Guild Wars 2

Sartharina.3542:

Obtena.7952:

That is a VERY trivial difference, if a difference at all. The meta events are ALSO telling you what’s going on in that area of the world and also rewards you for just being around in the area at the time the event occurs. How the heart manages to give something context, but the event does not isn’t clear from your explanation. If anything, if the heart gives context, it’s fleeting at best … you complete the heart and then you’re like “OK, next”. It’s very unlikely there is some memorable heart because of content. The most memorable ones are the ones that are frustrating to do, not because they have unique, challenging or interesting activities linked to them.

Actually, there are a few memorable hearts I can think of: Smacking Oozes with signs in Metrica Province and catching booze in Snowden Drifts come to mind instantly. Oh yeah – and the main Ebonhawke quest heart (Arguing with Separatists, tearing down propaganda, and invading homes looking for terrorists). I also have all the Plains of Ashford hearts memorized, and most of the Diessa Plateau ones. But that’s because I have 10 Charr characters that have 100% completion of those zones.

Vayne.8563:

Dynamic events often give the zones more context than hearts, because they chain There’s a tiny dynamic event chain that repeats quite often in the beginning of Caldeon. A sylvari woman sees the lights have gone out and to light them again she needs firefly essences.

Once those essences are collected and handed in, the lights come on but then an influx of mosquitos some in. That’s a simple example. The difference is dynamic event context can build, heart context never builds.

Escorting caravans through Kessex hills which are attacked by bandits and centaurs give context to how dangerous that world is and who are the law-abiding human’s main enemy in those maps.

Basically anything that a heart can give context with, a dynamic event can give deeper context.

After all, the entire Orr maps are our incursion against Zhaitan and they tell more of a story and provide more context than any heart on the game. Same with DryTop. Same with Silverwastes. Same with south sun.

The context is there, if people care to look.

And on topic most events can be soloed. Not all, but most.

The context isn’t there when the Events aren’t. Why are there threats on the roads through Kessex Hills? Since when have Mosquitos been a problem to that village in Caledon (Where did they come from?)

And the meta events give context… but the standard events tend to not give as much. Even then, scouts and the Heart Vendor give even more context on the ’what’s going on in this part of the world’ if you ask them. This is why I mentioned the Meta events replacing hearts, because they give the context for the world. In the newer zones, the maps are a lot more “In the Now” – Sure, they’re on a cycle gameplay-wise… but there’s not really the same sense of “This has been going on for a while/This will keep going on for a long time – Your contributions help, but won’t immediately change the situation” that hearts have going for them.

Something else the hearts do is give a sense of “Why are these creatures here” or “What effect are the creatures in this area having on local settlements outside of immediate events?” Sure, they tend to be ‘telling’ more than ‘showing’ – but telling is a LOT easier on the budget, and also less likely to be missed or misunderstood.

Events, including the meta events, say ’What’s happening now" – but they don’t always convey the conditions that the events arise from. Some of the events in Orr really should have been Hearts instead, as well (Such as the priory’s “Answer questions about Orr’s History” and “Bring spectral hammers to be destroyed” near the Cathedral in Malachor’s Leap).

But most hearts don’t really give that much context. In fact, many hearts are just add on sort of things. Several hearts in Queensdale and Kessex are just kill bandits, which you get from scouts. It’s really not that much context.

In fact, I’d say there’s precious little context from a huge percentage of the hearts. There are exceptions. But many of them are just mini games, an excuse for context. They fit without the established world, but there’s no depth to them at all.

And all of this has nothing to do with whether events are or aren’t soloable anyway.

But hearts are static in every sense of the word. And you can only do them once and then they’re gone forever. Events keep coming back again and again. So once you do ever heart of a character, the world is only alive because of events. The hearts become insignificant.

And if you have a boatload of alts, as I do, they become an impediment. I’m not sure how much context I need about trading with the Jotuns on six or seven or ten characters. Or bringing rabbit food in.

They’re just time wasters.

Daddicus.6128:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The OP’s argument is almost entirely based off the first mastery.

Incorrect. When I gave up trying for 3 months, the reason was yet another mastery needed (Nuhoch or exalted something or other). It happens throughout the process, at least as far as I’ve gotten so far. Who knows? Maybe I’ve hit the last one and just don’t know it. But, it’s awfully frustrating to just be getting into the story again and have to drop back to more random monster killing.

Exalted is needed. I reached it on day two. It’s the last one needed for the story. It’s one mastery point. I’m not sure how you can spend three months on it. If I played 15 minutes a day, I could probably have gotten it in one month.

Either you’re exaggerating or you’re just really bad at the game, but there’s no way in hell you should take 3 months to get gliding, mushroom jumping, updraft use and exalted law trained.

I’m not even sure how it’s possible.

Sartharina.3542:

Vayne.8563:

Moyayuki.3619:

Obtena.7952:

Put it this way … if you don’t repeat periodic events, then they are exactly like hearts, so the idea that Events aren’t an option for someone that likes doing hearts or aren’t an option for the people that think hearts is better than events is not sensible.

sigh I never claimed that the dynamic events were “not an option” for people who prefer hearts…

But what’s actually the difference between hearts and events. You say you enjoy hearts more than events.

So if theres’ a heart that says gather these apples and bring them in, or there’s an event that says gather these apples and bring them in, what really is the difference.

The difference is once you do the heart it’s done and you can’t do it again. But you an always replay the dynamic event.

It’s just a bizarre thing.

The only other difference is if you want zone completion you have to do hearts, but events are almost always optional (with a few excpetions).

Actually, in this case it’s pretty obvious with the difference – With the heart, it’s “Help Farmer X tend to the orchard – gather apples, clear pests, etc.” It tells you what’s going on in this area of the world, and it rewards you for just playing around in the area. The heart gives the event context.

The ‘heart-replacing’ events are the meta events. “Help Take/Hold the temples of Orr”, “Defend and Run Supplies to Red Rock Bastion”… and the numerous outpost progressions in Verdant Brink.

I wouldn’t mind if they were to put hearts in those areas to encourage exploration and interaction with the zones.

Dynamic events often give the zones more context than hearts, because they chain. There’s a tiny dynamic event chain that repeats quite often in the beginning of Caldeon. A sylvari woman sees the lights have gone out and to light them again she needs firefly essences.

Once those essences are collected and handed in, the lights come on but then an influx of mosquitos some in. That’s a simple example. The difference is dynamic event context can build, heart context never builds.

Escorting caravans through Kessex hills which are attacked by bandits and centaurs give context to how dangerous that world is and who are the law-abiding human’s main enemy in those maps.

Basically anything that a heart can give context with, a dynamic event can give deeper context.

After all, the entire Orr maps are our incursion against Zhaitan and they tell more of a story and provide more context than any heart on the game. Same with DryTop. Same with Silverwastes. Same with south sun.

The context is there, if people care to look.

And on topic most events can be soloed. Not all, but most.

Moyayuki.3619:

Obtena.7952:

Put it this way … if you don’t repeat periodic events, then they are exactly like hearts, so the idea that Events aren’t an option for someone that likes doing hearts or aren’t an option for the people that think hearts is better than events is not sensible.

sigh I never claimed that the dynamic events were “not an option” for people who prefer hearts…

But what’s actually the difference between hearts and events. You say you enjoy hearts more than events.

So if theres’ a heart that says gather these apples and bring them in, or there’s an event that says gather these apples and bring them in, what really is the difference.

The difference is once you do the heart it’s done and you can’t do it again. But you an always replay the dynamic event.

It’s just a bizarre thing.

The only other difference is if you want zone completion you have to do hearts, but events are almost always optional (with a few excpetions).

Even if they originally were a grind, they’re no longer a grind because experience has been increased, even just in kills. It took a handful of dynamic events to get your gliding, particularly if you were smart enough to use buffs.

People who can’t be bothered eating some food, or using a cheap potion for utility or using one of their birthday or celebration boosters, guild boosters, banners, and if you have an XP boost (which you can buy with gold anyway) it’s ridiculously fast. There’s fireworks too which are very cheap and it all stacks.

So I’m not sure why anyone thinks this is an issue anymore.

What the OP is really saying is let me level faster from 1-80.

Every other MMO I know of raises the level cap before you can get into stuff. That’s the only way expansions last at all. Now the OP is trying to make it so the expansion moves faster, and we have to do less to “level”.

It just doesn’t work that way.

Choosing to grind is not being forced to grind. In most MMOs you’re forced to grind. Here, you have the option to grind or go at your own pace.

But doing different stuff, as everyone else has said, isn’t grind.

Imagine if mastery points were just one dungeon you had to do over and over again to get them and they were RNG. That would be grind.

Reapers and druids are pretty good for soloing. Out of all the professions I play, those are the ones I find easiest. Next would be Dragonhunter for me, though it’s not on my list. I also do really well on either mesmer or chronomancer, but that’s because it’s one of my mains.

A new raid wing should be coming out soon. You’ll need ley-line gliding unlocked to complete it.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ll agree that dailies are not anti-casual. They’re slightly different than they were in March. Sometimes there’s a task in Heart of Maguma. Sometime there’s a jumping puzzle.

Most days I log in and do the 3 tasks I can complete as fast as possible. I avoid the event task, unless it’s someplace like Malchor’s. I’ll often do at least one task in WvW. Unless moved to then go play elsewhere in the game, I log out, usually after no more than 10 minutes. The timing has not changed since the 19 April patch.

I find it bemusing that the OP is getting tasks for L80 zones if he does not have an L80 character who could go there. Before the 19 April changes, only accounts that had a high level character would get Orr or FGS tasks. Did that change?

I’d also say that my pattern of doing dailies is different, but not just from the most recent change. It’s been different since the changes in Dec. of 2014. Before that patch, I spent anywhere from 20-45 minutes doing the old organic daily tasks while also running around zones, etc. On days when I was busy out of game, I’d then log off. Essentially, dailies take me a lot less time, and as a consequence I play less.

The OP has 2 level 80s. He just doesn’t necessarily want to do events in the new level 80 zones.

“Yeah, I do have two level 80s (I realize not everyone has the time to get that far), but I rarely play them now since I dread the LS 80 zones. I realize that the events are PvE, but it can be difficult to complete since there’s a lot of running around to do, and I’d rather spend that time questing and so forth. It just feels “out of the way” for my play style, and then I feel penalized (not earning Dailies) because of that.”

That’s his choice, but it’s still casual. He can do two easy PvE ones and jump into a PvE daily room for the third, which is casual as hell.

Danicus.4952:

An interesting point about casuals and not finding the game enjoyable. I would like to reiterate why I suggest why HOT may not be enjoyable for the casual player. Player skill progression is usually tied to built in in-game learning experiences. In my opinion, well-designed in-game learning experiences follow somewhat of a time-linear scaled set of challenges. A casual player (in my opinion), follows this sequence without excessive frustration. The ideal is a sort of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi flow state where consciousness of time playing disappears. I do not believe HOT scales in this way. Yes it is possible, with time effort and motivation to overcome these challenges, but is that what the designers truly intended? I want to thank the posters on this thread for such positive and sincere dialogue.

This is true. But it’s also true that the game has been getting slowly harder. Southsun was harder than Orr. Drytop and the Silverwastes are hard. But people hide behind zergs instead of learning how to play. The living world stuff got a lot harder. A lot of people stopped doing it, instead of learning it. Or played with a group and got carried through.

I played the content until Core was easy and each time something came out I played it and got better. But people take shortcuts, depend on zergs or being carried.

The content did get more difficult gradually.

For me dailies are faster than they’ve ever been. Today is a jumping puzzle, gathering and a vista.

And the jumping puzzle has people portaling all day even if you have to wait 2 minutes. So the jumping the puzzle takes 2 minutes, because it’s a portal. Then you gather, and do one vista. I did my daily in 7 minutes today, for which I got 2 gold.

Moyayuki.3619:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

well they have have to do without me , i just uninstalled
better to stop now, before the frustration ruins the rest of the experience
core tyria was one of the best mmos ive ever played, too bad they couldnt make more of that

Core Tyria was awesome but the game had kitten. That is core Tyria, everywhere pretty much, was braindead easy. I mean really easy. The idea that harder content was lacking is what was provided.

If you can’t do that content, then sure, you made the right choice. But if they just added more like core Tyria they’d have wasted an opportunity to expand the game, which is what an expansion should do.

My suspicion is the next expansion will be very different.

it prolly will, but too little, too late
3 years , and they only made 2 new hearts
i could prolly do it, if i really had to
if i wanted to put in the hours of work and frustrations
id rather do that in a game, where i get some actual progress for my commitment

Anet even said before launch, hearts were never meant to be main content. They didn’t even exist till the third beta. The purpose of hearts is to keep people in areas where dynamic events spawn. They had to add them, because they noticed people just running by stuff and not stopping because they didn’t have a star on their map.

Hearts, for the most part, are the most boring, mind-numbing content you can put in an MMO. Kill these guys, water these plants, collect these things. A couple of them, very few, had a bit of depth but if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, I’m okay with you not liking the game.

Because more hearts would only make me groan…unless they did them completely differently than the first hearts.

If hearts is your idea of content, good luck finding any MMO that appeals to you after you hit level cap.

I was always under the impression that the “hearts” were GW2’s version of quests that you find in other MMOs (WoW, ESO, etc.), which essentially act as a way to level up your character and keep you busy. What would GW2 be like without hearts, then? Just group events, dungeons, and personal story/Living World? That would be awfully boring. If hearts were added in later, then it was obviously meant to stand in as “quests” and to give more options for gamers.

Dynamic events are quests. Think about it.

You go to a place and there’s a dolyak to escort from point A to point b. On the way it’s attacked. What’s that if not an escort quest?

You go to a place and it’s being attacked by centaurs. You’re required to defend it. What’s that if not a defense quest?

There are dynamic events that require you to gather.

But the difference is, dynamic events are active, not static. They chain. They can even lead to different events. Dynamic event ARE quests. They are just quests that come to you. That’s Anet’s original idea of a living world. They talked about it endlessly.

Have you been to Orr? There are no hearts in Orr, but most people don’t find it boring.

And no most dynamic events are not group events. Hearts were NOT added in to give more options to gamers. I know this because Anet told us this. They had test players that simply ran by events, because they were so used to other games, they REQUIRED a marker on their map to stop and look at something.

I mean to me, I’d rather walk around in a world and see a field burning and decide to help out than have a marker on my map that can’t possibly exist in the game world itself, to tell me stop and do stuff here.

Dynamic events are better than hearts because they scale based on the number of players. They’re better than hearts because you can come across them at different stages of their progression. Because they can chain. Because they can have pass fail things.

As it turns out, hearts are okay, because they compliment what Anet said, but compared to dynamic events, they’re dull. And when you’re doing world completion on multiple characters they’re just a chore to get through.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

Do what I do and make your own monthly. I do it with collections. If you own Heart of Thorns, for example you can work on the first tier of legendary collections. Just set goals for yourself, most of which have rewards built into the game anyway.

Fun idea. I wonder if ANet would be willing to spend some effort allowing some customization of the achievement/collection interface so that you could designate your own goals. The watchlist is fine for short-term, but not useful for something that you’re working for more than a few days (especially if you use it to guide your dailies).

There’s so much to work on, like the elite specialization weapons collections. I finally finished all of those. I finished one of the exotic backpacks which opens up an ascended back collection. There’s the fractal legendary back pack for longer term goals.

There’s a simple collection to get a mini Zinn.

I chip away at a lot of stuff.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Obtena.7952:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

well they have have to do without me , i just uninstalled
better to stop now, before the frustration ruins the rest of the experience
core tyria was one of the best mmos ive ever played, too bad they couldnt make more of that

Core Tyria was awesome but the game had kitten. That is core Tyria, everywhere pretty much, was braindead easy. I mean really easy. The idea that harder content was lacking is what was provided.

If you can’t do that content, then sure, you made the right choice. But if they just added more like core Tyria they’d have wasted an opportunity to expand the game, which is what an expansion should do.

My suspicion is the next expansion will be very different.

it prolly will, but too little, too late
3 years , and they only made 2 new hearts
i could prolly do it, if i really had to
if i wanted to put in the hours of work and frustrations
id rather do that in a game, where i get some actual progress for my commitment

Anet even said before launch, hearts were never meant to be main content. They didn’t even exist till the third beta. The purpose of hearts is to keep people in areas where dynamic events spawn. They had to add them, because they noticed people just running by stuff and not stopping because they didn’t have a star on their map.

Hearts, for the most part, are the most boring, mind-numbing content you can put in an MMO. Kill these guys, water these plants, collect these things. A couple of them, very few, had a bit of depth but if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, I’m okay with you not liking the game.

Because more hearts would only make me groan…unless they did them completely differently than the first hearts.

If hearts is your idea of content, good luck finding any MMO that appeals to you after you hit level cap.

you hate 95% of this game, but still claim, that i was in the wrong place?
good luck with that..youre gonna need it
yep , i drop most mmos way before end game..or rather end grind
i dont wanna dig through a ton of unwanted pixels, just to get the few, that i actually want

There is some interesting truth … You drop most MMO’s, yet you’re complaining about how this one works? Obviously you shouldn’t be playing them … or imposing your ideas of how they should work on the regulars if you admittedly aren’t someone that enjoys them in the first place. Not sure why anyone should take anything you say seriously if you can’t even hold on long enough to experience most of what MMO’s offer.

when a game stops being fun, i stop playing it
core tyria was , for the most parts, a very enjoyable experience
if they had more of that they would have kept me as a paying customer
i dont have to eat the entire meal, to figure out, if i like the taste
if the first bite is awful, who would stay and finish all? only a starving, or very cheap person would do that
it seems to me, that most of those, who like hot, dont like core tyria
why did you slug through gameplay, that you hate?
according to you, they didnt have any challenging end game, so what was the point?

I never said I didn’t like core Tyria. I only said I was looking for something more and different. No matter how much I like steak, eventually I’m going to want some seafood or some chicken. Something different. And not just something with a different skin.

Core Tyria was a great appetizer, but for many people, it wasn’t a meal. It lacked depth. HoT provides the rest of the meal.

Not such a great analogy after all really.

“hearts are the most boring, mind numbing content in an mmo”
your own words, that doesnt like " a great appetizer" to me
if i dont like the levelling content, i will dump the game in 5 mins flat
but thats just me, i only play games, that i actually like

If you think hearts are what the core game is about, you haven’t paid attention to the core game. Do you realize you can do most hearts without ever even doing the hearts? I just do dynamic events, until I fill in the hearts incidentally.

I like the dynamic events, what the game was supposed to be about. What Anet has repeatedly said the game was centered around. Everything about this game is about dynamic events.

As I said earlier, hearts were added later. They’re not part of the original plan and they’re something you do once and never have to do again on each character. Dynamic events repeat.

However the core game had personal story, it had dynamic events, it had jumping puzzles, it had mini dungeons, it had exploration and the hearts didn’t take up enough time to even think about. They got done as I was doing other stuff. I run through an area, and I repair a couple of cages. No sweat. Next time I’m through, I do another couple of cages. Eventually it’ll get done without me focusing on it at all.

Oh look a DE. I can do the DE and look the heart is done. Part of the core game allowed you to complete hearts without even playing them. Thus I like the core game.

Do you know why you don’t think HoT is soloable? Because you think the core game is all about hearts the easiest content. You’re so focused on hearts you used it as an example for something they didn’t add in the new content.

That’s why you think the game isn’t soloable. You haven’t played it yet. You’ve played hearts.

The bit added incidentally at the end to get people to where events are.

Saying hearts are boring doesn’t make the core game less enjoyable because hearts can pretty much be ignored. Eventually most of them do themselves.

battledrone.8315:

Obtena.7952:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

well they have have to do without me , i just uninstalled
better to stop now, before the frustration ruins the rest of the experience
core tyria was one of the best mmos ive ever played, too bad they couldnt make more of that

Core Tyria was awesome but the game had kitten. That is core Tyria, everywhere pretty much, was braindead easy. I mean really easy. The idea that harder content was lacking is what was provided.

If you can’t do that content, then sure, you made the right choice. But if they just added more like core Tyria they’d have wasted an opportunity to expand the game, which is what an expansion should do.

My suspicion is the next expansion will be very different.

it prolly will, but too little, too late
3 years , and they only made 2 new hearts
i could prolly do it, if i really had to
if i wanted to put in the hours of work and frustrations
id rather do that in a game, where i get some actual progress for my commitment

Anet even said before launch, hearts were never meant to be main content. They didn’t even exist till the third beta. The purpose of hearts is to keep people in areas where dynamic events spawn. They had to add them, because they noticed people just running by stuff and not stopping because they didn’t have a star on their map.

Hearts, for the most part, are the most boring, mind-numbing content you can put in an MMO. Kill these guys, water these plants, collect these things. A couple of them, very few, had a bit of depth but if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, I’m okay with you not liking the game.

Because more hearts would only make me groan…unless they did them completely differently than the first hearts.

If hearts is your idea of content, good luck finding any MMO that appeals to you after you hit level cap.

you hate 95% of this game, but still claim, that i was in the wrong place?
good luck with that..youre gonna need it
yep , i drop most mmos way before end game..or rather end grind
i dont wanna dig through a ton of unwanted pixels, just to get the few, that i actually want

There is some interesting truth … You drop most MMO’s, yet you’re complaining about how this one works? Obviously you shouldn’t be playing them … or imposing your ideas of how they should work on the regulars if you admittedly aren’t someone that enjoys them in the first place. Not sure why anyone should take anything you say seriously if you can’t even hold on long enough to experience most of what MMO’s offer.

when a game stops being fun, i stop playing it
core tyria was , for the most parts, a very enjoyable experience
if they had more of that they would have kept me as a paying customer
i dont have to eat the entire meal, to figure out, if i like the taste
if the first bite is awful, who would stay and finish all? only a starving, or very cheap person would do that
it seems to me, that most of those, who like hot, dont like core tyria
why did you slug through gameplay, that you hate?
according to you, they didnt have any challenging end game, so what was the point?

I never said I didn’t like core Tyria. I only said I was looking for something more and different. No matter how much I like steak, eventually I’m going to want some seafood or some chicken. Something different. And not just something with a different skin.

Core Tyria was a great appetizer, but for many people, it wasn’t a meal. It lacked depth. HoT provides the rest of the meal.

Not such a great analogy after all really.

All the ones with cheap precursors including the underwater weapons (though I like them a lot). I call them kmart legendaries. I have a few myself. lol

Each of my characters displays different titles based on their “personality”.

Even though Thrist, my ranger main, has done everything in the game, he modestly assumes the title traveler, because that’s how he seems himself.

On the other hand Torin Kaoz uses the title God Walking Among Mere Mortals.

I see it as another form of customizing my character, besides just appearance and what he wears. Even wings and minipets and finishers work that way for me.

Do what I do and make your own monthly. I do it with collections. If you own Heart of Thorns, for example you can work on the first tier of legendary collections. Just set goals for yourself, most of which have rewards built into the game anyway.

DaShi.1368:

I strongly recommend calming down.

I’m quite calm actually. But it is as I said. Guild Halls were never meant to be in at launch and Martin K did say what I said he said.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

DaShi.1368:

Vayne.8563:

Vix.6730:

displacedTitan.6897:

Kaleban.9834:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Firelysm.8190:

I did quit GW2 in december, because Anet didn’t deliver nearly 50% of promised content on the expansion release. I ran out of content after 2 months. I’m wondering how far is anet from releasing Legendary armor?!

Any news on that?

What content are you counting that ANet missed out on 50%? From the wiki, here are the promised features:

• Heart of Maguuma: added (and updated 19 April). Four new maps, multiple levels, new metas.
• HoT story: added
• Mastery system: added new HoT masteries and several core ones.
• New prof: revenant — added and, erm, relevant.
• Stronghold for PvP: added.
• WvW: Desert BL: added (since restored to Alpine BL, by popular demand).
• WvW: Shield generator and reworked abilities: added.
• WvW: World ability: added
• Guild Halls: two added
• Raids: as announced, adding wings in waves.
• Fractals: new system, new masteries added as promised.
• Adventures: added
• Map bonus rewards: added
• Ascended gear: now salvageable
• Legendary gear:
  • New backpacks: added
  • New armor: not in game yet
  • New legendaries: 4 of 16 promised added; work cancelled (at least for now) on the other 11.
  • Legendary collections for generation 1 precursors: added
• Commander & squad updates: added.
• Action camera: added.

I can’t say whether anyone in particular will enjoy the changes. I’m just pointing out that nearly all of the content advertised has been added (the big exception being legendary gear).

LOL I’m sorry but are you serious?

Most of that “content” is grind with a pretty veneer. The action camera? There was a mod for it like years ago. The changes and tweaks to interfaces and skills is not “content” they’re simply alterations to existing content.

The new maps qualify, as does the Revenant. That’s about it. So in actuality, only about 30% of HoT was actual content, the rest just changes to already existing systems or things like Guild Halls which should have been present at launch for a game called GUILD WARS.

“Should have been present at launch” can be applied to EVERYTHING added to any game after it has launched. It is the lamest and most useless of complaints to level at things.

Wrong. Guild Halls were planned for launch, discussions continued after launch, but Anet couldn’t funnel the resources to make it happen. So they piggy-backed Guild Halls onto HoT and marketed them as a new feature.

This is absolutely 100% untrue. Guild Halls were not planned for launch, not even a little bit.

On Guild Wars 2 Guru, long before there were official forums, someone asked about personal housing and Martin Kerstein answered, saying that housing is definitely not slated for launch. Most likely it would come out when Guild Halls did, possibly with the first expansion.

I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s what was said. And it was talked about for a while after, which is why I remember.

On the other hand, I don’t think you can find a single scrap of evidence that said Anet was even considering adding guild halls at launch.

That’s not credible. Anet had been very careful about not promising an expansion or expansion-based content until they actually announced an expansion. Unless you can prove that those posts existed on Guru, I’m called BS.

Here you go:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/18447-guild-info-discussion-thread/page__st__180#entry887047

Thanks for this Cedo. Is it credible now, Da Shi? Have you ever caught me lying?

When I said there was a clarification of the manifesto people say it was bogus until someone posted it. My memory may not be 100% perfect, but I still have a pretty kitten good memory, especially for something that I spent a lot of time following in great detail. I not only read conversations but participated in them.

There’s no reason to lie about this stuff. Guild Halls were NEVER slated to be in the original launch. Not once. Not ever, as confirmed by an Anet employee.

I’ll be happy to entertain any evidence you have to the contrary.

DaShi.1368:

Vayne.8563:

Vix.6730:

displacedTitan.6897:

Kaleban.9834:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Firelysm.8190:

I did quit GW2 in december, because Anet didn’t deliver nearly 50% of promised content on the expansion release. I ran out of content after 2 months. I’m wondering how far is anet from releasing Legendary armor?!

Any news on that?

What content are you counting that ANet missed out on 50%? From the wiki, here are the promised features:

• Heart of Maguuma: added (and updated 19 April). Four new maps, multiple levels, new metas.
• HoT story: added
• Mastery system: added new HoT masteries and several core ones.
• New prof: revenant — added and, erm, relevant.
• Stronghold for PvP: added.
• WvW: Desert BL: added (since restored to Alpine BL, by popular demand).
• WvW: Shield generator and reworked abilities: added.
• WvW: World ability: added
• Guild Halls: two added
• Raids: as announced, adding wings in waves.
• Fractals: new system, new masteries added as promised.
• Adventures: added
• Map bonus rewards: added
• Ascended gear: now salvageable
• Legendary gear:
  • New backpacks: added
  • New armor: not in game yet
  • New legendaries: 4 of 16 promised added; work cancelled (at least for now) on the other 11.
  • Legendary collections for generation 1 precursors: added
• Commander & squad updates: added.
• Action camera: added.

I can’t say whether anyone in particular will enjoy the changes. I’m just pointing out that nearly all of the content advertised has been added (the big exception being legendary gear).

LOL I’m sorry but are you serious?

Most of that “content” is grind with a pretty veneer. The action camera? There was a mod for it like years ago. The changes and tweaks to interfaces and skills is not “content” they’re simply alterations to existing content.

The new maps qualify, as does the Revenant. That’s about it. So in actuality, only about 30% of HoT was actual content, the rest just changes to already existing systems or things like Guild Halls which should have been present at launch for a game called GUILD WARS.

“Should have been present at launch” can be applied to EVERYTHING added to any game after it has launched. It is the lamest and most useless of complaints to level at things.

Wrong. Guild Halls were planned for launch, discussions continued after launch, but Anet couldn’t funnel the resources to make it happen. So they piggy-backed Guild Halls onto HoT and marketed them as a new feature.

This is absolutely 100% untrue. Guild Halls were not planned for launch, not even a little bit.

On Guild Wars 2 Guru, long before there were official forums, someone asked about personal housing and Martin Kerstein answered, saying that housing is definitely not slated for launch. Most likely it would come out when Guild Halls did, possibly with the first expansion.

I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s what was said. And it was talked about for a while after, which is why I remember.

On the other hand, I don’t think you can find a single scrap of evidence that said Anet was even considering adding guild halls at launch.

That’s not credible. Anet had been very careful about not promising an expansion or expansion-based content until they actually announced an expansion. Unless you can prove that those posts existed on Guru, I’m called BS.

I dont’ care if you call BS. I don’t care if you think the post exists. It existed, it was widely talked about, it’s going on five years now, and no I didn’t save a copy at the time because why would I.

Yet you’ll take the word for someone who says guild halls were supposed to be in at launch but where’s the evidence? That post existed and people talked about it. I have no reason to lie.

Emerik.7846:

I seem to only find one at reset or around reset. Otherwise, as you said it is dead 90% of the time. for one the first portion of the meta is interesting but it takes a massive time chunk to even attempt to complete it. Second stage is mind numbing and boring. Boss fight has some cool cutscenes but not that great either. Kinda a nice way to wind down, fly around and dodge some simple stuff whack at a flying worm and get some loot.

I’m sure that full maps and dc’s have turned a lot of people off. Several times 30,45 minutes plus into the battle I myself have lost connection and my spot was eaten up by another player. I have seen it happen to my guild members and friends. Its a huge turnoff.
After gearing and masteries what reason do you have to go to DS really?
As stated the meta is to long and the rewards in my eyes aren’t worth it.
Lets fight for an hour plus then go whack some pods for 15min for subpar loot. No thanks I say, and obviously, others must/could feel the same.

Same issue happens in TD though. Although no as brutal time wise I find it even harder to find a meta there and just quit going.

I almost never do it at reset, because I’m usually not playing by then since I live in Australia and it’s 10 am. I play a lot more in the afternoon and evenings and I can assure you it’s far from dead.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

well they have have to do without me , i just uninstalled
better to stop now, before the frustration ruins the rest of the experience
core tyria was one of the best mmos ive ever played, too bad they couldnt make more of that

Core Tyria was awesome but the game had kitten. That is core Tyria, everywhere pretty much, was braindead easy. I mean really easy. The idea that harder content was lacking is what was provided.

If you can’t do that content, then sure, you made the right choice. But if they just added more like core Tyria they’d have wasted an opportunity to expand the game, which is what an expansion should do.

My suspicion is the next expansion will be very different.

it prolly will, but too little, too late
3 years , and they only made 2 new hearts
i could prolly do it, if i really had to
if i wanted to put in the hours of work and frustrations
id rather do that in a game, where i get some actual progress for my commitment

Anet even said before launch, hearts were never meant to be main content. They didn’t even exist till the third beta. The purpose of hearts is to keep people in areas where dynamic events spawn. They had to add them, because they noticed people just running by stuff and not stopping because they didn’t have a star on their map.

Hearts, for the most part, are the most boring, mind-numbing content you can put in an MMO. Kill these guys, water these plants, collect these things. A couple of them, very few, had a bit of depth but if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, I’m okay with you not liking the game.

Because more hearts would only make me groan…unless they did them completely differently than the first hearts.

If hearts is your idea of content, good luck finding any MMO that appeals to you after you hit level cap.

you hate 95% of this game, but still claim, that i was in the wrong place?
good luck with that..youre gonna need it
yep , i drop most mmos way before end game..or rather end grind
i dont wanna dig through a ton of unwanted pixels, just to get the few, that i actually want

I don’t hate anything in this game. I don’t enjoy parts of the game. However, I do enjoy dungeons on occasion. I do enjoy fractals on occasion. I do enjoy WvW on occassion. So what don’t I like? The PvP season and Raids? lol

I think you need to learn some percentages, mate. Because I like probably 80% of the game from my vantage point.

I don’t think MMOs are for you at all. And most of them aren’t for me either. This one, fortunately is.

Kal Spiro.9745:

If you really looks at it, there are two zones. The city sized zone right next to LA and the starter zone right next to Caladon. They’re split by the passage to the wizard’s tower.

Back during development Tengu actually were going to be playable, but they scrapped them. They still have all the areas, though.

People say this a lot, but I’ve never seen a quote from Anet to support. It’s love to see one if you have it.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

well they have have to do without me , i just uninstalled
better to stop now, before the frustration ruins the rest of the experience
core tyria was one of the best mmos ive ever played, too bad they couldnt make more of that

Core Tyria was awesome but the game had kitten. That is core Tyria, everywhere pretty much, was braindead easy. I mean really easy. The idea that harder content was lacking is what was provided.

If you can’t do that content, then sure, you made the right choice. But if they just added more like core Tyria they’d have wasted an opportunity to expand the game, which is what an expansion should do.

My suspicion is the next expansion will be very different.

it prolly will, but too little, too late
3 years , and they only made 2 new hearts
i could prolly do it, if i really had to
if i wanted to put in the hours of work and frustrations
id rather do that in a game, where i get some actual progress for my commitment

Anet even said before launch, hearts were never meant to be main content. They didn’t even exist till the third beta. The purpose of hearts is to keep people in areas where dynamic events spawn. They had to add them, because they noticed people just running by stuff and not stopping because they didn’t have a star on their map.

Hearts, for the most part, are the most boring, mind-numbing content you can put in an MMO. Kill these guys, water these plants, collect these things. A couple of them, very few, had a bit of depth but if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, I’m okay with you not liking the game.

Because more hearts would only make me groan…unless they did them completely differently than the first hearts.

If hearts is your idea of content, good luck finding any MMO that appeals to you after you hit level cap.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

The problem with a queue is if the map does fill up and you’re not trying to get into another full map you may miss out, because you may never get in.

Let’s say 50 people are in the queue and 15 can get in. That means 35 people never get in and miss the event entirely, which would probably cause people to be as annoyed as not being able to get in in the first place.

If there’s only one taxi, as is often the case, there is no difference. Those 35 aren’t getting in either way.

Many times there’s only one taxi so I say to people on the map I’m on that map is full let’s taxi people in. Most of the time we end up with enough people to fill another map. The first map stops filling so the second should fill.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

well they have have to do without me , i just uninstalled
better to stop now, before the frustration ruins the rest of the experience
core tyria was one of the best mmos ive ever played, too bad they couldnt make more of that

Core Tyria was awesome but the game had kitten. That is core Tyria, everywhere pretty much, was braindead easy. I mean really easy. The idea that harder content was lacking is what was provided.

If you can’t do that content, then sure, you made the right choice. But if they just added more like core Tyria they’d have wasted an opportunity to expand the game, which is what an expansion should do.

My suspicion is the next expansion will be very different.

STIHL.2489:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not really surprised HOT underperformed, there was a boatload of negative publicity before launch, a lot of which was the fault of whoever made the decision not to include a character slot, and also whoever made the dungeon nerf decision. Those decisions together (along with some others) definitely hurt HoT sales.

While I am inclined to agree with that those decisions hurt the sale of HoT, far more then say, putting Legendary Weapons on hold, the real question here is, Is this something NCsoft would concern themselves with when looking at the sales reports

Long discussion made short, when NC Soft said “Lesson Learnt” what lesson were they talking about?

Was it perhaps that they invested too much funds into HOT, Was it perhaps they waited too long to launch an Expansion? Perhaps a combo of the two?

I don’t really care what lesson NcSoft learned. I’m far more interested in learning what lessons Anet learned. And from what I can glean (which is little enough) there’s every chance the next expansion won’t be HoT-like.

The game shouldn’t be out of beta, because some people have issues with it still.

Out of beta doesn’t mean it will work flawlessly with every system and every setup. That’s not what out of beta means. It means the basic function for most people will work and the basic function for most people does.

Providing an option to switch it off is a reasonable alternative.

If Anet, or any software company, waits until every single bug or compatibility issue is fixed, nothing would ever get out of beta.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PyrateSilly.4710:

This has been happening with software and software companies from the first day there was software for the masses. Years and years and years of this happening. Every software company has this happen. Are you going to stop having anything to do with computers and software?

Did someone say that here? I must have missed it if they did. What I saw was people saying they wouldn’t be as fast to give ANet their money. Which is a reasonable response when a company fails to meet someone’s expectations or to provide paid for content.

You’re absolutely right. If a company fails to meet your expectations, you absolutely should be wary about giving them more money. That’s all well and logical.

The thing is HoT exceeded by expectations. Because they said it would be small, I set my thinking along those lines. Did I expect more legendary weapons? Sure I did. But I didn’t expect to be able to glide everywhere and that, to my mind, increases the value of the product I bought more than legendaries would have. Therefore my expectations were exceeded.

But the real test of whether the product is worth it or not is the Living Story when it comes out. Because at the end of the day, if you want to continue with the game and the story, you have to own the expansion.

At which point, delaying the purchase would have made no difference to me. $100 isn’t going to make or break me whether I spend it now or a year from now.

I actually like HoT and it was about the size I was expecting it to be, so no problems there.

My problem came when they stopped working on what I paid for for an indefinite length of time. That didn’t sit well with me at all. Now if they had said, “put aside for a few months until we get sufficient content in the pipe and then we’ll restart it” that would have been acceptable enough to let slide. Unfortunately they have a history of “indefinite” turning into years, or never, and after seeing things promised as “one day” slide off into black holes, never to be seen or heard from again, I have no trust in them picking up dangling unmet promises unless they feel a financial bite.

Well I’m far more concerned with the good of the game as a whole, because I like the game. If Legendary weapons aren’t good for the game, I’m happy to let them stop them for now.

I’m sure when they made the announcement they expected more people to buy HOT. But there was a ton of negative publicity and people didn’t. Now people who work on legendaries are a subset of the population to begin with, so people who own HoT would be a subset of a subset of the playerbase. That’s a lot of work for a relatively small percentage of the player base. Manpower that probably could be used to better effect anywhere.

Anet probably looked at it and said, we can appease this small percentage of the playerbase and hurt the game, or we can hurt this small percentage of the player base and make the game better for more people.

I’m sure it wasn’t an easily reached decision. Mike O isn’t sitting on a beach in the Caribbean sipping a martini and laughing an evil laugh. He’s a business man that made a tough business decision based on the fact that the game didn’t sell as well as they thought it would, so they didn’t have the player base to justify the cost in man power. Not while so much of the expansion wasn’t meeting player satisfaction. Not while there’s a big lull in new content for players.

So yeah, kitten decision. I’m sure he hated making it. It wasn’t personal. It was something that was decided to make the game better. I can respect that that’s what he did.

When you start taking this stuff personally….Anet lied, Anet betrayed me, it feels like crap. But really, they had a strong business case to walk away from that feature, even though it was advertised. It sucks for everyone, including Anet.

They simply need to get back on track more than they need new legendaries. So far, at least, that’s working. They are getting back on track.

As said by someone else, this is derailing the thread so we will have to agree to disagree on this topic.

I’m not sure it’s as off topic as all that, but I agree I’m not going to change your mind and you’re not going to change mine.

My opinion is that this decision was made because of the information revealed in the quarterly report. Still not going to change your mind, obviously, but it stems from the information in the report itself.

I’m not really surprised HOT underperformed, there was a boatload of negative publicity before launch, a lot of which was the fault of whoever made the decision not to include a character slot, and also whoever made the dungeon nerf decision. Those decisions together (along with some others) definitely hurt HoT sales.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Vayne.8563:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Harbard.5738:

That kills most of what I like about gw2: spontaneity.

There hasn’t been any spontaneity in GW2 for years. It plays like a bus schedule. Next scheduled stop: Fire Elemental.

If you look at timers and do world bosses. I have always played Guild Wars 2 as a spontaneous game, even in HOT. IT’s a choice. I don’t need to find a meta to enjoy myself in the open world.

If you like more than the generic event chain, and need to do a boss for some achievement, then at some point you will need to look at the schedule. You can avoid it and not do any of things tied to all the worldbosses, ofcourse.

There’s very little larger event chains that end up in a boss fight that is not tied to said boss train. Which is a shame, no matter how much other content there is to distract you from it.

Except that mostly I did avoid it. Because I didn’t play it in a goal oriented manner. I just enjoyed myself and ended up getting quite a lot of stuff just by watching map chat.

This is happening now, oh I should get over there. I didn’t look at timers. I still got lots of stuff done.

It takes me longer. I just don’t care.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PyrateSilly.4710:

This has been happening with software and software companies from the first day there was software for the masses. Years and years and years of this happening. Every software company has this happen. Are you going to stop having anything to do with computers and software?

Did someone say that here? I must have missed it if they did. What I saw was people saying they wouldn’t be as fast to give ANet their money. Which is a reasonable response when a company fails to meet someone’s expectations or to provide paid for content.

You’re absolutely right. If a company fails to meet your expectations, you absolutely should be wary about giving them more money. That’s all well and logical.

The thing is HoT exceeded by expectations. Because they said it would be small, I set my thinking along those lines. Did I expect more legendary weapons? Sure I did. But I didn’t expect to be able to glide everywhere and that, to my mind, increases the value of the product I bought more than legendaries would have. Therefore my expectations were exceeded.

But the real test of whether the product is worth it or not is the Living Story when it comes out. Because at the end of the day, if you want to continue with the game and the story, you have to own the expansion.

At which point, delaying the purchase would have made no difference to me. $100 isn’t going to make or break me whether I spend it now or a year from now.

I actually like HoT and it was about the size I was expecting it to be, so no problems there.

My problem came when they stopped working on what I paid for for an indefinite length of time. That didn’t sit well with me at all. Now if they had said, “put aside for a few months until we get sufficient content in the pipe and then we’ll restart it” that would have been acceptable enough to let slide. Unfortunately they have a history of “indefinite” turning into years, or never, and after seeing things promised as “one day” slide off into black holes, never to be seen or heard from again, I have no trust in them picking up dangling unmet promises unless they feel a financial bite.

Well I’m far more concerned with the good of the game as a whole, because I like the game. If Legendary weapons aren’t good for the game, I’m happy to let them stop them for now.

I’m sure when they made the announcement they expected more people to buy HOT. But there was a ton of negative publicity and people didn’t. Now people who work on legendaries are a subset of the population to begin with, so people who own HoT would be a subset of a subset of the playerbase. That’s a lot of work for a relatively small percentage of the player base. Manpower that probably could be used to better effect anywhere.

Anet probably looked at it and said, we can appease this small percentage of the playerbase and hurt the game, or we can hurt this small percentage of the player base and make the game better for more people.

I’m sure it wasn’t an easily reached decision. Mike O isn’t sitting on a beach in the Caribbean sipping a martini and laughing an evil laugh. He’s a business man that made a tough business decision based on the fact that the game didn’t sell as well as they thought it would, so they didn’t have the player base to justify the cost in man power. Not while so much of the expansion wasn’t meeting player satisfaction. Not while there’s a big lull in new content for players.

So yeah, kitten decision. I’m sure he hated making it. It wasn’t personal. It was something that was decided to make the game better. I can respect that that’s what he did.

When you start taking this stuff personally….Anet lied, Anet betrayed me, it feels like crap. But really, they had a strong business case to walk away from that feature, even though it was advertised. It sucks for everyone, including Anet.

They simply need to get back on track more than they need new legendaries. So far, at least, that’s working. They are getting back on track.

Vix.6730:

displacedTitan.6897:

Kaleban.9834:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Firelysm.8190:

I did quit GW2 in december, because Anet didn’t deliver nearly 50% of promised content on the expansion release. I ran out of content after 2 months. I’m wondering how far is anet from releasing Legendary armor?!

Any news on that?

What content are you counting that ANet missed out on 50%? From the wiki, here are the promised features:

• Heart of Maguuma: added (and updated 19 April). Four new maps, multiple levels, new metas.
• HoT story: added
• Mastery system: added new HoT masteries and several core ones.
• New prof: revenant — added and, erm, relevant.
• Stronghold for PvP: added.
• WvW: Desert BL: added (since restored to Alpine BL, by popular demand).
• WvW: Shield generator and reworked abilities: added.
• WvW: World ability: added
• Guild Halls: two added
• Raids: as announced, adding wings in waves.
• Fractals: new system, new masteries added as promised.
• Adventures: added
• Map bonus rewards: added
• Ascended gear: now salvageable
• Legendary gear:
  • New backpacks: added
  • New armor: not in game yet
  • New legendaries: 4 of 16 promised added; work cancelled (at least for now) on the other 11.
  • Legendary collections for generation 1 precursors: added
• Commander & squad updates: added.
• Action camera: added.

I can’t say whether anyone in particular will enjoy the changes. I’m just pointing out that nearly all of the content advertised has been added (the big exception being legendary gear).

LOL I’m sorry but are you serious?

Most of that “content” is grind with a pretty veneer. The action camera? There was a mod for it like years ago. The changes and tweaks to interfaces and skills is not “content” they’re simply alterations to existing content.

The new maps qualify, as does the Revenant. That’s about it. So in actuality, only about 30% of HoT was actual content, the rest just changes to already existing systems or things like Guild Halls which should have been present at launch for a game called GUILD WARS.

“Should have been present at launch” can be applied to EVERYTHING added to any game after it has launched. It is the lamest and most useless of complaints to level at things.

Wrong. Guild Halls were planned for launch, discussions continued after launch, but Anet couldn’t funnel the resources to make it happen. So they piggy-backed Guild Halls onto HoT and marketed them as a new feature.

This is absolutely 100% untrue. Guild Halls were not planned for launch, not even a little bit.

On Guild Wars 2 Guru, long before there were official forums, someone asked about personal housing and Martin Kerstein answered, saying that housing is definitely not slated for launch. Most likely it would come out when Guild Halls did, possibly with the first expansion.

I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s what was said. And it was talked about for a while after, which is why I remember.

On the other hand, I don’t think you can find a single scrap of evidence that said Anet was even considering adding guild halls at launch.

Raizen.7981:

Vayne.8563:

You can’t scale DS for 5 guys. It would be ridiculous. I’d hate it. It would lose what it is and a lot of people like what it is.

Being off-topic a bit, but doesn’t DS actually scale for 5 people? There’s a lot of people who did DS runs in 5/10 man parties because it’s way easier than doing it with huge zerks. I actually did a DS in 11 people and it was waaaay easier than doing it “the right way”.

I don’t think a party of five would work against the boss at the end before mordremoth or the fight itself.

You’d have to split the party some people to take down the boss and some to kill the collectors and keep the preservers at bay. I’m almost 100% positive splitting 5 people into two groups couldn’t accomplish that. Maybe ten could, but that’s ten per lane or 30 people and I still think that would be hairy.

More than that, once you get to the actual modremoth fight, you have plants that spawn on every island with a time limit to kill them all. It would advance the bar if you can’t make it. Five people per lane is 15 people. I’m pretty sure they couldn’t clear all the islands on those phases, which means that at the end of the day, the leyline energy would rise faster than you could kill mordremoth.

But it’s okay for me. I mean that’s the whole idea of a giant meta event like that being okay for five people would take it down a notch for me. It’s supposed to be an army incursion.

Depends on where you look and what categories. Play around with the subgroups because that’s where you’ll find stuff. The other day there was an encounter I expected to find in world bosses, but it was in open world squads.

I’ve never looked for something that was going on where I didn’t find something.

The exception is dungeons and fractals. Groups for that fill so fast, they barely stay up at all. Try making your own group for dungeons and fractals and see for yourself.

You can play your personal story and you can buy Season 2 of the Living Story, but you can not play Season 1 of the Living Story, and likely won’t be able to for a very long time if ever.

Timewise, the Personal story comes first, the Living Story Season 1 and 2 follow, followed by HoT. Presumably Living World Season 3 will be out at some point this year, possibly summer.

There’s also an animation you can access in game which gives you a very brief overview of season one.

To play your personal story press H and go to the story journal the 4th icon down. Click on my story or the icon immediately beneath it and click begin story. You can switch back and forth any time you wish between any of the compaigns, so you won’t lose progress in HoT.

Hope this helps.

The problem with a queue is if the map does fill up and you’re not trying to get into another full map you may miss out, because you may never get in.

Let’s say 50 people are in the queue and 15 can get in. That means 35 people never get in and miss the event entirely, which would probably cause people to be as annoyed as not being able to get in in the first place.

tomwcb.9713:

It’s definitely not dead. I run it all the time! I’ve done all 3 lanes at least a couple of times each in the last few weeks. To be honest I just go stand at the opening waypoint when it’s due to start and usually the map fills up. Maybe there is only one busy instance at a time but that’s fine with me.

There’s definitely more than one full instance, because sometimes my instance fills and guildies who try to get in end up in another instance which also fills up.

TexZero.7910:

battledrone.8315:

Dlarnkk.1068:

Inc a famous slogan,

‘Please nerf Tequalt. Apparently I need friends to beat him, and I don’t wants friends! I wanna look cool, and beat the crap out of him with my mesmer!’

[ People still forget this is a MMO, and not singleplayer game.]

if i live in a city, do i have to shake hands with every person on the street?
this is the same

No but your property tax will be relative to the area you reside in….

(Read: even though you may not do anything with your neighbors they still have an impact on your daily life)

And your city isn’t the question. I’m 100% sure in a war zone that wouldn’t be the case. We’re not in our city but in enemy territory with makeshift camps. We didn’t settle or explore this area. In such cases, people do depend on each other to stay alive.

Lord Kuru.3685:

There hasn’t been any spontaneity in GW2 for years. It plays like a bus schedule. Next scheduled stop: Fire Elemental.
[/quote]

If you look at timers and do world bosses. I have always played Guild Wars 2 as a spontaneous game, even in HOT. IT’s a choice. I don’t need to find a meta to enjoy myself in the open world.

battledrone.8315:

Vayne.8563:

battledrone.8315:

Stevieboy.4192:

Stevieboy.4192:

Open world maps should be just that, open world.

Not sure why you think they aren’t
Areas of map blocked by ‘Vines’ reliant on map meta to proceed is why.

and if its blocked by a vine, for any reason, then its not OPEN, is it?

And yet other parts of the game prior to this are blocked by things, and people didn’t say much. There’s a waypoint in the Silverwastes you can’t get to, because it’s blocked by a gate, until an event is done.

There’s a jumping puzzle in Caledon Forest blocked by an event as well.

Yes no one said that the area under the Silverwastes isn’t the open world.

There were plenty of hero points that you couldn’t get unless you could stealth in untaken temples when the game launched.

And there’s an area in Metrica you can’t explore without doing an event either.

weird, i got 100% in both metrica and caledon, so they couldnt be that hard
SW and DT are horrible zones, and i dont go there at all, after getting 100% on my main ranger

I said there was an area you can’t explore, which absolutely has nothing at all to do with map completion.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

@Indigo Sundown

In regards to HoT being so unpopulated that you won’t be able to do hero points, with the mega server technology that’s pretty unlikely to happen at least not for many years.

I don’t know how many people are playing this game at any instant, but even old servers (before the game was free to play) usually had people to help you out, no matter what time I was playing. If I tagged up and used map chat, I’d get people. Anywhere any time, almost all the time. Maybe on a rare occasion I wouldn’t …but the next time I would anyway.

Out of all the people playing at any given time, are we assuming people won’t be running the HoT zones at all?

I mean hell there’s an entire guild dedicated to running Dry Top.

If the need is there, guilds will form for that too.

And in a worst case scenario you can make a friend or join a guild. I can’t think of any point in any map I can’t three man.

If I had any confidence in ANet’s ability to fix megaservers, I might agree with you.

Seriously what major concern haven’t they fixed. It’s not a question of if…it’s a question of manpower. Did they fix culling. Sure. It took ages but they fixed it. They fixed the down hill bug that killed people. They’ve fixed stuff that’s important all along, but it takes them a long time.

I strongly suspect that the pressure they put on people to work faster means that coders don’t document their work properly due to feeling rushed. So when they leave and new people have to decipher their code it takes much much longer for them to fix it.

That doesn’t mean they’re incapable of fixing it. It means not enough attention was paid to documentation to make it faster/easier to fix. It’s like being wise with pennies but losing dollars. Documentation on coding is massively important.

But Anet’s coders are top notch. Look at how other MMOs handled maintenance and updates. Guild Wars 2 is better than almost all of them. Very little down time compared to almost every MMO I’ve played.

The programming is fine. And the famous Susan is one of the head server designers, she’s still there after 12 years.

They have plenty of ability. It just takes them a long time.

Fair enough, I’ll amend my statement to, “If I had any confidence that Anet will fix the mega-server system within a time frame where I might still want to play HoT, and in a way that might make the game more enjoyable for me, then I might agree with you.”

I’m leery of Anet’s “fixes.” Many of them have made the game worse, fixed “problems” I wasn’t having in ways that made my quality of play worse, etc. Hopefully, you’ll forgive me in thinking, as a result, that “fixing” the HoT mega-server system will work out. If they make it function as mega-server does in Core, well, that is not going to make the zones very much more accessible. I consider that the most likely outcome.

I believe that there are issues with mega-server that go beyond things like changing the number in the part of the program that checks the shard for “too low” population, or writing a subroutine that rechecks the shard as closure approaches to see if events are being progressed. It may be that the inability to choose shards (as was available in GW) is not possible with the technology they’ve used for the game. I believe that a better solution would be to scale the various events for a smaller “minimum needed” would be a better solution which would not require the whole taxi business — which works (for me) sporadically at best. If Anet went that route, I’d be happy — and very much surprised.

Actually I think the megaserver needs to be fixed, whether or not they fixed the scaling. You can’t scale DS for 5 guys. It would be ridiculous. I’d hate it. It would lose what it is and a lot of people like what it is. The megaserver must be fixed no matter what.

That doesn’t mean scaling can’t be revisited, but they’re different problems that require different solutions.

The thing is, Anet has assigned a team to do this, so it’s not just changing a few numbers. I think they’re reworking the system altogether.

The megaserver was fine before HOT, so obviously something in HoT maps threw it out of whack. Whatever that is, that needs to be addressed, no matter what and I absolutely believe Anet is addressing it.

Raine.1394:

It’s interesting that several of the “too difficult” threads answer the problem by suggesting that players ally with large groups in order to do the content successfully. That’s really not the answer for a contemporary MMO where the solo player is a large and growing piece of the player pie. HoT is definitely not solo friendly and that is a problem that will need to be addressed. It’s doable solo, but it’s not fun.

But there are things you can do in the jungle solo and there have ALWAYS been things you can’t solo in Guild Wars 2. I don’t think most people could solo temple events in Orr. I don’t think most people can solo the Silverwastes, you can do some events, but you definitely can’t solo the meta or the vinewrath. You can’t solo the Karka Queen or Tequatl or Triple Trouble. I doubt most people could solo the Claw of Jormag.

There have always been things people can’t solo in the open world. Hot really is that much different.

I never heard anyone complaining that you can’t solo the meta event in the Silverwastes, or that you can’t solo your way to Tier 6 in Dry Top.

The amount of stuff you can solo is quite large. Let’s take the hero point situation. If you solo all the hero points in core Tyria, you only need a handful to get your elite specialization up and running.

In VB alone, there are at least a half a dozen soloable hero points I can think of. You don’t NEED to do the others ones, but you know, it’s like getting a temple hero point in Orr. You wait until people do it and you get your hero point. It’s not really much different at all, with the exception that you can get people at any time. You don’t have to wait for the event to be up.

This whole you can’t solo the new zones because you can’t solo everything has been a fallacy since launch. I’m not sure why people think the new zone can’t be soloed, when plenty of people have already claimed they solo it. Including some self-proclaimed casuals.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PyrateSilly.4710:

This has been happening with software and software companies from the first day there was software for the masses. Years and years and years of this happening. Every software company has this happen. Are you going to stop having anything to do with computers and software?

Did someone say that here? I must have missed it if they did. What I saw was people saying they wouldn’t be as fast to give ANet their money. Which is a reasonable response when a company fails to meet someone’s expectations or to provide paid for content.

You’re absolutely right. If a company fails to meet your expectations, you absolutely should be wary about giving them more money. That’s all well and logical.

The thing is HoT exceeded by expectations. Because they said it would be small, I set my thinking along those lines. Did I expect more legendary weapons? Sure I did. But I didn’t expect to be able to glide everywhere and that, to my mind, increases the value of the product I bought more than legendaries would have. Therefore my expectations were exceeded.

But the real test of whether the product is worth it or not is the Living Story when it comes out. Because at the end of the day, if you want to continue with the game and the story, you have to own the expansion.

At which point, delaying the purchase would have made no difference to me. $100 isn’t going to make or break me whether I spend it now or a year from now.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

There a slight difference between a ride being closed because it’s a public hazard and a product not being delivered because they over promised when they charged you for it.

One is a closure required by law. The other is making promises and taking money for those promises and then unilaterally not delivering on the promise and not offering a refund either.

Edit: I wonder if this happens very often in other businesses, such as writing books

“Yeah I took your money to write a book. I only got 25% through then I decided I would be better off, business wise, to stop and do something else. No, you don’t get a refund. However you can have these other things you didn’t ask for or say you wanted.”

I’ll give this a whirl next time I take money for future promises, I’m sure it will work.

The point is, unexpected things happen PERIOD. And with an MMO, features ARE subject to change, for a variety of reasons.

This has always been true for all MMOs. Anet was going to provide legendary weapons over time. They also said they wouldn’t be able to bring gliding to central Tyria.

They took away something, but they also provided something. Because the thing they provided (that they said they couldn’t) is more valuable to me personally than what they took away, I feel like I got more than my money’s worth. whether or not they delivered on line items.

I understand when I’m buying an MMO all I’m really buying is access to the new content.

Do I want to eventually see all the new legendaries in the game. Sure I do.

But the way they were being designed was obviously not working.

Take the short bow. They did a great job on the short bow adding in all sorts of content. It was like it’s own mini quest series. It was great.

But if very very few people avail themselves of that content, it’s not worth spending the time and energy to produce more of it, and that’s the problem.

So Anet made a decision based on the amount of work/time creation of those new legendaries took compared with the over all health of the game. Did they say they were going to give us something they didn’t give us? Absolutely.

Would I want them to continue that if it didn’t work for the game over all?

Absolutely no. They should have simply not guaranteed all the legendaries. But then we’re back to square one. Anet never announcing anything until it’s ready.

That’s a bad trade off to me.

Siobhan.5273:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

As usuall I do beleave in Anet that they will do good, now it is up to the players and not keep the grudge from HoT.

I don’t know about keeping a grudge but if a company takes my money then doesn’t give me what I paid for then I’m most definitely going to remember that the next time they ask for my money. I’ll consider any promised advertisements for things that will be added later as “vaporpromises” and not to be relied on.

Sometimes you don’t get exactly what was advertised, but you get more than you expected from some things and less from other things. An MMO is NOT like other products. It’s more like an amusement park. They plan to build a ride. They advertise the ride. The ride proves unsafe so they close it down. That’s what happens sometimes.

In the case of legendary weapons we got 25% of what was advertised and then they decided it wasn’t work and they changed it. But also got stuff they told use they wouldn’t do, like gliding in central Tyria. I’m far more happy with that than I would have been with legendary weapons.

MMOs are products that are always changing. Sometimes you like the changes and sometimes you don’t.

But unless new legendaries were important to you personally, I don’t really see the issue. We’re getting some stuff and not getting other stuff.

The changes to WvW seem to be well received, for example. The PvP changes seem to be all in (though I’m sure most stuff is coming). Living Story Season 3 is coming after the third raid and the raids have been coming out relatively regularly.

The entire game was just overhauled to make it easier to spend less time to get rewards and to get greater rewards and to make it less grindy, that’s all time and effort.

If you like the changes, then there’s no reason to say well but you didn’t deliver X… unless X was what you were particularly looking for.

The fractal changes look good, dungeon rewards are back.

Sure, we didn’t get legendary weapons but that’s not the whole game to everyone. In any MMO sometimes you like the changes and sometimes you don’t. And no change is going to be guaranteed, because it’s an MMO.

Like the desert borderlands. Players in WvW mostly seemed not to like it, so they rotated it out earlier than they were going to. It was delivered and if you paid for that feature and you liked it, now you’d be unhappy.

That’s how MMOs work.

Exactly this.

I wasn’t donating to a charity when I purchased the expansion. There was an expectation of receiving the product that was advertised in return. I’m not funding their company out of the kindness of my little black heart, I’ve got grabby hands out over here.

Danicus.4952:

Thank you all for the cogent responses. After reading the comments to date, I would like to make a few small clarifications. My primary concern is not one of difficulty. Well conceived challenging content is a good thing. I don’t want additional nerfs. What I ineffectively articulated was that the design choices in the expansion diminish population access, and when people express their frustration, it is not productive to engage in ad hominem attacks about their skill or understanding of what an MMO is.

Consider the first HOT map zone for example. Run out of endurance while gliding and fall to your death in pulsing vine twitch. This insta-kill feature is not present on later maps. Seems like an upside down design choice. Consider all of the character trapping map features in the wrecked ship canopy areas in the first zone. I typed in /stuck many many times. Consider all of the locked waypoints on all of the HOT maps (there has been improvement with this). Consider how movement becomes easier as you become more experienced – (an upside down player skill progression imo) when accessing areas. (Doesn’t it make more sense to need to develop skills to access the most challenging areas on later maps rather than the first map!) Consider how the terrain mesh and the 2d layered maps / minimap are purposefully obscure to make pathing difficult. Compound those concerns with convoluted 3d maps, group timer meta events, megaserver and lfg challenges, and it feels – that by design – HOT does not invite casual player drop in, play, drop out experiences.

Mob attack mechanics,placement and strength will always need to be tinkered with, so that’s not what I consider a HOT specific design issue. People are frustrated to some degree with that, I get it, but I think the underlying source of frustrations are about design choices and not difficulty.

I think I see where you’re going with this, but I’m not sure I agree. Let’s take it from a different angle.

The gliding in the early area of the zones is supposed to be an attrition mechanic. It’s supposed to make you think before you glide. Judge distance. It makes the first zone a puzzle and adds interest to it. You think that dying is a really bad thing, but there are tons of people who play this game who don’t care if they die. In my experience, older school RPG gamers really hate dying and people who play FPS games don’t care as much because dying is expected. The idea of making it death is to make you think. It’s only a problem if you keep doing it.

But you need some gliding to get around in VB and you work on gliding and jumping mushrooms to get there.

What you don’t need in VB is nuhock wallows. But you absolutely need those in TD….without Nuhock wallows, TD is a nightmare to navigate.

The point is, the game isn’t designed so you can do zone 1 and zone 2 and zone 3 in sequence. It’s designed more holistically. You do what you can in Zone 1 and then you go to Zone 2 to do the next things you can do. There’s a mastery point in the second zone that requires poison resistance. If you don’t have it, you can sit there and wait till you get it, but why not just go to the next zone. You don’t need to get it today.

If you approach each zone from a completionist point of view, you’re making the game harder for yourself. The idea is to see something really cool, know you can’t get to it so when you can later on, it feels like an accomplishment. This is something that’s absolutely missing from the earlier zones.

My guess is completionists have a very hard time with this game anyway. Try getting every minipet or every skin. It’s just not really designed for that. The idea is to get the stuff you like hopefully it’ll be different from the stuff I like and we will then look different, have different minipets, different glider wings, different back items.

The new zones were, in my opinion, well designed, because they make you wait to get certain things. That’s intentional. It’s a design decision. It’s obviously not a design decision everyone likes

However, when I was in VB, seeing it as a puzzle, not having unlimted gliding made it more fun for me. Unlimited gliding, for me, gives me more freedom…but I had a blast figuring out the limits of where I could and couldn’t go.

Yeah it’s much much faster. I did an an hour and a half and got over 1000 leyline crystals, finished over three collections and ended up with extra chak acid too. It’s awesome now.

Dante.1508:

If you enjoy solo play, or are casual in any way, then no its not worth the money at all.

The grind is painful the resource collection are over the top and the maps just make you dizzy..

Many self-identified casuals in my guild would disagree with you. You don’t get to be spoke persons for all casuals. And you don’t get to define casual either. Casual doesn’t mean you’re not good at the game.

The fact is, I even offered to show you around and teach you and you’d rather just complain. But I’ve taught many people how to get through the jungle. It’s not about casual. It’s about playing smart.

Contrary to popular belief that’s something some casuals do.

misterman.1530:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

As usuall I do beleave in Anet that they will do good, now it is up to the players and not keep the grudge from HoT.

I don’t know about keeping a grudge but if a company takes my money then doesn’t give me what I paid for then I’m most definitely going to remember that the next time they ask for my money. I’ll consider any promised advertisements for things that will be added later as “vaporpromises” and not to be relied on.

Well I can understand that and I where one who felt cheated like that I would not buy atleast a pre -order, I would rather wait. That’s different to what I meant. I meant I hope people are so angry that they will not even consider looking at Anets titles anymore.

I didn’t preorder HoT and sure as heck won’t preorder their next expansion. I waited until I read about the mess, weighed my options, and finally after a couple of balancing patches, coughed up the $$. Would do the same with another expansion.

Let’s face it, people who preorder are not competent consumers.

The only way you can convince me to preorder would be to offer something of immense value (permanent bank slot, legendary weapon, legendary armor set) not something cosmetic (My Little Pony backpack with sparkly fairy lights that have a constant glow affect). I don’t play a game to look pretty as I’m not a 10 year old girl.

This is a little judgemental. Are you saying adults can’t play a game to look pretty or cool? Because that’s not my experience. And denigrating people who play the game differently than you is uncalled for.

Also, you can be a competent consumer and still preorder. My entire guild plays this game. It would have been very hard for me not to order the expansion just on the basis of that, since I’m running the guild and I have to be able to get to where players are. If more than half the guild buys the expansion (and it our case it was way way more than half that preordered) I have no choice but to buy the expansion.

So if I preorder it, whatever I get it gravy.

People who talk in absolutes are pretty easy to refute.