Guild Wars 2

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Balance became a problem after they introduced new skills and classes, which GW2 has neither done and which you yourself agree they should not do without balancing things first.

The fact is that GW1 WAS balanced early in the game. It was much more balanced in the first year of prophecies than GW2 is now in its first year.

The problem is that they’re GOING to introduce more. NO MMO is going to leave skills untouched forever. So starting here, where it can be balanced is the smart thing to do long term.

In a perfect world people don’t get bored of the same skills. In this world they do. Therefore, for the long term health of the game, starting this way is smarter. As more skills come out, the game becomes deeper.

I’m must saying that the introduction of new skills created imbalance in GW1. It is my opinion that the balance in the game now is way off compared to Prophecies. Actually, I think the balance is way off in general. Not between professions, but between making something other than direct damage the best and only route to winning.

I agree that they will need to add more skills to keep people happy. Doing that responsibly would be appreciated. But, fixing team combat now would be nice first.

What makes you think they’re not fixing it? I just think they’re not fixing it fast enough. It’s the whole patience thing. It takes time for MMOs to shake the kinks out. Time often measured in years, not months.

Okay, I’m going to chime in here about build diversity in Guild Wars 1.

There were tons of possibles builds. As long as you weren’t doing the highest level content, that is UW, DOA, Slavers, or you had a guild of people who would run with you all the time, you needed specific builds to get into groups.

However, I was able to h/h or play with my wife and use 6 heroes pretty much everything in the entire game….even DoA I did with 2 people and six heroes. I ended up doing it this way, so I wouldn’t have to use a cookie-cutter build.

Those who ramble on about Guild Wars 1, aren’t really talking about Guild Wars 1. They’re talking about a period in Guild Wars 1’s time. The golden age of Guild Wars 1. A time they want to recapture.

The problem with that is that there’s almost never a golden age when people talk about the golden age. Memory tends to exaagerate the positive, while ignoring the negative. My dad used to talk about the golden age too, and he grew up during the depression.

It’s not that the game is good or isn’t good. It’s that Prophecies when it launched was Anet’s first game and they went overboard in the skills, and particularly in the second profession. They didn’t look ahead to see what that would eventually breed.

I know several people personally who walked away from Prophecies because it was too complex. That’s part of the reasons why PvX wiki was so popular. You’d see people in the Great Temple of Balthazar all the time asking for someone to ping them a build

And because the game was Build Wars, personal skill mattered someone less than the build you ran. In other words, and I said this while I played too, your victory or failure was often decided before you left an outpost.

If you had the wrong skills, you were doomed. If you went after Duncan Black without Swap or some similar skill, some sort of strategy, it was about a billion times harder. There were skills that were absolutely 100 needed to get through the Deep.

You may like that or consider that good game design…and in some ways it was. But once those builds got into PvX wiki (and today everything gets into a wiki), that entire type of game, PVe-wise anyway) becomes meaningless. Here’s the build, take these heroes, off you go.

There was so much trivialized PVe content because of this. 55 monks, 600 monks, sabway…the list is endless.

Yes, it was fun to make builds, but the very thing that made that game fun eventually became the downfall of that game. Because being balanced at one point is irrelevant if you can’t keep it balanced long term.

Guys like Clay say, oh yeah, by then the game completely fell apart. That’s because of how it was designed. Had it been designed better, it wouldn’t fall apart when you added to it.

darkace.8925:

clay.7849:

GW2 isn’t the only game with this problem. Trash mobs are trash mobs, if you can run past them, usually people will. If mobs held aggro longer/further, you would see this kind of thing disappear.

I’ve wondered why they haven’t implemented a system wherein every trash mob killed increases your odds of rolling better loot from chests by a percentage large enough to entice players to fully clear dungeons but not so large that clearing dungeons becomes mandatory.

You win the interwebz. This is a great idea!

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Balance became a problem after they introduced new skills and classes, which GW2 has neither done and which you yourself agree they should not do without balancing things first.

The fact is that GW1 WAS balanced early in the game. It was much more balanced in the first year of prophecies than GW2 is now in its first year.

The problem is that they’re GOING to introduce more. NO MMO is going to leave skills untouched forever. So starting here, where it can be balanced is the smart thing to do long term.

In a perfect world people don’t get bored of the same skills. In this world they do. Therefore, for the long term health of the game, starting this way is smarter. As more skills come out, the game becomes deeper.

Nick.6972:

Most of the classes/skills in GW2 are not balanced too, GW1 wasn’t balanced, but at least it offered more diversity, hell, how hard was it to increase the Shadow Form CD to 1 minute as it was back in 2007?

There is such a huge difference in the type of imbalance we’re talking about here. The way Guild Wars 1 was set up, there was just no possible way to balance it. I mean, you think 4 zerker warriors and a mesmer are anything like a perma-sin, or a rank 8 ursan? Totally different level of unbalanced.

Imagine if you told Guild Wars 2 players today that a character could make himself immune to damage permanently. Or that a single player, like an imbagon paragon could mitigate 90% of the parties incoming damage with almost 100% up time. People would think you were mad.

Yes, this game has some balance issues, but they’re nowhere near as bad as the stuff that came up in Guild Wars 1.

Nick.6972:

Combat and skill system lacks depth and customization.

And read this Q&A, I find this funny, they’re basically saying they acknowledge the problems, but they won’t change anything. They know what players want but they won’t do it. http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1109-qa-with-jonathan-sharp-and-jon-peters/

Now, I dont want to be disrespectful, but please …

They know what “some” players want. Not all the players. The question always comes back to how many players want more complexity.

There are tons of people who love Guild Wars 1’s skill system, and there were more than a few who really didn’t like it at all. I’m one of the guys who loved it. I loved making builds. I had a ball with it. By the same token, it also made the game much much harder to balance. There was a downside.

I don’t think I’d want to go back to something that complex with that much variety, even though I enjoyed it at the time. The downside was too powerful to justify it in my opinion.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Holy cow! Logic on these forums! Say it isn’t so! lol

You mean like your attempt to determine probabilities about the number of hirings? That was completely illogical.

I’m sorry, how does this apply to the topic of “Is Guild Wars 2 fun”? I’m pretty sure that instead of trying to pick on me (which doesn’t work anyway), we can discuss the topic at hand.

I think Guild Wars 2 has fun bits in it, but it needs work in some areas. I’m having fun, though only part of that is due to the game. Part of that is due to my guild.

The problem is, of course, that everyone had different things that they find fun, so this game won’t be fun for everyone.

clay.7849:

cherrie.8907:

GW1 skill system was, to some extent, repeated in The Secret World and quite succesfully I’d like to say.

Classes – one of the sources of imbalance – are not present in TSW; instead, every player can use every combination of skill with same effectiveness.

There are 9 (main) weapons, you can equip 2 at a time to have access to active skills they are linked to (you can only use active skill from of the weapon you have equipped). Passive skills you can use regardless of what weapon you have equipped.

While tehre are less skills in TSW than in GW1, deck (TSW name for build) building is much more in-depth and I have yet to see the great imbalance I remember from GW1, or from GW2 when I still played it.

Add to that the fact that TSW treats it’s players as more intelligent than the chair they are sitting in and dungeons are actually great: no, GW2 has not hooked me up either, it was a gaming dissapointment of the decade for me, but TSW hooked me up from day one so much that I bought Lifetime AFTER they went F2P.

Everything I keep reading really makes me inclined to check out TSW.

Honestly, if ANet wanted to get rid of the trinity, they should have abolished the whole class system to begin with. As it stands now, we still have the same LF Zerker Warrior, LF Mesmer, etc. just like we have LF Monk in GW1.

It will continue to get worse as a meta is formed to complete content, in fact it really has been formed already. If you aren’t a warrior, guardian or mesmer in PvE, it is getting more difficult to find PUGS. It won’t be long until that spills over into more and more of the game as people get more familiar with the game and cease to do things for the fun of it and do it merely for the reward.

I think the difference is, in GW you needed a healer. In Guild Wars 2 you don’t “need” a warrior. People may prefer it, but it’s not a need.

People say all the time here, you can put up an add on gw2lfg.com saying any profession welcome and you’ll get dungeon groups.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

darkace.8925:

clay.7849:

Even getting into PvP wasn’t hard. There were some easy to run builds like iWay that provided a low barrier of entry to get into HA but weren’t OP enough to cause any real problems for higher skilled players.

I got into Guild Wars after Eye of the North was released. In my first – and not coincidentally, last – attempt to PvP I joined match in the Random Arena with a hammer toting warrior/ranger (being new, the skills I had unlocked were limited).

In an attempt to prepare myself and minimize the “dead weight” effect I might have on my teammates I had read all I could. But reading about something and doing it during an actual (especially your first) match are two different things. I struggled, as any reasonable person would expect.

How did my teammates, veterans I’m sure, respond? Not with words of encouragement. Not with tips for improvement. But with a demand I quit. And when I didn’t, explaining to them I’ve got to learn somehow, they reported me for leaching.

I’m sure there were some very nice people who played the game, but the “it was easy to get into” notion with which you remember Guild Wars isn’t quite the walk in the park you remember it to be.

You seem to miss the whole point of my post that I was talking about early in GW1’s existence, not later. Much of the PvP scene had become disenchanted by the problems of balance associated with the addition of new classes and skills in each new expansion. By the time you tried to get into PvP, I agree that it was a much different scene (and IMO worse) than during Prophecies and even Factions.

Which is why I don’t really want to see a repeat of the Guild Wars 1 skill system again. No matter what, it’s just too hard to balance. People say this game is in unbalanced, but Guild Wars 1 was also..probably in different ways.

Basically people are going to want Anet to keep adding skills. By starting with what you had in Prophecies, and then having to expand it, you end up with a system with too many skills, too hard to balance.

By starting small, and hopefully getting the balance right over time, Anet might be able to stop this thing happening in Guild Wars 2…might being the operative word.

I agree with this. One thing that people forget is that Prophecies WAS balanced. It allowed a really great amount of semi-OP builds that provided a nice way to enter into PvP without getting completely owned, but at the same time were not very threatening to highly skilled players.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the things people didn’t like about GW1 stay out of GW2. We already have groups that are asking for specific classes, builds and even play styles. CoF P1 is the most prominent one, but they exist almost everywhere and will continue to get worse, and we are less than a year in.

If Anet could get away with never adding a single skill, never adding more weapons, never adding anything, then the current system would be too simple. But if Anet does plan to expand it, then it’s good that they start this simple and hopefully get it balanced, slowly, correctly before they add to it.

I’d hate to see what eventually happened to GW 1 happen to GW 2.

Maybe an actual tutorial mode, instead of or in addition to what exists now. Something to teach the game, that’s optional. Maybe that would help.

Any chance you’d be selling gems for gold? Just a guess.

clay.7849:

darkace.8925:

clay.7849:

Even getting into PvP wasn’t hard. There were some easy to run builds like iWay that provided a low barrier of entry to get into HA but weren’t OP enough to cause any real problems for higher skilled players.

I got into Guild Wars after Eye of the North was released. In my first – and not coincidentally, last – attempt to PvP I joined match in the Random Arena with a hammer toting warrior/ranger (being new, the skills I had unlocked were limited).

In an attempt to prepare myself and minimize the “dead weight” effect I might have on my teammates I had read all I could. But reading about something and doing it during an actual (especially your first) match are two different things. I struggled, as any reasonable person would expect.

How did my teammates, veterans I’m sure, respond? Not with words of encouragement. Not with tips for improvement. But with a demand I quit. And when I didn’t, explaining to them I’ve got to learn somehow, they reported me for leaching.

I’m sure there were some very nice people who played the game, but the “it was easy to get into” notion with which you remember Guild Wars isn’t quite the walk in the park you remember it to be.

You seem to miss the whole point of my post that I was talking about early in GW1’s existence, not later. Much of the PvP scene had become disenchanted by the problems of balance associated with the addition of new classes and skills in each new expansion. By the time you tried to get into PvP, I agree that it was a much different scene (and IMO worse) than during Prophecies and even Factions.

Which is why I don’t really want to see a repeat of the Guild Wars 1 skill system again. No matter what, it’s just too hard to balance. People say this game is in unbalanced, but Guild Wars 1 was also..probably in different ways.

Basically people are going to want Anet to keep adding skills. By starting with what you had in Prophecies, and then having to expand it, you end up with a system with too many skills, too hard to balance.

By starting small, and hopefully getting the balance right over time, Anet might be able to stop this thing happening in Guild Wars 2…might being the operative word.

darkace.8925:

Vayne.8563:

darkace.8925:

“They lied to us about vertical progression” is exactly the reason why we no longer get posts from developers telling us what’s coming down the pike.

There were two quotes in two interviews that talked about vertical progression. At the time of those interviews, there was no vertical progression in the game, and very likely no real plan to put vertical progression in the game.

The game launched, it did well at first, but people burned through the content much faster than Anet expected them too. Content takes time. If you were around on the forums them, all you saw were posts about nothing to do at 80. There are still posts like this, but far less by my reckoning.

So Anet did what they had to do for the viability of the game. There’s a major difference between a lie and a changed circumstance.

If I told my kids I’d take them to the movies, and suddenly I got a call from work saying I had to go in…I didn’t lie to them. When I told them that I was going to take them to the movies, I didn’t have to work. Something came up. That’s what happened in this game. Something came up.

Anet really believed that most people would be fine going for exotic gear…but they found out otherwise. Too big a portion of the game will walk away if there’s no gear progression. I actually blame the profusion of WoW clones for this.

So if you were a business, and you saw a huge problem, and that problem had to be corrected fast, what would you do? Let the game fade away? Stay with your principles even if it meant down scaling your company and possibly laying people off.

Anet spoke about no vertical progression in a couple of interviews, that’s it. And the vertical progression offered as a compromise. It’s a fairly minimal bit of vertical progression.

So you can either say you were lied to, or you can believe, as I do, that Anet never intended to put vertical progression in, but in the end had to.

Choose to believe what you want, but there’s no evidence in my mind that Anet lied, even if they did make changes to what they’d planned.

Did you notice in the beginning they said there’d be energy and energy potions and they later took them out? They’ve said all along they’re a iterative company. They work on iteration. They try things until they find what works. What they had before wasn’t working for enough people, so Anet iterated.

Not quite the same thing as a lie.

I think you misunderstood the point of my post. I’m not saying “they lied”. I’m saying that they don’t tell us what they’re working on because things often change for a variety of reasons (as you pointed out, or as the account-wide dyes change aptly illustrates). If they’re going to be accused of lying every time something in the development stages is changed for whatever reason it’s better for them just to keep quiet.

Apologizes, I did indeed miss the point of your post.

lordmitz.2047:

tbh the classes all bring interesting things to dungeons, but people get so entrenched in the opinion that 4 warr+support is the only way to do things that its hard to shake for them. i’m not sure what would break that general consensus at this point.

The problem is, for the most part, you don’t "need’ those interesting things that other professions bring to dungeons.

There is a group of people who always want the most efficient play possible. Very often they make videos on Youtube, others pick it up and before you know it, people think that’s the only way or “right” way to play. It’s not of course, but that’s human nature.

I’m quite happy running dungeons with pretty much anyone, even if it takes longer to complete them. Doesn’t matter to me. But some people are really bothered by the fact that it takes them longer. Some people are just impatient. They want efficiency.

Those who want efficiency will never understand why people that don’t care about it don’t care about it. Unfortunately, the only way to make it better is to create the need for other professions to be there…which comes with a completely different set of problems.

I agree with the basic premise here. Dungeon encounters are badly designed to deal with the lack of a trinity. They need to be improved greatly for this game to move forward.

Support roles particularly need some way to be viable in end game.

darkace.8925:

“They lied to us about vertical progression” is exactly the reason why we no longer get posts from developers telling us what’s coming down the pike.

There were two quotes in two interviews that talked about vertical progression. At the time of those interviews, there was no vertical progression in the game, and very likely no real plan to put vertical progression in the game.

The game launched, it did well at first, but people burned through the content much faster than Anet expected them too. Content takes time. If you were around on the forums them, all you saw were posts about nothing to do at 80. There are still posts like this, but far less by my reckoning.

So Anet did what they had to do for the viability of the game. There’s a major difference between a lie and a changed circumstance.

If I told my kids I’d take them to the movies, and suddenly I got a call from work saying I had to go in…I didn’t lie to them. When I told them that I was going to take them to the movies, I didn’t have to work. Something came up. That’s what happened in this game. Something came up.

Anet really believed that most people would be fine going for exotic gear…but they found out otherwise. Too big a portion of the game will walk away if there’s no gear progression. I actually blame the profusion of WoW clones for this.

So if you were a business, and you saw a huge problem, and that problem had to be corrected fast, what would you do? Let the game fade away? Stay with your principles even if it meant down scaling your company and possibly laying people off.

Anet spoke about no vertical progression in a couple of interviews, that’s it. And the vertical progression offered as a compromise. It’s a fairly minimal bit of vertical progression.

So you can either say you were lied to, or you can believe, as I do, that Anet never intended to put vertical progression in, but in the end had to.

Choose to believe what you want, but there’s no evidence in my mind that Anet lied, even if they did make changes to what they’d planned.

Did you notice in the beginning they said there’d be energy and energy potions and they later took them out? They’ve said all along they’re a iterative company. They work on iteration. They try things until they find what works. What they had before wasn’t working for enough people, so Anet iterated.

Not quite the same thing as a lie.

darkace.8925:

If this is indeed their approach to build diversity (no link to a source was provided), then it’s a bit disheartening.

First, traits (as they’re currently implemented) pigeonhole us down specific trait lines (i.e. greatsword warrior is almost always going to put points into the Arms trait line).

Second, the diversity they offer is marginal (a greatsword warrior is going to play pretty much exactly like every other greatsword warrior).

Third, the fact that there are still bugged traits – traits that don’t work as intended or don’t work at all – almost eight months after release tells me the process of actually adjusting traits (changing them to make more builds viable) is going to take a very long time.

The quote is real, it was from a reddit AMA and I remember it clearly.

@ Space Cow

Sorry, mate, I don’t feel lied to. You might feel that way…I don’t.

Point 1. MMOs change all the time. It’s a fact of life. And things change for a reason. You might not like the reason. You might not understand the reason, but obviously Anet felt there was a reason.

Point 2. Lie implies intent. Like Anet said something knowing all along it wasn’t true. I don’t believe that’s the case. Whatever was said was probably said in good faith even if it did later change.

Point 3. There are people who definitely feel lied to and people who don’t. I don’t feel lied too. Other people have posted that they don’t feel lied to.

A lot of this is a matter of perception, but there really isn’t any proof that anyone was lied to. There’s only this feeling that you expected something to happen a certain way and it had to change for reasons you either don’t see, or don’t believe.

I played Guild Wars 1 too. I watched the same videos, listened to the same interviews as everyone else.

I don’t feel lied to.

Hey Pen, we did Komali before she was bugged.

fadeaway.2807:

The pessimist in me is saying that anet will soon add nodes higher than Ori, rendering your new purchase obsolete.

The economist in me is saying that even though $10 might save you a lot of money over the next X amount of years, you will return more money by saving that $10 for X amount of years and then buying gems -> gold with it. GW2 is already in an inflationary period, chances are gems are a better investment long-term than the axe itself.

I just read the pick description and it says it has the ability to mine all metals. That would imply to me that a new metal would still be considered a metal. I think Anet would have a rebellion if they tried to change that after the fact.

No one knows for sure, but since the description on the pick says used to mine ALL metals, I think it probably should work.

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

Let’s face it, we never getting duels, or any other highly requested feature for that matter…

We’ve gotten several highly requested features, including a trading post preview for armor and dyes, and weapons..even drawn weapons. That was a highly requested feature that we got. Some people also requested some kind of gear progression and we got ascended gear and the fractals.

Hell, Anet wasn’t even going to launch with a walk feature, they said so, and because people complained about it they put it in. Same with eye color, which couldn’t be chosen in the original betas.

Saying that we’ll never get a highly requested feature isn’t really the truth. And we might not get dueling in the forum you like but I’m pretty sure that once the custom arenas come out, dueling with be available in them.

BadHabitZz.1856:

Vayne.8563:

Costume brawl was a big thing in Guild Wars 1, that was done every Christmas and it was quite popular. Guild Wars 1 never had “duels” although you could 1v1 people in your Guild Hall with a scrimmage.

I think Anet puts in stuff like this because it fits in better with the Guild Wars series. If you didn’t play Guild Wars 1, naturally, you wouldn’t know about the history of the costume brawl.

EYEROLL so you think some costume brawls are more important that duels? Guild wars 2 is nothing like Guild wars 1 from what ive heard and hoesnt dont we have enough “fun” things in game. Duels are accualy something, costum brawls are just joke imo…

Actually no, I didn’t say that costume brawls were more important than duels. Nor can you find any place where I even implied it. I simply said that the costume brawl existed in Guild Wars 1, and it was very popular.

Duels are actually something? The Costume Brawl is a joke?

I guess that’s one way of looking at it.

Gestankfaust.4216:

I have a hunch. It is…just a hunch…

But my hunch is that it might have to do with worthless posts and the replies made thereafter.

Not quite. But yeah it was a great guess.

Siphaed.9235:

Here’s where they just announced, only 2 weeks ago, that they’re hiring:

https://twitter.com/GuildWars2/status/319513625930911744

Guild Wars 2 ?@GuildWars2

Our best wishes to those affected by the layoffs this week. We are currently adding to our team: http://ow.ly/jIk8W #gamejobs ~RB2

So, it’s not that they’re just “always looking for talent/hiring”, but that they’re actively seeking talented members of game development teams to join theirs. If they had no positions open, if the game wasn’t being successful, if they weren’t making profit, then they’d not have extended the invitation to apply. However, that invitation is an indication that the game is doing well, that they are making a profit, and that they need more people to help develop faster content for this profitably great game.

Holy cow! Logic on these forums! Say it isn’t so! lol

I got an infraction for defending Anet too. That’s not exactly bad moderation if you think about it.

Actually yes. There are people who don’t like dueling at all. Every time you see a post about duels, there’s a bunch of people who like it and a bunch of people who don’t. I’m one of the people who wouldn’t personally care if there was ever a dueling option, but I recognize the fact that other people like it, so as long as it can be implemented where I don’t have to get continually interupted by dueling requests, I’d be happy.

On the other hand, I quite like the free for all that is the costume brawl. It’s meaningless, harmless fun that you don’t enter unless you choose to.

Like much of this game, WvW is what you make of it. Those who live by the zerg, die by the zerg. Not that any of this will help your lag if your machine can’t keep up, mind you. That’s an entirely different issue.

But my guild tends to run around in a group of 5-10 and we have a ton of fun, taking camps, getting into small skirmishes and running like hell if we happen to encounter a zerg.

Also, we coordination pretty well and often take out groups of players larger than us.

Costume brawl was a big thing in Guild Wars 1, that was done every Christmas and it was quite popular. Guild Wars 1 never had “duels” although you could 1v1 people in your Guild Hall with a scrimmage.

I think Anet puts in stuff like this because it fits in better with the Guild Wars series. If you didn’t play Guild Wars 1, naturally, you wouldn’t know about the history of the costume brawl.

Drew.1865:

Vayne.8563:

Dante.1508:

darkace.8925:

mekkanic.4759:

Its not really a matter of cost…its just unnecessary.

Gold sinks are absolutely, positively necessary.

Why?

So the trading post might go down or up? i’d have been fine with zero trading post as per GW1.

Even in Guild Wars 1 there were gold sinks. Identify kits, salvage kits, for some people con sets…there were plenty of things in Guild Wars 1 that took gold out of the economy. And the economy did suffer at times as well.

Do you know why Guild Wars 1 lost so many players? Because starting that game after the fact became really really hard. Everyone had a zillion gold and could charge anything they wanted for anything. New people could never hope to catch up. That’s why karma was such a good idea. You can get a lot of stuff for karma, without having to spend gold.

Those who played Guild Wars 1 for a long time don’t realize how hard it was to break into coming late to the party.

How do you know why GW1 lost so many players or is it just your opinion that they did and is it also just your opinion that they lost players for that reason? I thought we wanted facts instead of opinions stated as fact? :-)

Even the fan boys are telling me they lost players. Clay is telling me how great it was and how many players there were at launch. I wish you guys would get together and figure out if they lost players or they didn’t.

Are you trying to tell me that Guild Wars 1 kept gaining players after Eye of the North’s heyday? Because that would be quite a feat, if they could pull that off. Gaining players with no major updates for years? Really?

Yeah, the overall population of Guild Wars 1 went down. Don’t believe it. I can’t prove it. And the core population probably did stay roughly the same, but that doesn’t mean the population didn’t drop.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

A layoff of a single person is calling being fired. There’s a difference between a layoff and being fired. People can get fired for all sorts of reasons. A layoff usually refers to some sort of budget seeking message.

I know the difference, thanks. So much information, so little relevance.

Yes, if Anet was “laying off” people they would have to make a public declaration. They would not have to if they let someone go, however.

As I’ve said, gaming companies that under perform end up laying off a percentage of their staff. If lay offs happen, they have to announce it.

Still not answering the question. What percentage?

I did answer the question. If Anet did layoffs they would have to annouce it PERIOD. That is, if the game wasn’t doing well and they started laying off people for that reason, they would have to announce it.

I used the word percentage originally because other companies in fact did have to let go a large percentage of their staff. But if you’re doing a layoff because sales have not met expectations, yes, you have to declare that publicly or you can get into trouble.

Raine.1394:

Vayne.8563:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Zeppelin.6832:

Hence the problem with horizontal progression. Going after different “skins” is great, but you can only wear one set of armor at the time. Eventually you’re going to settle on what you like, and then what? There’s nothing else to do on a character.

Except play the game. That is what GW is supposed to be all about. You level, outfit your toon, then just play. It worked in GW1 for 7 years.
GW2 was created as a game with horizontal progression, it was advertised as a game with horizontal progression and it was sold as a game with horizontal progression.
Players coming in now and complaining that they don’t like horizontal progression really have nothing to complain about. The arguments that “the other games has this, the other game has that” are not valid and meaningless. This is not the other game.

It did work for Guild Wars 1 for 7 years…but Guild Wars never went mainstream. It had a core group of players who adored it, including me, but everyone I knew was off playing WoW.

Guild Wars 1 sold 7 million copies over 7 years or a million copies a year. WoW has ten million active subs at the moment. Sure it was successful, but the devs want to do something “big” and to do that they need numbers. Far more numbers that Guild Wars 1 provided them. For that matter, of the 7 million people, just about everyone I know had multiple accounts, because it was cheaper to do that than buy character slots. Between my wife and I we have five accounts. So it wasn’t necessariliy 7 million people who own the game.

Guild Wars 1 had a staff of 50 people. The staff making Guild Wars 2 is five times the size. That’s a huge difference. In order for Anet to make the game they envision they need more people to play it.

I was absolutely fine with the way things were in Guild Wars 1, and I wish more people could be fine with it too…but I strongly suspect that’s not the case.

There are people who came to GW2 from WoW to escape the grind. I was one of those. There is a growing niche of players who realize the emperor is wearing no clothes. The treadmill goes nowhere; it’s simply a time-sink to entertain the simple. I would like more. Something along the lines of the GW2 pre-release marketing.

As I’ve said countless times on these forums, there is no way for any MMO to produce content faster than people devour it.

When you buy most games you play them for 15 or 20 hours. You might get an exceptional game like Skyrim which has a million mods and play it for a couple of hundred hours. MMOs are unique in that people play them for hundreds of hours and expect stuff to do.

Well, stuff comes eventually. Guild Wars 1, when Prophecies released, is a shadow of what Guild Wars 1 was to become in the years ahead. You could finish all the content in Prophecies in a couple of months. Guild Wars 2 has much more content at launch than Prophecies did, but it’s not infinite content.

All MMOs, because of the amount of play people expect to get out of them, need some sort of artificial way to slow down progress. Different MMOs do different things, but they all do it. Why do they ALL do it. Because there is no way to make enough content, not by launch time. Not even if you built the MMO for ten years instead of five. People would still go through the content and have nothing to do.

If you don’t accept this basic fact about MMOs, you’re not going to like most MMOs. Anet is doing it differently than most other games, but they’re still doing it. Slowing the game down until the can produce more quality content.

It won’t be fast enough for everybody and some people will leave. Some of those people will come back when new content comes out.

Time will tell what happens but it’s my guess that this game will still be going strong a couple of years from now.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Anet is publicly advertising for help wanted. Are you actually suggesting they’re doing this just to pull the wool over our eyes about how well the game is doing?

Er, what? Sometimes I wonder if you’re speaking to me or someone else.

Companies post open positions for all sorts of reasons. This is like your speculation about the number of people being hired based on someone in your guild knowing someone who was hired. You don’t know enough to make any sort of serious judgments.

Matters of public record are imporant.

Who said they weren’t?

You’re not addressing the key issue I outlined: do they need to announce every layoff or only if a substantial number are laid off?

A layoff of a single person is calling being fired. There’s a difference between a layoff and being fired. People can get fired for all sorts of reasons. A layoff usually refers to some sort of budget seeking message.

Yes, if Anet was “laying off” people they would have to make a public declaration. They would not have to if they let someone go, however.

As I’ve said, gaming companies that under perform end up laying off a percentage of their staff. If lay offs happen, they have to announce it.

gkrit.9416:

@Vayne – there is no consistency in your posts. you always go back on what you say and that we merely misinterpret everything you say.

You’re just like someone I know, and not many people bother discussing things with him anymore.

I don’t know, I seem to get on well with people in my guild. And you know, I’m not so sure I’d be real sad if certain people stopped discussing stuff with me.

I’m not a young man. In my life there have always been a group of people who really haven’t liked me, so I’m used to that. Fortunately, the group of people who do like me is just as large or larger. I’m really okay with that.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Public companies have to declare layoffs due to various laws, because it affects stock holders. NCsoft is a public company and like other public companies they’d have to announce when they laid off people at least in any significant number.

Define “at least in any significant number.” That differs from your statement below, which suggests some sort of ambiguity on your part.

If NcSoft was a privately held firm, they wouldn’t have to announce anything. The fact (and it is a fact) that they’re publicly traded means they’d have to announce lay offs.

It would have been helpful if you had said that you only had in mind public companies.

By the way, it’s also a fact that you don’t have access to the relevant information to determine the probability of hirings based on knowing someone who knows someone who got a job at Anet.

It’s a fact that laying off five guys if they in fact did, doesn’t constitute a layoff, if they’re hiring 25 guys. Anet is publicly advertising for help wanted. Are you actually suggesting they’re doing this just to pull the wool over our eyes about how well the game is doing?

Matters of public record are imporant. We have three big MMOs, or relatively big, to come out in the past yearish. SWToR, TSW and Guild Wars 2. No other big MMO new releases exist. MoP of course is a big release, but it’s not a new MMO.

Of those, two of the three new releases have had to make major layoffs within the first six months of their existence. This isn’t a guess. this is fact.

Anet, if they had to lay off a third of their staff, would have to annouce it (and even if they didn’t the people who watch the industry would have reported on it). You can bet there’d be an article in Barons or Wall Street Journal if it happened and if it did, we’d have heard about it.

Anet hasn’t laid off people and they are hiring (unless you believe they’re lying about hiring on their website).

I’ll leave each individual to decide which is more likely and what this information means. I’m at least relatively sure most people will at least take this as a sign that the game isn’t doing badly. Some might even believe it’s doing well.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Do you know why Guild Wars 1 lost so many players? Because starting that game after the fact became really really hard.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Yep, you’re right. Let me correct that I said, hang on. Do you know one of the reasons that Guild Wars 1 lost so many players in my opinion? Because starting the game after the fact became really really hard.

There you go, all fixed.

I think we made some real progress today.

If this keeps up, I can stop trolling.

It does get tiring, the hours are ungodly and the pay is kitten poor.

I think I liked you better when you were trolling lol.

Sadist.

I think the word you’re looking for is masochist and it’s probably true to a degree. lol

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

So if one person in my guild has a daughter being employed by Anet, then what are the odds she’s the only one?

Probability doesn’t work like that.

Imagine if one person in my guild won the lottery. What are the odds she’s the only one?

Determining odds in this case depends on the nature of the specific outcome as compared with the total number of possible outcomes. Neither of us have access to all the relevant factors to make any meaningful guesses. Try not to confuse unbridled optimism with meaningful analysis.

Again, if the Anet staff laid off people we’d have heard about it. We heard about it from every other game. Why wouldn’t we hear about it from Anet? You say what if a whole lot, but in reality, it’s just guessing.

1. It depends on what kind of staff. Some staff are non-essential and serve no core function. Their being laid off would not merit a press release or other public indicators.

2. I really don’t know where you’re getting the idea that we know about when this happens “from every other game.” Even if we did, that would be a composition fallacy.

3. Some staff are fired and, to protect privacy and/or for other sensitive (legal, contractual, etc.) reasons, this is never mentioned publicly anywhere.

In sum, you’re just guessing as much as anyone.

Public companies have to declare layoffs due to various laws, because it affects stock holders. NCsoft is a public company and like other public companies they’d have to announce when they laid off people at least in any significant number.

Bioware had to annouce they laid off half their work force. Funcom had to annouce they laid off a third of their work force. All matters of public records.

If NcSoft was a privately held firm, they wouldn’t have to announce anything. The fact (and it is a fact) that they’re publicly traded means they’d have to announce lay offs.

clay.7849:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Do you know why Guild Wars 1 lost so many players? Because starting that game after the fact became really really hard.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Yep, you’re right. Let me correct that I said, hang on. Do you know one of the reasons that Guild Wars 1 lost so many players in my opinion? Because starting the game after the fact became really really hard.

There you go, all fixed.

I think we made some real progress today.

If this keeps up, I can stop trolling.

It does get tiring, the hours are ungodly and the pay is kitten poor.

I think I liked you better when you were trolling lol.

I’ve had a couple, but I’m in Australia. It could very well be routing issues for me because those happen sometimes.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

Do you know why Guild Wars 1 lost so many players? Because starting that game after the fact became really really hard.

Assumes facts not in evidence.

Yep, you’re right. Let me correct that I said, hang on. Do you know one of the reasons that Guild Wars 1 lost so many players in my opinion? Because starting the game after the fact became really really hard.

There you go, all fixed.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Actually one of my guildies has a daughter that just got a job with Anet. Unless she’s lying to me, which I suppose is possible, well, they’re hiring. And yes, I’m not making this up. Against all the odds, someone in my guild has told me their daughter got a job with Anet. I almost wish she didn’t because it sounds like something I invented.

All you’re doing it trying to refute reasonable believes by saying this may not be true, or this might not mean something. It’s still more evidence that something is true than not. You don’t want to see it, but most other people probably can.

Great. They hired one person. ONE PERSON.

Do you know if they fired anyone? Do you really know how much the NCSoft layoffs IN SEATTLE WHERE ANET IS BASED had an effect on ANet?

Again, just because they are hiring doesn’t mean that the population is doing well. Maybe the person they need to hire is because the last guy quit to go work on the zombie MMO that everyone else left to go do.

I’m not gonna say I don’t believe you. I actually believe everything you say as in you observe the things you say and you aren’t making them up. I believe you when you say that you were an editor and that you follow MMOs closely and that you have done lots of studying into the LOTR trilogy.

What I just don’t agree with is that your anecdotal evidence is any more powerful than anyone else’s anecdotal evidence, and it doesn’t give you the right to tell people their opinion is wrong when you don’t know the truth either.

You’re missing the point. They hired one person (or are in the process of, they’ve given her a project), out of the people in my guild. If that were the ONLY person they were hiring the odds of that person being in my guild would be astronomical. In fact, even without that, if they were hiring 20-30 guys the odds would be highly against it.

So if one person in my guild has a daughter being employed by Anet, then what are the odds she’s the only one?

Again, if the Anet staff laid off people we’d have heard about it. We heard about it from every other game. Why wouldn’t we hear about it from Anet? You say what if a whole lot, but in reality, it’s just guessing.

Vayne, what do you want me to say. You’re right. There is obviously no way possible that this game is doing poorly, all signs point to go and it obviously is impervious to failing. In fact, the game is doing so well that the people who have had entire guilds quit on them or have friends lists that no longer light up and just wrong about what they see. They must just not play the game the right way or at the right time…

Is that what you want to hear? That there is no chance that you are wrong and that anyone who says the game might be doing poorly is so obviously wrong that we should ridicule them and banish them from the forums?

I don’t disagree that there is evidence that the game is doing well. I also don’t disagree that there is evidence that the game is losing population fast.

I have a reason I believe what I believe and I’m tired of discussing it, but I just can’t get over your insistence to make people feel stupid for feeling something because of the same reasons you feel something – because of their experience.

When we can get past that, and the fact that I don’t have an opinion because I haven’t played enough MMO’s, I think that you are an intelligent enough person to have a meaningful conversation with. You just do a terrible job of trying to make your opinion more important and “right” than everyone else’s

Some guilds are dying and some, like mine, are growing. I don’t know about you, but having a guild die in a game is as anecdotal as anything else. Guilds die in games for ALL sorts of reasons.

For example, PvP guilds might not be doing well, but WvW and PvE guilds might be doing great. Saying you know people who left so the game is dying, or lots of people do is not reliable.

For one thing, a zillion guilds die every day in WoW and no one says WoW is dying. Well no one who actually can read a stock report.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

clay.7849:

ScottBroChill.3254:

But it was barely farming dude. The only time I farmed was the last week before perma stealth got nerfed because I don’t usually farm but felt that If I played gw1 for so long and didn’t get the kitten ele obsidian armor I would be dissapointed in myself. I farmed for like 4 days and had like 70 ectos or something and used the rest of what I saved up that hadn’t been spent on weapons and elite armor for the rest of the materials and money need to buy it.

The difference is in gw2, instead of having a multitude of different options to make money for the specific thing you want, you have to farm the same thing over and over and over. It’s basically worse than ecto farming I’ll tell you that much.

Btw vayne personal opinion. Don’t get all bottom hurt about it, dude.

I just wanted to correct you about how you said it was incredibly hard for beginners in gw1 to make money near the end, when in fact, it wasn’t. I bought like 4 sets of elite armors just from playing alliance battles selling amber I made, and doing missions and selling gold unids I didn’t need. If you identified and sold all your drops you didn’t need you easily made money and the market wasn’t that unstable.

The lack of vertical progression and the ease of getting cheap green weapons and being just as powerful as someone with a perfect req. 9 fellblade was one of the best features of GW1 in the sense that you didn’t need money to be decked out in max stat gear.

There was very little monetary requirements in the game to be as effective as anyone else. The only thing that really mattered was skill. Skill, that is sorely missing from GW2.

I agree with this, actually. You didn’t need as much money in Guild Wars 1. But there’s still people with chaos gloves dancing around in LA and you’d say, oh those are cool where did you get those.

And they’re like it’s easy all you need it to get 80 ectos. Do you know how hard it was for a new person to get 80 ectos? Even if you wanted to farm the Underworld so many groups didn’t want to play with a noob.

Vayne, I wish you played GW1 earlier. Honestly.

The game you describe to me, which was after I left, sounds awful. Seriously. And, I hear it from a lot of people and I think they played well after Nightfall was released.

I never had a problem getting in a group and I was never denied entry to a group based on my build. Sure, we all made fun of Healing Breeze Warriors, but PvX Wiki wasn’t around and there generally weren’t speed runs or anything like that. At least, I never experienced it.

Even getting into PvP wasn’t hard. There were some easy to run builds like iWay that provided a low barrier of entry to get into HA but weren’t OP enough to cause any real problems for higher skilled players.

GW1, IMO, went downhill with each expansion, and many of the problems people have with GW1, IMO, are the same problems I had or would have had with it. But it wasn’t always like that.

Anyways, the same thing can happen to GW2 now that I think about it. CoF Part 1 is a good example. It is tough to create content that isn’t going to get the “you need to run it this way” treatment – especially as certain areas are dubbed more profitable than others. Basically, it isn’t just a GW1 problem, it is an MMO problem.

Well, I think that human nature is the problem. Really if you didn’t have the build of the month you were NOT getting into a group. I had to level an imbagon paragon just to attempt DOA. No one would even talk to me because I didn’t have the build of the week.

And I’m the kind of guy who likes to try things and experiment and try to beat stuff without looking up a build on a wiki. I’m pretty old school in my gaming. I’d rather just figure stuff out than look it up on youtube. But people weren’t buying.

You should have seen the voltaic spear farmers. It’s like they had their own code. You couldn’t even understand what they were saying when they talked. I used to stand around in the Umbral Grotto and ask questions, like what certain abbreviations meant. Most of the time I didn’t even get an answer.

Guild Wars 1 was STILL a great game. But it suffered from some of the same problems Guild Wars 2 does now.

Do you know two things that were in Guild Wars 1 that I’d like to see in Guild Wars 2? The hall of monuments, or something like it, a place you can go to see your achievements instead of just a list, and the zaishen menagerie, which was just awesome. Of course, they couldn’t put that in Guild Wars 2, because only rangers could really use it, now that I think about it.

clay.7849:

Vayne.8563:

Actually one of my guildies has a daughter that just got a job with Anet. Unless she’s lying to me, which I suppose is possible, well, they’re hiring. And yes, I’m not making this up. Against all the odds, someone in my guild has told me their daughter got a job with Anet. I almost wish she didn’t because it sounds like something I invented.

All you’re doing it trying to refute reasonable believes by saying this may not be true, or this might not mean something. It’s still more evidence that something is true than not. You don’t want to see it, but most other people probably can.

Great. They hired one person. ONE PERSON.

Do you know if they fired anyone? Do you really know how much the NCSoft layoffs IN SEATTLE WHERE ANET IS BASED had an effect on ANet?

Again, just because they are hiring doesn’t mean that the population is doing well. Maybe the person they need to hire is because the last guy quit to go work on the zombie MMO that everyone else left to go do.

I’m not gonna say I don’t believe you. I actually believe everything you say as in you observe the things you say and you aren’t making them up. I believe you when you say that you were an editor and that you follow MMOs closely and that you have done lots of studying into the LOTR trilogy.

What I just don’t agree with is that your anecdotal evidence is any more powerful than anyone else’s anecdotal evidence, and it doesn’t give you the right to tell people their opinion is wrong when you don’t know the truth either.

You’re missing the point. They hired one person (or are in the process of, they’ve given her a project), out of the people in my guild. If that were the ONLY person they were hiring the odds of that person being in my guild would be astronomical. In fact, even without that, if they were hiring 20-30 guys the odds would be highly against it.

So if one person in my guild has a daughter being employed by Anet, then what are the odds she’s the only one?

Again, if the Anet staff laid off people we’d have heard about it. We heard about it from every other game. Why wouldn’t we hear about it from Anet? You say what if a whole lot, but in reality, it’s just guessing.

clay.7849:

ScottBroChill.3254:

But it was barely farming dude. The only time I farmed was the last week before perma stealth got nerfed because I don’t usually farm but felt that If I played gw1 for so long and didn’t get the kitten ele obsidian armor I would be dissapointed in myself. I farmed for like 4 days and had like 70 ectos or something and used the rest of what I saved up that hadn’t been spent on weapons and elite armor for the rest of the materials and money need to buy it.

The difference is in gw2, instead of having a multitude of different options to make money for the specific thing you want, you have to farm the same thing over and over and over. It’s basically worse than ecto farming I’ll tell you that much.

Btw vayne personal opinion. Don’t get all bottom hurt about it, dude.

I just wanted to correct you about how you said it was incredibly hard for beginners in gw1 to make money near the end, when in fact, it wasn’t. I bought like 4 sets of elite armors just from playing alliance battles selling amber I made, and doing missions and selling gold unids I didn’t need. If you identified and sold all your drops you didn’t need you easily made money and the market wasn’t that unstable.

The lack of vertical progression and the ease of getting cheap green weapons and being just as powerful as someone with a perfect req. 9 fellblade was one of the best features of GW1 in the sense that you didn’t need money to be decked out in max stat gear.

There was very little monetary requirements in the game to be as effective as anyone else. The only thing that really mattered was skill. Skill, that is sorely missing from GW2.

I agree with this, actually. You didn’t need as much money in Guild Wars 1. But there’s still people with chaos gloves dancing around in LA and you’d say, oh those are cool where did you get those.

And they’re like it’s easy all you need it to get 80 ectos. Do you know how hard it was for a new person to get 80 ectos? Even if you wanted to farm the Underworld so many groups didn’t want to play with a noob.

Actually one of my guildies has a daughter that just got a job with Anet. Unless she’s lying to me, which I suppose is possible, well, they’re hiring. And yes, I’m not making this up. Against all the odds, someone in my guild has told me their daughter got a job with Anet. I almost wish she didn’t because it sounds like something I invented.

All you’re doing it trying to refute reasonable believes by saying this may not be true, or this might not mean something. It’s still more evidence that something is true than not. You don’t want to see it, but most other people probably can.

ScottBroChill.3254:

But it was barely farming dude. The only time I farmed was the last week before perma stealth got nerfed because I don’t usually farm but felt that If I played gw1 for so long and didn’t get the kitten ele obsidian armor I would be dissapointed in myself. I farmed for like 4 days and had like 70 ectos or something and used the rest of what I saved up that hadn’t been spent on weapons and elite armor for the rest of the materials and money need to buy it.

The difference is in gw2, instead of having a multitude of different options to make money for the specific thing you want, you have to farm the same thing over and over and over. It’s basically worse than ecto farming I’ll tell you that much.

Btw vayne personal opinion. Don’t get all bottom hurt about it, dude.

I just wanted to correct you about how you said it was incredibly hard for beginners in gw1 to make money near the end, when in fact, it wasn’t. I bought like 4 sets of elite armors just from playing alliance battles selling amber I made, and doing missions and selling gold unids I didn’t need. If you identified and sold all your drops you didn’t need you easily made money and the market wasn’t that unstable.

I don’t know. I think you’re misrembering how hard it was to make money if you bought the game after the rush. As a casual player, not hard core. Because unless you were looking up farming videos online or find out how to solo farm the underworld for ectos, you were getting prophecies drops. It was kitten hard to make real money that way. After a month you might have the 5k you needed for elite armor. You know how I know? Cause that’s how long it took me to get it.

It’s nice that you like to defend the old game, but you’re thinking more like a hard core player and not appraoching it as someone logging in who didn’t know.

And btw, I have 172 gold in Guild Wars 2 at the moment, I’m most of the way to my legendary and I’ve never gone out farming. I never ran CoF multiple times, never farmed pentitant path, never did anything just to farm.

I find it just as easy to make money here without farming as I did in Guild Wars 1 without farming, once I learned what was what.

gkrit.9416:

Vayne.8563:

You haven’t read enough of the forums if you haven’t seen me criticize the game. I have. What I won’t have is people spouting nonsense with NOTHING to back it up. People who say the game is dying or losing population…totally ridiculous. There are enough people playing (and paying) to keep the game going a long time. I know it because I see what I see. It’ll never have ten million players, but it’ll have more than enough to keep going. Those who think other wise can get back to me in a couple of years.

The point is, I do speak out about stuff. And I don’t answer every thread where someone has a legit complaint. What I do answer is people who insist in exaagerating or using hyperbole to try to prove a point. People who make stuff up…well, I’m perfectly happy to talk to them.

There are issues with this game, I never said otherwise. But that doesn’t mean Anet lied to people with the manifesto. It doesn’t mean that the game population is going down. It means it’s a new MMO.

And if you don’t like my posts, feel free not to read them.

I only came back to this thread just to see if it moved on lol but then i came across this post.

How do you know that the population is not going down? Are you able to provide statistics? or are you just basing it on what you “see”?

And as for losing even 1 paying customer… that can be a serious thing. You lose 2 then 3 and its starts to get worse. Don’t underestimate the value of 1 person because if you did not have one person to begin with, then, you’re not going anywhere.

I know that the group of people that I used to play with, are no longer playing (hence reduction in possible in-game purchases… already a loss the company). Now if others say their groups have stopped playing also, then yeah… you get the picture (or not)

You say people are spouting nonsense without any backup… well that’s what you just did in this post.

I’m not saying nonsense without any back up. Let’s look at all the facts.

Fact 1. Every single MMO loses people after the initial rush. People buy it and the game isn’t for some people and they go.

Fact 2. Every single MMO also has people who start playing it after launch. Not everyone buys it at launch.

Fact 3. Just about every MMO has people who leave and come back to see it later.

The equation goes something like this. If the number of new people are signing on and coming back are greater than the number of people who have left, the game’s population will go up.

I never said people aren’t leaving. Of course people are leaving. But people leaving an MMO are not necessarily an indication that the population is going down. It’s only an indication that the game doesn’t suit or appeal to a certain segment of the population.

Guild Wars 1 was the same way. Both my sons left Guild Wars 1 to go play WoW but Guild Wars 1, during that time, still had a rising population. The reason was that new people were finding the game, even as people who didn’t like it were leaving.

The fact is two MMOs have come out recently that didn’t do so well and both of them were forced to lay off staff (SWToR and TSW). This is an undeniable fact. It’s also a fact that Anet is currently hiring. If it laid off people we’d have heard about it.

Another fact is that servers were expanded. I know people say that Anet can say anything and they might be lying, but considering some people actually saw the population on all the servers go from high to medium at the same time lends support to the fact that Anet has had to expand how many people can be on each server.

You may not like these facts, and yes, some of them are circumstantial, but without layoffs, server mergers or any other evidence, it seems to me more reasonable to believe the game is doing well than the game is doing badly.

Edit: Not to mention we know the game is doing well from the NcSoft quarterly report which anyone can read if they wanted to. But it’s just faster to say it’s not doing well. One of us provided something besides anecdotal evidence.

Guns and Giblets.9308:

Vayne.8563:

And if you don’t like my posts, feel free not to read them.

Pretty hard when half of all the posts in these threads are yours.

Would just mean less reading for you. I’d think you’d welcome that.

ScottBroChill.3254:

Dude, I knew a bunch of people that played for like two months who had stacks of ectos and ambraces and were much richer than me and I was playing for like 5-6 years. Incredibly easy to make money if you took the time to figure out how. Speed runs, droks runs, even UW and FoW farming was easy for the most part if you just watched a video first. Don’t go around spreading lies about how hard it was making money in gw1. The problem happened with the duplicating glitch, and they banned most of those people so really the excess of ambraces and ectos lowered those prices allowing more people to get them.

So I see. What you’re saying is like anyone can come into Guild Wars 2 and farm CoF path 1 endlessly and get rich. No wonder we don’t agree. We’re playing different games.

You see, a lot of people, even a lot of people I know, didn’t come to Guild Wars 1 to farm DOA. Some people of course did, but then, some people actually wanted to play the game. And playing the game, instead of endlessly farming is not what some of us have in mind. If you really think it’s that easy to get those items, you’re not thinking like a casual person starting a new game.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Zeppelin.6832:

Hence the problem with horizontal progression. Going after different “skins” is great, but you can only wear one set of armor at the time. Eventually you’re going to settle on what you like, and then what? There’s nothing else to do on a character.

Except play the game. That is what GW is supposed to be all about. You level, outfit your toon, then just play. It worked in GW1 for 7 years.
GW2 was created as a game with horizontal progression, it was advertised as a game with horizontal progression and it was sold as a game with horizontal progression.
Players coming in now and complaining that they don’t like horizontal progression really have nothing to complain about. The arguments that “the other games has this, the other game has that” are not valid and meaningless. This is not the other game.

It did work for Guild Wars 1 for 7 years…but Guild Wars never went mainstream. It had a core group of players who adored it, including me, but everyone I knew was off playing WoW.

Guild Wars 1 sold 7 million copies over 7 years or a million copies a year. WoW has ten million active subs at the moment. Sure it was successful, but the devs want to do something “big” and to do that they need numbers. Far more numbers that Guild Wars 1 provided them. For that matter, of the 7 million people, just about everyone I know had multiple accounts, because it was cheaper to do that than buy character slots. Between my wife and I we have five accounts. So it wasn’t necessariliy 7 million people who own the game.

Guild Wars 1 had a staff of 50 people. The staff making Guild Wars 2 is five times the size. That’s a huge difference. In order for Anet to make the game they envision they need more people to play it.

I was absolutely fine with the way things were in Guild Wars 1, and I wish more people could be fine with it too…but I strongly suspect that’s not the case.