1, but with an improved battle system, a persistent world, and a few other small improvements.

They didn’t continue the philosophy because Guild Wars 1 didn’t work for most people and Guild Wars 2, when they had the philosophy wasn’t working for most people. It sucks but there you have it.

What you need to understand is that this isn’t Guild Wars 1 from a business point of view. The voice acting alone for this game may have cost what Guild Wars 1 cost to make. The staff has grown from 50 people to over 300 people, and Anet had to move to new, larger digs to house this staff. The budget to create an MMO today is much higher than it was for them to create Guild Wars 1.

That budget, this entire game, is predicated on the fact that people spend money in the gem store…because this much staff and content can’t exist on box sales alone. It would be different, obviously, if the game had a subscription fee.

So to compete in this much more dynamic and competitive environment, Anet needed to hold onto more players. You personally don’t like something that you didn’t see as necessary, but Anet has a whole lot more metrics than we do. Before the introduction of ascended gear, a whole lot of people finished all the content and left. They wouldn’t grind for a legendary…it was too big a goal.

Essentially, the discrepancy between the exotic armor/weapons which were easy to get, was too far from the legendary to interest most people, because the work to get it was too hard and long. People need to see bit sized progress. It wasn’t in the game.

Sure there are other solutions besides making ascended gear, but not so many that have been tried and proven. So if it was your game, if you’d invested millions and millions of dollars to make it, and you saw people leaving, and you saw a change that could make a difference,….you wouldn’t try it.

They tried to keep it locked upin the Fractals, but that didn’t work because it offended WvW players, who felt forced to do fractals. So we have what we have now.

It was a compromise. Anet didn’t look up one day and say, you know, I think I’ll just kitten off a million loyal fans who bought the game, just for the hell of it. That’s not what happened. I’m sure even in the Anet offices, there were arguments or at least intense discussions about what to do to stem the tide of people leaving.

I’m convinced Fractals gave them the time to work on other things that needed to be worked on so the game could move forward.

I’m not sure how many of us would have done anything differently in Anet’s place.

Aeolus.3615:

I missed the events after the karka, dont know where to start, just know theres some crystals to take on new map more than that dont know what to do.

You should have had a letter in your mail that tells you where to find the new content. There’s an NPC on the dock in LA that will take you to the new area. By talking to NPCs there as you go, you’ll start solving the puzzle of what to do. Basically you find out by exploring.

If you really hate exploring, you can go to www.dulfy.net who has a ton of guides on exactly what to do.

Galen Grey.4709:

Vayne.8563:

For those who say people are going to leave the game…it means zero. Nothing.

Well zero is probably a bit harsh, I am sure Arenanet dont want to loose people as much as possible but that being said you do have a point that Arenanet also know some people leaving the game is inevitable and by stating you’re just good as gone you’re just gonna weaken your argument as you’re essentially saying this game does not serve my playstyle which in turn will result in developers focusing more to strengthen the content thats retaining players which is probably at the other end of the spectrum.

Simple speaking I quit threads harm more then they help. I hope no one feels by threating to quit they’re gonna blackmail game designer into doing what those people want from the game. It wouldnt even be physically possible even if it did work because it will take months to develop something new by which time either the player was serious and would have long quit or they were bluffing which would be pointless anyway.

When I say it means zero, is that it means zero. In other words, there is nothing that Anet can do that will prevent some people from leaving the game. So the fact that some people are leaving the game is meaningless.

Some people left the game over dailies. It’s true. I know someone who left the game, because dailies were stressing them out. It wasn’t fun for them. Did it mean something? Not if it kept a hundred times that number of people in the game.

When I say that it means zero that someone is leaving the game over a decision Anet has made is true…because it has no context and without context it’s meaningless.

A lot of people, a whole lot of people, left the game over the Fractals and ascended gear…but I’m convinced the Fractals helped save the game too.

It’s not meaningless that people are leaving…but each individual post about someone saying they’re leaving over a specific change is actually meaningless without knowing how many people are staying in the game, or even coming to the game because of that change.

TwoBit.5903:

The question is, if it’s so inconsequential why have ascended gear at all? Given the general arguments of those defending the game, GW2 can surely compel players to play on its own merits rather than coercing them with vertical progression, can’t it?

I’ll tell you why.

Because the illusion of something can be greater than a think itself.

There are people who don’t like this game and won’t play it, because it doesn’t have a full on gear grind. To them, cosmetics aren’t worth their time at all.

By the same token, there are people who absolutely want NO vertical progression at all. Not even a hint of it (in spite of the fact that vertical progression existed in the game at launch).

But the people who’ll leave over extremes is still a relatively small percentage of the population.

By creating a compromise, those that are just uncomfortable with vertical progression or those who thought it would be nice to have some grind are both still playing the game….maybe not quite as happy as they would have been, but the game has now had the time to get going.

It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if Anet now didn’t release ascended armor or weapons. They may, but they’ll be very careful about how they do it.

The main point is this though. Before they released the fractals and ascended stuff a lot of people finished the game, didn’t go for cosmetic skins and they were done. They left. Anet saw what was happening, had to make a fast decision and they did so. They made the fractals. They released it fast, they screwed up how the gear was released, but they made that compromise.

And since then the game, from my point of view, has more or less remained strong. Some people see it as a bargain with the devil, but it really hasn’t hurt or affected the game that much.

That’s why it’s not more than it is, but it’s also why they couldn’t not do it.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Stuff said years before a product comes out doesn’t apply to bait and switch.

Agreed.

Of course if that stuff is still being said at, or near, the time the product is released its a different matter.

As I’ve said, repeatedly, there was so much accurate information released by Anet leading up to the release, that ANYONE could have done a minimal amount of research and found out about mostly anything in the game.

Another point is that the game launched and had a refund policy for months and months and months. They gave refunds to people who played the game for six months. That’s unheard of. So even if they had said something different before launch, the fact they were willing to return people’s money for the first six months (when people well and truly should have known what they were getting) means that bait and switch doesn’t exist. There are a whole lot of people who played this game for free.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Well, if there are rewards for achieve points, then how about to at least make some skill-based achievements? Like completing dungeon without deaths/getting downed, or killing bosses for less than X minutes. For interrupting some dangerous casts. Dodging X attacks in a row. Heal other people when they have less than 5% of their hp, etc. Its not that hard.

I agree there should be some skill based achievements like not dying in dungeons etc.

Just keep in mind, many skill based achievements, people will find a way to bypass. Like the swamp fractal and avoiding the traps. All you have to do is get to the wisp enclave without hitting a trap then stand there while three other people do the work. There are no traps for the final boss, so the less you do in the fractal the more likely you are to get the achievement.

Shockwave.1230:

Vayne.8563:

Shockwave.1230:

Which is why I would call it WoW 2.0, bcs its the something different WoW players are looking for, not what Guild Wars players wanted. There’s too many swings in direction on key concepts for it to be considered better conceptually than Guild Wars. The combat is improved and the world is persistent, those are definitely better.

But I still disagree here. I do think this has a lot more in common with Guild Wars 1 than WoW. Compare.

WoW..unlimited skills all at once.
Guild Wars… limited skill bar

WoW. Taunt mechanic/true tanking
Guild Wars. No taunt mechanic

WoW..mounts
Guild Wars no mounts (except the broom if you want, but we had siege devourers in game in Guild Wars 1 anyway…not quite the same as the mounts in WoW)

Then you have stuff like story and explorable mode dungeons, already done in Guild Wars 1. As an example, Bloodstone Caves, the easier explorable mode as part of a story followed by the explorable mode when you went back to it.

The fact is, with the exception of “making builds”, this game works a whole lot like Guild Wars 1 did, far more than it works on WoW.

Guild Wars tries to tell “your” story.
WoW- Just as a story of the world, nothing is really your story.

WoW . Thrives on player made mods. The whole game was pretty much a mod fest.
Guild Wars. Very limited use of mods

WoW. Gear score…encouraging players to be competitive.
Guild Wars….each person gets their own drops, you’re not rolling against other people

Guild Wars…doesn’t lock you out of content due to gear
WOW…locks you out of content due to gear

Then you have stuff that WOW and Guild Wars 1 has that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have…like faction rep grinding.

Yeah, I don’t think this can in any way shape or form be considered WoW 2.0. Rift can, but not this. It’s way too different.

I’ve extensively played a lot of WoW style MMOs, and this has a lot less to do with those than you’re admitting.

Check my last post for some of the design changes I’m referencing.
Also add to that a gated aspect to builds was never in GW. The whole gating concept in the trait lines really bugged me when it also applied to major traits in the betas. That dies not help with build diversity, you limit the number of possibilities, if they were concerned with traits not seeing use, then make better traits.

The grind is what really gets my gears though. How can a company go from 0 power progression to over over 10% disparities on weapons and armor and ridiculous disparities on runes and sigils. That in combination with the trading post being the only viable way of obtaining the items… just look at the prices of the best stat items. How can you expect someone to get a full set of max gear and mods in a day or two like it was so easy to do in Guild Wars? You can’t because the current systems don’t allow it.

One of the best aspects of Guild Wars was taking your character through content in different ways by playing different builds. Which you can’t do in GW2 bcs build are so equipment based. You’re gated from playing lots of different builds, bcs it’s so expensive to get gear and it even takes currency to respec your traits and trait attribute bonuses. Builds are like relationships in this game, you do a good job finding one bcs you’re going to be with it for a while.

I relate it all back to freedom that players feel within the system the developers make. GW2 feels very limiting to me compared to GW, and those limitations remind me of how I felt when I tried to play WoW and never could fully commit to it.

Sure but in WoW, you never have best in stat stuff for any length of time, because it changes every three months.

You’re commenting on some ascended stuff that’s been around since November. Armor and weapons are the same now as they were the day the game got released back in August.

Do you have any idea of what a ten month period in WoW would look like with no armor or weapon stat upgrades? It’s called a treadmill for a reason. This game doesn’t have it.

Shockwave.1230:

Klawlyt.6507:

Holy crap, Shockwave, You’re right! ANet is eeeeeeeeeevil! Let us all run! Run from this place! Yes let’s go, go somewhere else full of bunnies and golden coins! Yes let us run… run… is he gone?

Look, the manifesto is an ideal, and it contains the guiding principles behind the development of this game. I think they’ve largely stuck to the broader manifesto itself. I think the fractals were the beginning of a step away from that, but I think ANet also saw the blowback that resulted and learned from it. Is the manifesto still relevant? Absolutely. Is it a contract between anyone and anyone? Nope.

Now let’s be honest. The dye thing isn’t about the manifesto. The dye thing is a matter of you liking the idea of a beta iteration of a system you never tried. You like it better because it adhered to your ideals better, and because you never tried it, and don’t know the drawbacks first hand (which have been discussed at length by now). In your mind the equation is as simple as account bound=good, character bound=bad. There’s a lot more to this, and your oversimplification of the system as evil and money grubbing doesn’t really further any discussion.

The dye thing is a small concern by itself. The broader implication of multiple concepts that penalize players by taking in game currency unnecessarily is that you force players to spend more time or money to get that currency back. The dye thing isn’t even a penalty, but it in combination with other design choices that are penalties do exactly what I’ve described, which ultimately incentivizes players to lean towards shortcuts of getting game currency, which leads to more gem purchases for gold.

Now I’m sure people think I’m nuts, bcs my views are driven by the original Guild Wars, but I expect not to lose time or money to do the following…

Fast travel
Change my build
Death penalty – removing this was skilled play
Get the best stated items
Trading fees – didn’t exist

I expect only to grind for cosmetics and achievements. I also expect that every player have easy access to the best stated gear so that they can’t feel handicapped.

You’re still missing my point about the dye system. The orginal dye system was more greedy than it is now and Anet toned it down. In the process of toning it down they made a decision about whether it should be account bound or not. Big, fat, hairy deal.

The problem is that people keep bringing that stuff up, not only out of context but trying to link it to everything else. The decision Anet made to revamp the dye system over all was a positive change for players, not a negative change. I guarantee you if they kept the dye system they originally quoted, people would be screaming about it in frustration.

How much would you like to bet that Anet won’t be trampled? People said the same thing about Guild Wars 1 and it never happened.

First of all, this game is focused on PvE not PvP. It’s not even CLOSE to being focused on PvP. Anyone who says so isn’t paying that much attention.

More importantly, ESO is going to be very popular on the consoles, which it’s coming out for. The audience for consoles and computer games is pretty different and generally speaking, most console games that come out aren’t that great on computer. Now Skyrim got by because Skyrim had six zillion mods on the computer, most of which you won’t be able to have in an MMO.

ESO will make a lot of money but it’s not going to hold most players. It’ll have the same problems every MMO has. Too competitive for the casuals, not hard enough for the hard core and not enough content for the content locusts.

No one said Anet needs an expansion to release a new class or race, btw, they can still do it through the living story. It doesn’t mean they will.

However, releasing new classes in Guild Wars 1 caused no end to troubles.

Shockwave.1230:

Which is why I would call it WoW 2.0, bcs its the something different WoW players are looking for, not what Guild Wars players wanted. There’s too many swings in direction on key concepts for it to be considered better conceptually than Guild Wars. The combat is improved and the world is persistent, those are definitely better.

But I still disagree here. I do think this has a lot more in common with Guild Wars 1 than WoW. Compare.

WoW..unlimited skills all at once.
Guild Wars… limited skill bar

WoW. Taunt mechanic/true tanking
Guild Wars. No taunt mechanic

WoW..mounts
Guild Wars no mounts (except the broom if you want, but we had siege devourers in game in Guild Wars 1 anyway…not quite the same as the mounts in WoW)

Then you have stuff like story and explorable mode dungeons, already done in Guild Wars 1. As an example, Bloodstone Caves, the easier explorable mode as part of a story followed by the explorable mode when you went back to it.

The fact is, with the exception of “making builds”, this game works a whole lot like Guild Wars 1 did, far more than it works on WoW.

Guild Wars tries to tell “your” story.
WoW- Just as a story of the world, nothing is really your story.

WoW . Thrives on player made mods. The whole game was pretty much a mod fest.
Guild Wars. Very limited use of mods

WoW. Gear score…encouraging players to be competitive.
Guild Wars….each person gets their own drops, you’re not rolling against other people

Guild Wars…doesn’t lock you out of content due to gear
WOW…locks you out of content due to gear

Then you have stuff that WOW and Guild Wars 1 has that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have…like faction rep grinding.

Yeah, I don’t think this can in any way shape or form be considered WoW 2.0. Rift can, but not this. It’s way too different.

I’ve extensively played a lot of WoW style MMOs, and this has a lot less to do with those than you’re admitting.

Shockwave.1230:

Stone.6751:

Shockwave.1230:

Stone.6751:

Its simply amazing that people care so much about this. I don’t even know what to think about it. Its like an obsession for some, an unhealthy obsession.

It’s a debate on getting value for your time as it relates to gaming philosophies. I openly admit to being obsessed with getting value for my time. It doesn’t have be monetary value, but I can say that I spent $220 on Guild Wars over 6 years and 4500 hours of play and enjoyed it more than any other game I’ve played including GW2, and that time has been far more enjoyable and valuable than the $140 I’ve spent thus far in Guild Wars 2 for the near 300 hours I’ve played it.

Uhh…yea. But people have beaten this horse to death, drudging up old comments made by ANet employees from years ago, writing page long posts, and even linking “the manifesto” in their signature.

I like to talk about games too. I’m just saying that people take the complaints to the level of an unhealthy obsession.

The game is what it is.

This is what happens when a company backtracks on the philosophies that drew people to it. Guild Wars and Wow seemed pretty much like opposites in the gaming world. Guild Wars 2 conceptually is WoW 2.0, not Guild Wars 2.0. Like I mentioned earlier if this was Blizzard, whole different story. But there’s this whole market of gamers wanting a modern game with the ideologies that drive the original Guild Wars and all that in a persistent world. I doubt it’s going to happen, at least not in the lifespan of Guild Wars 2, but if it did expect most of the GW fanbase to pick it up.

Only people who haven’t played WoW could say these games are alike. There’s no rep grind, there’s very little grind at all (except those people insist on making for themselves), there’s no trinity, there’s no taunt mechanic at all, there’s no static quests, there’s an active dodge roll. There are no raids. There’s a bar with less skills on it, instead of a zillion bars with a quintillion skills on it…

honestly only a Guild Wars 1 fan could say this game was like WoW. No WoW player thinks this is like WoW.

Shockwave.1230:

Vayne.8563:

Shockwave.1230:

It’s just information in a raw form Vayne.

snip

Dye’s being changed from account bound to character bound is obviously a way to increase revenue through the gemstore.

Really the issue people have is that they originally were thinking about the player’s convenience and decided to go against that for dollars.

Sorry but the old dye scheme, the one that Anet showed, would have been more likely to increase sales in the gem shop., not less.

See this is something else taken out of context. Anet had one system in place and changed THE WHOLE system. That includes whether a dye is account or player bound.

Now, you might think that you can pull one change out of the system analzye it and say that change is bad, but Anet had something really horrid in the cash shop (The plant food) and took it out. The system that you’re trying to make look more greedy is actually LESS greedy than it was before the change.

You then take one thing that’s changed not all of it, and point it out to make the decision seem to be nothing but greed. If Anet wanted to be greedy they’d have left in the original dye situation where dyes were account bound but you couldn’t sell or trade them and you had to buy plant food to grow more in a day.

Imagine how it would have been. You get a dye seed. You’re already growing one. You can’t grow another until you buy plant food from the cash shop. So you don’t buy it and you wait. 24 hours for a dye seed to mature, then you go and find out it’s the same dye you already have. But you can’t sell it on the marketplace. You can’t use it, because it’s account bound. You just have to delete it, because it’s worthless to you.

Do you really think that’s a better system?

Simplifying information is fine, as long as the full story emerges from that simplification. Taking a single change out of context and making it look like something it’s not (let’s say more greedy instead of less greedy), is misleading.

snip

And on that topic, it’s infinitely better than the dye system in Guild Wars 1 where you needed a bottle of dye each time you wanted to dye your armor for each piece of armor.

What you’re describing seems neither here nor there, it might have been better or worse. like you’ve said systems evolve. Fact of the matter is that Anet was looking at dyes being account bound and changed it to character bound thereby increasing the amount of time and or money players must invest into getting the colors they want. There is no denying they were well aware that account bound dyes are more convenient to a player than character bound dyes. This fact can’t be spun. They did character bound bcs it causes the player population to spend more time/money meaning more revenue for them.

It’s the same reason they did the repair penalty, waypoint penalty, gold/gem exchange penalties, trading post listing penalties, and vertical progression gear. The more time it takes players to accomplish something they want the more willing they are to find a way to do it faster, people become more willing to part with their money, because it saves them time on doing what they don’t want to do. So in order to incentivize people to part with their money they made fundamental shifts counter to what they did in Gw1.

If this was Blizzard doing these things I’d be impressed and singing their praises, bcs they’d be progressing towards something more favorable to the player than what they were. But it’s ANet, they were already ahead of the game with what they were doing in Gw1 and backtracked. That’s what gets to people, they had a game where you paid for new content, actual content once, and you had the option to pay for cosmetics and account supplements like character slots and storage, and low level bonus items, and max level weapon skins, and bonus missions.

They were going to come out with Guild wars utopia, but did Gw2 instead. Though guild wars 2 is a better game technologically, it turns out that conceptually, Guild Wars was the utopia for players.

If the dyes were account bound in the old system it would take players longer and cost them more to get the dyes they want not less.

Anet changed the system to make it better for/easier for players to get the dyes they want, and that’s what’s important.

Taking one aspect of the system separately gives the illusion that it was made harder.

Now you can buy the missing dye you want off the trading post. Before you couldn’t. It had to drop, period end of story. And you could only identify one day a day from seeds that dropped all the time, unless you paid money to the cash shop to speed up the process.

So yeah, having it account bound wasn’t better when you take into consideration the entire dye system.

Rooks Zaer.5846:

Vayne.8563:

Sorry but I was in retail for a long long time. Now if Anet made an ad, let’s say the manifesto or an article and TWO YEARS LATER they opened the business, and between the same two points they annouced what the business would have in great detail, it wouldn’t be bait and switch.

The point of bait and switch is immediacy. I advertise something today which I don’t have in stock and when you get into the store, I then at that point try to sell you something else. It’s a point of sale thing.

If I advertised something six months ago, and since changed what I do, no court in the WORLD would call that bait and switch.

A manifesto is not a guarantee of delivery, it’s a statement of intent. You can’t really call someone intending to do something but not guaranteeing it bait and switch, because not every intent can come to pass.

And beyond all that, you can argue all you want, but unless Anet advertises that dyes are account bound and that’s a major selling point of the game, and you end up buying the game JUST BECAUSE dyes are account bound, that wouldn’t be bait and switch either.

Sorry but the whole bait and switch thing is nothing more than hyperbole. You’re exaggerating a claim to try to make a point.

And using the words bait and switch means you lose credibility with those who know what it means.

Stuff said years before a product comes out doesn’t apply to bait and switch.

Are you still pitching the “it was two years old” argument…despite the fact that the main guild wars 2 site had a direct link to it (complete with graphics) on the main page basically right up until release?

http://web.archive.org/web/20120510235808/http://www.guildwars2.com/en/

Having it linked off of the very front page made it every bit at launch as the day it was created.

And it’s completely 100% irrelevant. First of all, nothing in the manifesto is wrong or a lie. It’s a statement of intent which for the most part Anet has upheld. If you can’t see that, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Secondly, and more importantly, it’s neither an advertisement nor a guarantee and more stuff exists on the site than just that. So it’s not bait and switch. If it were an ad, you MIGHT be able to claim it’s false advertising, except that wouldnt’ stand up in court either.

I love how people try to justify their hyperbole when there isn’t any excuse for using it. Why can’t you just say these are things Anet said that didn’t eventuate, instead of using obviously incorrect hyperbole like bait and switch?

Says the same thing and isn’t completely wrong.

Erasculio.2914:

pullnointer.1476:

… instead of time played?

The issue is that MMORPGs have been made to cater to people who have time to spend, not skill. This makes sense from the point of view of a pay to play game, in which the goal is to keep people p(l)aying – if a reward is a matter of skill, some players know it’s likely they wouldn’t get it, so they wouldn’t even try. If something is a matter of only time spent, then everyone could get it, as long as they play (and thus pay) just a little longer.

GW2 is not a pay to play game, and so it does not need to follow this model. But the MMORPG players who flocked to GW2 are somewhat addicted to that kind of grind, so expect a lot of them to refuse the idea of rewarding skill as opposed to time spent.

Guild Wars 2 is funded by the cash shop and so needs players playing. That’s what’s behind the content every two weeks model. More people playing means more cash shop sales…even if only 20% of the people are buying. Because 20% of a bigger number equals more money.

Nemesis.2019:

I am getting bored of this game, and instead of releasing an Expansion they gonna give us free content, free is great but free has it’s limitations, with a new exp we would get a new race, new class, new gameplay mechanics, and probably Cantha or Elona to explore, free content won’t be the same, got bored of Bazaar of the Four Winds in 1 day the new area is beautiful but it lacks life, it’s a a big jumping puzzle, once you are done nothing left to see..

Way to bring something totally irrelevant into a thread. But since Anet can open new zones and add no races for free, I don’t get your objection.

On topic: WvW and SPvP are very different games. SPvP is a quick hit type of thing. Unless you’re playing in tournaments, it’s a pick up and play, hot join, drop out when you’re done sort of thing. It’s fast and fun but it’s like candy.

WvW is longer, slower, more down time, more traveling but the big battles can be quite epic. It’s a longer, slower, more drawn out process that’s a lot better for some people.

This is particularly true if you join a WvW guild or you’re part of a group that plays. Roaming in WvW..that I’m not too sure about. That also turns WvW into a different game.

I think you should try both though, because I play both and they fill compelely different roles for me.

For example, I like to do SPvP to kill some time, between doing other things because its’ fast. I really can’t do that with WvW. But WvW would be a better long term PvE replacement for me.

zerospin.8604:

The rewards are indeed disappointing. From the 2-3 PvP chests I received a load of skins… that I couldn’t use on my character. What’s even the point? Thanks.. for nothing I guess?

Using a pvp salvage kit, the ones you already have stored can be broken down in mats you need to create new PvP gear.

If you don’t PvP it doesn’t matter anyway. If you do PvP it’s new mats for crafting even if you get doubles.

morrolan.9608:

Klawlyt.6507:

How can dailies possibly feel like a grind? They just happen! All by themselves! As long as your play experience involves leaving Lion’s Arch occasionally, you’ll get your required dailies.

No you won’t, there’s always at least 1 or 2 that you’ll have to go out of your way to get.

If you choose to do every daily every day, then you in fact will have to go out of your way to get some of them.

But you’re not obligated to do every daily every day and I’m pretty sure most people don’t. Not doing it just means you’re delaying your reward chest by a few days or weeks.

If you, for some reason, choose to do every daily every day, and you’re not enjoying it, I suggest you stop.

Because the game doesn’t require it of you.

Hrithmus.2583:

Vayne.8563:

Evolution and even changing things isn’t bait and switch. Do you even know what bait and switch MEANS. In no court of law would ANY of this be considered bait and switch.

snip

People are still complaining about the dye system? Really?

How come you’re not listing how the original dye system was where you got a seed drop and you had to go to the NPC in your home instance to grow that seed and you could only grow 1 per day, unless you spent money in the cash shop to buy plant food. Oh I know why you didn’t comment on that change. Because it didn’t prove this point you’re trying to make.

The old dye system was MUCH worse than the new dye system, even if those dyes would have been account bound. But you ignore this in your argument. Instead you point out one article, written by one employee before the game was actually released. In the beta, the plant food thing, with the seeds, that was in the game…and Anet changed it. But get this. They changed it FOR THE BETTER.

So the dyes are not account bound anymore, but you don’t have to buy plant food to see what dye you got, if you want to do more than one dye a day.

This is an MMO. MMOs evolve and change all the time. Keeping a list of all the times Anet made a change to the game should be longer.

Are you also advocating that they said there would be energy potions in the game and there are not energy potions in the game. Why isn’t that on your list. I’ll tell you why.

snip

Colin said straight out there would be no way to walk in the game only run. He said that it’s a quote. And then, due to people complaining, Anet added walk. It was a lie, right?

How about when Anet said there would be no way to change eye color that they couldn’t do it. And then Anet put changing eye color in the game, again due to the outcry from fans. How come that’s in your list. Anet said one thing but they did something else.

All MMOs evolve and change. Energy potions, eye color, the ability to walk instead of run are some examples and I can find probably dozens more.

If this is all Anet “lied about” in the years since the game’s inception, they have a pretty kitten good track record.

And I don’t see this thread as productive, just something that will start arguments for no reason. I think the mods should close it.

Hmmmm i’m not sure you know what bait and switch really means you cant say “Mostly” and have a valid point. I was reading this post and got so kitten ed off that i had to log in and reply. So, what your saying is that when i get an add in the paper for a Business saying “Sea food! all you can eat” i go to that Business sit down and the waiter tells me “Sorry sir, the sea food is 1 dish only” Then i say, wait in your Paper it said “All you can eat sea food” so i should (according to you) just get up and go to different business that sells sea food????. Your missing the real point to Bait and Switch. The BAIT part is to get you to play and promise you all this ‘Really new and cool stuff that no other MMO does’ and the SWITCH part is them changing the process when you INVEST your time with there product. I’m sorry but your Logic is totally and completely wrong.

“The intention of the bait-and-switch is to encourage purchases of substituted goods, making consumers satisfied with the available stock offered, as an alternative to a disappointment or inconvenience of acquiring no goods (or bait) at all”

Sorry but I was in retail for a long long time. Now if Anet made an ad, let’s say the manifesto or an article and TWO YEARS LATER they opened the business, and between the same two points they annouced what the business would have in great detail, it wouldn’t be bait and switch.

The point of bait and switch is immediacy. I advertise something today which I don’t have in stock and when you get into the store, I then at that point try to sell you something else. It’s a point of sale thing.

If I advertised something six months ago, and since changed what I do, no court in the WORLD would call that bait and switch.

A manifesto is not a guarantee of delivery, it’s a statement of intent. You can’t really call someone intending to do something but not guaranteeing it bait and switch, because not every intent can come to pass.

And beyond all that, you can argue all you want, but unless Anet advertises that dyes are account bound and that’s a major selling point of the game, and you end up buying the game JUST BECAUSE dyes are account bound, that wouldn’t be bait and switch either.

Sorry but the whole bait and switch thing is nothing more than hyperbole. You’re exaggerating a claim to try to make a point.

And using the words bait and switch means you lose credibility with those who know what it means.

Stuff said years before a product comes out doesn’t apply to bait and switch.

Shockwave.1230:

It’s just information in a raw form Vayne.

We’ll never know if the old dye system could have been implemented in a player friendly way, but I know that character bound isn’t as player friend as account bound. That much is obvious.

Dye’s being changed from account bound to character bound is obviously a way to increase revenue through the gemstore.

Really the issue people have is that they originally were thinking about the player’s convenience and decided to go against that for dollars.

Sorry but the old dye scheme, the one that Anet showed, would have been more likely to increase sales in the gem shop., not less.

See this is something else taken out of context. Anet had one system in place and changed THE WHOLE system. That includes whether a dye is account or player bound.

Now, you might think that you can pull one change out of the system analzye it and say that change is bad, but Anet had something really horrid in the cash shop (The plant food) and took it out. The system that you’re trying to make look more greedy is actually LESS greedy than it was before the change.

You then take one thing that’s changed not all of it, and point it out to make the decision seem to be nothing but greed. If Anet wanted to be greedy they’d have left in the original dye situation where dyes were account bound but you couldn’t sell or trade them and you had to buy plant food to grow more in a day.

Imagine how it would have been. You get a dye seed. You’re already growing one. You can’t grow another until you buy plant food from the cash shop. So you don’t buy it and you wait. 24 hours for a dye seed to mature, then you go and find out it’s the same dye you already have. But you can’t sell it on the marketplace. You can’t use it, because it’s account bound. You just have to delete it, because it’s worthless to you.

Do you really think that’s a better system?

Simplifying information is fine, as long as the full story emerges from that simplification. Taking a single change out of context and making it look like something it’s not (let’s say more greedy instead of less greedy), is misleading.

Anet didn’t just change the dye from account bound to unlocked on an individual character, but they revamped the whole dye system…and it’s much better this way than it was in beta.

And on that topic, it’s infinitely better than the dye system in Guild Wars 1 where you needed a bottle of dye each time you wanted to dye your armor for each piece of armor.

Tachenon.5270:

Krosslite.1950:

Tachenon.5270:

They will run out of things to do more quickly if there are fewer things to do (due to, for example, temporary content)

Hmmmm… This statement makes no sense. “fewer things to do” does not equate to temporary content.
Fewer things to do means not much content. We can look it up in the dictionary if you like.

Actually new content every two weeks be it temporary or permanent is MORE content. Means people have a lot to do.

How long does it take you to work through these living story installments? Does it take you a week? Two weeks? A month? How long? What do you do when you’re finished with the new temporary content? Do you keep doing it over and over? Do you just stop playing until the next batch of content comes along? Do you go back and do old content?

If, by some miracle, you go back and do old content while you’re waiting for new content, wouldn’t it be nice to have more old content to choose from, while you’re waiting for that new content?

It takes me a week probably to get through the content. I don’t use Dulfy. And I have other things going in like Guild Missions and such.

Helping people in my guild get the kite in the Eternal Battlegrounds takes time, because lots of people need it who are on at different hours.

I’ve done most of the achievements so far and I play a lot.

Sure I could push myself and get every achievment on day two. And people who play like that will never have enough content. I don’t think Anet should waste time trying to appease them.

Particularly if it annoys the other group of people who would feel compelled to do the old stuff even if they will never be able to catch up.

Erasculio.2914:

Mkalafut.1273:

All I said was that they designed the game similar to how they designed GW1. The manifesto was explaining the design philosophies to those not familiar with those of GW1.

You mean, the same Guild Wars that had “skill > time spent” as one of its main design philosophies?

Except that Guild Wars 1, for the most part, didn’t reward skill…at least not in PvE. Just about every dungeon could be run by someone. So someone with no skill could get the same rewads/titles etc. You could buy many if not most achievements.

You could get survivor as a title by grinding wurms that appear before you first reach the Eye. No danger at all, just a lot of grinding.

You could easily grind Luxon, Sunspear and lightbringer points in areas that were easy.

So what’s this mythical reward for skill people keep talking about?

Fey Zeal.7032:

The manifesto intended players to not have to grind levels. In some mmo’s you have to grind the same monsters, sometimes competing with others for the same spawns to earn levels. It is this kind of grinding Anet has eliminated.

Thanks for this. This is precisely what Anet was talking about. That and not having to get to “end game” to have fun encounters. It’s been explained so many times, it’s hard to imagine anyone can believe otherwise…unless they’re just saying it to further an agenda.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

Oh look. Another person quoting the manifesto out of context. Quoting an almost three year old video out of context doesn’t win arguments. It just makes you look like you were too lazy to actually pay attention to everything else Anet said about the game.

Oh look Vayne defending the manifesto again despite being proved wrong. And we were paying attention to everything anet said about the game at that time its why we know they have backtracked on their original vision for the game.

I haven’t been proved wrong and the fact that you’ve said so now, more than once, shows your complete lack of understanding of the issues. If your’e going to repeat that I’ve been proved wrong (and many people have agreed with me), then you should back it up with some evidence.

But you don’t have any evidence because it doesn’t exist. I think you should look up proof in the dictionary. I’m not sure it means what you think it means.

Edit: Anyone with even a basic knowledge of English should acknowledge that once a word is defined a document, the second usage of the same word right after in the same paragraph will retain that definition. Why is that so hard for you to understand?)

Evolution and even changing things isn’t bait and switch. Do you even know what bait and switch MEANS. In no court of law would ANY of this be considered bait and switch.

It’s like a restaurant opening mostly with seafood and finding out that more people like steak, so they get rid of some seafood dishes and start serving more steak. People who used to like the seafood dishes stop coming. But that isn’t bait and switch that’s the evolution of a business. Those who like steak have no problem with it. Those that like seafood find another seafood restaurant.

People who continually bring up stuff that was said even before the game launched are the same people who bring up old arguments about what you did last year when the argument should be about what’s happening today.

People are still complaining about the dye system? Really?

How come you’re not listing how the original dye system was where you got a seed drop and you had to go to the NPC in your home instance to grow that seed and you could only grow 1 per day, unless you spent money in the cash shop to buy plant food. Oh I know why you didn’t comment on that change. Because it didn’t prove this point you’re trying to make.

The old dye system was MUCH worse than the new dye system, even if those dyes would have been account bound. But you ignore this in your argument. Instead you point out one article, written by one employee before the game was actually released. In the beta, the plant food thing, with the seeds, that was in the game…and Anet changed it. But get this. They changed it FOR THE BETTER.

So the dyes are not account bound anymore, but you don’t have to buy plant food to see what dye you got, if you want to do more than one dye a day.

This is an MMO. MMOs evolve and change all the time. Keeping a list of all the times Anet made a change to the game should be longer.

Are you also advocating that they said there would be energy potions in the game and there are not energy potions in the game. Why isn’t that on your list. I’ll tell you why.

You want to pick on the things Anet changed that you don’t like, without balancing it out by listing the things Anet has said that they’ve changed that people do like. Here’s another example.

Colin said straight out there would be no way to walk in the game only run. He said that it’s a quote. And then, due to people complaining, Anet added walk. It was a lie, right?

How about when Anet said there would be no way to change eye color that they couldn’t do it. And then Anet put changing eye color in the game, again due to the outcry from fans. How come that’s in your list. Anet said one thing but they did something else.

All MMOs evolve and change. Energy potions, eye color, the ability to walk instead of run are some examples and I can find probably dozens more.

If this is all Anet “lied about” in the years since the game’s inception, they have a pretty kitten good track record.

And I don’t see this thread as productive, just something that will start arguments for no reason. I think the mods should close it.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

Saelune.5316:

GW2 doesnt require grinding. ALL grinding in this game is optional. If you want a legendary, you might need to grind, but you dont need a legendary. If you want ascended gear, you might need to grind, but you dont need ascended gear. Grinding is only an issue if you need to grind to advance, which you dont.

corection: if u want a legendary you MUST grind. no other option.

“we don’t want you to grind”… yeah, right.

Oh look. Another person quoting the manifesto out of context. Quoting an almost three year old video out of context doesn’t win arguments. It just makes you look like you were too lazy to actually pay attention to everything else Anet said about the game.

For those who say people are going to leave the game…it means zero. Nothing. People are going to leave the game no matter what. People are going to leave other games too. In one quarter WoW dropped from 10 million subscribers to 8.3 million. That’s a whole lot of people leaving. It’s what happens with games. No game is going to entertain everyone indefinitely.

The real and ONLY question is, what percent of the playerbase is leaving over time and how many are returning and how many will stay.

You have several types of players involved here.

You have people who don’t Pve at all and they don’t care. They’re waiting for changes to SPvP and WvW and tournaments or whatever.

Then you have the people who play mostly or exclusively PvE. Some of those people just play instances. It’s all they care about. They run fractals, do dungeons and everything else is filler. They’re not and never will be the majority in this game (and they’re not the majority in many other games too…though they often think they are).

Then there are people who are completionists who absolutely have to finish everything. I assume there are a fair few of these.

Then there are people who have TONS of time and other people who have relatively little time. And each will have their own needs and wants.

So how many people are going to leave this game over this. The most PvE completionists might and some of the people who have too much time on their hands might (I’m one of those but I like what Anet is doing so that’s why I say might).

This whole I’m leaving so this is bad nonsense, or everyone is going to leave because I don’t like it nonsense is just that…nonsense.

Change it so it’s the way one group likes it and OTHER PEOPLE will leave. Someone is always going to leave. That’s the nature of the game.

And new people will find the game and some people will come back. That’s the nature of the game.

Is it a big deal? Probably not as big a deal as most people think.

Aramean.2354:

Shiren.9532:

You’re saying the world is exactly the same as it was before that content but now we have to vote to get the old content to return to the game rather than maintain it as a permanent addition to the game, bolstering the permanent experience?

If someone comes back to the game this month after not being here all year they will find out they missed out on four weapon sets (Flame and Frost one, Karka one, Dragon Bash one, the SAB ones) two dungeons (Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat – both of which were only around for a couple of weeks), one mini dungeon (Canache’s Layer), several mini-games (Crab thing, Dragonball, SAB), lots of back items and a several plots. They can’t access these things.

I think that this is an important distinction in a lot of these discussions. What we’ve seen so far is a world that changes and then reverts back, changes again and reverts back again. If you are a player that has consistently been in the game over the last few months, then you’ve had a variety of new experiences that weren’t available when the game launched. However, if you are a returning player the game hasn’t added very much at all in terms of new playable content.

To be fair, the game has changed a lot over the last few months with the laurels, dailies, achievement rewards, etc. But those are things that affect your character when you play through the content…..they aren’t new content to play through.

Now the game released with a good number of dungeons and they did add a new permanent one since it released less than a year ago. As someone who works for a software company I find it incredible that they are able to release new content as fast as they are. If you would have told me in August that within the first year the game would have seen a new permanent dungeon, 2-3 new sPvP maps, a new playable zone, and a plethora of new in-game systems (dailies/monthlies, achievement rewards, WvW leveling system) I would have been excited. The fact that we’ve also seen the incredible amount of other content that has been released as temporary is, in my opinion, stunning.

The disappointing thing for players like me is that there is significant amount of playable content that I will never be able to experience because I didn’t login for a brief period of time. It’s like “hey, we did these awesome things….too bad you’ll never see them!”

It’s very possible that ArenaNet is working on large permanent content as we speak. Obviously there are a number of elder dragons out there other than Zhaitan and new zones to unlock. If we end up getting those types of changes somewhat regularly, then it will help to lessen some of the disappointment in missing other content. If I was getting permanent content every so often and then using the temporary content as a way to hold me off in-between I could definitely live with that. Like I said, that could be exactly the plan but since that hasn’t been explicitly stated I can only talk about my opinions of the current temporary content release design.

People are simply too focused on dungeons. I don’t really think that was ever Anet’s focus, not even in Guild Wars 1. They’re focused more on the world. When they released War in Kryta in Guild Wars 1 it wasn’t a dungeon. Nor was any of the other new content after Eye of the North came out.

So you ignore the meta event and other new events, the new jumping puzzle, the moa racing and the new drinking game all of which are staying. You ignore that Cragstead has indeed changed and so has Southsun (Southsun has actually changed quite a lot).

You even ignore the guild missions that have changed those areas an added content.

And the new PvP map.

You can say the game hasn’t changed, but what you’re really saying is there hasn’t been a permanent DUNGEON.

That’s only one type of change. And I think you’d be very surprised at how few people actually focus on dungeons out of the entire playerbase, just as many who raid on other games doesn’t see how few people by percentage actually like raiding.

So people think that being a PvEer means running dungeons. That’s their opinion of what PvE is.

They’ve been trained by so many dungeon-centric games over the years that anything that’s not a dungeon doesn’t count and isn’t content.

I’ve been waiting for an MMO that doesn’t center on dungeons for a long long time. I’m not in favor of spending huge amount of time on dungeons so people who run them over and over again and get bored three weeks later.

Erasculio.2914:

CryxTryx.9208:

TDLR: – GW2 is an MMO and so by definition, by design, by ne·ces·si·ty requires repeatable content grind.

MMOs need grind as much as they need the holy trinity.

Which is to say, they don’t.

People are so used to mediocre MMOs that they cannot see the difference between the flaws in current MMOs and the flaws of the genre. ArenaNet could and was trying to do something about them, but they didn’t dare to go all the way out there.

As to why MMORPG players think MMOs need to have grind, I have writen about that here, so I won’t repeat myself.

Vayne.8563:

Erasculio.2914:

By claiming to be a “MMO for people who don’t like MMOs” (Manifesto, remember?), the idea behind GW2 is that it would not work like the other MMOs do. Which is good, considering how mediocre the MMORPG genre has been.

In that, ArenaNet failed, though. The GW2 community is still filled with the grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters that make the majority of other MMOs’ communities.

The game didn’t fail because a bunch of people don’t change. The game succeeded by offering gamers like me something different…and it IS different.

Reading comprehension, buddy. When I say “In that, ArenaNet failed”, I’m not saying Guild Wars 2 failed, I’m saying ArenaNet failed at the goal I had mentioned in the previous line, being a MMO for people who don’t like MMOs.

After all, I’m speaking English, yoiu’re taking one line out of context. There’s no other way to describe taking one line out of the paragraph and refusing to acknowledge the preceding line.

I still disagree. Anet didn’t fail. They’ve provided a game for people who want to play this sort of game. That’s not failure, that’s success. If they now go and make this game a full on gear grind, then they would have failed.

Edit: I don’t like other MMOs. I pretty much can’t stand them. This one I like. Ergo Anet didn’t fail. Maybe they failed for you, personally, but plenty of people I know that don’t like MMOs do like Guild Wars 2.

Shiren.9532:

MightyMicah.7451:

Achievments are optional. You don’t need it.

So is owning a computer, playing the game, having a nice job, sending your kids to a good school, eating healthy food, education, a phone, the internet, housing, clean water. Hell, even living is optional.

Using “it’s optional” as a blanket statement to shoot down any criticism is like saying “I’m either an idiot or I have no intention of engaging in this conversation, I just want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing”.

Context is everything in communication.

We’re not talking about quality of life issues here like where you live or what you eat. We’re talking about a game you’re playing. Within the context of SOME MMOs, getting max level gear is a must or you’re locked out of content. Literally you can’t do the content at all. In many games you can’t even SEE the content.

In Guild Wars 2 the game doesn’t require you to get these items to see everything in the game. Even if you can’t get to high level fractals without BIS gear, you can still see every fractal.

It’s the same with achievement points. As fast or as slow as you get them, the game doesn’t vastly differ. What differs is the attitude a person brings to the game.

Some people have been trained for years to HAVE TO HAVE BIS gear and in most games, to play all the content, you do have to have BIS gear. But not this game.

So when someone says you don’t need BIS gear or you don’t need every achievement, they’re talking in context about a game that doesn’t require you to have those things.

It’s not about ignoring or not wanting to engage with someone in debate. You’re the one who’s not wanting to debate by trying to take an argument out of context to make a point.

Within the context of this game, very little is required to experience all the content, and get the most out of the game.

Erasculio.2914:

CryxTryx.9208:

I start to wonder if the people who make this complaint have ever played an MMO before. It is not how an MMo work.

True. But then again, other MMOs “work” by catering to addicts who have more free time than brains to figure out that they are no better than Skinner rats.

By claiming to be a “MMO for people who don’t like MMOs” (Manifesto, remember?), the idea behind GW2 is that it would not work like the other MMOs do. Which is good, considering how mediocre the MMORPG genre has been.

In that, ArenaNet failed, though. The GW2 community is still filled with the grinders, farmers, addicts and exploiters that make the majority of other MMOs’ communities.

The game didn’t fail because a bunch of people don’t change. The game succeeded by offering gamers like me something different…and it IS different.

If it wasn’t, why would so many people be complaining about the lack of gear progression as just one example.

Erasculio.2914:

Vayne.8563:

For the 87th time, the manifesto was talking about grinding to get to the fun stuff. It SAYS that. Then recalled the word grind a couple of lines later.

Irrelevant. You have been stating it over and over, trying to twist ArenaNet’s words to excuse how they went back on their design philosophy about the game. As much as I listen to your opinion regarding some other topics, I’ll continue ignoring your excuses about the Manifesto as sycophantism.

I’m speaking English, yoiu’re taking one line out of context. There’s no other way to describe taking one line out of the paragraph and refusing to acknowledge the preceding line. I’ve talked to a whole lot of people about this…people with no agenda whatsoever.

Anet defined what it meant by grind then used the word grind again. If you ignore how they first defined it (and subsequently explained it) then you’re just being disingenuous.

Erasculio.2914:

lolstabz.7026:

I hesitate to mention the Manifesto, but like, we’re totally grinding.

I agree. Considering the Manifesto’s claim about how they didn’t want us to grind, the amount of rewards focused on grinding in the game is staggering.

However, I’m not sure that was the opinion of the entirety of ArenaNet. You can easily see how they mentioned systems with less grind, and had those replaced by more grindy ones before release. For example, the dye system – it was originally meant to be account bound, and later it was changed to character bound. The dungeon token system – at first we were told we would get one armor piece per run, and later the system was changed so we would get only some tokens after a run.

I think not everyone in ArenaNet had the same opinion about how healthy grind is for a game. Unfortunatelly, those responsible for the reward system and for the crafting system were those who love grind, hence the amount of rewards for grinding being significantly higher than the rewards for everything else.

For the 87th time, the manifesto was talking about grinding to get to the fun stuff. It SAYS that. Then recalled the word grind a couple of lines later.

It’s clear as day. As long as people keep taking that line out of context, I’ll keep calling them on it.

Tachenon.5270:

Galen Grey.4709:

Too much content is scary to players. They need that choice taken away from them so they won’t be pressured into doing it.

Its not so much as scary, but overwhelming really. Actually I am curious how not more players agree here.

It’s simple.

People often leave games when they run out of things to do. They will run out of things to do more quickly if there are fewer things to do (due to, for example, temporary content) than if there are more things to do (lots of permanent content).

Personally, I prefer games with ‘overwhelming’ amounts of content. Games with a wide variety of content – content that will be there when I’m ready to tackle it. I feel GW2 got off to a good start in this regard, a great start, even, but now this living story deal just isn’t providing the growth the game needs.

We new content coming out every 2 weeks MOST people will have stuff to do. The guys who can play 24/7..they’ll run out not matter what you do. So trying to appease them is next to pointless.

Some of them will come do the new stuff and leave until the next new stuff comes out. Some of them won’t.

But most people will have plenty to do with new content coming every 2 weeks.

Nick.6972:

They also said they’re taking everything we loved form GW1.

Your right, they did say that. Followed by two years of very detailed explanations about what was actually being done with the game. Everything from how dynamic events really work to how the personal story works, to how skills and weapons work.

Any who listened to that one line and ignored every single thing that came after it, shouldn’t be surprised that they’re disappointed.

I’d NEVER pay attention to one line from a video produced two years before a game came out, while ignoring every single thing that game after. I don’t know why anyone would.

Edit: It’s about weighting. You weighted that one line and assigned it far more importance than the countless hours of videos and interviews that came after.