Guild Wars 2

LHound.8964:

Vayne, afaik MF don’t work as a plain multiplier to the item loot chance. It increases loot table chances, and not loot table item chances. Let’s make a theoretical example:

#. table1 has got 4/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table2 has got 3/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table3 has got 2/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table4 has got 1/10 chance to be rolled.

With increasing MF %, the chances tends to change the table looting:

#. table1 has got 1/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table2 has got 4/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table3 has got 3/10 chance to be rolled.
#. table4 has got 2/10 chance to be rolled.

Inside each table the item probability of dropping is the same independently of the MF. Between tables, different rarities have different probabilities.

This behavior explains why we see a reducing amount of grey/white items on increasing MF to blue/green items. If it was a multiplier, we would see a huge increase of the lowest quality items (grey/white).

/Cheers

Okay I understood this anyway, but I was explaining only why it works as a percentage, which is what the OP was asking.

The only way to know what it’s doing over all is to leave it as a percentage, because it acts as a percentage. It’s a percentage chance on different tables, but it still doesn’t make sense to change it to a non-percentile number.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Do people get all bothered about card packs? That’s what RNG boxes are. RNG boxes are not slot machines, Texas-hold-‘em tables, lotteries or raffles. They’re kittening baseball/M:tG cards.

If you don’t like RNG boxes (as I don’t), then don’t buy them (as I won’t). Posts like these will not change the minds of the monetization crew at ANet. More importantly, it won’t change the minds of the people buying the RNG boxes — and they’re why these things keep showing up.

And as far as people who oppose certain positions, you’re over-analyzing. Many posters post in opposition for one simple reason. It’s ingrained in the human ego to want to think that we’re right, and nothing makes people feel more right than pointing out where others are wrong. This is nothing new, and the whole “Whatever happened to gamers looking out for gamers?” is remarkably disingenuous for suggesting that it was ever different. There are, of course, exceptions to everything, but as a general trend, no. Now, I’m not condoning the behavior, but the pseudo psycho-analysis is wrong.

Do you know the difference between baseball cards and this?

No one knows when looking at someone else on the street exactly what baseball cards they got. But everyone can see that you have a fused greatsword. lol

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

I wonder how many people who have complained about this have bought chests or keys anyway.

Well I’ve bought exactly zero.

Me too. But I did buy a mining pick last month.

Except that one of my guildies ran it 3 times and got the mini. RNG is RNG.

Why do you say it doesn’t work as a percentage increase? It works fine. In fact, it’s more easily understandable that way.

There are loot tables. The higher your magic find, the more chance their is of rolling on that loot table.

Let’s say you had a 1 in 100 chance of getting a rare on every kill. You don’t but let’s say you do, for the ease of the math. 400% magic find would raise your chance to 4% to get a rare off that kill (from 1%).

That is still fairly rare and you still won’t get one most of the time. I believe you have less than an 1 in 100 chance to get a rare per kill. I don’t know the exact percentage, but if it’s 1/10 of 1% then you only have 4/10 of 1% to get a rare with that amount of magic find.

The stat works fine, but it would take a very long time to prove itself.

Making it a number would simply obscure what it does.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

Every single time you bring up the manifesto with regards to Anet lying you lose more and more credibility. There is precisely ONE LINE in the entire manifesto that anyone can really argue and that’s the “everyone you loved about Guild Wars 1 line”. The Manifesto is many paragraphs long and everything in everyone one of those paragraphs is part of this game.

You’re being too literal to try and defend anet. The fact is the marketing with the manifesto and other blogs and articles emphasised anet as a company who cared about the players and who were making a game which emphasised the player experience above all else with fun as the overriding factor and none of the OCDness of other mmos.

The reality is totally different and the extreme RNG and gambling boxes is a part of it. This is why people are angry at anet, they bought into the marketing and trusted anet based on their rep with GW1. That trust was misplaced and anet have been revealed to be just like most other game makers and publishers.

This is simply untrue.

I defend the manifesto because it is the single thing most people bring up.. The most viewed, most influential piece of advertising that Anet has done and, for the most part, it remains true.

Then we get into the "other’ areas of how they advertised the game. Now I saw all the same ads everyone else did. Read the same interviews. There are two or three times that Anet HAS changed direction, but anyone who says that player first means they won’t make money, anyone who says the cash shop was not supposed to be part of how the game funded itself, anyone who thinks that fun is objective instead of subjective is someone I wouldn’t argue this with anyway.

With the exception of introducing “some” vertical progression (done after launch and at the request of many players who find THAT fun) just about everything else they advertised is here. They gave me a game for $60 bucks that I didn’t have to spend money in the gem store to enjoy. I’ve gotten more than my money’s worth from this game and yes, I find it fun.

People like to talk about Anet’s advertising and how Anet lied. Anet has been honest with us all along. They HAVE made some changes, but that’s true for every MMO. People who claim they said we’d matter and we don’t are trying to talk for everyone.

What about the people who DID want something like the fractals when it was introduced. They were listened to. Anet cared about them.

Whenever a game company makes a choice to include something, there’s always a segment of the population who says, Anet didn’t listen to me so their advertising campaign is false. Well, maybe, just maybe, they cared enough about the player to make the best changes for the game, instead of not making those changes and watching the game die. Because I’m pretty sure if the Fractals didn’t come out when they did, we’d have major problems. Problems we don’t have now.

And yes, we’ve had other problems because they came out, but that doesn’t mean Anet was wrong. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean they don’t care. They simply made an unpopular decisions that they said they knew would be unpopular. The only reason any game maker does this is because it will benefit the game. You may not agree,but it doesn’t mean Anet doesn’t care about its fans.

I wonder how many people who have complained about this have bought chests or keys anyway.

darkace.8925:

JustTrogdor.7892:

For all of you that want to buy all these skins direct consider this scenario.. They are all on the gem store buy direct. You can’t wait to get your elite new skin. You buy gems with money or (gold that you can earn in game at no cost other than time) get your skin and put it on. You head to LA and look around, everyone is wearing the same skin you have. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so special does it?

You might buy a weapon or armor skin with the hopes it will make you a special little snowflake, but – and you may find this hard to believe – some people buy skins solely because they like the way they look. Not everyone thinks like you.

That’s true, and not everyone thinks like me. There are a whole lot of people out there (I’m not one of them) who do care if what they have everyone else has. I think it’s silly personally, but I don’t think anyone can deny there’s a segment of the population, maybe even a large segment that does care about this.

It’s about standing out. I only care about how I look to me, but there are people out there who want to “wow” other people. A lot of people.

So yeah, it’s a valid concern.

I’ve had pretty good luck with powerful blood on Southsun…and I don’t spend an hour farming EVER.

Penguin.5197:

Flissy.4093:

The difference is Engineer’s kits count as other weapon abilities. Similar to Elementalist and attunement, they unlock whole new weapon abilities.

If anything, both Elementalists & Engineers get 4 (or 5 including med kit) weapons, so if anything all other professions should be able to cycle through 4 sets.

Why do these professions get 20 weapon skills to play around with but others only get 10?

If anything, eles and engies got the short end of the stick here (mostly engies). Their class mechanics just ended up being slightly more skills or skill swapping, but to get that they lost the ability to weapon swap.
Other professions got true class mechanics where they didnt have to sacrifice jack for theirs. Whats the differnce between a guardian and an engie? an engie got one more skill slot at the cost of weapon swapping.

Edit: Im only talking about class mechanics here, you know those skills that you always take no matter what build you have, not about kits, who already have damage tax to pay for instant swapping.

Are you really saying the ranger doesn’t have to sacrifice anything for his profession mechanic? Really? When a pet is expected to do X amount of your damage, and they die too fast (or get you killed because of bad AI). Some of this was only fixed in the last major patch.

And how about necros. Their class mechanic is deathshroud. If you don’t spec into it, it isn’t much at all. If you do spec into it, you cant’ spec into other things. In fact, I think the necro attributes may be the worst designed in a game, because minions are spread across mulitple attributes, conditions are, everything is just so….disorganized. It’s a pretty bad deal necros got over all.

Everyone’s problem seems worse to them…but other professions have feelings too. lol

You customize later using traits, not skills…and also by changing runes and sigils, plus the armor that you use. There’s still quite a bit of variation left.

For open world I love minion builds, but they’re not great use in dungeons I’ve found. I love well builds for dungeons, which use completely different traits. I sometimes have used a condition build as well.

And switching out weapons really can change things around too. Limiting yourself to one weapon is one way to limit your enjoyment of the game.

Dante.1508:

15 silver they don’t have to help and anything that circumvents that stupid jump puzzle in southsun is a win to me.

I literally cannot complete it due to my ping time (which is grossly unfair) i’ve had no issues with any other jump puzzles but this one and the Festival ones.. Timed jump puzzles hurt players outside of America…

Holy cow…I agree with you. lol Living in Australia has some serious downsides.

JustTrogdor.7892:

For all of you that want to buy all these skins direct consider this scenario.. They are all on the gem store buy direct. You can’t wait to get your elite new skin. You buy gems with money or (gold that you can earn in game at no cost other than time) get your skin and put it on. You head to LA and look around, everyone is wearing the same skin you have. Suddenly it doesn’t seem so special does it?

This is one of the reasons I stopped buying costumes in Guild Wars 1. It’s a valid point.

darkace.8925:

Dante.1508:

But i’m not the only player that disagrees with these business practices.. Also the whole end of this game is about “Fluff” so when the whole end game becomes a cash grab how long do you think players will pay for fluff with nothing else to look forward too..

Your post makes it sound as if the only way to get the “fluff” is through the rng gem shop boxes. That’s neither fair nor true. I loathe the rng gem shop boxes as much as anyone, I promise you that; but ANet has made more than a few “fluff” items available either in-game or through direct purchase in the gem shop. To pretend otherwise shows you’ve allowed reality to be distorted by your emotions.

This is what I usually talk about…and this is the same thing TB was complaining about but in reverse. If you don’t like what a company is doing, you can say anything whether true or not, and because you’re not a fan boy it’s okay.

But if you’re a fan boy and you say something positive, even if it’s clearly true, you can be completely discounted because you like the game.

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander (and I’ve just dated myself by using that expression).

Hey OP, have you tried the Fractals of the Mists dungeon?

captaincrash.6528:

I am a massive fanboy of guild wars, have always been, and probably always will be. But this RNG rubbish has got to slow down. I did not say stop because I think RNG does belong in some places but in the cash shop Ive had just about enough. Part of this is me getting burnt, of course, but also partly because month after month, without a noticable pattern, its RNG heavy and RNG light, the original Southsun Cove update sold chests that guaranteed you skins and everything, coming after the halloween one which was hard to get skins.

Fast forward 6 months or whatever and last month we had a repeat of halloween, coming after the super adventure box which was the first thing I can think of since launch where if you played the game, YOU COULD EARN REWARDS. only 2 things have been similar to this, the molten gloves and the backpieces in the newest patch. But most new cosmetic stuff for our guys have been locked away behind RNG. I have no issue with cash shop = cosmetic upgrades, hell probably the best way to do it, but it doesnt have to be the ONLY way. And it definately SHOULDNT be behind RNG. I bought the quiver because it looked cool. I spent $10 on gems, got EXACTLY what I wanted, and leftover gems to boot. If I wanted one of the new eyeball skins, I dont know how much Id have to spend, and that in a way is scary.

Sure theyre probably making a lot of money off the RNG and all the power to them, but 1 set of skins + 3 items as free fanservice in almost 9 months? the content is fun yes, but I and Im sure everybody else would like more to show for it than being able to fill newer players in as to what has happened plus some words under our names. Making us give you more money probably without reward is getting kind of old now.

You left out the guild weapon skins and the SAB weapon skins you could get quite easily from your post. I agree that the BEST weapons have been locked away behind RNG but not all of them.

Dante.1508:

Vayne.8563:

Mahaedros.7085:

The RNG and these forums are awful

I don’t understand how a company can moderate their own forums in the way this company does… they have to realize that the people who volunteer to speak for Anet cost them serious money by driving people away…

I would buy lots of things from the cash shop…but not RNG items.

The quote from TotalBiscuit is great.

I looked forward to playing this game and have played since beta. Now, though i still have fun leveling alts and stuff I like to do, I’m looking and waiting for a different MMORP that is not so slimey.

Good luck with that. Most MMOs I’ve played are more slimy than this.

You’re right they are more slimey, but they don’t try and hide it and say things like they did in manifesto and then do a 180 when the game is released, you know they are slimey and you live with it or don’t play their games…

What Anet did was lower than those others in my opinion..

Every single time you bring up the manifesto with regards to Anet lying you lose more and more credibility. There is precisely ONE LINE in the entire manifesto that anyone can really argue and that’s the “everyone you loved about Guild Wars 1 line”. The Manifesto is many paragraphs long and everything in everyone one of those paragraphs is part of this game.

You can keep bringing up how the manifesto misled people, which is misleading in itself. The manifesto didn’t say anything at all about vertical progression. It didn’t refer to gear grind. Everything said in the manifesto, except one line about everything you love about Guild Wars 1 (clearly a marketing line anyway) was true.

There are tons of good guilds out there. Just look through the guild section of the forums. This game is a thousand times better with a good guild. I don’t know that I’d play nearly as much if it wasn’t for my guild.

Astral Projections.7320:

Vayne.8563:

Astral Projections.7320:

Vayne.8563:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Astral Projections.7320:

Guild Wars 1 always had rare, to the point of being almost unobtainable, minipets in their games. The prices on the rarest ones were astronomical, the type of jaw dropping, “you got to be kidding me, I’ve been playing this game for years and don’t have that sort of money”, price. Even a semi rare pet could cost 100k plat. I don’t know how much that would translate in Guild Wars 2 money, but 100k plat wasn’t cheap.

The Guild Wars franchise has always been about grinding for the shinies. About getting the rare vanity item to show off with. The game was marketed on this and minipets are just one of the vanity items.

So far the game has made most vanity items attainable thru a little work. Aside from the gem store RNG, which is another topic. >.> Having to grind for a few days to get money for a particular vanity item isn’t bad. At least it’s obtainable. And it’s part of the games philosophy.

Making money in the Original GW was extremely easy, 13 mules and 2 playing characters all maxed in gold as well as my bank, that’s 100 plat on each character and 1 mil in the bank. GW2 is a grind for in game cash unless you play the TP which I suck at.

I disagree. Guild Wars 1 was EVENTUALLY easy to farm/grind in. But in the early days, the first year, it wasn’t so easy. It was quite hard to make gold. Eventually as time goes on, the gold sinks tend to get less ( you don’t need to outfit more characters) and the knowledge and availability of stuff goes up.

Comparing Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1 five years in is not the same as comparing Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1 nine months in.

He also said he had 1 million plat, when the game was 6 years old and I can believe it. However that sort of money in the bank wasn’t common amongst the “little people”. Most struggled to get 100k.

In all fairness, later in the game, I found 100k quite easy to get….however, the stuff I wanted couldn’t be bought with 100K, or even 1000k. There were minipets that were completely out of my reach on a permanent basis.

Yeah, I could get 10k a day from fairly casual play towards the end. But that was at the end of the game with the quests they put in. Before then, no way

The really expensive minipets were out of my budget as I was trying to get GWAMM and they cost a lot, as well as rarely being for sell. Some of them would probably cost close to the million dollars that that guy had. Lol. Not many people had that much. I know a lot of people didn’t even have 20k. I spoke to long time guildies who didn’t have much money.

I really wanted a mini-Yakkington. My wife finally got one after almost a year of doing Nick the Traveler every week. I never did. I did get a moss spider egg though. lol

Dante.1508:

Jaall.3420:

Mkalafut.1273:

You claim to be the all-knowing prophet of gaming with a master’s degree in MMO community knowledge, yet you condemn people for speaking their mind about obvious, unnecessary cash grabs in lieu of actual content.

I know enough about mmo communities because I play the game, and technically have a degree (not masters) in 3d animation, working alongside game designers and coders so you could say I do know what I’m talking about to a certain extent, but that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m talking about is you would think it was obvious that this would exist.

A game gets released where you only pay for the game box, and a cash shop exists in game. A company exists to make money, how they do that is their own choice. They choose to offer the community a service in the form of a game but to appeal to a wider market they make it cheaper than most, with the potential to be more expensive than most. To appeal to even more of a market, the only reason it would be more expensive is to look good so they sacrifice money by not introducing statistically better items but gain more players for that reason.

If you feel forced to buy these items, and then come crying on here because a games company who are out to make money aren’t doing exactly what you’re asking for then of course I and others will condemn you. If you owned a company I can guarantee you would go for the option that might upset a few people but made you 10x more money in the long run. It’s just logic.

And then they all sit around wondering why their game failed and what they did wrong…. Game developers these days seem very out of the loop with their customers reading this..

Oh and games failing is happening a lot…i wonder why..

Game failings happen for a number of reasons. It’s not usually listening to the fans that causes it. Warhammer, for example, failed because it released waaaaay too early. AoC can’t have said to fail because it’s free to play now and probably making money, but it was also so buggy on launch to be almost unplayable. Guild Wars 2, by contrast, was a pleasure…in spite of launching too early and having too many bugs.

SWToR made the unfortunately choice of trying to emulate WoW. You can’t out-WoW WoW. Blizzard has been at it too long.

TSW made the unfortuantely decision to go with a monthly fee, instead of being buy to play at launch. That decision cost them. Particularly because when it launched so many people were waiting for GW 2, which was B2P.

Saying that MMOs fail because people don’t listen to their fans is not only completely unprovable, but often complete impossible, considering fans are often at odds about everything.

So are fan boys necessarily wrong? Or can you be a fan boy and be right sometimes too?

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

Yeah the TB quote wasn’t about Guild Wars 2 fans…it was against fan boys in general.

Would it surprise you though? I’m pretty sure I remember him being blown away by the attacks of the GW2 community for not praising the game 100% in his youtube videos. I’ve never seen him have to address a specific fanbase in that manner.

It wouldn’t surprise me, but the fan base at this time is quite different than it was at launch or before launch. And he made his comments about Guild Wars 2 fans who were reacting to what Jessie said, not him. And what Jessie said, at that time, was uniformed.

That said, the game is old enough where the rose-colored glasses are off. I’ve been called a white knight and a fan boy, but I still posted negative stuff about RNG and I’ve agreed with quite a few posts that have negative things in them. I’ve agreed we need an LFG tool, I’ve agreed we need more viable builds for many professions, I’ve agreed with a number of negative points.

The fact is, I object most to specific unverifiable claims, or people who want everything NOW. That’s are my pet peeves and I respond to them. But those who call me a fan boy, oddly, NEVER mention the times I say I agree with something negative said about Anet.

Seems suspiciously imbalanced to me.

Yeah the TB quote wasn’t about Guild Wars 2 fans…it was against fan boys in general. But then, there are as many trolls who post on forums to rile up fan boys as there are fan points. How many negative threads are actually troll posts?

I know people who post negative stuff on fan forums just to rile up the fan boys, even when they don’t believe what they’re saying.

Lying occurs on both sides of the fence…and so does honesty.

Astral Projections.7320:

Vayne.8563:

Im Mudbone.1437:

Astral Projections.7320:

Guild Wars 1 always had rare, to the point of being almost unobtainable, minipets in their games. The prices on the rarest ones were astronomical, the type of jaw dropping, “you got to be kidding me, I’ve been playing this game for years and don’t have that sort of money”, price. Even a semi rare pet could cost 100k plat. I don’t know how much that would translate in Guild Wars 2 money, but 100k plat wasn’t cheap.

The Guild Wars franchise has always been about grinding for the shinies. About getting the rare vanity item to show off with. The game was marketed on this and minipets are just one of the vanity items.

So far the game has made most vanity items attainable thru a little work. Aside from the gem store RNG, which is another topic. >.> Having to grind for a few days to get money for a particular vanity item isn’t bad. At least it’s obtainable. And it’s part of the games philosophy.

Making money in the Original GW was extremely easy, 13 mules and 2 playing characters all maxed in gold as well as my bank, that’s 100 plat on each character and 1 mil in the bank. GW2 is a grind for in game cash unless you play the TP which I suck at.

I disagree. Guild Wars 1 was EVENTUALLY easy to farm/grind in. But in the early days, the first year, it wasn’t so easy. It was quite hard to make gold. Eventually as time goes on, the gold sinks tend to get less ( you don’t need to outfit more characters) and the knowledge and availability of stuff goes up.

Comparing Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1 five years in is not the same as comparing Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1 nine months in.

He also said he had 1 million plat, when the game was 6 years old and I can believe it. However that sort of money in the bank wasn’t common amongst the “little people”. Most struggled to get 100k.

In all fairness, later in the game, I found 100k quite easy to get….however, the stuff I wanted couldn’t be bought with 100K, or even 1000k. There were minipets that were completely out of my reach on a permanent basis.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

yah, and gw2 is easier than all you just explained. dungeons in GW2 have that very same problem, just ten times worse because of diminishing returns.

you could yawn your way through because of the right build set and correct gear. The addition of those heroes really did make the game easy mode , i agree.

the road to getting stuff and completing your objectives in GW1 was just all around better IMO. When you get something in GW2 you aren’t really surprised or excited to use that item.

Maybe its because GW1 had a better way of modifying your current gear so you wouldn’t have to spend hours on end to grind on something that wouldn’t be any stronger than your current build.

At least in GW1 your face roll was because of a good build and not because you had berserker gear and just hit 1.

The impact of choices that you make in battle aren’t really noticeable. I can autoattack the enemy to death or press all my skills and still kill the enemy in the same time in general PvE scenarios.

“I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey I swung it again.” -Colin
This is the feeling I get most of the time.

Then again I tend to try to change things up with certain condi builds that take more than one button to be effective, but kitten it takes a good amount of grind to get those stat gears.

In all seriousness it takes much longer grind to get where you want to be in GW2 than it did in GW1.

I don’t know. I took me a REALLY long time in Guild Wars 1 to get the weapons I wanted with the stats I wanted…particularly my celestial compass. Getting the other stuff in Guild Wars 2, just the stats is pretty fast and easy.

Are you really telling me you got the magmas shield with the stats you wanted when Guild Wars 1 was 9 months old easily?

Because I’d have to take you to task for that.

It’s so easy to remember Guild Wars 1 later in the game when everything was easily available….but that wasn’t always the case. In two more years, Guild Wars 2 will be like Guild Wars 1 was in the end.

Mahaedros.7085:

It’s a fun game but I don’t like the influence of Nexon and NCsoft.

read the quote from Totalbiscuit again instead of posting again Vayne

I read the quote. Want to know something? TB is like a guy. His opinion is worth as much as yours. Or mine. Or anyone.

Yes, it’s a very lovely quote. What every happened to…

But those who are familiar with the history of the world know there really was never a golden era. Sure everyone looks out for each other when there are only five guys around. That’s human nature. That’s survival. Small, close knit communities tend to look out for each other.

Then you move to the city. Gaming is no longer a niche market with five guys with neckbeards sitting in mom’s basement. It’s big business. And no matter what TB says or anyone says, human nature is human nature.

We have the same stupid human nature problems we had in the dark ages. We have the same stupid human nature problems we had in the nineteeth century.

Basically, small groups stick together and support each other and big groups tend to form cultures that think differently than small groups. That’s that TB is saying. What ever happened to when gamers stuck up for each other.

I don’t lie in my posts. And naysayers often use hyperbole to make things sound worse than they are because they don’t like it. In every single business (not just gaming), once the suits get in it’s the same. Publishing…check…movies…check….music…check. All of these industries have serious flaws, because they’re run by marketing departments.

Publshing companies used to be run by editors and they made decisions based on you know…quality. Now they’re run by marketing and they make decisions based on, you know…we can always use another celebrity cook book.

Times change. Businesses change. There’s reality and there’s TB living in the past, because he remembers when gaming was niche. Okay, so much for his quote.

So how much is Anet paying their staff? How big is their staff? How much staff do they need to create constant content? If they don’t create this content, how many people would leave the game?

I don’t think TB invested millions of dollars to make a game. It’s so easy to criticize, but not all criticism is valid.

Mahaedros.7085:

The RNG and these forums are awful

I don’t understand how a company can moderate their own forums in the way this company does… they have to realize that the people who volunteer to speak for Anet cost them serious money by driving people away…

I would buy lots of things from the cash shop…but not RNG items.

The quote from TotalBiscuit is great.

I looked forward to playing this game and have played since beta. Now, though i still have fun leveling alts and stuff I like to do, I’m looking and waiting for a different MMORP that is not so slimey.

Good luck with that. Most MMOs I’ve played are more slimy than this.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Astral Projections.7320:

Guild Wars 1 always had rare, to the point of being almost unobtainable, minipets in their games. The prices on the rarest ones were astronomical, the type of jaw dropping, “you got to be kidding me, I’ve been playing this game for years and don’t have that sort of money”, price. Even a semi rare pet could cost 100k plat. I don’t know how much that would translate in Guild Wars 2 money, but 100k plat wasn’t cheap.

The Guild Wars franchise has always been about grinding for the shinies. About getting the rare vanity item to show off with. The game was marketed on this and minipets are just one of the vanity items.

So far the game has made most vanity items attainable thru a little work. Aside from the gem store RNG, which is another topic. >.> Having to grind for a few days to get money for a particular vanity item isn’t bad. At least it’s obtainable. And it’s part of the games philosophy.

Making money in the Original GW was extremely easy, 13 mules and 2 playing characters all maxed in gold as well as my bank, that’s 100 plat on each character and 1 mil in the bank. GW2 is a grind for in game cash unless you play the TP which I suck at.

I disagree. Guild Wars 1 was EVENTUALLY easy to farm/grind in. But in the early days, the first year, it wasn’t so easy. It was quite hard to make gold. Eventually as time goes on, the gold sinks tend to get less ( you don’t need to outfit more characters) and the knowledge and availability of stuff goes up.

Comparing Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1 five years in is not the same as comparing Guild Wars 2 to Guild Wars 1 nine months in.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO.

GW was massive, it was multi-player, it was online, and it was a role-playing game. GW was imo a better RPG than any of the old stand-bys.

GW didn’t meet the “definition” of MMORPG because it lacked a persistent, open world and because your group had each explorable to itself. This was a definition derived from earlier games that even ANet bought into. Perhaps the genre should have been called, POWMMOG instead of MMORPG. That acronym would have more accurately fit the definition.

Yet there were elements in Guild Wars 1, because it wasn’t an MMO, that made it a stronger game than most MMOs. Yes, I loved Guild Wars 1…I just know it’s not an MMO and I know a lot of the things within it would be impossible within an MMO, no matter what you call it.

For example, I loved vanquishing. It was my favorite thing to do in Guild Wars 1, but unles they created completely instanced zones in Guild Wars 2, it’s not going to happen. Also the way the groups of enemies formed could really only be done in an instanced game. The number of heroes you had was great, but if everyone was running around with eight heroes…well…if you think the world has lag now…just wait. I still think they should introduce heroes for dungeons, just for solo players.

It’s just that so much of what makes Guild Wars 1 great (like the story which is best told in instance) is also what made Guild Wars 1 not an MMO. As soon as Guild Wars 2 became an MMO, several things were going to have to change.

Completely instanced zones in GW2? Oh, like dungeons which need help coming up with a reason to kill trash at the moment? Hmm.. That’d be a good place to try out Vanquishing. Heroes weren’t meant to be as cool as they were, I don’t think. They were mainly to replace having people in your party.

I don’t think vanquishing is nearly as impossible to do in GW2 as you’re saying.

Vanquishing a dungeon instead of a zone is an idea I had and posted elsewhere at some point..but it’s not the same as clearing a zone.

And yes, I think it would be hard to do. But I don’t think either of us could prove it.

The new events take place on Southsun Cove. While this is usually a level 80 zone, for the duration of the event, lower level characters will be scaled up to 80 at least in health and armor, so you can participate. There are plenty of people doing the event, so you might want to find people to group with. That could help too, particularly if you’ve never been there and don’t know the pitfalls of the islands.

My best advice is join a guild of like minded players, who can help you and answer your questions. It’s the best way to get the experience if you’re new to the game.

JustTrogdor.7892:

I agree with the toggle option. As far as feeling it isn’t necessary at all because an email was sent there could be problems with that as far as getting all players in the know.

Many people, like me have a separate email adress they use for registrations. These are often rarely viewed with the exception of password retrieval and such. I do this because many sites, even if you select not to receive emails will still mail you. Additionally some sites will sell your email even if they claim they don’t. I’ve have tested this many times with a new clean email address and registering with a few sites and it wasn’t more than 24 hours that I started getting mails from junk I never heard of.

Also some email clients are more sensitive to spam and will dump just about anything in the junk folder that isn’t whitelisted by the user or isn’t in someones contacts. This issue is also common when emails are being sent out in bulk. You have probably noticed when registering for an honest, well known site they often hint to check your spam folder and whitelist their address.

So my guess is this redundancy is to ensure that as many players as possible have received the news.

But yes a toggle feature would be nice. I also wish they would add a way have a toggle option to show frame rate on the mini map by the clock.

I think the mail being referred to is not an email but an in game mail.

This is a really good analysis of the situation as it stands. I’m not sure it adds anything that hasn’t been said in other threads, but it does bring the entire issue under one roof, so to speak.

The difference, though, in comparing Tribes: Ascended and an MMO is the amount of new content that the company has to create to keep people interested.

In first person multiplayer shooters like Tribes Ascended, it’s all about player vs. player and that makes it’s own content. The same can not be said for an MMO. So I find it interesting that you chose to compare an MMOs cash shop to that of a FPS. I’m not sure the situation is congruent.

The question is, for me, how much money does it take to maintain that game, compared to how much money it takes to maintain an MMO. When comparing cash shops, it’s easy to make the basic assumption that the cash needs of one game are equal to another, but I don’t find that true.

Even within the MMO genre, its’ not true. WoW has a cash shop and you can buy a mount for $25 dollars or more. They charge as much as Guild Wars 2 for server transfers too…but they also have a monthly fee….a huge influx of cash every month.

Other MMOs have cash shops that are far worse than Guild Wars 2’s. They lock off certain professions or certain races. In some you can buy traits or character upgrades. In the worst of them you can buy BIS gear. It’s a pretty sad story, all together.

But because every MMO that has a cash shop and no subscription has a cash shop at least as bad as Guild Wars 2, it makes you wonder why.

I don’t think it’s particularly good to compare the cash shop in an FPS where regular content isn’t a monthly deal and no one is expecting it really, and something like Guild Wars 2. In fact, do we even know how big the company that makes Tribes: Ascended is. How many people they’re paying?

That sort of overhead definitely changes the game with regards to how “greedy” a cash shop is. I don’t have the answer, because I haven’t researched it, but I do know that it’s far easier to run an FPS than an MMORPG.

Except that not everyone who played Guild Wars 1 shares these opinions. I’m a long time Guild Wars 1 player, have my GWAMM and 50/50 in my HoM and at least in the later years, GW 1 solo with heroes and henchies was face roll easy. Easier, in my opinion than much of Guild Wars 2.

Even in hard mode there wasn’t a zone I couldn’t yawn my way through. Drop wise, I remember getting yellows and greens in Guild Wars 1 that meant absolutely nothing. Time between drops that meant anything at all were few and far between.

Even running most dungeons in hard mode and getting the two gold drops at the end, or the worthless green and a gold drop was just tragic.

I dont’ know what game you’re talking about being harder and more rewarding, but I’m not sure it’s Guild Wars 1.

I don’t recall Anet specifically saying the would reward laurels. Is there a quote for that somewhere?

Wouldn’t say I farmed, but spent a significant about of time doing the achievements on Southsun. 40 magic find plus the buff you get from the NPCs there, however much that is. Not even MF food. One chest.

Got some crafting mats out of it.

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

The real issue here isn’t Anet themselves, but who Anet has to compete with to keep this game viable. Box sales alone are never going to make that happen. Would just selling the item in the trading post? I don’t know.

If it was enough to fund this game’s development, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be enough to keep it running.

Because in order for an MMORPG (not a game an MMO) to be competitive today, it has to have massive amounts of content. This is 8 years after the release of Prophecies. People’s attention spans are shorter than ever. Either a game gives them something to do r they find a game that does.

And the budget required for that is far higher than the budget Guild Wars 1 ever had. The size of the staff is five times larger (or more). The servers are no doubt more expensive. We know Anet moved to bigger headquarters. I’d assume the rent is higher. The content updates are much much faster (which is necessary in today’s world).

Anet isn’t competing against nothing but subscription games anymore. They’re competing against free to play games like DDO, Lotro and others. And they’re competing against subscription games, or games that had subscriptions for periods of time or still have optional subscriptions. This means that they have to produce content, if not as fast as those games, almost as fast…or they lose part of the player base.

Let me tell you, there’s not much worse than being part of an MMO was a seriously declining player base. More and more people leave, open world stuff becomes impossible to do…the game dies.

I’d love it if this weren’t the case…but unfortunately it is. In order for ANY MMO to be successful today they have to compete with other MMOs and that means they need to have enough cash to do that.

Colly.4073:

I have been trying to get a skill point in Malchor’s leap for 5 days now, It has a Champion Risen Knight spawned right over it + a Veteran spark. But Anet continue to add useless content that draws players away and leaves previous area’s a ghosts town.

People will soon get tired of this kitten.

Have you guested over to a busier server? Do you belong to a guild?

I know if someone in my guild said they needed a skill point, a half a dozen people would come back them up…if not right away, soon enough. I also know that that knight is killed relatively regularly on my server, because I’ve killed him.

If you insist on soloing everything and won’t guest to another server for free….there’s not really much anyone is going to be able to do for you.

Okay this argument has gone a long way to changing my mind (not about not liking RNG) but not seeing it as quite as bad as I had.

The real issue here isn’t Anet themselves, but who Anet has to compete with to keep this game viable. Box sales alone are never going to make that happen. Would just selling the item in the trading post? I don’t know.

At any rate, I’m still not going to buy chests, because I know if I do and don’t get any of the new weapon skins it will simply annoy me. I have no use for most of the other stuff in them and don’t want to waste my money on stuff I’m not likely to get.

It’s not that I don’t have the money….it’s that no skin is worth $100 to me.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO.

GW was massive, it was multi-player, it was online, and it was a role-playing game. GW was imo a better RPG than any of the old stand-bys.

GW didn’t meet the “definition” of MMORPG because it lacked a persistent, open world and because your group had each explorable to itself. This was a definition derived from earlier games that even ANet bought into. Perhaps the genre should have been called, POWMMOG instead of MMORPG. That acronym would have more accurately fit the definition.

Yet there were elements in Guild Wars 1, because it wasn’t an MMO, that made it a stronger game than most MMOs. Yes, I loved Guild Wars 1…I just know it’s not an MMO and I know a lot of the things within it would be impossible within an MMO, no matter what you call it.

For example, I loved vanquishing. It was my favorite thing to do in Guild Wars 1, but unles they created completely instanced zones in Guild Wars 2, it’s not going to happen. Also the way the groups of enemies formed could really only be done in an instanced game. The number of heroes you had was great, but if everyone was running around with eight heroes…well…if you think the world has lag now…just wait. I still think they should introduce heroes for dungeons, just for solo players.

It’s just that so much of what makes Guild Wars 1 great (like the story which is best told in instance) is also what made Guild Wars 1 not an MMO. As soon as Guild Wars 2 became an MMO, several things were going to have to change.

CoRtex.2157:

The problem is, any random dubai person can create an account -> create a lvl 1 char -> buy a Legendary. That’s how stupid it is. There’s is no point in getting a cool weapon, you are better of going to work for 3 hours instead of spending XXX hours in the game. Playing this game doesn’t mean anything, you buy it all with money. THAT’S NOT HOW GW1 WAS LIKE. You needed effort and practice to do these dungeons with organised groups and when you succesfuly did the dungeon you had a chance to get an epic drop. I miss that soooo much.

Do you mean NO ONE in Guild Wars 1 bought gold (illegally) and bought the mats to make obby armor? No one in Guild Wars 1 paid for runs to beat games (with gold that could have been bought the same way?). Do you really think every single person in Guild Wars 1 who had a tormented weapon beat DOA? Because I don’t.

In fact, I had a tormented weapon BEFORE I beat DOA. You could have just about everything in Guild Wars 1, and I mean just about everything by feather farming. You can miss Guild Wars 1 all you want, but at least be honest about it.

Im Mudbone.1437:

IRONIC, ANET don’t want us to farm yet they graciously dangle treats in front of us that forces many to farm for whatever is needed to obtain these treats because they are the ones unable to pull out a credit card or don’t have the funds.

It wasn’t any different in Guild Wars 1, except that rare minipets there were far far more expensive than anything here. The fact is, everyone isn’t mean to have everything. If that were the case, what’s the point of playing?

I was a minipet collector in Guild Wars 1, but I never had a mini polar bear. In five years of playing, and I played a lot, I couldn’t afford one if I’d wanted to. And Guild Wars 1 didn’t have a gem shop where you could buy gold for cash.

Hawkian.6580:

Vayne.8563:

That’s a good post, Hawkian. It’s stuff I knew but never put together in my mind.

I mean I REALLY don’t like this RNG stuff. Drives me mad. I like the new skins, I want a new skin but I’m not willing to gamble to get a new skin. Yeah, that’s annoying.

On the other hand, there are probably tons of players used to this type of transaction who don’t think twice. Somehow, it’s wrong to me that they don’t think twice…like they should know better, or it should be obvious…but it’s not to lots of people.

I don’t like it at all either. I mean, again, on an individual level no one should.

To employ the popular analogy of gambling (this is not actual gambling, by the way, but I do not have any desire to get into that at the moment)…

It’s like an individual sitting at the slot machines and complaining about how low his odds of winning are, while he and 300 around him continue to pop in quarters every few seconds. Yes, of course you’re wasting money. Yes, of course the odds are atrocious. You should just know better, come on!!!

But obviously there’s nothing enticing about it, since as we all know, casinos are not profitable establishments and Las Vegas as an institution has no reason to continue offering slot machines.

Now, up until this point in my analogy I’d still simply prefer that everyone stop putting in quarters. They’re just hurting themselves. There’s no net benefit to themselves, let alone the other people playing slots, let alone the other people in the casino who aren’t gambling.

But here’s where the comparison diverges completely. It would be as though the casino was offering me, someone who isn’t gambling or really spending much money on anything at all, a valuable and enjoyable service. And the quality of that service went up and had the chance to last longer the more money the casino made. Now I look back at the people in the rows of slots and say, “Yeah! Go for it! I’m sure next time you’ll hit the jackpot!”

I guess, while it does benefit the game over all, it also hurts the game’s image. At least it does to me. I’m not happy knowing this goes on in a game I support.

On the other hand, I don’t like any other MMOs even ones with subscriptions and no cash shop. Nor do I suspect any other MMO in the near future is coming out that has a better cash shop.

I’m sooooo conflicted. lol

I never tip the mesmers that portal me. Bad enough I let them in the guild. lol

Jack of Tears.9458:

You know what we need is a way to bring those numbers back down; cataclysm of such magical proportions that it wipes the world of much of it’s upper tier gear. Make Rares actually “Rare” again, and each step above that harder to achieve – maybe hiding them in hard to find locations, at the end of really difficult jumping puzzles, behind the ranks of the nastiest monsters you can find, or on the other side of that mega trapped room. And from there you make the next step harder. But you make sure that the blues and yellows and greens that drop for your level are still good enough to get by on until you manage to get something better. Then you remove the “exotics” tab from the Trading Post so you can’t just go on and buy your exotics on the market. Instead you’d have to go through the work of getting them or deal in trade with other players who might want something you have. I could get behind that.

I wouldn’t mind it, but you know…it’s just not going to happen. And maybe it shouldn’t.

In theory the people who need that gear the most are the people who wouldn’t be able to get it. lol

aspirine.6852:

I have not done any fractals because no-one would take people like me. Only experienced fractals players can come :/
So I dont know if agony is anything like spectral agony in gw1, it sounds like it you also had to infuse your chars to avoid the damage of this. And this was in not in dungeons but in open(being instanced though) parts of the game.
I would not mind such a change, an area can be avoided if you cant get infused items .

You’re in the wrong guild then. I run fractals with new players quire frequently.

That’s a good post, Hawkian. It’s stuff I knew but never put together in my mind.

I mean I REALLY don’t like this RNG stuff. Drives me mad. I like the new skins, I want a new skin but I’m not willing to gamble to get a new skin. Yeah, that’s annoying.

On the other hand, there are probably tons of players used to this type of transaction who don’t think twice. Somehow, it’s wrong to me that they don’t think twice…like they should know better, or it should be obvious…but it’s not to lots of people.

So many MMOs have worse cash shops than Guild Wars 2. WoW has a cosmetics only cash shop, in addition to charging a monthly fee for 8 million people.

How is any game ever going to compete if they don’t have an influx of money to pay devs to continually make new content?

The whole thing just rubs me the wrong way.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Vayne.8563:

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO.

Darn good game for its time – darned good game – but yeah it was … I’m not even sure whatcha call it, aside from awesome.

But you know, I gotta stick with the people supporting GW2, it fixed everything I wished was better about GW1. I was the audience GW2 was shootin’ for when Anet made this game and I’m hoping to have a good ’nother 5+ years with this, just like I did with the first series.

Anet called it a CoRPG…a cooperative RPG. A lot of what’s changed in Guild Wars 2 has changed because of the persistent world.

For example, in an instanced world, you could have groups of enemies with healers and rits and minion masters all together in a single group…because you were talking a group in with you. Even solo, you had heroes.

In Guild Wars 2, you could see the problem with respawns and all. I mean nothing respawned in Guild Wars 1, because it was instanced. If nothing spawned in Guild Wars 2, there’d be nothing left for the guy behind you to do.

These are the differences between an MMO and an instanced game. Instanced games are just better at things like stories, and complexity.

Jack of Tears.9458:

Vayne.8563:

Sneaking past a champion for some professions is quite easy. Should a thief always get a rare, because he has stealth?

You play to your strengths; if you’re a Warrior you bash your way past, if you’re a Thief you sneak your way past. But there was a good point made about flooding the market with Rares, it’s just that by the time you’re 80th level a blue is such a minor deal it doesn’t even seem worth sneaking past … heck, even a rare is barely worth your effort at that point. But, yeah, ya still get he satisfaction of sayin’ ya did it if nothing else.

Which is sorta my point. Even in Guild Wars 1, drops become sorta meh. So you got a yellow? Big deal. All it is is a potential ecto here. In Guild Wars 1 most of that stuff was just garbage. The top level drops were all very rare skins. Those were the only ones you cared about, like certain named exotics.

Rares are already undervalued because of how many you get from meta-event chests. Every chest doesn’t need to have a guaranteed rare.

I guess if you come from Guild Wars 1, seeing a blue isn’t a big deal because the loot system isn’t tremendously different, certainly not as much as most people think. There was probably a time when a yellow or green meant something when it dropped in Guild Wars 1 too, but I can’t remember it. lol

AlietteFaye.7316:

declan.3968:

Is there an MMO out there with horizontal progression and a lot of persistent content? Can someone give a few examples? Notice I said horizontal progression. WOW has vertical progression, sure the raids still exist but there’s not much to do as a guild if you’re following progression beyond raiding the top tier raid.

Guild Wars 1. The game that this game is named after and is a sequel to. Weird, huh?

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Many people quote Colin’s original statement regarding ‘an expansion’s worth of content’, as he said they would, but few quote his expanded explanation about what he meant:

’I’ll throw out feature wise, many of the things we’ll be doing feature wise across the first half of 2013 are typically the type of features you’d likely only see in a paid expansion traditionally. We’re really excited about the opportunity to be able to do that for Guild Wars 2, and think there is something really compelling in that experience, which is really the only message we wanted folks to take from all of this. March will of course continue this tradition of free releases, major features, and of course the growth of living story as we expand its role in Gw2.

All of that being said, this is exactly why we try and avoid talking about stuff until it’s ready, if we say something early and it ends up not ending up exactly what people expect, it doesn’t work out for anyone. Saying something like “expansions worth of content” means different things to everyone, and is nearly an impossible goal to meet expectation wise since everything expects something different, which is a big part of why marketing stepped away from that plan very quickly after asking us to use it when speaking to the press/fans.

I imagine it’ll still get quoted until the end of time, but hope that helps explain where it came from, and what to expect. Just to re-iterate the post I made back in January:

“To set expectations accordingly, the January release will be a relatively small release that sets the table for the stories and features we plan to roll out with the Feb/March releases and beyond. Also, there will be no new race, profession, or new region with these larger Feb/March releases. One of our major goals with these releases is making our existing world as strong as possible, ensuring there are reasons to go to all the locations in the world we’ve already built, and strengthening the core game we’ve provided. In saying this will be an expansions worth of stuff in these releases, we’re talking about the number of new features that will be rolled out across PvE, WvW, and PvP in early 2013, which usually you’d only find in an expansion for a traditional MMORPG.” ’

Would only be fair and accurate to do so. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/ColinJohanson-2394/showposts

Sure, give it the full quote. Features aren’t content, though. This quote you’re referring to is when they realized that they actually weren’t providing anywhere near that much content, and they had to step back and try to fix the mistake of saying so.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO.

tigirius.9014:

Reloading.3260:

that stupid living story reminder sitting on my screen forever they’ve gone and replaced it with a Southsun one.

You sent me an email informing me of the southsun festivities, I know about it, thanks. You don’t need to plant a constant reminder in front of me every second I’m logged in that somethings going on in southsun.

The only reason I completed character story and living story on my main chars was to get rid of that stupid text.

Didn’t we ask them to do this the last time when this thing started? Make it toggle? Another example of them not reading the forums methinks.

Or an example of them having other priorities. I’m sure they know people want it toggled. I’m sure it’s not on the top of their to do list.