A game this size couldn’t function with a couple of developers. We’ve seen more than a couple of developers, different developers in interviews and several articles on the blog are written by others.
It’s a stupid rumor. I can’t see why anyone would believe. it.
Aside from that, Anet is part of NCsoft which is a publicly held company. No big company would lay off staff without announcing it as they could get into serious trouble. If it were announced somewhere, it would be in the news and we’d have heard…the same way everyone knew about the layoffs at EA over SWToR and everyone knew about the layoffs at TSW.
And how easy is it to start a rumor on the web. Anyone can say anything. But if you check the Anet webpage, they’re hiring. You don’t your entire staff while hiring.
It’s not the way casting works in most MMOs. I most MMOs you can’t cast anything at all without a target.
Did you realize there’s a red bar under each skill that tells you whether or not you’re in range?
So leave until they introduce the in game LFG tool and come back then. No harm done. It’s not like you have to pay a monthly fee to do that.
Though I don’t really understand why you don’t use the site. It works pretty well.
WvW doesn’t take place in Tyria, nor does SPvP. These battles take place in the mists, which is the essence from which everything else is created. It’s also the place where people go in Tyria after they die.
SPvP are reflections of famous past battles. Great warriors, to test themselves to those battles to refight them over and over again, proving their valor and skill.
As far as I can tell, when you face other realms in WvW, you’re actually facing a reflection of your own reality. A parallel universe. But you fight for the honor of your universe. Different races would fight for different reasons.
Humans, presumably, would fight to impress the gods. Norn would fight to make their legend. Charr would fight to hone their skills. Sylvari would it for the same reason Sylvari do everything… to learn, to experience it. And Asura would do it for the bragging rights, or because they’re trying to figure stuff out. Maybe it’s linked to their eternal alchemy.
Because you’re not fighting people in your own realm, you really do have to figure out why you personally are doing it.
I’ve always thought the way WoW did it was a sort of cop out. We attack them because they’re they enemy. So what?
There is no race in which everyone of that race hates everyone of another race. There’s no nationality where everyone of one nationality hates another nationality. This is the whole good vs. evil in fantasy fiction thing. It’s a cheap gimmick to sell us on who are the bad guys and who are the good guys.
It’s much more interested, to me, to say that we’re all the good guys, but we’re the better guys, and we need to kill the others simply for the sake of glory. It’s not less reasonable.
And yeah, you will learn to recognize specific guilds and find you dislike them. There are a couple of guilds I attack on site, just because they’re just obnoxious. No, I won’t name them here. lol
To stop people from saying Anet is greedy. lol
I think the lesson that we can take from this topic is that everyone wants something different. Anet is balancing the tastes of millions of players. Few of the requests in this thread have been echoed by other people, and it’s clear that what would make one person happy would not make others happy. What YOU want is not what OTHERS want, so the next time you decide to complain about the direction that Anet is taking, maybe we should try to remember that there are others who are applauding what they’re doing. I think that would make the forums a much more enjoyable place. That’s what I want.
Great post. It’s always been this way. MMO players are an eccletic bunch. You’ve got players who only PVe, players who only PvP, players who come in just to socialize, players who want real challenge, players who log into relax and hit stuft with sword, players who want deep group coordination, players who want to solo.
And very often design decisions that make one group happy will destroy the game for another group. Most people believe that the way they play is the way most people play and what they want is what most people want.
We can’t ALL be right.
Part of me would have preferred this workload be converted to the 7 remaining dungeon overhauls they need to do.
Have no idea if the normal team did this dungeon or not.
If they did: They still have that “we want to build on what’s already in game” comment they need to uphold, which this deviates from slightly.
If they didn’t: Move those beautiful dungeon designers into revamping the older dungeons.
The normal dungeon team did not build this content. This was a different team.
But I think spending time revamping old dungeons is less valuable than creating a new one.
Look at AC. It was revitalized, but most people I know don’t want to run it.
This is no attack or any sort, I’m just curious here.
I see a lot of people complaining about content being a grind in this game. I would really like to know what they would do to make it less grindy, or how they would change the game. Because to me that’s usually what mmos are about; advancing in a slow progress to an achieved goal. I mean what i’m getting out of certain players is that they want things done super quickly, but wouldn’t that make the game really boring?
I’m just super confused with some of you guys. If anyone could explain I would greatly appreciate it.
EDIT: Would also love if some of you guys could give me some other MMOs that aren’t grindy for examples!
I actually don’t mind the grind, what bugs me is the hand holding ANet does via Diminishing Returns.
“ANet: Oh look, you have been playing for 45 minutes killing x mob for something you need, you should play elsewhere for something you don’t need! Come back later for another shot of ridiculous RNG.”
If I can play 6 hours once a week, why can I only work on my goal for 3 hours? Should I play those other 3 hours, or just find something else to do? GW2 has the worst way of limiting people.
Prime example is WoW, farming raids heroics, you know you can only do them once a day, or once a week period. In GW2 you have no warning other than “I’ve been looting crap for the last 10 minutes, did I hit DR’s, or just a dry spell?”
Don’t give me crap about farming, if ANet was against farming Legendary’s would have been legendary from the start not a farm-fest of mats. Whether you’re have fun, or not the process’ of anything in the game at its very core is farming.
Just move around and don’t keep killing the same stuff, and the DR doesn’t kick in. I do it all the time. Why do you insist on killing the same stuff over and over or staying in one small area?
There is a small group of people that complain about open world DR, but I’m not convinced that most even know what it is, or ever experience it.
Why do you insist on moving around? You’re doing the same thing, just in different areas.
True tunnel vision YOU have, if ANet continues to back-peddle you will eventually come to your senses.
Maybe not, I mean it’s B2P, and I know how much B2P gets praised just for the fact that some people think 15 a month is a rip-off… OMG 50 cents a day I has a family!!!
Why shouldn’t I move around? That’s not tunnel vision. I think you’ll find for most people, staying in one spot is boring. It might not be for you.
But bots tend to kill the same mobs over and over too. So it’s a logical thing for Anet to do.
Because you think it is boring, I don’t play like you, many people don’t play like you, and many people have goals. My goal shouldn’t be hampered by a kitten war against bots. Why are there bots any ways? Wasn’t that the whole point of gem =/= cash + play came in? Legally selling gold, taking the power out of the 3rd party’s hands? DR’s have removed bots from parts of the game, also have made it hell for players, that is NOT fixed, that is lazy. Players are now better off to cheat with a second account than actually play the game for things they want so that they can move on and do something different.
Not all players want to run in circles all day and claim how awesome it is to just rerun old content over and over and over and over!
Do what you want, take a break, new content? Do more content.. Some people have all day to play the game and all night to post about it, well, I don’t and gaming is a luxury and until ANet realizes that time spent is the true commodity, they will continue to disappoint people.
Game is B2P, it will sell, but it will never be any thing great.
It’s already something great to a lot of people. Talk about tunnel vision.
It doesn’t fit the way you play, so it will never be great.
Maybe it’s just not the game for you…which is okay. But that doesn’t make it a bad game. In fact, it can be a great game and not for everyone.
problem is new players joining will see no content had been added, how do u explain to ppl picking up the game 1year from launch o u missed all this content sorry your out of luck and they are stuck with the basic content the game launched with 1year ago by then…
How do you explain to someone who starts watching a 25 year old soap opera that it’s 25 years old.
If the game is good and the content is good, then it doesn’t matter. Because there’ll be cool stuff to do.
And really aside from the dungeon, what are you really missing from F&F? lol
This is no attack or any sort, I’m just curious here.
I see a lot of people complaining about content being a grind in this game. I would really like to know what they would do to make it less grindy, or how they would change the game. Because to me that’s usually what mmos are about; advancing in a slow progress to an achieved goal. I mean what i’m getting out of certain players is that they want things done super quickly, but wouldn’t that make the game really boring?
I’m just super confused with some of you guys. If anyone could explain I would greatly appreciate it.
EDIT: Would also love if some of you guys could give me some other MMOs that aren’t grindy for examples!
I actually don’t mind the grind, what bugs me is the hand holding ANet does via Diminishing Returns.
“ANet: Oh look, you have been playing for 45 minutes killing x mob for something you need, you should play elsewhere for something you don’t need! Come back later for another shot of ridiculous RNG.”
If I can play 6 hours once a week, why can I only work on my goal for 3 hours? Should I play those other 3 hours, or just find something else to do? GW2 has the worst way of limiting people.
Prime example is WoW, farming raids heroics, you know you can only do them once a day, or once a week period. In GW2 you have no warning other than “I’ve been looting crap for the last 10 minutes, did I hit DR’s, or just a dry spell?”
Don’t give me crap about farming, if ANet was against farming Legendary’s would have been legendary from the start not a farm-fest of mats. Whether you’re have fun, or not the process’ of anything in the game at its very core is farming.
Just move around and don’t keep killing the same stuff, and the DR doesn’t kick in. I do it all the time. Why do you insist on killing the same stuff over and over or staying in one small area?
There is a small group of people that complain about open world DR, but I’m not convinced that most even know what it is, or ever experience it.
Why do you insist on moving around? You’re doing the same thing, just in different areas.
True tunnel vision YOU have, if ANet continues to back-peddle you will eventually come to your senses.
Maybe not, I mean it’s B2P, and I know how much B2P gets praised just for the fact that some people think 15 a month is a rip-off… OMG 50 cents a day I has a family!!!
Why shouldn’t I move around? That’s not tunnel vision. I think you’ll find for most people, staying in one spot is boring. It might not be for you.
But bots tend to kill the same mobs over and over too. So it’s a logical thing for Anet to do.
This is no attack or any sort, I’m just curious here.
I see a lot of people complaining about content being a grind in this game. I would really like to know what they would do to make it less grindy, or how they would change the game. Because to me that’s usually what mmos are about; advancing in a slow progress to an achieved goal. I mean what i’m getting out of certain players is that they want things done super quickly, but wouldn’t that make the game really boring?
I’m just super confused with some of you guys. If anyone could explain I would greatly appreciate it.
EDIT: Would also love if some of you guys could give me some other MMOs that aren’t grindy for examples!
I actually don’t mind the grind, what bugs me is the hand holding ANet does via Diminishing Returns.
“ANet: Oh look, you have been playing for 45 minutes killing x mob for something you need, you should play elsewhere for something you don’t need! Come back later for another shot of ridiculous RNG.”
If I can play 6 hours once a week, why can I only work on my goal for 3 hours? Should I play those other 3 hours, or just find something else to do? GW2 has the worst way of limiting people.
Prime example is WoW, farming raids heroics, you know you can only do them once a day, or once a week period. In GW2 you have no warning other than “I’ve been looting crap for the last 10 minutes, did I hit DR’s, or just a dry spell?”
Don’t give me crap about farming, if ANet was against farming Legendary’s would have been legendary from the start not a farm-fest of mats. Whether you’re have fun, or not the process’ of anything in the game at its very core is farming.
Just move around and don’t keep killing the same stuff, and the DR doesn’t kick in. I do it all the time. Why do you insist on killing the same stuff over and over or staying in one small area?
There is a small group of people that complain about open world DR, but I’m not convinced that most even know what it is, or ever experience it.
I’m sorry but all this holiday/seasonal crap is just a stupid move on ANET’s part. Yes it’s great to get it nailed down, but in a fast paced industry like this it’s important to produce sustaining content to keep the players playing the game. Who gives a rip about Halloween, or Chrismtas, or April Fools if people are quiting and will never see the content ever again. You just made a bunch of content that nobody will give two hoots about 1-2 years from now. Those will be your core gamers and they would have been around had you not had these development dead-ends in the first place.
One thing you’re missing is that Guild Wars 1 players, at least anecdotally DO care about those holidays. The busiest time in Guild Wars 1, the time with most people online and playing were the holiday events. And this isn’t a small jump in the population.
Shing Jea Monastry used to host the Cathan New Year every year. When events aren’t running, there was one zone in Shing Jea Monastary, or once instance of that outpost. Like when a city in Guild Wars 2 has no overflow servers.
On the festival days, there were 90 plus districts, or the equivalent of 90 overflow servers.
You can say what you do and don’t like, but I think you’d be mistaken to say that people don’t care about these events. Some people love them. If Guild Wars 1 is anything to go by, a lot of people.
This is Guild Wars 2, not one. The developers have insisted on making this a treadmill game so there are so many things that need fixing/streamlining that it’s important that they fix those first then even remotely think about this temporary work. Why not work on a new WvW map or something instead of a supid continent that nobody went to unless for guild rush or orichalcum nodes.
A single tier of gear does not a treadmill make. Just because you use the term treadmill, doesn’t make it a treadmill.
Vertical progression itself doesn’t make a treadmill either.
Play WoW for a few years if you want to see what a treadmill actually looks like.
Many of the things though come back…like Halloween and Christmas content. That we’ll be seeing annually. What Anet is doing, at least in part, is building a library of things they can use.
It’s a very different idea for an MMO and I disagree with the poster who said they’d rather not go through six months of beta testing to see whether or not something will pan out. If everyone thought that way, the industry would be even more stagnant than it is now. Trying new things is what drives the industry forward. Without it, we’d all still be playing pong.
Only this isn’t a new thing. WoW and Rift have recurring seasonal events too, as well as chapters of the story as it unfolds. This whole “living story” thing has been around since WoW tried to do phased instances in WoTLK, it didn’t work out well then, I don’t see how this is going to end any differently.
Every time Rift unlocks a new raid or dungeon there is a 2-3 week event coinciding with the release of it. Only the raids or dungeons stay around forever after the event ends. This isn’t a new idea, and the GW2 version of it is poorly done.
I played Rift quite extensively when it came out and I HATED the way they did events. I mean really hated them. Because every event became like a daily.
There wasn’t enough content in the game at launch. A tiny fraction of what Guild Wars 2 had to offer. So they hit us with these events. Not like short weekend events. Events that lasted until the next event. As you said, temporary content.
But there wasn’t always a raid attached to it, it was just the next event. And it was always the same. A new set of quests that you did over and over again every day for a new currency. Every event, every time. Drove me nuts.
So you want this minipet from this event, you have to play these events, over and over the same thing every day. That’s NOT the same as the living story idea, that, in theory, will bring changes to the world.
The living story didn’t make me do the same quest every day for more currency to buy the same stuff. It gave me something to do which I could do and forget about. This was very different than what Rift gave me.
And just because it didn’t work in WoW or Rift, doesn’t mean it won’t work here. That’s the nature of experimentation. There are plenty of examples I can think of where someone tries something and someone else tries and it someone else tries it and the third person gets it right. There’s no guarantees of course, but this is a very different game to Rift, with a very different prime audience. I’m not so sure that the Rift players, who were displaced WoW players in the first place, would appreciate this is quite the same way that Guild Wars 1 players might.
I can see your point. I guess my point is Living Story is not “living” up to my expectations personally I found the Rift events to have a richer story and more rewarding gameplay. And the pun is bad, very bad, I’m sorry :p
Actually I agree with you on this. The living story isn’t living up to my expectations either, though the new dungeon is pretty cool.
I think this was more of a test though for it, rather than a full scale implementation and I think as time goes on, Anet will get better with it. Think of it as a living story on training wheels.
There’s still a lot of the staff working on quality of life features and bugs and such, LFG tool, that sort of thing, stuff that should have been done ages ago. As that list of things get smaller, the teams that work on the living story can get bigger.
The future might be very different than what we’re seeing now.
That’s very cool. I love stuff like this.
My wife and I played Guild Wars 1 for many many years. One day, a few years ago, my wife gets a holiday card from Anet. Out of the blue. We’ve done nothing special but play the game.
What makes this even more special was that we live in Tasmania, Australia. Anet randomly posted out cards to various fans, and we just happened to get one, even though we were on the other side of the world.
We saved the card, because it’s a really cool thing for a gaming company to do.
Because this isn’t 1999, we aren’t all 16 anymore playing EQ all summer long. I don’t have time to kill thousands of enemies day in and day out. I have work and a family now.
Give me an epic weapon skin quest arc that takes a month or two to do, NOT a collect 100 of 20 different things year long grind! That’s fine if people want to grind like that, but give those of us with sporadic play times that can’t stand sitting in the same spot for hours a way of doing it!
There are plenty of nice skins though that aren’t legendaries. The game needs to provide for people like you, but also people like me, who have a LOT of spare time in which to play.
There are some very nice skins out and I’m sure more will come in time. They’re not legendaries, but they’re still quite cool. You just have to look for them.
Oh I agree with you, there are tons of cool skins out there! Honestly they need a few more of some weapons, but for the most part there is a nice selection out there. A lot of the non legendaries actually look nicer than the legendaries themselves.
Actually yes, I was kind of surprised at how…overdone many of the legendaries are. There are few I’d consider personally anyway. I just want to get that stupid blank spot off my loading screen. lol
Ahh, i see your problem, sry, i forgot about something. Of course, there are also casuals, who want a legendary, but i dont want. My idea is to create a big gap between normal stuff and pestige stuff (mostly, but not only legendaries). This would make normal stuff far easier to obtain for casuals (casuals goes from a few hours and not each day to a few hours three days a month, so even, if you call yourself a casual, there are other casuals, that play even less), but legendaries would not makeable for casuals anymore, but they are only skins.
You can have better skins, but you dont need them, they have no benefit to you and there are enough other skins in the game. But ascended gear gives you also better stats, and although you can also play without them, it is of course an advantage to have them. I think, any player should have a chance to play with max stats (that was, what i loved in GW1, it was may not for free, but for any player payable to have a max armor without farming), but to make them obtainable (easy to get) needs on the other side something not obtainable (legendaries).
Of course, it sucks to see great skins without the chance to obtain them, but if you are really a casual, you should have no chance to get them anyway (you are not a casual, only because others play even more). To say it a mean way, the prestige stuff is rather something for players without a real life, only having the game. If you are a casual, this should mean, that you have things in your life more important than playing the game, so why whinig abot an non-obtainable prestige-skin, only enjoy the game.
Because I paid the same 60$ that anyone else paid and I should have access to the game the same ways as anyone else.
That’s like saying I paid a health spa membership to a gym, but I don’t have the time to work out and I should build muscle or lose weight as fast as the next guy.
When you buy an MMO, you’re not actually buying a game. You’re buying an account. Access to a world. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get ANYTHING but access to that world. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll like the game, be good enough to beat content (though that shouldn’t represent too much trouble in this particular game), or that you’ll play enough to get everything done in the game.
You know, I paid for a day’s access to Disneyworld, but I was only able to stay there for an hour. Do you think they’ll give me a refund because all I did was ride space mountain once?
I don’t think you understand what he was saying or why I was disagreeing with him.
Maybe so, but it seems that you at least were saying you want access to ascended weapon skins even though you have extremely limited time to work on getting one.
Many of the things though come back…like Halloween and Christmas content. That we’ll be seeing annually. What Anet is doing, at least in part, is building a library of things they can use.
It’s a very different idea for an MMO and I disagree with the poster who said they’d rather not go through six months of beta testing to see whether or not something will pan out. If everyone thought that way, the industry would be even more stagnant than it is now. Trying new things is what drives the industry forward. Without it, we’d all still be playing pong.
Only this isn’t a new thing. WoW and Rift have recurring seasonal events too, as well as chapters of the story as it unfolds. This whole “living story” thing has been around since WoW tried to do phased instances in WoTLK, it didn’t work out well then, I don’t see how this is going to end any differently.
Every time Rift unlocks a new raid or dungeon there is a 2-3 week event coinciding with the release of it. Only the raids or dungeons stay around forever after the event ends. This isn’t a new idea, and the GW2 version of it is poorly done.
I played Rift quite extensively when it came out and I HATED the way they did events. I mean really hated them. Because every event became like a daily.
There wasn’t enough content in the game at launch. A tiny fraction of what Guild Wars 2 had to offer. So they hit us with these events. Not like short weekend events. Events that lasted until the next event. As you said, temporary content.
But there wasn’t always a raid attached to it, it was just the next event. And it was always the same. A new set of quests that you did over and over again every day for a new currency. Every event, every time. Drove me nuts.
So you want this minipet from this event, you have to play these events, over and over the same thing every day. That’s NOT the same as the living story idea, that, in theory, will bring changes to the world.
The living story didn’t make me do the same quest every day for more currency to buy the same stuff. It gave me something to do which I could do and forget about. This was very different than what Rift gave me.
And just because it didn’t work in WoW or Rift, doesn’t mean it won’t work here. That’s the nature of experimentation. There are plenty of examples I can think of where someone tries something and someone else tries and it someone else tries it and the third person gets it right. There’s no guarantees of course, but this is a very different game to Rift, with a very different prime audience. I’m not so sure that the Rift players, who were displaced WoW players in the first place, would appreciate this is quite the same way that Guild Wars 1 players might.
just award 1 Laurel if the account logs that day.
Then, stock dailies until Sunday, so if the account didn’t log during the week it still has the opportunity to collect all the remaining Laurels for that week.
Problem solved.Whose problem? The point of dailies, in most games, is to get people logging in. More people in the world mean more people to play with. More people around. The game looks busier. This is true of all MMO dailies.
This way someone logs in and logs out without doing anything, leaves it all to the weekend, and you lose part of the reason dailies exist in the first place.
Some individuals may benefit from this, but the game as a whole may not.
I see your point and you are not wrong, but forcing people into doing things they won’t do on their own sets the basis for a migration.
I bring my own experience as example: I am a very casual player, if my total GW2 time available for the day is, let’s say, 1 hour, I would really like to log and do a dungeon; I cannot, because if I do the dungeon I miss the daily…. you see the point? and what if I only want to do a quick WWW run? and if I just want to chat with friends in LA?
This game has an excess of currencies when we would need really only one, able to buy everything in the game .
Forcing people is not the right path.
You’re not being forced to do a daily. If you’re THAT casual, do the dungeon. Because it doesn’t matter how long it takes to get something like ascended gear. It’s not like you’re gated from content without it. You sure don’t have time to do a level 40 fractal.
This has more to do with your perception and less to do with the game itself. I go to the zoo and I have an hour to spend there. I won’t see the whole zoo. So I go to the attractions I think I"ll like the most. It doesn’t matter that there’s a zoo tour I can take that shows me a bunch of stuff, even if all that stuff is interesting. Because I, personally, only have an hour.
No one is forcing you to do dailies, and if you don’t change how you see them, you’ll just either leave the game, or be miserable.
I don’t see why you’d embrace either of those options. Just do the dungeon and forget the laurels. You’ll get them when you get them.
Ahh, i see your problem, sry, i forgot about something. Of course, there are also casuals, who want a legendary, but i dont want. My idea is to create a big gap between normal stuff and pestige stuff (mostly, but not only legendaries). This would make normal stuff far easier to obtain for casuals (casuals goes from a few hours and not each day to a few hours three days a month, so even, if you call yourself a casual, there are other casuals, that play even less), but legendaries would not makeable for casuals anymore, but they are only skins.
You can have better skins, but you dont need them, they have no benefit to you and there are enough other skins in the game. But ascended gear gives you also better stats, and although you can also play without them, it is of course an advantage to have them. I think, any player should have a chance to play with max stats (that was, what i loved in GW1, it was may not for free, but for any player payable to have a max armor without farming), but to make them obtainable (easy to get) needs on the other side something not obtainable (legendaries).
Of course, it sucks to see great skins without the chance to obtain them, but if you are really a casual, you should have no chance to get them anyway (you are not a casual, only because others play even more). To say it a mean way, the prestige stuff is rather something for players without a real life, only having the game. If you are a casual, this should mean, that you have things in your life more important than playing the game, so why whinig abot an non-obtainable prestige-skin, only enjoy the game.
Because I paid the same 60$ that anyone else paid and I should have access to the game the same ways as anyone else.
That’s like saying I paid a health spa membership to a gym, but I don’t have the time to work out and I should build muscle or lose weight as fast as the next guy.
When you buy an MMO, you’re not actually buying a game. You’re buying an account. Access to a world. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get ANYTHING but access to that world. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll like the game, be good enough to beat content (though that shouldn’t represent too much trouble in this particular game), or that you’ll play enough to get everything done in the game.
You know, I paid for a day’s access to Disneyworld, but I was only able to stay there for an hour. Do you think they’ll give me a refund because all I did was ride space mountain once?
Because this isn’t 1999, we aren’t all 16 anymore playing EQ all summer long. I don’t have time to kill thousands of enemies day in and day out. I have work and a family now.
Give me an epic weapon skin quest arc that takes a month or two to do, NOT a collect 100 of 20 different things year long grind! That’s fine if people want to grind like that, but give those of us with sporadic play times that can’t stand sitting in the same spot for hours a way of doing it!
There are plenty of nice skins though that aren’t legendaries. The game needs to provide for people like you, but also people like me, who have a LOT of spare time in which to play.
There are some very nice skins out and I’m sure more will come in time. They’re not legendaries, but they’re still quite cool. You just have to look for them.
But feedback is only as good as the test players. I’ve seen some wildly bad ideas posted by test players in my day.
Back when I did alpha testing for Rift, I naturally had access to the alpha forums. They were not all that different from these forums, except they tended to be more respectful. lol
The point is, people who played the alpha content often disagreed about how things should work or be changed. It’s not always so obvious. Multiple opinions are often mutually exclusive, and the company is back to listening to one group or another.
I mean Rift had some crazy bad decisions even with the public test server. It didn’t seem to help at all.
Many of the things though come back…like Halloween and Christmas content. That we’ll be seeing annually. What Anet is doing, at least in part, is building a library of things they can use.
It’s a very different idea for an MMO and I disagree with the poster who said they’d rather not go through six months of beta testing to see whether or not something will pan out. If everyone thought that way, the industry would be even more stagnant than it is now. Trying new things is what drives the industry forward. Without it, we’d all still be playing pong.
I miss the last two threads that covered this issue in depth. So much so that I’ll post here too. lol
I really liked playing with builds in Guild Wars 1. I mean, that was the whole game for me. But I also recognized the way builds work in Guild Wars 1 has certain inherent problems.
First and foremost, in Guild Wars 1, you could only change builds in an outpost. So if you were in a dungeon and you wanted to test a new build, you would have to go back to the outpost, run back to the dungeon in hard mode and get back to the point you wanted to test. Aside from that, very often your success or failure in PVe at least, was often determined before you left the outpost.
And with so many skills, there were inherent problems balancing. People say Guild Wars 2 is imbalanced, but there’s nothing in Guild Wars 2 like the ursan builds, or the permasin, or sabway or the 600 monk or the 55 monk or the discord builds…or any of dozens of others.
And of course many of the skills were completely useless (quickshot for the ranger comes to mind).
In Guild Wars 2, I can swap out skills out of combat between encounters in a dungeon, something I could never do in Guild Wars 1. I can even change major traits out, if I need something different. This is a different type of flexibility that people seem to ignore.
I mean in Guild Wars 1, your skills were your skills out in the world, and they had to count for every single contingency. In Guild Wars 2, there are ways to change what you’re doing, even your entire playstyle by changing weapons. Which means you don’t have to go back to town every time you want to play differently.
Both systems have advantages and disadvantages, but this is how I see it.
I was far more involved in builds in Guild Wars 1. I’m far more involved in actual combat in Guild Wars 2.
Rift had a public test server. When I was on it which wasn’t that often (I did alpha testing for Rift prior to launch), it was always relatively dead. Because nothing you did on that server furthered your actual character on the main server. Most people would rather work on their characters and make some kind of progress in something, even if just gold or karma acquisition than play on a test server, for the benefit of the game.
Doesn’t ANET have an ALPHA to test builds on?
Of course there’s an alpha server. What people are often arguing for is a public test server like some other games have.
Depends on how many good dungeons will be coming in the future. Some of the other “good dungeons” aren’t so good after doing them a zillion times. I think there’s a bit of logic to having something that doesn’t hang around forever. That said, I think less than two weeks is way too short a time for a temporary dungeon.
A lot of people really enjoy having that many options to tweak their character, mostly old school RPers and MMORPers and MUDers that want to feel attached to the avatar/character – if my character looks like every other character out there, I just find myself not giving much of a crap in general about the game, because I know that means most other things are likely to be cut and paste too. Turns out that most of the time that’s exactly what happens.
I just find it rather sad that instead of moving towards having -more- options (for character creation and other advancement options/gameplay features) MMOs seem to be moving -backwards-. How is it that older games, like COH (didn’t care for the game but can’t argue that the character creation was at all lacking) or EQ2 or even AION (though I didn’t care for the art style in general ) have -more- options for something as simple but fundamental as character creation in the past few years?
The problem is, it isn’t just men who want these types of costumes, but women too. Do you know in games where you can make ugly characters, a disproportionate numbers of characters are made to look as good as possible?
When TSW launched there were tons of complaints about not being able to make a good looking woman character….many of those complaints from women. TSW went out and changed a lot of the starting character stuff, because that’s what people wanted.
My wife likes making really attractive female characters, some of them scantily clad. It’s her choice.
The problem is, why should game companies put time and money into stuff that only a small percentage of the fan base wants.
That’s why we end up going “backwards”. Because we live in a society where appearance is worth so much more than substance.
Storyline or quests. Don’t make me just hunt thousands of Glacer Golems and hope a lodestone will drop. Give me a quest that will be incredibly challenging and give me at least half of what I’m going to have to grind for. A little grinding is inevitable, but the amount needed for certain items that only drop from 1 or 2 enemies is silly. There are so many things that could be tied into dungeons, personal story, and even whatever is going on monthly!
This guy has it – to get a precursor, for example, should be something like a 700hr quest line, that you reliably get a reward from.
The fractal gear to me is also a prime example – you do the fractals, to achieve the AR you need to… do the fractals? And it’s a bleeding gear treadmill? (something we were told, for 6 years, wouldn’t exist.) If they peak at ascended, it’s no big deal – primarily because they already lost a huge chunk of players over it, those of us who are left either a)don’t care about the ascended stuff, b) are willing to get them slowly through dailies, c) are willing to grind, grind, grind the fractals.
Any content that right now is rewarded through RNG should instead be the result of massive quests – or multiple small quests. But they need to be reliable.
The success of GW1 can be summed up with the idea that, if you left the game for 4 months, when you came back, you were still at max power (assuming you left that way.) You wouldn’t discover that you’re elite gear was now second best, or that your max level now needed to pop up another 20 to be competitive.
Adding reliable, quest/mission content worked for 7 years. To change that approach now is just flipping off their original fan-base.
Adding reliable quest/mission content took time. Prophecies launched with a much smaller game than Guild Wars 1. There was the addition of Sorrow’s Furnace and hard mode. And that was it till Factions a year later.
This is a game which launched with far more content and more time is needed to create more content. If you don’t think Anet is working on content, you’re probably mistaken.
So we need to make a GOOD 700 hour quest. It takes a lot more than 700 hours to make a quest like that. In the mean time, people had nothing to do NOW.
This is the problem ALL new MMOs face. It’s why stuff is so hard to get at launch and why after a year or two, everything is easier to get. Because the content is caught up and people have other stuff to do.
This isn’t something that we don’t see in every MMO, not because Anet is lazy. But because content takes a whole lot longer to program than it does to run through.
just award 1 Laurel if the account logs that day.
Then, stock dailies until Sunday, so if the account didn’t log during the week it still has the opportunity to collect all the remaining Laurels for that week.
Problem solved.
Whose problem? The point of dailies, in most games, is to get people logging in. More people in the world mean more people to play with. More people around. The game looks busier. This is true of all MMO dailies.
This way someone logs in and logs out without doing anything, leaves it all to the weekend, and you lose part of the reason dailies exist in the first place.
Some individuals may benefit from this, but the game as a whole may not.
Here’s the problem. Let’s say you report him. If Anet bothers to ask him, he can say it was an honest mistake. That he didn’t realize he started the dungeon. It can happen. Not saying it was, just asking you what you expect Anet to do if you do report him.
This kind of thing is devilishly hard for a company to “prosecute”, because there’s another explanation besides malice.
All you can really do is never team up with that guy again and move on. I know it sucks but I don’t think reporting him will yield results.
Part of what keeps MMOs new and fresh for some people are these changes. You have to play a bit out of your comfort zone. You have to learn how to use the skills you have to succeed. Obviously not everyone likes this, but for many, the meta is what keeps people playing. The few people you lose changing it are acceptable collateral damage. It won’t change because more people are bored with the status quo than are offended by changing it.
Probably why all MMOs do it.
I don’t really understand all the annoyance directed at the OP. He/she is going to stop doing dailies because he/she doesn’t find them fun any more. That’s fair enough. What’s wrong with it.
I stop doing anything in a game I don’t find fun.
What part of leaving posts are against forum rules did you not get? You could have easily made this exact post without the threat of leaving.
However, every MMO makes changes to specific builds over time. Every…single…one. No exceptions. Well there is one exceptions. MMOs that aren’t supported at all.
Anyone who can’t see the ele bunker build was OP, honestly see it, well…
There will always be people who want to leave MMOs because they chose an OP build and it’s easy and now it’s not easy and they have to learn something else. Most of the rest of us just shake our heads and keep playing.
If you expect that other MMOs won’t nerf obviously OP builds, you’d be wrong. There are probably more non-elementalists ready to leave the game because of the nerf build than eles who are leaving because their build was nerfed.
I’d rather inconvenience one profession than all the others.
What is the community consensus on whether or not there are enough incentives and rewards for players to dedicate their endgame farming time on running around the open world? Things seemed to have gotten better since the FoTM was introduced, but I don’t play anymore, so I don’t really have any first hand experience.
A lot of people who play Guild Wars 2 don’t actually play for rewards. A lot of people, of course, do. The people who do play for rewards will only be in certain zones at certain places, waiting for certain events (the Maw, the dragons, the great Wurm, etc). The rest of the world will be ignored by those people.
Then there are people like the people in my guild who play the game for fun and care less about the rewards. There are people in my guild who never do dungeons or PvP of any kind. All they have is the world. I promise you they don’t stand around Orr all day.
People like me, I like the world. I’m all over the world.
And let’s not forget there are also guild missions happening in the world, too, which add to some world traffic…but not at off peak hours generally.
I remember Anet saying they didnt want the player to have to grind in Guild Wars2…..in their BS “Manifesto” video.
I swung a sword, hey look I swung it again…..guess what Colin…we have done that same grind a million times now… You must have been predicting the future
The manifesto isn’t BS. But your understanding of what was being said in the manifesto is certainly questionable. It’s so good when people take a quote out of context and twist it to mean what they mean. There were four problems in the manifesto and of them, only one of them was “marketspeak” and could conceivably be termed as BS. That’s the line “We take everything you love about Guild Wars 1 and put it into a persistent world.” Clearly impossible since different people loved different things about Guild Wars 1 and if everything was put in, then we’d have Guild Wars 1. I mean what if someone liked the world being non-persistent. Then that wouldn’t be true. But aside from that, everything else in the manifesto is actually something that is in the game.
Colin was talking about grinding to level like in many asian MMOs, including AIon. You ran out of quests at one point and you just had to kill stuff. The last line of the paragraph you curiously ommited, was “I swung a sword, I swung it again, hey I swung it again! That’s just great. We don’t want people to grind in Guild Wars 2, no one likes grinding, no one finds it fun, we want to change the way people view COMBAT”.
See that word combat at the end of the sentence. He’s talking about making combat fun. Now YOU might not like the combat, but plenty of people in this game do like it, because it’s mobile. You can move around, cast on the move, swap weapons (or attunements or kits if you’re an ele or engie)…all that is true. For many, this is the most fun combat they’ve ever had in an MMO. It says nothing in the manifesto about vertical progression. It says nothing in the manifesto about gear progression or gear grind.
The only other confusion in the manifesto was put to rest shortly after it’s release by a post on Guild Wars 2 guru about the manifesto because there was some confusion about it. Colin was talking about DEs and Ree was talking about personal story. Due to editing, it made what they were saying sound completely impossible. How can you have a persistent world and still have each player being able to change it. Clearly you can’t. But once you see one is talking about DEs and one is talking about PS then it’s actually quite clear…and Anet was the one who clarified it.
People are so fast to call BS. I think people need to stop ignoring context.
The other side of that coin is that this team and create more dungeons and we can always have fresh stuff coming in to play relatively frequently, without it hanging around long enough to get stale. Because eventually everything gets stale.
Do we know that Eir “abandoned” her son? We only know that he lived with his father. But there are a whole lot of possibilities about why that might have been.
<snip>
Without knowing more, I don’t know that I’d be so fast to judge Eir.
Your mother’s name is Eir Stegalkin. Remember that, but I will tell you what I told Yngvi and Brynhildr. No one must send word to your mother that I am gone. I forbid it. She is capable of great things, as are you. She must not be tempted to stray from her path. Wolf walks beside her. But you mustn’t worry. He walks beside you as well, my son. Never forget that.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/brahams-story/
Sounds to me that the parents split amicably…dad took on the responsibility of raising their son so mom could fulfill her destiny of saving the world.
Thanks for posting that. I hadn’t read that before. It fills in a gap.
But Eir, before she decided to take on dragons, was just living in Hoelbrak and sculpting. She wasn’t actively hunting dragons when her son was born. At least I think that’s the timing.
It’s possible though, that she’d be sick at that time, or injured and that the father moved away with the child. In fact, it sounds like the father has some kind of fore-knowledge of what would come and encourage this.
And of course it’s dangerous to judge norn by human standards. They look like humans…but they’re not human. I suspect there’s a whole lot less nurturing going on there.
If you’re that causal, that you don’t play that often, what’s the difference if it takes you 1 month to get an ascended amulet, or 3 months? Or six months?
You’re not locked out of content either way. You can do all the same stuff. So what’s the difference if you NEVER get ascended jewelry.
It won’t stop you from enjoying the game, unless you choose to let it.
I’m not a fan either. I felt it humanised the Pale Tree, and removed the mystery surrounding it. They should have just made something like a bright glowing orb instead.
Yep, I agree. And a bright glowing orb that didn’t speak in a voice that sounded like someone’s doting grand mother.
Do we know that Eir “abandoned” her son? We only know that he lived with his father. But there are a whole lot of possibilities about why that might have been.
I once had a character in a story who had a son, who he didn’t see anymore. The mother moved away and hid the child. He had no idea where the child was. He had no way to find them.
Without knowing more, I don’t know that I’d be so fast to judge Eir.
Why not try an easier profession to get the hang of the game and then level up the elementalist after you’re more familiar with the gameplay and content?
I just wish that they would add some sort of NPC support (like GW1) so we can do all of the content without having to find a 5 man group. These living story events, with the need for a multi person group to complete, frustrate me no end (especially with no LFG tool). Standing there and spamming chat can be a huge PITA when you need to find a group of 5.
The same goes for the personal story.
The rest of the stuff seems ok, but for me personally, the lack of a way to get through the end of these events pretty much excludes me from them. I have a busy personal schedule and waiting for a group burns my gaming time. Needing 5 people is a bit much. Could this be reduced to 2 or 3?
5/10 for me.
So why not join a casual guild. Then you’d have people ready to play with you and you can just get a group together in guild chat. My group does it all the time.
Good point. And one I frequently see in these forums.
If a guild is too casual then it is either too small to have enough players on at any given time or the players are not bound together enough to play regularly or cohesively. Casual guilds are also very fluid in terms of keeping players (or even existing for long).
Also it is kind of cheesy for me to join a guild with the sole purpose of competing only my story. I’d have to lie my way in or play with them so seldom (only when I want to do personal content) that the rest of the guild would feel manipulated.
Obviously, hard-core guilds require mandatory play at certain times, practices and guaranteed participation in various events and use of voice comms. Not my cup of tea.
Yes, this is selfish but this is MY game and it was advertised as being a game that I could play solo (one would think this would be true especially for the main story and special events).
I can see how grouping would be necessary for regular dungeons but the main story line should be soloable or it should be supported by NPCs that can help finish content.
Don’t join a guild just to do your story. Join a guild to find some nice people who ALL want to finish their story. lol
We have about 80 people in my guild, about 20-30 people who are on all the time, and we’re real casual. People can represent or not, if they want.
But if you don’t like the patch because you can’t get content done…join a guild. One day you do the content you want because you need that and another time, maybe you give back to the guild by helping someone else with a skill point or a vista, or even a dungeon. You might find you just enjoy the game even more with the right people playing.
Basically it’s something you can do to fix the problem. Rating down the patch for it, I’m not sure that’s really fair.
I’ve done it twice, had no problem. And I’m not sure that even if they had in game help, it would have helped in this case.
Sure but how much money will they have to spend to save them money. So the devs work harder on patch days. But the devs are already being paid. They don’t get paid more to work harder.
At any rate, I’m not so sure pride is the main reason Anet doesn’t have a public test server. I think they that create content VERY quickly, and I think that they don’t want to let the cat out of the bag before that content is released.
It’s very very hard to do that if everything is running on a public test server. That’s really the down side. There are no surprises in the game to anyone.
I will come strait to the point, I do not like how The Pale Tree has been portray – with an Avatar.
if you look back at the concept art and the tree in Guild Wars 1. you do not need and Avatar.
Yes the Avatar is/was needed.
The Pale Tree, also known as the Mother Tree to the sylvari, is a massive, magical, sentient tree which is the mother of all playable sylvari. She is aware of activity around her and can manifest as an avatar of herself and will converse with those who seek her wisdom.
All is normal as this shows.
The Avatar of the Tree is the spiritual representation of the Pale Tree, used in order to communicate openly with other beings, primarily her children, the sylvari.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Avatar_of_the_TreeNothing to see here move along.
You quote lore from the wiki, but who wrote that lore. That lore isn’t fact. It’s lore. It could have changed if it made the game better. In fact, there’s no reason that a tree that shares a dream with it’s children can’t communicate with them telepathically.
At any rate, it’s not just that it has an avatar, it’s the form the avatar took and the way the avatar spoke. I didn’t buy into it. And that’s a problem for me.
Guild Wars 2 has a lot of good things about it, I really am a fan, but they lean to much to the stereo-typical and they don’t have to.
I said CHARACTER CREATION which meant males as well as females. There are some MMO’s that do character creation much, much better… GW2 is pretty lame in that aspect. Yeah, the male faces are pretty awful too and smack of bishy anime 12 year old pretty boys. Boring.
But seriously… WHY would any viking-esque woman wear a ton of makeup? Do you -really- think warrior women in history decked their faces out and slapped on some high-heel thigh high boots to go fight in? That’s all pop culture. And depending on the time period and culture, women may or MAY NOT have been showing skin. Victorian era, for example -you showed your ankles and that was risuqe’. Instead of doing anything remotely interesting with cultures or remotely taken from history save for the boring stereo types of the Nord (obviously viking influenced), we get pop-culture influenced underwear armor that would look more natural in a Victoria’s Secret magazine. Sorry, I find it stupid, uninspired, and utterly lacking in creativity. GW2 took the easy way out with character creation and armor design, and I don’t like it at all. Hard to be attached to my character when I can’t stand how any of the options for the races look. You may have a differing opinion and that’s fine – but I’m old school and I prefer armor to look like armor and warrior women not to look like little fashion models on a catwalk.
Ah, I see your problem…and agree…to a point.
The problem is, if you made armor to look like armor for female characters, you’d be in a bad position with the women (and men) who play female characters to wear sexy armor. It’s not fair, but it is how the market works.
What should happen is that there should be enough choices to keep both schools happy. But you can bet that most companies that have a substantial investment in a product will try to appeal to the masses.
Elementalists need to be both mobile and to some degree, have defenses. Things like control and also conditions like blinding are your friend.
If something’s blinded, it’s not going to do that much damage.
In this game, moving and dodging is a big part of your success. Having points in vitality/toughness can help too, particularly while you’re learning.
Changing attunements is important too and don’t forget earth. It can help.
I just wish that they would add some sort of NPC support (like GW1) so we can do all of the content without having to find a 5 man group. These living story events, with the need for a multi person group to complete, frustrate me no end (especially with no LFG tool). Standing there and spamming chat can be a huge PITA when you need to find a group of 5.
The same goes for the personal story.
The rest of the stuff seems ok, but for me personally, the lack of a way to get through the end of these events pretty much excludes me from them. I have a busy personal schedule and waiting for a group burns my gaming time. Needing 5 people is a bit much. Could this be reduced to 2 or 3?
5/10 for me.
So why not join a casual guild. Then you’d have people ready to play with you and you can just get a group together in guild chat. My group does it all the time.
They advertised the game, saying forming parties wasn’t necessary to complete dynamic events, and it’s completely true.
They also talked about their dungeons and that they were made for parties of five and that they were the hardest content in the game.
It’s not like this information was hidden, in fine print, on page 27.
What they said about not having to group for DEs is true. But they never said you wouldn’t have to group at all for anything.