Guild Wars 2

TheManowar.2014:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

They said a number of contradictory things. Clarity has never been one of Anet’s strong points.

Before launch they told us straight out that skills would be linked to weapons. They gave examples. They told us straight out there would be ten skills, five determined by the weapon. They even said one would be a dedicated slot for healing and one would be an elite slot. They said directly there would be less skills than Guild Wars 1 as well.

Entire discussions happened on Guild Wars 2 guru about people being worried because there were less skills. This was something that was widely known before the game launched.

In fact, it was known as early as september 2010, almost two years before game launch: wiki archive 1, wiki archive 2

I agree one can like or dislike the differences between GW1 and GW2 skill systems, but surely there was much time for anyone to form an educated opinion about them, well before game launch.

EDIT: I just found an old GW2Guru discussion dating 01 May 2010 where a quote by Regina Buenaobra specifically refers to the skillbar composition: "You will also be able to use different weapon combinations: If for example, you have an axe in your main hand, this will define your first three skills. Pick up a shield – this defines the next 2 skills. Switch to a mace in your offhand – those skills change, basically giving you a different set of combinations. Switch to a Greatsword and you get 5 completely different skills.

All of this is then complemented by your free choice for the other 5 slots. Yes, one slot is reserved for a healing skill, and one for an elite skill – but we are not talking about one healing skill here, you will have a variety of different heal and elite skills to slot, each with their different flavors, each changing the way you actually play (aka your build)." So yeah, plenty of time to inform yourself about it.

You’re my hero. lol

I have a pretty good memory about this stuff, but because I had to do a lot of research for a living, I sort of burned out on looking stuff up. Fortunately, people like you exist.

Ashen.2907:

They said a number of contradictory things. Clarity has never been one of Anet’s strong points.

Before launch they told us straight out that skills would be linked to weapons. They gave examples. They told us straight out there would be ten skills, five determined by the weapon. They even said one would be a dedicated slot for healing and one would be an elite slot. They said directly there would be less skills than Guild Wars 1 as well.

Entire discussions happened on Guild Wars 2 guru about people being worried because there were less skills. This was something that was widely known before the game launched.

Taltevus.3289:

I’d just like to correct this entire thread as much as I am in a Love Hate Bonding with Gw2.

THERE WAS NEVER ANY DIRECT CLARIFICATION ABOUT WHAT LESSON WAS LEARNED.
THERE WAS NEVER ANY DIRECT CLARIFICATION ABOUT WHAT LESSON WAS LEARNED.

All that was said was that, “A”, Lesson had been learned. There has been no factual statement as to explicitly what the specific lesson that was learned.

It could have been about sales.
It could have been about HoT.
It could have been about the Gemstore.
It could have been about what they mistook players wanted.
It could have been about the LACK of free accounts switching to paid accounts.
It could have been about how much an expansion pack really does for an MMO.
It could have been about a choice ArenaNet made independently in opposition to NcSoft’s advising.

It’s too dang bad that they never said what that lesson was.
This entire thread assumes that the lesson learned had anything to do with the painfully obvious to us…lack of universal reception. HoT therefore could and can still be the future of Guild Wars 2.

This works both ways. There are a number of factors that stood in the way of HoT being well received over all. But people who like a specific type of play believe that not getting that specific type of play is “the” reason HoT didn’t do well, or a major reason. There’s no real evidence of that. There are probably a lot of reasons why HoT didn’t do as well as expected and much of it could simply be pricing and bad publicity.

Now, if it had changed and HoT was completely casual with open maps and another group of people gave it bad publicity because they didn’t get what they wanted, how do you know sales wouldn’t have been the same or worse?

Anet might or might not have learned the lesson. The question is, who really knows what the lesson actually is?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

I think the 4th Birthday and Anniversary Gifts were very nice. They added all the dyes that were left out of the 3rd Birthday Gift, we got a Mail Carrier and a Backpack, Birthday Boosters are always helpful, Teleport to a Friend is useful (unless you have no friends, of course); the Scroll – meh – not so much.

I can’t tell you how many Necrid Horsemen and those two-headed lion things I got in GW1 for birthdays.

Scroll is useful for keyfarming if you like that sort of thing.

So what you’re saying is a white mini on a bunch of Guild Wars 1 characters, because that’s what you got most often, is somehow better than we’re getting here?

Okay. I think a single white mini per character is much worse than we get here. Sure you could get a green or a gold mini, but what are the odds.

Someone could theoretically have started Guild Wars 1 two years after it launched and they’d be two years behind on birthday presents where the mini they get, if it was white, would have been worth next to nothing. And I’m sure those people complained.

At the end there were probably more people like that, than people that have every dye.

Birthday boosters, a 24 hour buff is actually pretty nice. Teleports to a friend? I use them all the time. A nice back piece once per account, pick the best you want, so everyone doesn’t have the same thing, nothing wrong with it.

And the dyes, which for most people would be worth more than the white mini they were most likely to get in Guild Wars 1.

I’m sorry but this is definitely a case of rose colored glasses. I one year in Guild Wars 1, I opened presents on 12 characters and got 11 whites and a purple. I promise you I wasn’t thrilled with what I’d gotten.

I’ll go on record to say the dyes are probably as good or better, and everything else is gravy.

This is what I keep telling people and when they accept my offer for help,. what I show them. The HoT maps are truly truly awesome. The most fun I have in this game right now is figuring out new ways to improve how I get around on those maps.

Today I took a guildie into VB and we got 10 of the 11 Hero points in like record time. I avoided the bat guano because I’m lazy. lol

Then I ran her to TD and got her the points she needed there to get around.

No hassle at all. She was like I didn’t even die once. I’m like of course you didn’t. You were there with me. lol

Gehenna.3625:

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

Nothing like taking a brilliant game and completely binning some of the best aspects of it for the sake of dumbing down for the console generation eh

Well this is a big part in the reason why I bought the game, started playing it and dropped in within a couple of months. GW2 has nothing in common with GW1 except the name. It was an automatic break of promise to those who were along for the ride from the first announcement of GW2.

People can like both GW1 and GW2, but nobody can maintain that the two games have much in common at all if anything. Just the cosmetics they are bringing back in. And because the systems are so different, I don’t expect them to bring back GW1 style skill choice in this game.

I can reminisce and complain forever that GW2 isn’t like GW1 at all and that they didn’t deliver on their earlier promises and representations. But that’s all water under the bridge now. I do play GW2 now casually and spent some money on it gladly, but I’ll never be into it as I was with GW1. Such is the reality for me and life does go on.

Wasn’t a break of a promise to me and I was a die hard Guild Wars 1 player. They said there would be less skills, and they said there would be no second profession. I’m not sure what information you were listening to, but I knew LONG before preorders opened this game wouldn’t be like Guild Wars 1 with the way skills were set up.

A promise is when they say they’ll do something absolutely and they don’t. In this case, they said they weren’t going to do it, and people either didn’t pay attention or didn’t believe it.

I think the exploit should be fixed too, but I wouldn’t call that toxic. I’d call it strict. The rules are the rules and if you just decide to do what you want and everyone does, it all falls apart. Make an exception for one, and others end up suffering.

So they do what they do. You enter that arrangement with that understanding.

Hearts weren’t even added to this game until the third beta test before launch. The first two beta tests didn’t have them.

They were only added because people must have markers on their maps. Other games so conditioned people to look for stars or exclamation marks, or whatever, that people couldn’t function without that. So they added hearts to keep people in areas where events spawn.

Hearts have several disadvantages, whatever their advantages are.

1. You can only do them once. That means, every time I return on to that zone on the same character, and my hearts are done, I’m pretty much playing the zone without hearts anyway.

2. If you’ve done world complete on multiple characters, as I have, they’re a completely useless time sink. The rewards are paltry, they take time, and I can’t complete the map and make another legendary unless I do 300 hearts, most of which aren’t that exciting and some of which are downright annoying. They don’t make world completion more fun, particularly after your second or third. I’m working on my seventh.

3. Hearts take time to create. You create a hard, for a player to do once, for 1-5 minutes. That seems like an awful lot of wasted time.

If hearts do make it back into the game somehow (and I hope they don’t) they need to alter them to make them repeatable, and vary them more.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Even the skills in Guild Wars 1 were more complex and more conditional over all. They related to each other. Do we have skills in this game that mimic other skills, or steal people’s skills and add them to your bar?

Skills in Guild Wars 1 tended to be more conditional and more dependent on other skills more often. One skill I remember required both a condition and a hex to be active on a player before it would proc properly.

No, there were a handful of peculiar skills but look it up…the vast majority of skills were straightforward and the really tricky ones you could ignore anyway. I mean who seriously used skill stealing?

Sure the Mesmer was a bit more tricky but in the end it is in GW2 as well just for different reasons.

And GW2 has plenty of conditional stuff that only happens on condition of something else, like doing more damage to targets that suffer from condition x or whatever.

Just a nice comparison for ya.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_skills
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_necromancer_skills

I mean really. That’s GW1 after 3 expansions and GW2 after 1 expansion.

Not much weird going on in the GW1 list except a lot of skills in 1 list. GW2 has them grouped but there are still tons of skills and you do have to make choices in a different way.

You see a lot of conditional stuff in the GW1 Necro? And what about the GW2 Necro?

The GW2 skills can have up to 3 or 4 things going on at the same time. And some of the conditional stuff is actually put into the skill trees so it’s still there.

I can understand that people are not as smart as I like to assume but then they are also not getting the most out of their builds in GW2 just as GW1.

I think that the reason that GW2 is more accessible has to do with other things. Things like level sync and not having to team up to do content together for most of the game and getting lots of npcs in story missions.

No, the GW2 combat system is much more complex than you give it credit but they’ve made the game so that in general people don’t really notice if they have a bad build because you generally zerg things or just take longer to kill regular mobs.

HoT may have been too much for many because there you notice the differences more because aside from the meta there’s not a lot going on there usually, so you’re left to yourself or very small groups more often. People are faced with their builds then more than in the regular leveling zones I bet.

Okay, guilty secret time.

I loved using skill stealing in the first mission in Nightfall in hard mode. The guys only had one skill. If you stole it, they had no skills at all, and didn’t attack. I found it funny. lol

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

I think you’re remembering wrong here. You get your second profession in pre-searing ascalon. You can literally have two professions in your first hour of playing the game. You might think every one can maintain that pace, I assure you that is not the case.

Apparently not. Now you’re right that you get to pick a second profession early on and that does by itself add a level of complexity, but really, you don’t have many skills to choose from.

You might be right about the pace though. There may be some semantic issues going on as well. When I speak of complexity I look at the levels and interactions of the combat system itself. I get the feeling that isn’t quite how you approach it. You are clearly looking at different things that I would not class as complexity but might be hard for people to follow nonetheless.

Vayne.8563:

It’s easy to tell you’re a smart guy. Like a lot of smart people, you assume most people are able to do what you do, or some facsimile of it. I assure you that’s not the case.

Hmm. I have no counter argument to that.

Even the skills in Guild Wars 1 were more complex and more conditional over all. They related to each other. Do we have skills in this game that mimic other skills, or steal people’s skills and add them to your bar?

Skills in Guild Wars 1 tended to be more conditional and more dependent on other skills more often. One skill I remember required both a condition and a hex to be active on a player before it would proc properly.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 2 has builds but entry level builds are the weapon you choose. Five of your skills are determined by weapons and those weapon skills are determined by devs. Yes, we make our own builds but anyone who picks up any weapon is using dev assigned skills.

How many skills does a new player start with on their first character? Zero, if I remember right and you have to kill some mobs with basic weapon attacks to gain your first skill. And then you gain others, Until finally your bar is full. Then you get a secondary class. How many of those skills do you start with? Hundreds or do you have to unlock them first?

Honestly. It’s preposterous to call that complex.

I do think a lot of people didn’t get how it works because it was very different from what they were used to. I think back then the PC game world was more separate from the console gamers.

Nowadays people are more used to this type of set up, but GW2 is still very strange compared to other MMOs with a limited skill bar and skills linked to weapons. To me the link between skills and weapons was one of the biggest turn offs. It still would be if I wanted to play this game less casually as I do.

Vayne.8563:

Yes, I think WoW was a lot easier than Guild Wars 1. Not a little, a lot. Getting into WoW at the entry level was easier. I’ve done them both and I found WoW to be braindead easy and I left WoW for the original Guild Wars because of that.

Well I never played WoW myself but I wonder if more people who played both games agree with you. I find it surprising but I can’t agree nor disagree on this point as a consequence.

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 2 gives you 8 slots, and that’s it. The second you get 9 skills, you’re leaving something off that bar. You get your second profession pretty fast, so you can get 9 skills pretty fast. Which do you leave off? Which do you keep?

This is complex to you is it? Choosing between two skills once you get number 9? There are always skills you like better or not. And GW2 makes you choose between skills as well or weapon skills. How often do we not see questions in GW2 about “which weapon is best for my class”? And then we haven’t even touched skill trees.

Vayne.8563:

If you’re a gamer, if you’re already an MMO player, it’s different. But a lot of people, who come to MMOs for the first time, they’re really lost.

Surely you’ve seen those posts.

I’ve seen those posts in all MMOs I’ve played. This is a non-argument to me as such. And in the 6-7 years I played GW1 I’ve heard people ask which build was best and I’ve heard people complain that there were no skill trees etc. But I do not remember people generally complaining that it was too hard. That just hasn’t been my experience in all that time.

Well, perhaps it’s because I never play on US servers

I think you’re remembering wrong here. You get your second profession in pre-searing ascalon. You can literally have two professions in your first hour of playing the game. You might think every one can maintain that pace, I assure you that is not the case.

It’s easy to tell you’re a smart guy. Like a lot of smart people, you assume most people are able to do what you do, or some facsimile of it. I assure you that’s not the case.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

I know a lot of people who left Guild War 1, because they wanted to log in an just start killing stuff. Guild Wars 1 is more of a strategy game. Guild Wars 2 has more of an arcade element. It appeals to a different group of people.

I will agree that GW1 had more strategy to it, but I know a lot of people who enjoyed GW1’s style. Shall we fight over the definition of what “a lot of people” means and who has the best anecdotal evidence?

The element that does make sense here is the Arcade comment. GW1 builds up a bit more slowly and it was a discovery of the world and your class(es). GW2 is more fast paced, though at the same time killing mobs take more time. An interesting combination.

Vayne.8563:

If you’re used to just going into a game and killing stuff, or even if you’re used to something like WoW, Guild Wars 1 was a step up in complexity.

I’m surprised at this. You answer my question with a yes then. I’ll say that you are the first person that I know of that considers GW1 more complex than WoW. I wonder how other people who played both those games feel about that.

Vayne.8563:

Not everyone wants to spend time figuring out builds.

That’s just a lame excuse sorry. GW2 has builds. There is the choice of 2 sets of weapons and the second half of the skill bar with skill trees behind it. You need to figure those things out as well. It’s complete and utter bull to say that GW2 has no builds in it. I referred to the guides for GW2 classes which are very lengthy.

And there were plenty of sites that told you which builds where out there so you didn’t have to figure them out yourself. People even had files you could copy into your builds folder. So to say GW1 was tricky because it had builds is nonsense, all games have builds GW2 included. Not to mention heroes. You could just give them the builds that other people figured out and they play the game for you mostly.

The one thing that holds water in what you say is that GW2 is more fast paced overall. Right into the action as you say. GW1 built up more slowly but it’s not more complex.

GW1:
Level to 20. Gather hundreds of skills. Websites tell you which builds are most powerful. Copy/Paste file or do it yourself and use 8 skills as described. Save a few different builds from Copy/Paste for different content types.

GW2: Level to 80. Gather hundreds of skill points. Websites tell you which builds are best but they are very lengthy guides. Get two weapons sets or more depending on what you do in game. Use 15 skills while clicking back and forth with longer cooldowns + any F1-F4 skills you may have as a class and make sure the skill trees are set correctly and that you know what the effects are you so can actually have the benefits of them.

Gear was also easier to get in GW1.

Seriously, do you really want to contend that GW1 was more complex? Sure you have lots of skills to choose from but the builds are so easy to obtain and to load and to use. GW2 factually has more complexity because of the skill trees and synergies between various aspects of your build and a lot more skills than just the 8 slots GW1 had.

GW2 more fast paced? Yes. Less complex? Hell no.

Guild Wars 2 has builds but entry level builds are the weapon you choose. Five of your skills are determined by weapons and those weapon skills are determined by devs. Yes, we make our own builds but anyone who picks up any weapon is using dev assigned skills.

Yes, I think WoW was a lot easier than Guild Wars 1. Not a little, a lot. Getting into WoW at the entry level was easier. I’ve done them both and I found WoW to be braindead easy and I left WoW for the original Guild Wars because of that.

But I don’t believe I’m atypical of the average gamer either.

The difference is not just complexity but where the complexity comes from. WoW also gives you skills when you start, but you never have to choose, because you can put every skill on bars. Those are your skills. You might only use two or three of them, but you can just run around anyway, because they’re all available all the time.

Guild Wars 2 gives you 8 slots, and that’s it. The second you get 9 skills, you’re leaving something off that bar. You get your second profession pretty fast, so you can get 9 skills pretty fast. Which do you leave off? Which do you keep?

Everything in WoW was following a star on your map to a wall of text. There was no thought process for me. There was nothing like missions.

Yes, I found WOW easier. And Guild Wars 1 is harder at the entry level for people to get into. Even Guild Wars 2 was considered by the devs to be too hard, which is why they introduced the NPE.

If you’re a gamer, if you’re already an MMO player, it’s different. But a lot of people, who come to MMOs for the first time, they’re really lost.

Surely you’ve seen those posts.

Malediktus.3740:

How is it an advantage to have cosmetic items earlier? If it would give stat or currency benefits I might agree with you.
But having these 2000 gem bundle things were a bit like wearing an expensive clock in real life.

If you have it when fewer people have it, for a lot of people it’s cooler. I knew it would eventually be sold separately because I saw the community outcry so I waited.

Anet can’t win. If they listen to the community and change something, someone complains, because they personally didn’t get in on the deal.

I’m glad they listened. If you have to have something right away, you’re most likely overpaying because most things eventually get discounted.

Zenith.6403:

Vayne.8563:

Everyone said Guild Wars 1 PvP was amazing, but a dev also said there are more people playing PvP in Guild Wars 2 right now than there ever were in Guild Wars 1.

That doesn’t make Guild Wars 2 PvP better, but I strongly suspect it makes it more accessible.

I can imagine dumbing down games has the positive effect of increasing accessibility. Why should developers bother to have any ambition to innovate when Candy Crush is the pinnacle of gaming? Any deviation from that is net loss. There is science in all of this and carefully manipulating key metrics creates profit.

I disagree with this idea. I want to experience art, interesting gameplay and positive feelings. I want to see companies that provide those succeed.

You can disagree if you like, but it’s not your money being invested in an MMO in this particular climate. MMOs are dangerous to make because they require a large investment with no real guarantee of pay off. You can’t afford to remake the wheel, even if you think it would be better for the genre.

Not like TSW is doing really well, but they went with a level-less system. They had good graphics, really good story but still didn’t really manage to catch on main stream and they’re suffering for it.

The higher the bar to entry the harder to pay for your investment.

It doesnt’ mean you don’t try to raise the bar, but you have to have a path to get to the bar.

I’m sure you’ve seen people complaining that HoT is too hard. They keep dying. There was no real smooth transition from the old Tyria to the new one. I mean, there were some steps up in difficulty like Silverwastes and Dry Top and particularly some of the Living World Season 2 stuff but it wasn’t gradual enough and it left too many people behind.

I love HoT. I think those are the best zones in the entire game. But a lot of people were left behind and HoT sales didn’t meet expectations.

It’s always easy to take a stand when you don’t have to answer to investors. It’s much harder when you’re not the only one you need to please/impress.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

I know Guild Wars 1 was diffficult because I ran a guild there for five years and ran a guild here for four.

Here you put on a weapon, 5 skills. The skills that matter most. You’re forced to take both a healing and elite skill. A lot of guys in GW 1 would have benefited from a healing skill, but didn’t take one because they wanted more DPS and figured the cleric would keep them alive.

The fact is, there you had 8 slots to fill from hundreds of choices, here you have 1 slot to fill from like three choices, three slots to fill from dozens. Your elite here is one choice out of three.

And Guild Wars 1 had a second profession. You’d effectively double the amount of skills to choose from.

Given eight slots with no real direction, this game is much much easier to build…there’s probably a fair number of players here who’ve been to the trait screen once and never looked again. But at least they have usable skills.

Honestly, when you start GW1 as a new player you don’t get all those skills right away. You have to unlock them as you go along. It’s not till later that all those skills come along and by then your brain should’ve sparked once or twice and the builds are easier to make than reading through a guide for a GW2 class.

But I think I get your point just in a different way. I don’t think it’s an inability but an unwillingness to learn that we face in today’s world. The media have all but convinced people that they don’t need to think for themselves and that there’s always a guiding hand to tell them what to do and where to go.

You may have experienced this in your guild already back then but it baffles me to think that people think GW1 to be difficult. I still don’t believe that, so for me it’s just that when you give people freedom, they’ve forgotten how to make choices for themselves.

That’s actually really saddening when I think about it.

I know a lot of people who left Guild War 1, because they wanted to log in an just start killing stuff. Guild Wars 1 is more of a strategy game. Guild Wars 2 has more of an arcade element. It appeals to a different group of people.

If you’re used to just going into a game and killing stuff, or even if you’re used to something like WoW, Guild Wars 1 was a step up in complexity.

Not everyone wants to spend time figuring out builds.

Hearts aren’t the main or best way to level. You really want to find dynamic events…the orange circles. Dynamic events are more effective than leveling with hearts. Doing all the hearts doesn’t mean you’ve seen everything in a zone.

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

Well yes and no. This has to do with barrier of entry. Not everyone likes chess but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great game. However, chess also has a barrier to entry. It requires thought and not everyone wants to think while playing games, and therein lies the problem.

You can’t make everyone like a game, but you can remove barriers to entry. To put it another way…

It still goes both ways but the more I think about it, the more I’m actually trying to wonder what was so difficult about GW1 compared to GW2. Look at the class guides for GW2, which are rather lengthy. The GW1 build were never that complex.

GW1 started in pre-searing and then you leveled on. Gearing was very straightforward because all max level gear had the same stat level. It was all the best gear and the rest was about cosmetics. And only later when things came in like DOA did you need to do infusions…I mean gain lightbringer levels to get resistances, but it was a more straightforward thing to do to get the minimum level required. No really, I am not sure what made GW1 so unaccessible in your view. GW2 has been far more confusing to me than GW1 ever was.

Vayne.8563:

The average person has an average IQ. They also have an average amount of time to devote to gaming. Outliers with have almost no time to devote or they’ll have all the time in the world, like me, but most people will be somewhere in between.

You can’t make a game for the outliers and expect it to go mainstream because there are less outliers than there are people within the norm.

Now here’s the thing. WoW dumbed things down and GW1 compared to EQ was also dumbed down and came out not long after WoW I believe. WoW blew everything out of the water. No game has been so successful in the MMO genre and it was totally mainstream. Are you seriously saying that GW1 was much harder than WoW, because that’s the correct comparison of the time.

You make a dangerous statement about IQ but it is true, however, most people had average IQs when WoW came out as well. I don’t see how that is different today then it was then.

Vayne.8563:

So you make the game harder to enter into by making builds that require thought and or research and you lose a percentage of players. The harder you make it to get into the more percentage of players you use. This is called hedging your bets.

I lost interest in GW2 because leveling was endless and being level 80 was pointless. It’s better now but I think GW1 was niche mostly because it didn’t have all the amenities of a regular MMO like 3D maps, crafting and a persistent world. I really don’t think it was niche because of the combat system.

Vayne.8563:

There’s a reason WoW is far easier than EQ was and it’s also far more popular than EQ was, as far as player numbers go anyway. It’s because WOW “dumbed down” the genre and allowed more people access.

Well again are you saying GW1 was so much harder than WoW and didn’t dumb down from EQ? Because I don’t agree and that basically debunks your point.

Another question. Is GW2 dumbed down from WoW?

Vayne.8563:

In recent years, due to the proliferation of MMOs and even free to play MMOs, it’s been harder and harder to retain players for ALL MMOs including WoW. Even big MMOs struggle for market share.

So it makes sense to have a bigger pool of people to fish in, to try to get them to stay with the game. Raise the bar too high as far as skill, or time commitment or the knowledge you need, or the amount of research you need to do, or even the IQ needed to play the game and you cut out more people as that bar gets higher.

Yeah and this actually sums up why the MMO genre is struggling and nobody even gets close to the success of WoW. It’s these cowardly business tactics that perpetuate this. You simply cannot open a new MMO with so much less than existing MMOs in it. With less I mean endgame, I mean PvP options, I mean guild functionalities and storage facilities etc. These game companies shoot themselves in the foot thinking that they can start at base like games did in the past and repeat a similar success if they just get that one edge. That’s bull. A lot of players in MMOs have played MMOs before and are used to certain amenities. You can’t just say, oh we may implement that later. You mentioned retention, well the biggest loss of players is generally within the first 3 months after release because of advertising that facilitates ridiculous expectations and not having a robust enough start with in game functionalities for guilds etc. GW2 had that problem just like all other MMOs pretty much.

Vayne.8563:

Everyone said Guild Wars 1 PvP was amazing, but a dev also said there are more people playing PvP in Guild Wars 2 right now than there ever were in Guild Wars 1.

That doesn’t make Guild Wars 2 PvP better, but I strongly suspect it makes it more accessible.

Well, what did he mean? If GW2 has more players overall than GW1 obviously had less players doing PvP. If it has more relatively speaking then we are on to something. But then what did he consider PvP in his statement? Did he include the factions maps like Jade Quarry on the one hand and WvW on the other hand? Sorry but that statement by itself doesn’t tell me anything without proper context.

I know Guild Wars 1 was diffficult because I ran a guild there for five years and ran a guild here for four.

Here you put on a weapon, 5 skills. The skills that matter most. You’re forced to take both a healing and elite skill. A lot of guys in GW 1 would have benefited from a healing skill, but didn’t take one because they wanted more DPS and figured the cleric would keep them alive.

The fact is, there you had 8 slots to fill from hundreds of choices, here you have 1 slot to fill from like three choices, three slots to fill from dozens. Your elite here is one choice out of three.

And Guild Wars 1 had a second profession. You’d effectively double the amount of skills to choose from.

Given eight slots with no real direction, this game is much much easier to build…there’s probably a fair number of players here who’ve been to the trait screen once and never looked again. But at least they have usable skills.

I’ll add my thanks too.. I’ve played many, MANY MMOs. This is by far the one that best suits my play style.

Yep, I loved the gift too. Finally got shadow abyss dye.

Posts like this make me chuckle a bit.

It’s like you hate PvE because it’s too kitten easy but for many people PvE is about lore and story, not doing metas and world bosses. It leads to speculation about what comes next. Where’s the story going? Who is E? There are things that are far more mentally stimulating than PvP to many of us.

Putting it another way, did you see the new Star Wars movie? I didn’t because it was just too easy.

Some of us play to be entertained rather than challenged. And it’s okay to want to be challenged, but that’s not why everyone is here.

The combination of the forum bug and the flood control penalty for getting too many infractions is just….gah. lol

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

I’m guessing that for every person who loved, this, there was someone else sitting there not able to come to terms with the last build they made. Or not being able to figure out how to make a build at all.

It was good for people who loved that game like me. It was bad for getting more people to love that game. I think the game remained niche because of the number of people who bought it, tried it, and walked away without really understanding what was going on.

I think much the same can be said of GW2. Do you not think that for every person who likes the game there is at least one who doesn’t or walked away?

GW2 is a game that is sort of easy to play and get into but by making it so easy it gets boring. That’s the downside of the GW2 approach…and before you say that “boring” is a matter of opinion, ask yourself why there are level skip items in the game. Make a character instantly level 20, then level 30, now a level 40 token is on the way with the new birthday stuff, but the level cap hasn’t been increased, has it? When you do your dailies you get more more level tokens.

Yes GW2 is definitely easier to get into but I don’t necessarily agree that this is better for the game. If your only measurement is that more people played GW2 than GW1, well, that could be true. However, that’s a very shallow measuring stick. I think GW1 is still the better game of the two. That’s my personal opinion but I am not of the persuasion that a bigger game is better simply because it’s well…bigger.

Well yes and no. This has to do with barrier of entry. Not everyone likes chess but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great game. However, chess also has a barrier to entry. It requires thought and not everyone wants to think while playing games, and therein lies the problem.

You can’t make everyone like a game, but you can remove barriers to entry. To put it another way…

The average person has an average IQ. They also have an average amount of time to devote to gaming. Outliers with have almost no time to devote or they’ll have all the time in the world, like me, but most people will be somewhere in between.

You can’t make a game for the outliers and expect it to go mainstream because there are less outliers than there are people within the norm.

So you make the game harder to enter into by making builds that require thought and or research and you lose a percentage of players. The harder you make it to get into the more percentage of players you use. This is called hedging your bets.

There’s a reason WoW is far easier than EQ was and it’s also far more popular than EQ was, as far as player numbers go anyway. It’s because WOW “dumbed down” the genre and allowed more people access.

If you make a game that only 50% of people could possibly like, you’re going to get a fraction of 50% of people who like your game, since not everyone likes the same thing. If you make a game that 80% of people could possibly like, you’ll get more people to try it and stay longer by percentage. It’s the rate at which you retain players and it’s important in MMOs.

In recent years, due to the proliferation of MMOs and even free to play MMOs, it’s been harder and harder to retain players for ALL MMOs including WoW. Even big MMOs struggle for market share.

So it makes sense to have a bigger pool of people to fish in, to try to get them to stay with the game. Raise the bar too high as far as skill, or time commitment or the knowledge you need, or the amount of research you need to do, or even the IQ needed to play the game and you cut out more people as that bar gets higher.

You can’t make everyone like every game. But you can lower the barrier to entry that more people are going to try a game.

Everyone said Guild Wars 1 PvP was amazing, but a dev also said there are more people playing PvP in Guild Wars 2 right now than there ever were in Guild Wars 1.

That doesn’t make Guild Wars 2 PvP better, but I strongly suspect it makes it more accessible.

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

Crimson Clouds.4853:

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

The discussion in groups about which builds you`d run, if you didn`t have A) could you run which was similar but with 1 or 2 different skills, then so and so could run his other build that`d work with them , it was a real collaboration, esp going into places like Sorrows Furnace the first time, the Deep, Urgoz, FOW

Isn’t this the case with raids and high level fractals though? This is hardcore content- designed to challenge players looking for one.

This sort of build/party requirements slow down gameplay in other areas of the game. A-net clearly stated that they wanted people to be able to quickly enter dungeons rather than having to wait for ages for a particular class or build to join.

My point is this: it sounds like in general you want content that requires careful management of your build and your party members to do the same. This would be considered harder content in GW2. With HoT, A-net put a strong emphasis on hardcore content. It sounds like new raids/wings will be a common thing.

Having harder content that doesn’t affect the core content is the best compromise. It allows everybody to play in the areas that suit them best. Increasing the difficulty and time investment required to play the game is not beneficial for the community overall.

Freeing up the skills and weapons would mean you could take anything you wanted into a dungeon, you`d have access to them all so there wouldn’t be any waiting for a particular class ,lets face it you`ve now got engies running round with hammers and necs with bloody greatswords and axes….could have at least made it a scythe but nah, give a non CQC class a greatsword without the speed boosts to use it, makes sense. …It`s NOT about content ( though that could do some work ) its about bringing back some originality and god forbid a bit of experimentation with skills …such scary stuff eh. Because right now there isn`t any skill wise, its mob up and max damage everything in one go , no finesse, no style, no forethought, no originality . It`s tedious , oh what pres determined set of skills shall i equip with this as i fancy a weapon change …..thats it

This is wrong. I can’t tell you how long I used to wait for people in Guild Wars 1 to come on with a specific build to get into an Underworld or DOA group. People wanted very specific builds no matter how many skills there were available.

I-way anyone? How about Ursan-8. Guild Wars 1, if anything, had a stronger meta than this game.

Corvinus.8634:

Pls no more extreme puzzle maps… I’m about to jump the train because of VB and AB hassle… friggin hate puzzles when the game becomes all about it. Only thing right now that keeps me playing is my joy for my druid. When I finally reach a HP or Mastery champion, nobody is there because of some event I can’t reach either. Soloed a few champs – and veterans at the same time, but some are plain too hard.

I’m just pushing through it, at the same time getting exp to progress the story.

Silverwastes was actually rather fun, but VB/AB where I’m currently at has me lookin that tired hulk face.

Ever think of joining a casual guild that can help you get that stuff?

Gehenna.3625:

Vayne.8563:

I’m relatively sure that almost every single MMO in existence, including WoW, has peaks and troughs based on things like sales, items in gem stores, and of course, bad management decisions.

That is the truth of it really. One bad or lesser quarter doesn’t mean anything by itself. I saw the quarterly results but I never quite got the panic of some people. NcSoft themselves certainly weren’t too fussed about it.

The most interesting thing to me really was how well Lineage 1 is still doing. That game is pretty ancient by now but still blows everything else they make out of the water. That’s something I find interesting to think about.

Lineage 1 is known as the WoW of Korea. That’s where it has it’s following and that’s where it makes much of it’s income. That same game couldn’t make it in the west.

It’s a bit like Eve Online, in that it’s player driven content. So if you have your feuds, and your alliances, it pretty much goes on forever. You don’t walk away from that kind fo thing easily. Particularly if you’ve spend hundreds of dollars on it and you’re in an active community.

Zenith.6403:

Vayne.8563:

I enjoyed making builds, but I don’t think it was great for the game over all, even though I personally enjoyed it.

Really? I thought getting skills was one of the biggest appeals of the first Guild Wars. Every new ability made me excited to try it out. Casting Shield of Regeneration felt like the ultimate way of saying “you will survive this fight, my friend”. Should I make that enemy caster kill itself, burn their energy or shut them down altogether? Where do you get that kind of kicks?

Yes, really, I don’t believe it was great for the game over all. Not because I didn’t enjoy it. Not because people like me didn’t enjoy it. I just don’t believe most players ARE like me.

There’s some sort of bias that the more strongly you feel about something or like something, the more you’ll believe that a majority of people feel the same way.

I’m guessing that for every person who loved, this, there was someone else sitting there not able to come to terms with the last build they made. Or not being able to figure out how to make a build at all.

It was good for people who loved that game like me. It was bad for getting more people to love that game. I think the game remained niche because of the number of people who bought it, tried it, and walked away without really understanding what was going on.

Galtrix.7369:

Congratulations? The only reason there was a surge is because of the Living Story being released + the HoT discount. I’d say you’re just proving the point of the naysayers. If GW2 needs new content in order to keep a decent amount of revenue, that supports the naysayer’s point.

This is a really interesting interpretation of events.

I’m relatively sure that almost every single MMO in existence, including WoW, has peaks and troughs based on things like sales, items in gem stores, and of course, bad management decisions.

Reference WoW when they release an expansion or when they release something like sparkle ponies, which they sold in their cash shop, and weren’t cheap. That’s how sales spike for pretty much all older games. They release new content or get some publicity for something and boom, more traffic and more money.

Or you get debacles like Eve Online which lost a lot of revenue and good will when they tried to release a cosmetic item in their cash shop, a monocle, which they tried to price for $90. That was a mistake and the game suffered for it on a number of levels.

At the end of the day, four year old games aren’t going to have a surge, unless they have a sale, or release new content, or put something in their cash shop.

Some of us were saying that the 9 month content drought had a lot to do with the lack of gem store sales, which is the biggest way this game is funded.

The content drought has ended and the new content has been relatively well received. That puts more people in the mood for buying gems. That increases income. They run a sale, people buy the game. No real surprise there, of course that increases income.

How does this prove the naysayers?

Are the naysayers suggesting there are other games that don’t have weak quarters after an extended content drought, and a game being four years old?

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Balkarrie Legacy.9175:

Justine.6351:

Balancing nightmare is how I think it was worded.

For as many skills as there were in gw1, the average ones were crowded out of skill bars by op/overtuned ones and then there were the skills that were weak/poor.

Removing weapon restrictions from skills will just end up with over half of them never being used. That’s not to say those skills are bad, just those skills would be crowded off the new op skill bars.

There needs to be some average skills ingame or everyone is going to stack aoe cc/heavy dmg/boon skillbars and make the game less about skill and more about spamming no-brain-hit-everything-get-everything all over the screen.

That`s the point, you COULDN`T run an op build because there were more than enough average ones , you actually contradict yourself on that btw , saying there were too many , but then that they`re needed …oh and don`t remove weapon restrictions because half of them won`t get used..uhm…so what…… give players the choice to use them or not.

You think there`s not enough op boonsharing builds right now ? My life how many more do you want with the revs, guards, druids, mes`s engies ? All of whom are massively op because they’re beloved of anets devs

You must have been playing a different version of GW1 than I ever did: there were tons of OP’d builds, but worse: if you weren’t into theorycrafting, it was all-too-easy to come up with _under_powered builds, since there were tons and tons of bad ones possible with so many options.

When I first heard about GW2’s system, I thought it was going to be terrible: skills being limited by choice of weapon, one of the utilities forced to be from a tiny set of healing skills, no dual profs, and no way to adjust the power of our trait lines… that sounded awful.

Still, I kept an open mind and now I find the current system to be more adaptable and more fun, because skilled play matters more than skilled-choice of builds. Plus, it’s much, much easier to help others out and support them.

In short, I don’t want to see the GW1 system back in any of its aspects (except, of course: we should have been able to save builds at launch).

Aww bless, you weren`t into making your own builds up so prefer to be told what you can use , so therefore no one should have the option to make their own builds up . Some of us enjoyed that experimentation , because actually, it IS part of playing ! As for skilled playing, yeah more macros really improved that eh 20 button gaming mice..yeah thats skill …

Well I was into making my own builds and I still think the Guild Wars 2 system is better for most people. The problem is, too many people came into Guild Wars 1, built crappy characters, and left because they didn’t know what was going on. And that’s not good for the game.

One of the biggest things any MMORPG can do for the game and its players is to remove barriers to entry.

Guild Wars 1 was a niche game. Guild Wars 2 is less of a niche game, partly because barriers to playing the game have been removed.

I enjoyed making builds, but I don’t think it was great for the game over all, even though I personally enjoyed it.

In Guild Wars 2, which skills linked to weapons, at least everyone has a chance to play the game, even if they don’t focus on builds.

This has nothing to do with freedom. It has everything to do with success.

I was sure it would go up, but I’m not sure how much I’ll believe anything until I see the actual report from NcSoft.

There are at least a couple of jumping puzzles in HoT. They’re simply not listed as jumping puzzles.

Why must something have an achievement in the jumping puzzles section of the game to be considered a jumping puzzle.

There’s a jumping puzzle that requires leyline gliding, for example, but also has jumping in it past the Golem HP in AB. To get to the top of the great tree without gliding, you have to do a jumping puzzle and there is a chest at the end. There’s a jumping puzzle in VB with a mastery point on top of it.

I’m sure there are more as well. They’re just not called jumping puzzles. In every other particular they are.

Edit: There even a jumping puzzle to get to the top of an airship in TD that’s a hidden achievement.

seabhac.5346:

It is times like these that I really wonder why, after 4 dedicated years, as a veteran, we can’t have all 5 skins. Why, why, why? I mean, what would be the harm? We’ve been here, supporting the game for 4 years! Let us have all 5 skins.

That is all.

Well you can have a four year old character and not be a dedicated veteran. Having a character at launch and leaving for four years gets you the same birthday present I get. Not everyone has played continuously in that time.

Having a four year old character doesn’t make you particularly loyal.

Edit: but there should have been some kind of warning anyway.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Vayne.8563:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Vayne.8563:

Djinn.9245:

Neurion.4086:

Sanctum Scramble stands between me and Glint’s Bastion. I guess my Revenant will never get this shield. I find this adventure more annoying than words can describe. Not that I like GW2 adventures in general, but this one takes the cake.

You have to wonder who thought that making Adventures, which rely on how well your computer communicates with Anet’s servers, was a good idea since GW2 is very popular globally. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that then some genius gated Mastery Points, Profession collections, and Legendary collections behind them. Basically giving a big middle finger to any player who lives far enough away or happens to have a bad traceroute. Nevermind the players who don’t want to play this type of content or find it difficult for many reasons.

I guess it’s a good thing that there are more mastery points available than you actually need then.

This is a weird reply, Vayne. For a start, you’re arguing against a claim Neurion didn’t even make. He only mentioned MPs in passing and didn’t claim there weren’t enough. He just questioned gating them behind this content. He also points out the lag issues that you yourself have complained about. In fact, he’s reiterating all the points you’ve made yourself in other posts. So it’s weird to see you arguing here. O_o
I suspect you’re starting to get triggered by any mention of mastery points and responded automatically on this one. Let’s chalk it up to fatigue and move on.

It’s not a strange response. This is a line from the post I replied to.

" Which wouldn’t be so bad except that then some genius gated Mastery Points, Profession collections, and Legendary collections behind them. "

It’s in response to that line, which includes mastery points. Profession collections were changed so that you only need bronze. Not sure about legendary collections, but I’m pretty sure you only need bronze on them. And bronze is attainable.

But mastery points are a big focus for a lot of people. Far more people need mastery points than make legendaries and half the people I know are only half aware of collections at all and don’t care about them.

Most people care about mastery points. I’m not sure why you think my response is odd.

It was a little odd to me that you focused on that one line and made it about the number of points available whereas the post, in its full context (below), seems to be mostly a criticism of gating points behind laggy content, which is a point I’m sure I’ve seen you make yourself. You’re right there’s other points but it just seemed like an oranges response to a discussion on apples. Anyway, not trying to start anything. Just seemed odd, ’sall.

Neurion.4086:

You have to wonder who thought that making Adventures, which rely on how well your computer communicates with Anet’s servers, was a good idea since GW2 is very popular globally. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that then some genius gated Mastery Points, Profession collections, and Legendary collections behind them. Basically giving a big middle finger to any player who lives far enough away or happens to have a bad traceroute. Nevermind the players who don’t want to play this type of content or find it difficult for many reasons.

Most of my issues were solved when changes were made in April though. Pretty sure you havent’ seen me make those points recently. With the changes I’ve been able to get every point I need personally at least.

The content isn’t nearly as laggy as it was either. Changes have been made on that front.

When I used to do fallen masks, I’d jump on a mushroom and I’d sit there spinning for a second before It finally propelled me up. That doesn’t happen anymore.

Having to get silver was a major issue for me. They’ve reduced most collections to bronze which I’ve not had trouble getting.

But bringing mastery points into it, and saying that you can’t get the masteries you need because of adventures…well it might affect a small percentage of players, but it would be a pretty small percentage.

Edit: And yes, I still don’t believe gating anything behind adventures was a good idea. I’ve been pretty open about that.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Vayne.8563:

Djinn.9245:

Neurion.4086:

Sanctum Scramble stands between me and Glint’s Bastion. I guess my Revenant will never get this shield. I find this adventure more annoying than words can describe. Not that I like GW2 adventures in general, but this one takes the cake.

You have to wonder who thought that making Adventures, which rely on how well your computer communicates with Anet’s servers, was a good idea since GW2 is very popular globally. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that then some genius gated Mastery Points, Profession collections, and Legendary collections behind them. Basically giving a big middle finger to any player who lives far enough away or happens to have a bad traceroute. Nevermind the players who don’t want to play this type of content or find it difficult for many reasons.

I guess it’s a good thing that there are more mastery points available than you actually need then.

This is a weird reply, Vayne. For a start, you’re arguing against a claim Neurion didn’t even make. He only mentioned MPs in passing and didn’t claim there weren’t enough. He just questioned gating them behind this content. He also points out the lag issues that you yourself have complained about. In fact, he’s reiterating all the points you’ve made yourself in other posts. So it’s weird to see you arguing here. O_o
I suspect you’re starting to get triggered by any mention of mastery points and responded automatically on this one. Let’s chalk it up to fatigue and move on.

It’s not a strange response. This is a line from the post I replied to.

" Which wouldn’t be so bad except that then some genius gated Mastery Points, Profession collections, and Legendary collections behind them. "

It’s in response to that line, which includes mastery points. Profession collections were changed so that you only need bronze. Not sure about legendary collections, but I’m pretty sure you only need bronze on them. And bronze is attainable.

But mastery points are a big focus for a lot of people. Far more people need mastery points than make legendaries and half the people I know are only half aware of collections at all and don’t care about them.

Most people care about mastery points. I’m not sure why you think my response is odd.

OP, I’ve already cancelled my subscription.

Most MMOs have more down time than this every single month….without providing compensation.

Alaoglu.4637:

I submit a ticket too about what i lost and didn’t play since the Rollback. I m really disappointed about this game now. I m feeling like 15 days of spvp rush for nothing and playing other game. I really hope they will repair their mistake for disappointed people or i m pretty sure they will lose some players

They won’t lose that many players. Just about every MMO I’ve ever played has experienced roll back. It’s even worse in a lot of other MMOs which have to go down for maintainance a couple of times a month.

Stuff like this happens. If you don’t think so, you haven’t been around much. In fact, stuff much worse than this happens, even in big MMOs like WoW that charge a subscription fee.

It’s just one of those things. Anyone that would leave over this is going to leave anyway.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I don’t mind mini games being in the game. I do mind the stand-in for leveling being gated by them. They ought to be rewarding enough with intrinsic rewards that people who like that type of thing feel rewarded for doing them.

This. Mastery points should have never been gated behind those types of games, nor should collections.

Neurion.4086:

@Vayne,
Yes, I did use a speed booster once, but didn’t help much as the timer expired just a few steps before jumping to the finishing area.

I’m not that good at jumping like a rabbit all over the place; yet, I have managed to get a couple of golds in some adventures.

I know a lot of people find it fun to try over and over again, but I am just not one of them.

I don’t like it either, which is why I never got past bronze on that one. I skipped most adventures, at least gold on most of them.

There may be compensation yet. Those decisions don’t happen in a day. One would think that ANet was pretty busy today, and all hands on deck. What compensation may or may not come will be decided in the days to come.

Anet isn’t going to start making snap decisions at this point in its life.

Djinn.9245:

Neurion.4086:

Sanctum Scramble stands between me and Glint’s Bastion. I guess my Revenant will never get this shield. I find this adventure more annoying than words can describe. Not that I like GW2 adventures in general, but this one takes the cake.

You have to wonder who thought that making Adventures, which rely on how well your computer communicates with Anet’s servers, was a good idea since GW2 is very popular globally. Which wouldn’t be so bad except that then some genius gated Mastery Points, Profession collections, and Legendary collections behind them. Basically giving a big middle finger to any player who lives far enough away or happens to have a bad traceroute. Nevermind the players who don’t want to play this type of content or find it difficult for many reasons.

I guess it’s a good thing that there are more mastery points available than you actually need then.

Djinn.9245:

OriOri.8724:

Nikal.4921:

JustTrogdor.7892:

I certainly hope the next expansion swings a bit more toward the core game style . I’d like to see a bit of a middle ground between HoT maps and core. I’d rather not see any or at least much less of the vertical maps and less annoying mob density like we see in HoT. Just my opinion.

I hope the next expansion is more like the core game, too. I won’t purchase HoT, even when it was discounted, because of the points in this thread, and once purchased, it’s my understanding I’ll be forced to do my dailies there. I don’t PvP at all- only do open world content, so I am already limited in what I can do.

I just wish I could get HoT Masteries without being forced into HoT zones. I hope the next expansion will let us totally bypass those zones.

Wow whereever you have been getting information from has been misleading you.

To start with, by far most if not all of the worst problems with HoT were already addressed in the April patch, its already far far better than it used to be.

Looking at the OP, what about HoT has been made better than it used to be?

Depends on how you define better. Fractals, to me, are better. Much better. Far more accessible at entry level to casual players. The reward structure is better. Cliffside as a fractal is better. Snowblind as a fractal is better. The new fractal is fun. The way agony resistence is handled is much much better. So Fractals are better.

Gliding is obviously an improvement on not gliding. So getting around maps is better.

WvW is actually better now than it was before the patch in my opinion and yes, that is the opinion. There are a lot of cool things there that didn’t exist before. The reward track is a nice addition to it as well. Many of the people long term complaints from WvW players are being addressed, slowly but they’re being addressed.

Necromancers are better after the patch, considering how weak they were before hand. Rangers feel a lot better too with the addition of the druid spec, even if you don’t spec for healing. Rangers have more ways they can help their party now, which makes them more desirable.

Adding a third heavy profession is an improvement. The action camera is an improvement. A lot of people waited a long time for something like the action camera.

More than that the HOT maps offer something the core game really didn’t, more complex maps. You may not personally like more complex maps and that’s okay, but the design of the new maps is amazing. It’s fun to have a map that you have to think about, at least for me.

The ability to make precursors instead of just buying them is better for me as well. Complete autolooting is better. Not having to spam F is a godsend.

Some of the new commander markers are fantastic. They really help. The way guild missions are handled are better, for me at least. You can run them when you want without it costing you favor. I much prefer having puzzles and challenges instanced, btw. Much better to run, at least for my guild.

Obviously people who like raids are going to think the game is better too, even though I’m not one of them. There were a lot of changes that the expansion brought that makes the game better for some people. But not every change is going to be better for everyone.

But saying the expansion didn’t make anything better is probably something that you’ll find very few people by percentage would agree too…in my opinion.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Djinn.9245:

Sykper.6583:

I like someone’s statement before about it being paying for convenience. That’s extremely different than paying for an absolute advantage over your other players, and you certainly aren’t winning for it.

You don’t think it’s an advantage over other players if a one person can play for years without getting a Precursor and on his first day of playing another person can purchase gems with cash and purchase a Precursor? Or completely equip his character on the first day with Ascended gear (if you argue that Legendaries aren’t “winning”.)

I think original players have years to have built up their wealth and could afford a precursor even if they’re relatively casual.

I think new players are horribly far behind. Giving new players a way to catch up is not only smart, but doesn’t break the game in any appreciable way.

I mean what percentage of new players are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a legendary? How does it affect my game if six more guys or ten more guys or one hundred more guys have a legendary.

The answer? It doesn’t affect my game at all.

it has an effect, its just that you dont care that much. many people actually require ascended for pugs, having ascended in wvw makes you stronger. having ascended will make you more likely to get credit per kills in open world trains.

people who say ascended has no effect a mathematically inaccurate.

fact is, a dude who is willing to pay can shortcut to equality with veterans, whereas, someome not willing to pay will spend 5-6 weeks catching up.

how long it takes is only a matter of degree.

you could literally grind long enough in maplestory to be top teir, by trading for cash shop money. my guess is it would take way longer than gw2, but thats a matter of degree.

But how does that really affect you. What someone else is doing.

Simply put WvW is PvP, and it should be more normalized. What’s the difference if a new person coming in can catch up? Why is that a bad thing? Don’t WvW players want people on their TEAM that are up to date.

Doesn’t it work the same for both teams.

WvW is not a 1 on 1 endeavor. SPvP is normalized. So what’s the difference if someone has an ascended weapon or an exotic. Even if it makes them more powerful it’s not relevant, because most people in WvW already have those weapons. You’re talking like it’s a bad thing that someone can jump into WvW and participate.

But they still are less powerful, because no matter how much money they spend, then can’t buy trinkets. And trinkets give you the biggest boost.

A single weapon or even two legendary weapons won’t make a bit of difference if the person they’re fighting has ascended trinkets.

This is just arguing to argue.

Linken.6345:

Vayne.8563:

Djinn.9245:

Sykper.6583:

I like someone’s statement before about it being paying for convenience. That’s extremely different than paying for an absolute advantage over your other players, and you certainly aren’t winning for it.

You don’t think it’s an advantage over other players if a one person can play for years without getting a Precursor and on his first day of playing another person can purchase gems with cash and purchase a Precursor? Or completely equip his character on the first day with Ascended gear (if you argue that Legendaries aren’t “winning”.)

I think original players have years to have built up their wealth and could afford a precursor even if they’re relatively casual.

I think new players are horribly far behind. Giving new players a way to catch up is not only smart, but doesn’t break the game in any appreciable way.

I mean what percentage of new players are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a legendary? How does it affect my game if six more guys or ten more guys or one hundred more guys have a legendary.

The answer? It doesn’t affect my game at all.

Oh it do but in a positive way you finish your fractals, dungeons, raids, world bosses and open world events faster.
Since they got the highest stat weapon in the game helping you.

Oh yeah, I guess this is true also. That new player having that better weapon is helping vets, not hindering them…though I suspect a single legendary without trinkets and armor isn’t going to make much of a difference anyway.

Neurion.4086:

Sanctum Scramble stands between me and Glint’s Bastion. I guess my Revenant will never get this shield. I find this adventure more annoying than words can describe. Not that I like GW2 adventures in general, but this one takes the cake.

Have you tried using a speed booster?

Djinn.9245:

Sykper.6583:

I like someone’s statement before about it being paying for convenience. That’s extremely different than paying for an absolute advantage over your other players, and you certainly aren’t winning for it.

You don’t think it’s an advantage over other players if a one person can play for years without getting a Precursor and on his first day of playing another person can purchase gems with cash and purchase a Precursor? Or completely equip his character on the first day with Ascended gear (if you argue that Legendaries aren’t “winning”.)

I think original players have years to have built up their wealth and could afford a precursor even if they’re relatively casual.

I think new players are horribly far behind. Giving new players a way to catch up is not only smart, but doesn’t break the game in any appreciable way.

I mean what percentage of new players are going to spend hundreds of dollars on a legendary? How does it affect my game if six more guys or ten more guys or one hundred more guys have a legendary.

The answer? It doesn’t affect my game at all.

phys.7689:

Sykper.6583:

This is the same stubborn mentality that brings you ‘GW2 is the worst grind MMO’.

It’s plausible that I am being bias with my subjective take on things, but I am willing to gamble my previous experience with games that have had actual grinds or P2W aspects to them that I can safely say GW2 is doing an excellent job making them nearly non-existent or absolutely unnecessary.

Until this game offers an item that you can only get through the gem store with gems, that is an outright upgrade over any pre-existing item you can normally get through playing the game, it will not be P2W.

I like someone’s statement before about it being paying for convenience. That’s extremely different than paying for an absolute advantage over your other players, and you certainly aren’t winning for it.

the marketing guys who came up with that rebranding term to make you feel more comfortable with their microtransactions will be happy you feel that way.

the way mmos were, there was pay to play term first, which was subscription models, then they had f2p, which often users would call p2w, because for most of them, there were signifigant advantages for paying players. many of these did not offer unique item power boosts. large exp boosters, item drop rate boosters, top teir weapons and armor, movement speed boosts, thats what p2w was. most items were available in game, just a lot harder to get, like a 1.5% drop from a world boss, or items that let you upgrade gear safely.

people always bring up maplestory, but im pretty sure they have trading system that lets you sell items for cash shop money, which would by some of you guys standards, negate p2w claims

Well I’m not one of them. I’m not going out on a limb when I say that expansions were simply not considered pay to win even though they raised the power in almost every game. Why?

Because people expected to pay for expansions and if they were going to continue with the game, they were going to buy the expansion.

Simply put, Guild Wars 1 came out with expansions with new professions and new skills. You couldn’t use those professions or skills, unless you bought those games/expansions. Furthermore, the one true expansion Guild Wars 1 came out with, Eye of the North, included some of the most powerful PvE skills in the entire game, which you could only attain by buying the expansion, and you could only level up through grinding, much like masteries.

But people weren’t saying Guild Wars 1 was pay to win, because even though it was buy to play, people expected to buy expansions to continue with the game.

The advent of free to play games, made it so that people didn’t expect to pay for expansions anymore, but that’s not really what buy to play means.

Paulytnz.7619:

Vayne.8563:

Mitch.4781:

Obtena.7952:

Are you camping the mobs in the right place … Moa’s are not exactly hard to find or in short supply.

Yes. I’m just saying that when the Moa comes on ROTATION I have either not been online or the middle of something else. The point is, it’s an unnecessary drawn out timer rotation for no other reason than to flesh out a very minor event..cos “content”

World bosses are on rotation too. So are most meta events. You can’t plan when a temple in Orr is open. Is that better?

The difference here tho is we do not know how long these events will be in the game. Everything else you have offered up here are going to be there pretty much permanently.

While 3 hours is not exactly the longest time to wait it can still pose some problems to some people obviously. I don’t know why they didn’t just have them run on 2 different cycles and run them every 2 hours. At the moment if you just miss one you have to wait 2.5 hours at most if it was the moa or devourer for example. They could have instead gone:

Option 1:

Moa/Devourer – 1 hour window, Wyvern – 1 hour window – repeat.

Option 2: (runs/starts at the exact same time as option 1)

Wyvern – 1 hour window, Arctodus/Shark – 1 hour window – repeat

This way it could have given people some more versatility and options with the system and at most have you waiting only an hour or so in the worst case scenario.

I don’t disagree with the rotation thing, it could have been handled differently. All I’m saying is, what difference, really, does it make if people don’t finish this achievement.

There are people who have to get every achievement and those people are absolutely going to wait the three hours (and frankly I didn’t have to wait, because I figured out how to use the tool and just keep checking it).

But, in reality, the few achievement points you get from this will make a difference to what percentage of the playerbase? I mean what’s the actual reward?

25 achievement points for all of it and a blood stone visage skin that changes the color of your eyes, plus 10 blood rubies. It’s likely not worth hours of waiting for most people anyway. I mean they’re hidden achievements in the first place, so that means that a lot of people probably don’t know about them at all.

The thing is, the game needs to balance stuff for really long term players to do that have nothing left to do, and people who are just casual and don’t care about achievement points or getting every skin (which in my opinion is most players).

This event takes some time, but you don’t have to wait three hours to get one. If you want to wait, you’re doing it because you want to get one NOW. This moment. If you take your time, you’ll get them anyway, if you just keep checking your tracker when you’re free, or use one of the timer sites, like gw2timer.com where they’re listed. It’s not a perfect listing btw, but it gives you an indication of when those creatures can appear, which will save you a lot of time.

As always how long you have to wait depends on how aware you are of how the event works. Being in a helpful guild doesn’t hurt either, since people in the guild call out when these things are up, which means a lot less waiting.

In the end, this I have to wait three hours thing isn’t really the case. It’s only the case for people trying to make their argument by stating the worst case scenario.

MrPinks.2015:

Vayne.8563:

MrPinks.2015:

Vayne.8563:

MrPinks.2015:

Vayne.8563:

MrPinks.2015:

Vayne.8563:

MrPinks.2015:

iv read so many comments and i got to say that people need to read the definition of PAY2WIN

Pay to win is when a game company sells stuff that gives an in game advantage through micro transactions.

I agree with people who say HOT is slightly Pay2Win because of the elite classes

so the only argument people can have in terms of P2W is not the cosmetics , bank slots , black lion keys , transmutation charges and ETC
it is only HOT Elite classes

I just get mad at the level of logic people have
that put cosmetics items into P2W argument? really?
Black lion keys? really?
Transmutation charges?
you can buy all of that with gold
and also gain them in game but even if you wont buy them … you are not in a disadvantage against other players , well only if there are fashion competitions .

if you want to really understand what is P2W mmo , i suggest you nice people to go out and try Neverwinter online you’ll have a great time !
and come back to compare it with Guild Wars

In your own definition you use the word micro transactions. That’s always been my understanding too.

HoT isn’t a microtransaction though. It’s an expansion. It’s not available in the cash shop. You only buy it once.

HoT is therefore not pay to win. Microtransactions never referred to expansions but to stuff sold in the cash shop of any game.

it dosnt matter my friend there are plenty of definitions for P2W
i just chose this one because i think it is the popular term

and HOT is slightly a P2W compared to F2P players
in terms of elite specializations
i am not saying you cant compete or enjoy the game as F2P in PVP
but some elite classes are slightly better , but again it is debatable
i agree to disagree on this points because in reality i dont really care , i bought the game so…

my point was that saying cosmetics are P2W it is an hilarious joke that has no logic for a P2W argument

Actually there aren’t many defintions, so much as people tailoring the existing definition to completely change it from what it meant originally. You don’t get to make up definitions. That’s not the way it works.

This genre has a history. Words are created to explain certain concepts. If a concept is going to evolve and it’s going to include every single MMORPG on the market, the term loses not only it’s original meaning but all meaning.

Saying something is true doesn’t make it true. Changing the definition only muddies the waters. It accomplishes nothing.

lol

you wrote that micro transaction definition was your understanding too

and you are saying that Hot is not micro transaction therefor it is not P2W haha really?
thats the best word play iv seen but you could still use some work
lets play your game of words

there are multiple definition for P2W but since you insist on sticking to the orgin of the term P2W
lets analyse this

Pay To Win – just like it is written you PAY to WIN , it dosnt state any micro transaction in it and since you pay to buy hot … it counts as a valid point

see easy iv done the same thing as you did

BUT!! my post was not intended to discuss if HOT expansion is P2W or not i just stated there are some Illogical argument points in this thread in terms of defining p2w by stating that buying cosmetics is p2w , i just mentioned the expansion because it is debatable and i agree with some people that it is slightly pay to win

and there are various of variations definitions to this P2W term no matter if people choose to evolve it or not , it is a fact ! that there are multiple definitions

but the true definition in my opinion is having an advantage over other player by paying sum amounts of cash even if it is considerd Pay to Progress

Those who use literal interpretations of words without context are doomed to create misunderstandings.

When you see a phone booth that says out of order, do you try to move it in a different position relative to the phone booth next to it?

Pay to win aren’t words, they’re a phrase and that phrase had a meaning. You’re ignoring the original meaning trying to interpret a phrase literally.

This style of interpreting things isn’t very useful when you’re trying to communicate an idea publicly.

Oh looky here

well my friend since you know the phrase so well
please do and find me the original phrase of Pay to Win
But before you do i must say you wont succeed
because many others share a different definitions
like many others share different opinions

and about the phone booth skit very cute hmm i dont see many phone booths since we evolved a bit well … maybe there are some in prison .

I don’t really need an original quote, considering it was widely discussed for years. People used it to decribe games like Runes of Magic and Maple Story. They didn’t use it to describe Guild Wars 1 or WoW.

By the current definition both Guild Wars 1 and WoW are pay to win, but if you look back five or six years, no one ever said they were.

Guild Wars 1 brought out expansions with new skills, and new professions, some of which were considered the most powerful in the game. Hell you could solo farm the Underworld on a Ritualist. But you had to buy Factions to get it.

If you wanted the most powerful PvE builds you had to buy Eye of the North to get at the very least pain inverter. There were a few amazing skills you could get with Eye of the North.

For a while, in fact they were asking for rank 8 ursans to do content, but you couldn’t be a rank 8 ursan if you didn’t have Eye of the North.

And WoW not only raises the level cap but makes it easier to twink alts, so you get more powerful even on new low level characters, giving you an advantage. And since open world PvP is a thing in WoW, the level cap itself makes open world PvP imbalanced.

But people aren’t walking around six years ago saying these games were pay to win.

Yet now, Guild Wars 2 sells a cosmetic item for cash, that you can get in the trading post (talking about legendaries, since you can’t be ascended for cash) and suddenly this game is pay to win?

Or they bring out new builds or specializations that are better in PvP, but they did that in Guild Wars 1 with certain skills and elites. They even sold a way to unlock skills/elites faster in Guild Wars 1, just by buying something from the cash shop.

But Guild Wars 1 wasn’t known as a pay to win game.

I don’t need an original definition. You need to tell me which MMOs aren’t pay to win by this new definition.

Every one has an opinion if you arnt considering Gw1 or Gw2 pay to win it is your own way of viewing it … it dosnt mean these are facts !
also i havnt said that this game is P2W
i just said i agree with some people that it is DEBATABLE !

Compared to F2P the expansion is slightly P2W it is debatable no matter what OPINION youll express
if you compare Reaper to Necro or Mesmer to Chrono there is a huge difference
but yea sure it dosnt mean you cant win a match but some F2P peeps feel the disadvantage and it should be addressed in my OPINION

Adding exclamation marks to your sentences doesn’t make them facts. Just saying.

We had a definition of pay to win back in the day that served a purpose. The purpose was to separate games that were legit from games that were simply ways to part you from your money. That definition came with all sorts of connotations. If you change the definition and the connotation doesn’t change, you’re giving people the wrong idea.

The original idea of pay to win was you can’t trust or play this game at all, because you need to keep throwing money at it to stay relevant. Again, maple story and runes of magic are examples of this. Legit triple A titles weren’t called pay to win because they were legit games, even though they came out with expansions that raised power and level cap. It just wasn’t how the term was used. This isn’t an opinion. It really wasn’t how the term was used.

All you can debate now, really is whether it’s fair to change the term you’re using in light of how bad the feelings are associated with that term. In my opinion, changing the definition of something with massively negative connotations creates confusion rather than clarity and muddies the waters. It allows less savory games to operate with impunity because if you’re calling all games pay to win, those other games get a free pass.

There are pay to win games. This isn’t one of them by the definition used years ago, and I do believe that’s fact. If people want to interpret the word literally and change the definition, in my opinion, they’re doing the entire genre a disservice.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

long and short of it is, you cant trust anet to deliver on what they say. this means when trying to figure out if the product is worth it to you, go primarly on what you ve seen in the past, and on the present.
nothing they say regarding future plans really means much

The long and short of it is, Anet has promised hundreds of things and didn’t deliver on a small handful. You should judge everyone you know that way.

Not everyone I know is running a business that advertises a product as including certain content and then announces that they have made a decision to not provide the content after accepting payment.

I do agree with you that we should judge every company trying to get our money in this way.

There is a huge difference between, “we are looking into the possibility of X,” and advertisements claiming that X is included with the purchase of the expansion and accepting payment under that expectation.

But the difference is, they’re advertising a suite of things, not one separate individual thing.

I’ve seen many products advertised this way that changed over time, due to say availability. I remember computers being advertised as coming with certain software and during a shortage of that software, it was replaced with something else.

However, an MMO isn’t a product you buy, what you’re really buying is access to a theme park of sorts. They advertise rides that close sometimes in theme parks. Sometimes they close because of lack of interest. It’s in the best interest of most park goers to make that change.

If I ran a health spa and I said I was going to be putting in four of a specific machine and I bought one and hardly anyone used it, sure I’d change the plan and get something people used. That’s just logical.

MMOs are access to a world and a game. You’re paying for a key for an experience. If you think you’re paying for any single item in an MMO, you’re going to be disappointed relatively frequently.

Many times things aren’t delivered as we picture them anyway. What if they came out with 16 horrible looking legendaries that no one in their right mind would make? They’d be delivering on their promise, but who would care?

They made some legendaries and I pretty much can guarantee if most people who bought hot was making them, they’d continue making them. They made a business decision.

You pay for access to the game. They anticipated higher demand. It wasn’t there. Frankly I do believe everyone who bought the game just for legendaries, or even primarily for legendaries should be given a refund for HOT and have it and all it’s benefits removed from their account.

But that’s all I see that Anet should need to do.

In the mean time, I’m still confident more legendaries are coming at some point. I know people think they’ve been canned completely but I’m not believing that’s the case.

Linken.6345:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

long and short of it is, you cant trust anet to deliver on what they say. this means when trying to figure out if the product is worth it to you, go primarly on what you ve seen in the past, and on the present.
nothing they say regarding future plans really means much

The long and short of it is, Anet has promised hundreds of things and didn’t deliver on a small handful. You should judge everyone you know that way.

It’s a matter of focus.

They also delivered a bunch of stuff I didn’t know about that I really liked.

I’d say, over all, they delivered more than I was expecting, not less.

they were late with tons of things, under delivered on many, and changed their minds on many things.
im not saying they had no reasons, but as far as developers go, they are not top of the list on intentions and what they deliver.

basically, if anet says this is what to expect, take it with a grain of salt. even if they deliver on 80% of what they say, there is still a substantial chance that it may not come to pass. this doesnt mean they should say nothing, just that you got to realize who you are dealing with.

following through on ideas, or schedules is not high on anets priority, their priority is doing whatever they feel is most important in that moment.

there are some people who will show up to a concert in the rain because they said they would, there are others who will cancel because they think concerts in the rain suck for all involved.

like you said, you start to know what to expect when you deal with people after a time, you know who is the former and who is the latter.

Except that the percentage is probably closer to 95% not 80%. If you list everything Anet has EVER said, and you take away what they haven’t delivered it’s a very low percentage.

its actually noticeably larger if you combine
undelivered/changed/exagerrated, which is what most people consider when they weigh someones trustworthyness.

I’m not buying this at all. Not even a little. I mean people tend to hype themselves anyway, without Anet saying anything.

The biggest example is that Anet said straight up this expansion would be lighter on content because they were redeveloping base systems which they’d use moving forward.

Did that really stop people from complaining the expansion was light on content.

I’m sure if you took every single thing promised, all of it and you numbered them, compared to what’s in the game, you’d find that well over 90% it was in the game.

But then, there are many things they never promised that are in the game that are awesome.

Anet did say, for example, that they wouldn’t be able to bring gliding to core Tyria. They changed their mind on that, because they realized they could. But people don’t say they lied, even though the eventual reality of the situation has changed.

And some people didn’t want gliding on core Tyria and complained about it right here on these forums. Maybe those people would think that what Anet was doing was unethical.

I don’t think it was though. Anet made decisions based on a shifting situation. They’ve always said they iterate and change things. They even had an entire blog post about it back in the day. They told us up front how they work.

I signed into this game knowing this was how they work. It’s sort of late to say changing stuff is unethical.

And I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that legendaries are coming back to the game, in a substantially different form. They just needed to retool how they do the quests for them is my guess, which takes time to work out.

Why won’t they say anything about it? Because when they do say stuff and change it, people call them liars and unethical. I wouldn’t say so much either.

Yes and how much content have we got after hot and these new redeveloped base systems? I guess next expansion will be light on content aswell due to reredeveloping some base system aswell.

No idea. But I don’t feel like HoT was partcularly light in content anyway, and with the living story coming back, and the new zone, it seems a lot of people are really digging it.

The real issue with HoT was the list price. If it had retailed for $30 there wouldn’t have been nearly the resistance to it.

With or without the legendaries.