Guild Wars 2

Kamara.4187:

+1 this was a nice post, and I’m glad someone else remembers back when all there was, was pinball, foosball, or just a pool table, and how it all evolved. Do you recall how people back then thought RPG was some kind of cult activity? laughs….

Good times and I also find myself where you are. Games might start off great but for one reason or another they all seem to turn into a cookie cutter of repetition with little spark or magic to immerse oneself into. After so many changes I’m wore out, and tired of complaining about game changes.

Perhaps its just time for me to hang up the mouse and find another hobby.

Remember the movie Mazes and Monsters? lol That was all about that. I think D&D was actually illegal in Utah for a while.

Fun times.

bloodletting wolf.2837:

Vayne.8563:

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

Unfortunately, I moved 10,000 miles away from my pen and paper group, but we were playing for decades as well. 10,000 miles is a bit of a long commute to play a game though.

There are low cost online tools so you can play pen and paper games with your friends no matter how far away they are. TS is also an option – I play a Rifts campaign bi-weekly using TS and the GM making all the rolls. Unlike video games I have never regretted my time spent playing RPG’s.

Yeah but there are very few old school tools that can make the time different convenient for all my friends also.

LyricDawnhagen.7803:

Thanks for writing that Vayne. I am from the same era. I came into gaming via D&D when I arrived in college. It was the stories and interaction that kept me coming back week after week. And that is what still draws me into these (RPG) games. Having the combat be fun to watch and interesting character models are all great eye-candy but it is the story that will keep me involved for the long haul.

I joined my current pen & paper gaming group 31 years ago. The core of the group remains and we have been playing ever since. We often go an entire game session with no combat at all. Just lots of RP with each other and the GM for that night. It’s all about the story and the interaction.

Unfortunately, I moved 10,000 miles away from my pen and paper group, but we were playing for decades as well. 10,000 miles is a bit of a long commute to play a game though.

Ashen.2907:

In oldschool fantasy pen and paper RPGs, DnD in particular, the most potent rewards were expected by design to be earned in the equivalent of the most difficult raids/dungeons. That Hackmaster +12 would be taken from the hoard of the biggest, baddest, most challenging boss at the end of a series of increasingly difficult encounters.

The repetition thing…yeah, but a GM in a pen and paper game, in general, has more ability to write new, “playable content”, that doesnt involve repeating last week’s adventure for his weekly group to enjoy. Some posters on these forums have listed play times that equate to 8-10 hours a day, 7 days a week, since launch over 3 years ago. I have never met a pen an paper GM, myself included, who could meet that demand with new content.

When I GMed I did a lot of stuff on the fly. Obviously programmers can’t do this, so your point is valid.

But I’m quite tired of people assuming that because I don’t want to raid, I’m lazy. It’s not my thing because it was NEVER my thing.

As for the most potent rewards, that’s not a rule at all and never happened with our games. You could get anything anywhere, in much the same way you could get a precursor killing a deer in Queensdale.

That was how the game was originally designed. Sure you had to do dungeons to get legendaries, but you didn’t have to devote huge amounts of time to get through a dungeon. What the program is asking for here is to do something that requires quite an investment in time and energy to get something. Dungeons really didn’t do that. It’s taken the commitment level to new heights.

Some might find that fine, but I don’t. Not three years into a game.

fishball.7204:

Looks pretty dead to me, diamond NA prime PvP q = 5 min+ solo.

Tried to do vinetooth prime in OCX/SEA time, not even a map with commander tag or taxis. Had to wait till NA prime right after reset.

Maybe overall the game pop is fine but man if you don’t play NA prime (or EU prime for EU), good luck getting anything niche done.

I play Australia time and get plenty done. Vinetooth prime is just one of those things the players tend not to do much.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Vayne.8563:

The point is, there are people who raided in other games who came here specifically because the game didn’t have raids and they could get the best stuff without raiding. Now that’s gone.

Um, what do you mean by “the best stuff without _”? It’s a skin, not a stat bonus. Plus the game already required dungeons to get dungeon armor & weapons, fractals to get fractal weapons, silverwastes to get lumi armor, and (for a brief period) WvW to get Legendary Weapons.

When the game first launched and for well over a year after, there were lots of people who said they could never get dungeon skins; it was just too hard. The same for fractals: I know even more people who thought those were inaccessible, too. And of course, there are all sorts of PvP skins (and achievements) gated behind competitive gaming.

So now, people are saying Raids are too exclusive — I have trouble believing that. I think people are claiming foul before ball has landed.

I think it’s reasonable that some people think that a game purportedly designed for casual players should not have any features gated behind skill. I think it’s reasonable that some people think that features should not be gated behind larger groups.

However, I also think it’s completely reasonable for ANet to disagree with both ideals, especially since they are in the business of making games profitable enough to keep making games, which means appealing to different types of players.

---

On a related note, I think there are lots of ways that ANet could try to bridge the differences across the community’s expectations — making Raids easier is one and/or making it easier to obtain mag-shards, but I think those are the most short-sighted.

One of the core sensibilities seems to be that there’s some amazing advantage in having stat-adjustable armor (although frankly I rarely make use of it for legendaries).

So, ANet could introduce a wardrobe-like system that offers something like Trans-statial charges, comparable to transmutation charges — perhaps bought or perhaps crafted — allowing you to change stats (& runes|sigils) on the fly. Legendary owners get the costs waived, so there would still be an advantage and it would probably have to be fairly expensive (for various economic reasons).

Then the only things Raids would gate is a skin. And the game already has plenty of gated skins, so I am hoping this wouldn’t be as much of an issue.

I never had problems with skins. But legendary isn’t just about skins. It’s a tier of gear.

Right now, I have enough skins to choke an ox. Could I work for more skins? Sure. I would I realistically at this point be likely to use more skins….not so much.

But armor that I could reskin taht I could change stats on, that IS something I could work towards. It’s a meaningful goal to me.

My goal used to be achievement points, until I hit my cap and they became too grindy even for me. Now there’s no real reason to push myself to get those achievement points, or in some cases even log in.

Combine that with my finishing getting every dungeon and armor skin…even the PvP reward tracks that are left don’t really interest me that much. Yeah, I could get all the glorious armor, I suppose. I’m just not interested enough in PvP to do that.

So I find myself at a crossroads. If this game is about progression, but there’s no meaningful progression left to me, then I’m not going to play as much.

On the other hand, new story is coming out and that IS meaningful progression to me. This is just growing pains while Anet gets moving on the stuff that I like.

I’m 100% sure something will come out sooner rather than later, another 3-4 months maybe that will get me back into the game hardcore.

But right now, what I have left that I enjoy is helping new players and building the guild…which is what I guess I should be focusing on.

slamfunction.7462:

Kheo.2504:

Distaste.4801:

How about the amount of content and “features” you get simply isn’t worth the price? FFXIV offered far more content and mechanics for a lower price.

FFXIV also requires an extra 12-15 bucks a month~ If Guild Wars 2 charged that, I’d have paid the price of HoT 8 times over by now. No thank you.

Note that i have no issues with this. I also don’t have any reason to troll the SE or FFXIV subreddit to complain or read other people’s compaints. Lemme tell, that $15 a month is COMPLETELY worth it to me. But, meh, d’ffrent strokes. d’ffrent folks.

Plenty of complaints about that game in their forums too though.

Nope without specifics I don’t know what you’re talking about.

For example, you need zergs to do temples in Orr, but most of the time when they’re up, if you talk in map chat and say a temple is up and pop a commander tag or get someone else to, you’ll probably have a big enough group to do the event. Sometimes building a zerg isn’t spontaneous.

The same could be said for most hero points in HoT.

Many events are on timers. That means all you need to do is be aware of the timers. There’s no point in getting a zerg together if nothing is going to happen with it.

There are times when the timers don’t go your way however. Is that what you’re talking about?

Sinbold.8723:

Excellent post, Vayne. I logged in specifically to plus one your story. You’ve echoed my sentiments, and we seem to have similar backgrounds from the pinball to GW2 road we’ve taken. I really enjoyed the lower levels of this game when it was new, doing hearts and dynamic events. Later, when I started to not enjoy where the story was going (mostly because I didn’t appreciate a few of the B-iconics, but did enjoy others), I started wandering around WvW for the enjoyment it gave me. It sure wasn’t a story, but more of a “dungeon crawl” in an open world, with great fights when enemies were around and taking towers and keeps with siege when they weren’t. Yeah, its sort of like PvP in WvW, but there’s a goal there where there isn’t in PvP.

I really like your closing paragraph. I couldn’t have said it better myself. Not a fan of raids- I might do one with some guildies or friends just to experience the story, but I sure don’t want to grind them for any specific rewards the way I grinded (ground? What’s the past tense of “grind”?) PvP for that ascended trinket.

I do a lot more WvW if it weren’t server based. My issue with WvW isn’t WvW itself, because I still enjoy it. My problem is it’s the only server based part of the game left. As we expanded our guild, more and more people aren’t on TC anymore and as a result, I don’t like to run WvW events, because I don’t like to leave people out.

Hopefully one day Anet will find some kind of solution to let guildies play together, but until then, I run WvW only occasionally and mostly when no one in the guild is on (the middle of the US night).

Agemnon.4608:

The only real RPG’s left are Dragon Quest, Hyperdimension Neptunia, and Final Fantasy and even Final Fantasy desperately wanted to get away from its RPG roots starting with 12 and 14 and 15 aren’t RPG’s at all. Skyrim is in real time so it’s an action game that tries being an RPG but with level scaling doesn’t really work. If you wanna be an action game go all the way, a full action game is funner than a half RPG.

What made RPG’s great was that they had unique mechanics in a separate screen that gave a sense of scale to the world while the overworld maps weren’t to scale and represented how far your character went. They were either hella easy or hella hard depending on the particular RPG and getting killed after forgetting to save lead to frustration. You also had optional yet challenging content specifically there to challenge the player. It was a great experience. However, in current games most of the content is optional creating a glut.

What happened to the RPG? Some of its elements creeped into other genres (usually undesirably such as Mass Effect in the third person shooter genre) while everything went to “real time”. Instead of traveling the entire world on a mission to save it you just travel one are (such as Skyrim) where you have a character that isn’t nearly as free as Link is in action and movement yet still lacking battlescreens and other fundamental RPG features that make an RPG good. RPG’s when done right have the potential to have deep intricate gameplay. In very old school RPG’s for example conditions like poison were utterly useless on a boss while in simply old games like Final Fantasy 13 poison was a welcome edition because it chips away at 1% HP and works on bosses. Now, 1% HP doesn’t sound like a lot but if you consider how tanky some bosses can be that 1% adds up quite a bit over a long period of time.

From a narrative standpoint however how does an RPG separate itself from other genres? Characterization? Fighting games have some of the best characters. Story? All genres such as some shooters, fighting games, and action-adventure have good stories. Is Dark Souls an RPG? No, but it contains vague elements of one.

I think you’re using a different definition of RPG than I was. I mean my pen and paper RPGs played a lot more like skyrim than they did as something like Baulder’s gate.

A lot of that has to do with drama/story vs strategic turned based combat. You’d think a pen and paper RPG was about turn bsaed combat, but the way we ran our compaigns, combat went very fast, and it was turn based in name only. We didn’t care as much about combat or dice rolls. Hell we went through large swathes of time with no combat at all. We had political intrigue and mystery.

The kind of differences you’re talking about don’t resonate with me. Not to say you’re wrong, we’re just approaching the genre from different directions.

Avarice.2791:

@Vayne

I’m going to keep this short. From what you just said it sounds like you are getting burnt out on this game.

It sounds like you blame the game for providing rewards exclusively through certain avenues of content. If you’ve played this game to the point that you have no more “short term goals,” then why not perfect your gameplay? From a MMO perspective, if you are picky about the content you choose to play, the rewards you get to choose from become limited. My 2 cents.

I love Tyria, I have since 2005, but if you’re to the point where you aren’t having fun, then step back and breathe a bit. Making all content accessible to everyone would greatly reduce the enjoyment this game brings IMHO. Challenge = replay-ability. It would make certain aspects of this game empty if all content was easily finished through multiple avenues in a limited amount of time. What’s the point of doing anything in this game? The reward. This is generally how MMO’s go.

I’m not picky about the content I play. Pretty much everything that came out in the first three years was my type of content. I do the holiday stuff. I do jumping puzzles. I run dungeons and fractals. I even WvW and PvP some.

But most of the content for years has been geared toward me and now that’s not the case. That’s not burn out. That’s a shift in direction.

Halandir.3609:

Vayne.8563:

No one ever claimed it’s not perfect.

That’s factually wrong – A lot of people claimed it’s pretty far from perfect
(Sorry couldn’t resist)

Actually that’s really clever. lol

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

We know that Anet is working on mega server issues. They can’t fix them faster than they can fix them because it’s a large undertaking. It’s not like Anet has said they’re doing nothing about this and, in the mean time, there’s a working solution.

Must admit that I was glad to hear that, after (close to) two years, Anet are working on megaserver issues.

Anet is working on the HoT megaserver issues. Whatever issues you’re referring to, they’re probably not working on. The mega server was one of the best updates from my point of view every to come to this game, warts and all.

Tearthy Flame.1463:

I think the title for this thread should be “Why are Players disappointed by HoT?” we forget how strong the word Hate is these days. I suggest the title be changed.

Why are most players disappointed by HoT? Because it brought solutions that caused griefing and didn’t resolve the original issue we had. Precursor Crafting is that particular issue. I would love to craft The Colossus, The Legend; to create The Juggernaut, The Bifrost. But ArenaNet did something very wrong by basing how much currency/material is needed by using the Trading Post as an example, getting the idea on how much players put a value on items. Crafting a Precursor shouldn’t be gated behind ascended material. It should be more about the Quest it brings us on, not Meaningless-Farming & Waiting-Games. Collections are fun and a pain in the but, yet still do-able.

Even though HoT improved and brought new technology, most we’ll never notice. We have a lack of visual experience in the game which is what will grab are attention. In most games.

I say HoT has more value than a AAA title like CoD games. But It won’t feel as rich as playing something like Pillars of Eternity. Yes these aren’t MMO’s but it is fair to mention them because GW2 has other gaming elements to it, and in the past has added SAB. Something that’s just all about having fun!

Uhm, Guildhalls. Scribe. Look almost anywhere and there is most likely an issue that doesn’t have justified difficulty and still retain the fun of playing with a community.

We’ll all have are preference but there isn’t much “play the way you want” in HoT. I would love to play Tank only rolls for Raids, but the mechanics of fights doesn’t make it worth playing a defensive only roll. I’ll value saving my team mates to endure mechanics that push the limits of our builds. Also it is difficult to play with someone who doesn’t have a high level mastery, like Gliding. Playing with a friend new to HoT brings back just how not fun it was, at least for me, to do any of the Mastery’s.

The list can go on… Can also mention the Story. But anyway, there is a lot of negative feedback for HoT because most of the design choices aren’t justified: Don’t feel right for this game and for the kind of community it has grained.

I’m not sure most players are disappointed by HoT. In most threads, most of the topics seem to be about 50/50, and from long experience I know that more people complain than compliment.

I’m just wondering where you get your data from.

Distaste.4801:

What do people have to complain about? How about the amount of content and “features” you get simply isn’t worth the price? FFXIV offered far more content and mechanics for a lower price. WvW got a map that was absolutely terrible, its like they saw the complaints about EotM and thought they were complinents. How about when ArenaNet said that new specs wouldn’t be alpha specs, but for the most part they are. How about them taking content that was available pre-HoT and gating it behind HoT content?

I think the most frustrating thing is that people might have expected things to change after HoT released. Sadly though we are back in the same old rut, extremely slow updates that only focus on one area of the game and questionable implementations.

FFXIV closed down for a year to relaunch their game after a terrible start. This is more akin to that than anything else. They redesigned the trait system, added in the mastery system, created systems that will allow them to expand moving forwards. Remember this game launched without plans to have an expansion and when they changed direction they needed to rewrite some core parts of the game. Likewise stuff like gliding problem required changes to the physics engines. If your’e going to use FFXIV as a shining example of gaming, you should probably cut Guild Wars 2 more slack because they didn’t have to suspend operations till they fixed their game from the start. This was more like the reboot than anything else, so of course, there’s going to be less content. And they told us this.

Missy.7356:

Vayne.8563:

You seem not to have met the scenario of having completed the the events to a T4 to have someone map in and Tag up for a hero point train, at this point you have 2 choices, you move maps and lose your participation or stay and have map chat become toxic since “no one tells me how to play” you end up leaving anyway.

LFG is filled up more with people looking to raid (why does raids not have its own LFG by now?) and last minute people start calling for groups to meta, my game time just lately has been sitting in a map refreshing the “LFG” now its pot luck of if you can get into a map with people that actually want to do the meta, or people running about exploring, I can not choose a map that is doing hero point train or meta, i can try and relog, i can try guesting and hoping I get a different map, but if I turn up early and do events this does not mean the map will fill with people wanting to do meta, and eventually I will have to lose that participation due to having to leave to find a map playing the way I want too.

Saying that Silverwastes had it wrong, there are more LFG calling people to SW than there are to maps in HoT, now tell me if a timer is working in HoT or having to work for it before the boss spawns like SW.

As is stands HoT map can become become explosive due to pitting the Hero Point train against the people wanting to do meta, all these people have a right to play how they want, but they can not choose a map with people due how to megaservers work, too many times I have volunteered to leave a “empty” map to find the one it places me in has far less progression with fewer people.

If I search LFG and see a SW at 50% I can go there, get my 5 stacks and i am with people wanting to do the event, this is something you can not do with HoT maps, even if its a T4 all it takes is a hero point champ to map in and things go badly. Dont get me started on how I can be in a squad for start of DS and still be unable to get into the same map as them at the start.

Im glad that you have a guild around you giving you a different perspective of how these maps play out, you seem to have a lot of time to play as well, its just a shame you can not see it from other posters perspective.

There are people in my guild who have not so much time to play, who have done the metas too. They can’t do them as often perhaps, but they can definitely do them.

It’s a shame that people are so willing to argue for the limitations of the system that they don’t use what’s there.

We know from stuff said by different devs that Anet is working on making the zones more attractive to casuals, and we know they’re working on the LFG tool.

So maybe, in another month or a bit more, all this goes away.

I’m certainly hoping those who already made up their mind will at least approach it openly when the spring patch hits.

Naix.8156:

Daddicus.6128:

Naix.8156:

That’s how balance business works. Straight up power creep is better for sales.

Actually, with this game it’s the opposite. Since they’re not getting paid for making people pay, power creep works against them: it provides a disincentive to new players.

If you want your character to be more powerful, or in the case of PvP be remotely competitive at all, you need to by the expansion. GW2 has done a lot of thing right, but the pay to win of the expansion wasn’t one of them.

Lol at pay to win expansion. What MMO is there in which expansions don’t increase power? I’m really curious.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

I think you missed the point of the analogy.

I got the point. Just don’t agree with it.

Vayne.8563:

The solution exists. Whether it exists in game or on a website is a moot point.

Its moot to you. Perhaps even to some others. It is apparently a point of some significance to others.

Vayne.8563:

Making it sound like this is so inconvenient the content isn’t playable is a massive overstatement in my opinion.

I haven’t seen this. Huge difference between unplayable and undesirable IMO.

Simple semantics. This thread is about being frustrated with HoT. People are saying they can’t finish metas or they’re in empty maps. The solution is a 1 minute solution. Sure it’s not perfect. No one ever claimed it’s not perfect.

But some people are making it sound like it’s much harder than it actually is. It’s quite simple to tab out, look up times, or look them up before you start playing, and it’s not that hard to look for a group., particularly now that you can put search criteria in LFG, which is an improvement over how it was a month ago.

If people want to do the meta events they can. If this mild inconvenience is going to stop them, I’m pretty sure no MMO is going to suit them.

We know that Anet is working on mega server issues. They can’t fix them faster than they can fix them because it’s a large undertaking. It’s not like Anet has said they’re doing nothing about this and, in the mean time, there’s a working solution.

Ashen.2907:

Torolan.5816:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

for the first time, I feel like a second class citizen in this game.

Honest question here…

How does having the vast majority of the game aligned with your preferred style of play make you feel like a second class citizen compared to players for whom only a tiny percentage of the game is aligned with their preferred style of play?

Is not getting everything your way, some times (rarely) having others get something they want, what defines being a second class citizen now? If my mother, when I was a child, had given my sister a tiny slice of cake and the rest of the cake (nearly the whole thing) to me, would I have been treated as a second class citizen because I didn’t get the whole cake?

No, but your example does not really fit because:
a) The cake we are talking about is 3 years old in most slices, the newest piece of cake is around 1 month old and the second youngest piece around 5 months. Would you like to eat a 3 year old cake because your mother refuses to bake new slices of cake? And if she does bake new slices with a flavor you dislike, would you be happy?
b) Let´s say your sister was hockey champion and you refused to play hockey because you found it boring, hard to get to games and time consuming. Then you come home, sit at the table and wait for a new slice of cake you like, but your mother says:
“Uhm, no. you refuse to play hockey, so no cake for you.”
And bam, you´re the newest member of the secondary children club.
c) Your mother changed. When you first lived with your mother, she was a carefree, open herated person that treated all her children the same. Then things began to change, and she stuffed more and more her belongings in her skirt and began to force you into stuff you hate, like playing the violin or joining a sports club because it is a common practice.
What most parents like this don´t realize is that most of this forced content leads to absolutely nothing. A large majority of children simply refuse to play the violin when they feel old enough to stand up to their parents. Most of them were greatly annoyed to have to play something they don´t like and never paid attention to anything the teacher/coach was saying. So what is left is some most basic knowledge about playing the violin you could have also taught children with funny Orff musical instruments. so you largely earned tears and rage because you as the parent were too stubborn and listened to the common take that playing music is good for your brain and free play is wrong which has been largely proven wrong in the later case.

a) Yep, some people have been waiting for three years for their turn at dev resources. Thank you for reinforcing my point.

b) Well, as I have been getting all of the cake for years and so when my mother baked one cupcake for my sister to celebrate her hockey championship (funny story, my sister is really quite good at hockey while I have never played) it is probably not such a big deal that she gets one small morsel compared to the vast quantities of pastry that I have been consuming (and which is still present for me to eat).

c) Nothing forced. Mom is trying to make sure that she provides some of each of her children’s favorites for them to enjoy. My siblings and I don’t all enjoy the same thing but mom makes enough of each dish so that we can all try it if we like. Still there is a limit to how much mom can make at once so my siblings and I take turns getting our favorite.

This issue here is myriad again. First of all, I said I FEEL like a second class citizen. That doesn’t mean anything at all except it’s how I feel. Feelings aren’t based on logic for most people. They’re based on expectations and change.

We were given certain expectations by Anet. They said, we’re going to do this content and it’s going to come out every two weeks. I loved that. I understand that it’s not sustainable. Doesn’t mean I didn’t love it. And that content, was content for me. So yes, I got spoiled.

When Living Story Season 2 came out I liked it less than Living Story Season 1. I didn’t enjoy it as much. It also came out less frequently. But most patches, when they came out, where things I were interested in.

Now, I didn’t build those expectations in a vacuum. Anet and Guild Wars 2 set the bar high. They couldn’t keep going and then they switched over to an expansion model.

While I was excited for the expansion, I was having a good time playing, preparing for the expansion. Getting stuff done.

But then a series of things happened in a row, all of which led to me being less satisfied. And this isn’t a mental process, its’ an emotional one. Most people can’t quantify why they dont’ enjoy something. I usually can but the reasons are usually complex. For example, if I were still getting 10 achievement points a day for doing my daily, I’d have a couple of months of dailies until I got my first pinnacle weapon. That’s going to be a very long term goal for me now, which I find frustrating. As already mentioned I’m not particularly interested in the content being released.

The combination of having only long term goals left, no real short term goals since I’ve done all those ages ago, combined with seeing other stuff come out for other people is going to cause an emotional reaction, probably in most people.

Of course our emotions aren’t reasonable. That’s because they’re emotions. I can mentally tell myself that sometime this summer, most likely, I’ll have more to do that I want to do specifically. But summer (my winter actually) seems a long ways off right now.

Sure I’ll come back and play the game when the April patch hits, see what the changes look like. I’m sure that’ll keep me entertained for a couple of weeks.

But I’m winding down because when everything is a long term goal, my interest in playing is lessened.

Put it another way, many people play MMOs for that sense of progression. For me, story progression and achievement point progression were the two types of progression I played for. The progression on offer right now is SPVP progression and raid progression. I’m not really interested in either.

I COULD be interested in getting legendary armor, but that’s sort of off limits to me, unless I raid. The PvP back pack is obviously going to be off limits to me.

Given how much money I’ve spent on the game (hint, a lot lol), and given that I’ve played this game for three years pretty much non-stop, this is a big change to me for my play style.

Saying someone shouldn’t FEEL like a second class citizen for reasons of logic is fine. I agree, it’s probably not reasonable to feel like a second class citizen.

But saying that isn’t going to change how I feel. I had a game that catered to me and my play style and now that emphasis has shifted. Sure it’s not fair to people who wanted to do this other stuff.

On the other hand, my expectations were built upon what Anet has trained me to expect. So there’s that too.

DGraves.3720:

Heart of Thorns is meh. It isn’t Game of the Year but it isn’t terrible either. Very middle of the road in it’s current state.

I’m pretty interested in what the overhaul might look like next month.

EvilTwin.4125:

Vayne.8563:

EvilTwin.4125:

Wow, such venom has been directed at me. I don’t like something you do, so you get mad at me and talk to me like I’m an unruly 6-year-old and you’re my parent. Well, I am not a child, and you’re not my parent. I can see right now posting things on the forums and expecting intelligent disagreement is expecting too much. Instead, every spoiled brat has something infantile to say.

Look, I don’t like how ArenaNet handled this, and I never will. Grow up and accept that.

To those of you who replied to this (pro or con) and did so with decency and respect: THANK YOU. I never expected everyone to agree with my statement. But wow I didn’t know I was going to get cyberbullied.

Oh, well. I guess I won’t be on the forums again. It was a mistake to express an honest opinion here, apparently.

Look, whether you like the way Anet handled this or not, doesn’t make your response to what Anet did a reasonable one.

Almost every game goes down in price over the years. People who played SWToR and Wildstar and ESO for example, paid a sub for a long time before the game went free to play. All those people spent over $100 over the price of the game, to play a game that everyone else was now going to get for free. Worst still many games offer “optional” subs that aren’t really optional anyway, while claiming to be free to play.

Both WoW and EQ don’t actually make you buy every expansion. It’s bad for business. Like it or not, Anet has to compete with other MMOs.

Over time, every MMO suffers natural attrition. People stop playing. They run out of things to do, or their friends stop playing or they play games less altogether, but eventually the playerbase is going to go down. Unless you replace players lost by natural attrition, you end up with a shrinking player base. This is terrible for people who bought the game at launch.

And I don’t know many games that stay the same price over three years anyway. The core game has already been on sale for $10 three times. So what we’re really arguing about here is $10.

Anet doesn’t have a pay to win cash shop, and it doesn’t charge a monthly fee. So it sells an expansion at a higher price than most people think is worth it. That’s fine.

But making it so people don’t have to buy two products, which means making sure more people enter the game? That’s good for everyone, even veteran players.

If no other company were doing something like this, you’d have a point. But the thing is, the two most popular MMOs next to Guild Wars 2 both charge monthly subs and the others have optional subs that are only theoretically optional. Or they have pay to win options that are not acceptable.

Charging $50 for an expansion makes up for the fact that so many people don’t use the gem store. Including the original game which was sold for $10 anyway, and is now free with restrictions? That’s just simple business logic.

I don’t love every decision Anet makes, but I do understand they’re a business, and they need money to move forward.

Well good for you. But why talk to me like I’m subhuman? Do you think I’m the first person ever to not like something like this? You have a point—I’ll get used to it; I’ll either buy the expansion or I won’t. I just can’t figure out why some people think it’s necessary to “correct” me. As I said, you’re not my parent.

Why did I come back here? Every time I do someone has something snarky to say. Goodbye forums, I get enough of this garbage in real life, I really don’t need it online from people who obviously look on the forums just to be annoying.

Translation: don’t bother “correcting” me again, “Mom”. I’ll never see it.

Even though you’ll never see this, I’m going to post anyway. My advice to you is don’t post on a public forum and not expect a response from people who disagree with you. Because you’re bound to be disappointed.

On topic: I think everything said above makes sense from a practical point of view, but for a person who never bought the original game, it doesn’t apply anyway. If you don’t already own the core game, HoT is a steal.

Ashen.2907:

Since when does one without auto-loot need to go to a third party site to pick up their drops?

I think you missed the point of the analogy.

The solution exists. Whether it exists in game or on a website is a moot point. The point is you don’t have to do it every day. If you’re looking for something that runs every two hours, you look at it once, you right down a single point, particularly easy if you play roughly the same times every day, and you figure it out.

Or you take one minute to check before you log in.

Making it sound like this is so inconvenient the content isn’t playable is a massive overstatement in my opinion.

One of the main issues with this expansion is that it’s content light and Anet told us before release it would be lighter on content because they pretty much had to retool the game to make it work. So speicalizations were introduced instead of the told trait system. They had to deisgn the mastery system> They had to make it so you could glide, which I’m pretty sure required changes to the physics engine. There were a raft of changes that came with this expansion and whether or not people like that, it took programming time and dollars….but we’ve been told that stuff is largely done now, with the exception of WvW which is still being worked on.

Moving forward they won’t have to redesign the entire game to make the expansion. The specialization system and mastery system is in place and doesn’t have to be designed or debated. They’re in the game now. So in reality the next expansion should have more content.

How much more no one can say, but we were told even before launch that redesigning game systems took something out of this expansion.

EvilTwin.4125:

Wow, such venom has been directed at me. I don’t like something you do, so you get mad at me and talk to me like I’m an unruly 6-year-old and you’re my parent. Well, I am not a child, and you’re not my parent. I can see right now posting things on the forums and expecting intelligent disagreement is expecting too much. Instead, every spoiled brat has something infantile to say.

Look, I don’t like how ArenaNet handled this, and I never will. Grow up and accept that.

To those of you who replied to this (pro or con) and did so with decency and respect: THANK YOU. I never expected everyone to agree with my statement. But wow I didn’t know I was going to get cyberbullied.

Oh, well. I guess I won’t be on the forums again. It was a mistake to express an honest opinion here, apparently.

Look, whether you like the way Anet handled this or not, doesn’t make your response to what Anet did a reasonable one.

Almost every game goes down in price over the years. People who played SWToR and Wildstar and ESO for example, paid a sub for a long time before the game went free to play. All those people spent over $100 over the price of the game, to play a game that everyone else was now going to get for free. Worst still many games offer “optional” subs that aren’t really optional anyway, while claiming to be free to play.

Both WoW and EQ don’t actually make you buy every expansion. It’s bad for business. Like it or not, Anet has to compete with other MMOs.

Over time, every MMO suffers natural attrition. People stop playing. They run out of things to do, or their friends stop playing or they play games less altogether, but eventually the playerbase is going to go down. Unless you replace players lost by natural attrition, you end up with a shrinking player base. This is terrible for people who bought the game at launch.

And I don’t know many games that stay the same price over three years anyway. The core game has already been on sale for $10 three times. So what we’re really arguing about here is $10.

Anet doesn’t have a pay to win cash shop, and it doesn’t charge a monthly fee. So it sells an expansion at a higher price than most people think is worth it. That’s fine.

But making it so people don’t have to buy two products, which means making sure more people enter the game? That’s good for everyone, even veteran players.

If no other company were doing something like this, you’d have a point. But the thing is, the two most popular MMOs next to Guild Wars 2 both charge monthly subs and the others have optional subs that are only theoretically optional. Or they have pay to win options that are not acceptable.

Charging $50 for an expansion makes up for the fact that so many people don’t use the gem store. Including the original game which was sold for $10 anyway, and is now free with restrictions? That’s just simple business logic.

I don’t love every decision Anet makes, but I do understand they’re a business, and they need money to move forward.

maddoctor.2738:

Vayne.8563:

For a long time. PvP players who hated PvE had one option to get dungeon skins. They had to run dungeons. And people told them to suck it up. You want a dungeon skin, do something you don’t enjoy. Some PvPers did. Did it make them like the game more? No. So Anet went and added dungeon reward tracks.

Dungeon skins were available through PVP at game release. Sure they required a high rank to obtain but you could obtain them by playing PVP alone. The dungeon tracks were added when the PVP currency, glory, was removed and the whole concept of PVP-skins was scrapped.

The dungeon tracks weren’t added so PVPers could get dungeon skins, they were added so PVP could offer some form of rewards similar to PVE. And also for pure PVE players who can’t run dungeons to get the rewards through custom arena farming.

Just a correction

Thanks for the correction.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

for the first time, I feel like a second class citizen in this game.

Honest question here…

How does having the vast majority of the game aligned with your preferred style of play make you feel like a second class citizen compared to players for whom only a tiny percentage of the game is aligned with their preferred style of play?

Is not getting everything your way, some times (rarely) having others get something they want, what defines being a second class citizen now? If my mother, when I was a child, had given my sister a tiny slice of cake and the rest of the cake (nearly the whole thing) to me, would I have been treated as a second class citizen because I didn’t get the whole cake?

There’s a lot of answers to this. Because raiding has been pretty much the main form of new content, pretty much everyone is talking raids. It’s not that everyone is into raids, but what else is there to talk about? It’s not like I’m going to talk about jumping puzzles, because there’s nothing more to say about them. I’ve done them all. I love them, but you know, that’s it.

The other thing that’s being pushed is the PvP tournament. That’s the other thing people are talking about.

So I’ve done most of the stuff in the game I want to, and what’s left? Raids or PvP, neither of which interest me. The new rewards I can go for? Raids and PvP.

I have 8 legendary weapons, all the ones I really want, and I’m working on a 9th because I’ve run out of things to do. Really the only time I’m actually having fun at this point is helping guildies get through stuff.

Of course, I’m going to feel this game isn’t for me when my way forward is to do all the stuff I don’t really enjoy. How else could I feel but disenfranchised.

At the end of the day, I’m going through the motions right now, because I love the guild and I enjoy helping people, but for me, there’s very little left to do. Hell I don’t even get achievement points for dailies anymore, so I come in, get my log in reward, gather a few things, home instance, guild hall, my secret garden in Mount Maelstrom and I look and see that nothing is really new but raids and the PvP tournament.

Yes, I have a bunch of other stuff I can do. The game is mostly the kind of content I like. I have 30 plus level 80 characters, at least 6 world completes, 8 legendaries, I’ve beaten all the dungeons, I’ve gone to about level 41 personal fractal level, but I’ve done fractals as high as 60. It’s not my passion anyway. I’ve done the meta events in the new zones a bunch of times and yes, I have to do them a bunch more, but what I see coming out is raids, and PvP.

The new schedule seems to indicate I’m going to get four updates a year with story. Is that enough for me? Maybe. I’ll have to see how big the updates are.

My interests are not in line with what people are currently doing and talking about.

Legendary armor might be something I’d work towards. That’s a goal I can embrace. But in reality, I’m simply not going to raid to do it.

Sure it’s only stat changing, I already have complete suits of light, medium and heavy ascended stuff and I already have all the ascended weapons I can want. The only thing I’d probably want to work toward at this point if legendary armor. But not at the price of being forced to play game content I don’t enjoy.

Edit: I also have most of the elite specialization weapons, a boatload of black lion skins I don’t use because I have too many skins unlocked, 28k plus achievement points, all the weapon masters except shield master, all the slayer achievements except giant slayer…do I log in for shield kills and slaying giants. It wouldn’t hold my interest and if I focused on it, It’d take me a few weeks at most, during which I’d be bored to tears. I have some collections to fill in that will get filled in as I do more metas in the new zones. Beyond that, yeah. There’s raids. I’m even up to 163 mastery points spent.

Manasa Devi.7958:

General Health.9678:

Manasa Devi.7958:

It’s all too easy to miss out on a once-every-two-hour opportunity because of this dreadful system.

It’s also really simple to use a timer site and get to the event you want early. Organised maps set up at least ten minutes early, that’s what being organised means.

There are other issues with lfg and parties and groups I’m sure but being on time is a player issue.

So your position is that the game is indeed not providing useful tools to make it accessible? Thank you for agreeing with me.

Sadly, your attitude is why ANet doesn’t fix their game. When players accept being burdened with finding extraneous solutions to glaring issues, there’s no motivation to make things better.

Internet sites like Dulfy and the Wiki are a fact of life Anet is smart not to ignore. However, even without using those sites, it’s easy enough to hang out in a zone until the meta starts, and then you know when it starts.

It’s like saying I won’t pick up drops if I don’t have autoloot. The ways to get the information are out there. People who refuse to use them are just being stubborn.

The bottom line is it’s not hard to find the schedule for any zone, one way or another. It’s not massively convenient, but it’s not massively inconvenient either.

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Serophous.9085:

I think the thing that happened was, they saw perhaps the majority of people liked the way silverwastes was handled (I at least did, I can be wrong in this). Sure, chest trains were a side effect, but the rest was to defend as best as they could and pop the event as fast as they could for the boss. It wasn’t perfect, but it was neat.

So for HoT, they decided to take that style, and merge it with a less popular style, the one at Southsun, which only really matters when a boss is going to spawn. Instead of players dictating when the boss event spawns, now its set on a hard timer, which…sucks. I really wish they left it in the hands of the players to decide.

It’s more they merged Silverwastes with Dry Top (which, like the HoT maps, runs on a fixed timer).

What everyone loved about Silverwastes (other than the loot) was that instances progressed based on player action, which meant you could do the meta pretty much as much as you wanted.

The issue with the Silverwastes as is was the number of leechers. People could jump from finished instanced to finished instance, and some poor kitten like me would be doing the events to push the meta, and everyone else was getting a free ride.

The idea of making all the metas at the same time was that people couldn’t map hop and it would minimize leeching. Not to say people still don’t leech, but that was probably the reason for the change.

Chaos.5072:

I swear gamers are getting more and more entitled these days. Everyone wants to have access to everything without putting in any effort.

Expecting to achieve something without putting in the work required to do so is an entitled and selfish mindset, not just in GW2 but in all areas of life.

Want a car? Save money and buy it.

Want a smoking hot girlfriend? Put yourself out there.

Want raid armor in a video game? Play the bloody raid.

Sure, some people will have a more difficult time achieving certain goals than other people. Welcome to life.

If the only way for me to buy a car was to go out and get a job that I hated, I might still go out and get a job I hated to buy the car. But that job would probably cause stress and pain and annoyance. It would take away time from me that I could be doing stuff I enjoyed.

Of course, that’s the point isn’kitten This isn’t about being lazy or entitled, because I can’t think of anyone who would say they bought this game specifically to do something they didn’t enjoy. The key word here is game.

For a long time. PvP players who hated PvE had one option to get dungeon skins. They had to run dungeons. And people told them to suck it up. You want a dungeon skin, do something you don’t enjoy. Some PvPers did. Did it make them like the game more? No. So Anet went and added dungeon reward tracks.

Anyone who wants to compare a game to real life is free to do so. But people play games to escape real life. I don’t need a second job, or a third job or any job. Anet isn’t paying me to play this game, I bought this game from Anet. And if Anet wants me to spend more money in the gem store, they’re certainly not going to lock a reward behind content I don’t enjoy. Content that stresses me out. Because options are good.

Stat sets and legendary armor, and story are all inside raids. I’m not liking that, not because I NEED that stuff, but because now, for the first time, I feel like a second class citizen in this game.

You’re right. I could work for it. I could put myself out there and do everything I need to do to become good at raiding. I have that ability. But I’d stop enjoying the game for hours and hours and I’d eventually quit.

You call that a good solution. Because I’m not sure Anet would.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ve got a different opinion. GW2 was a great game until ANet started trying to bend every which way to appease the people who wanted this game to be like every other MMO out there.

That’s not to say that the game does not have problems. I just don’t see the same ones the OP does.

I think you’re right, but for different reasons. I think Anet tends to be willing to try things out more than just about any other MMO. We like how the game started, so we’re focused on what that game was. But there are 300 devs in the game and we also know that Anet has often given them their reign to do stuff. That’s how SAB and the combat mode came into existence after all. People working on stuff they wanted to do.

My guess is that not everyone who works for Anet sees the game as you or I might (and I do think I like many of the same things you do). They come in to replace people who were here and they bring new passion and new ideas. My guess is that if they love something and they think they can produce something that really adds to the game, Anet will give them a nod.

We keep saying it’s Anet giving in, but just as gamers are divided on what makes a good game here, what makes you think that gamers aren’t divided about what makes a good game at Anet?

From where we stand, it looks like a mess with no real structure, but that could very well be because we attached ourselves to a vision that was stated years ago and new people are there now doing different things.

Look at how many of the top guys inception aren’t here. Jeff Strain, Eric Flannum, Jon Peterson, Jeff Grubb, Chris Whiteside, and now Colin. There are more, many more.

But as people change in a company, so too can the vision for where the game should go next. We only know really what Anet had planned for this game before launch, but afterwards, there was plenty of room to fill in the gaps.

Take challenging content. The game had very little even moderately challenging content, for me anyway, before recently. Yeah, Liadri when it came around. Maybe a few of the achievements, but once you do those, they’re not repeatable.

People say Anet was driven by the fan base to do stuff they really didn’t want to do. I believe there were probably always elements without Anet that thought there should be more challenge, or raids, or even something like gliding. As the staff changes, so to do the visions of what this game should be.

Some good points, there.

I’d say though that vision has to flow from management. Unfortunately, the only management I can see that is still there is Mike O’Brien. Most of the names you named were mid or even upper management.

Perhaps I’m cynical. I believe that money is the prime mover, and that ANet wants to appeal to more demographics to up their market share. At a guess, the number of potential players who “hated traditional MMO’s” was not as large as they would prefer. Hence, the movement to add more traditional MMO stuff to the game. The problem there is that those who hated MMO’s start to feel like the company is betraying them — sometimes for questionable upsides.

It’s like the new Bat/Super movie. It’s touted as being all dark and moody like Marvel used to be. I get that DC movies have largely been disappointing to their producers, but embracing a style the other guys did and moved away from is certainly going to alienate some DC fans — and I don’t believe it’s going to appeal as much to Marvel fans or even general audiences as the company might prefer.

Being cynical, I tend to view the experimentation in a bit of a darker light. Those who dislike MMO’s have likely already spent their money. Also, where can they find another MMO that is not worse than GW2 as far as their dislike of MMO stand-by stuff goes? Why not try to appeal to the other side, as the one side is either tapped out or isn’t going anywhere anyway?

I agree with what you say, particularly you’re last line. Anet had a great niche and they’ve largely squandered the good will with that niche. There really are very few casual friendly MMOs.

On the topic of profit, profit always has to be a consideration, but I don’t think the devs are thinking in terms of profit when creating content. They’re just trying to make the best content they have given the time and budget constraints they work under. Like pretty much every business.

Clearly the raid team loves raids and that’s why the raids have been well received. They’re not making raids to kitten off the casual audience. They’re making raids because they really believe raids are fun and would be a good addition to the game. If that weren’t the case, the raids wouldn’t have been as well received as they have been.

But raiders who think raids are awesome aren’t going to look at raids and think they’re some sort of attack on the direction of the game. They’re thinking this would be awesome to have here as well.

The more vested you are in a content type. the more likely you are going to feel hurt when the company moves away from that. But filling in holes is what companies tend to do. Even in Guild Wars 1, GW 1 had no real dungeons and when Eye of the North came out they added 16 dungeons, something they really didn’t have before. Why? Because they didn’t have it. They didn’t see it as we’re changing direction. They saw it as we’re plugging holes.

Unfortunately for Anet, the new zones were too difficult or too scheduled or too hard to navigate for a percentage of the playerbase. But as I’ve said often, I have a guild filled with casual people and really only two or three of them are having issues with the new zones, and of those one of them really likes it, even though he doesn’t really have the skill set to enjoy it without help. So we run together a lot…and he has a good time.

HoT asks for more of a commitment in time and energy than earlier zones, which is something this game needed, even for a player like me. I was getting bored of being in zones where my survival was a given. I’m hoping the upcoming changes will be a reasonable compromise that will work for both sets of people, harder core players and more casual players and I hope people give it a real chance before judging it.

Absurdo.8309:

Vayne.8563:

Absurdo.8309:

Youd.1375:

Instead of nitpicking on moot points, let’s look at some real things.

1. This discussion exists, and it’s big.
2. There’s a growing “us vs them” mentality.

Doesn’t matter in which camp you are, or if you’re neutral – the problem exists no matter how you try to argue for or against it. So let’s talk about solutions instead of arguing about who’s right or wrong.

The solution that raiders propose is to get better at raids. And that, in my opinion, is the correct answer. I believe anyone, with enough practice, can beat the raids.

The problem is that the other side refuses. So we are at an impasse.

Can you imagine how ridiculous the non-raiders would sound if their reasoning was applied to legendary weapons? Consider the world completion requirement. Someone says: “I hate open world pve. It takes too much time to complete maps, and it’s boring.” Your response would be: “Then maybe you shouldn’t be going for a legendary weapon!”

The same reasoning applies here. If you can’t put in the time to learn raids, then maybe you shouldn’t be going for legendary armor.

And there is no statistical advantage to legendary armor. You can have the best in slot gear without raiding.

What about someone who doesn’t have enough time?

I would quote myself above:

If you can’t find an hour to raid in a week, then perhaps it’s not for you. I would suggest fractals or dungeons.

Not everyone has the same scheduling problems as you. And it’s ok if you can’t commit the time to raid. GW2 offers a variety of content for a variety of players. Please don’t ask that all content cater to your particular situation.

And if that is too much, perhaps legendary armor isn’t for you. It took me a year to complete my first legendary weapon. It’ll take me three or four seasons to get the pvp legendary. That’s the time frame I would consider appropriate for legendary armor too.

See my problem isn’t finding an hour a week. It’s easy for me to find an hour…but not necessarily the same hour. I can’t guarantee a schedule for anything, so everything has to be pretty much spontaneous. That’s why this game has worked for me.

If I want to jump into a dungeon or Fractal with the guild, I’m quite easily replaced and nothing is lost. It really doesn’t work that way with raids. It requires more of a commitment and I can’t give it.

The point is, there are people who raided in other games who came here specifically because the game didn’t have raids and they could get the best stuff without raiding. Now that’s gone.

I would love to see Elona again. Or Cantha for that matter. I want it all!

Absurdo.8309:

Youd.1375:

Instead of nitpicking on moot points, let’s look at some real things.

1. This discussion exists, and it’s big.
2. There’s a growing “us vs them” mentality.

Doesn’t matter in which camp you are, or if you’re neutral – the problem exists no matter how you try to argue for or against it. So let’s talk about solutions instead of arguing about who’s right or wrong.

The solution that raiders propose is to get better at raids. And that, in my opinion, is the correct answer. I believe anyone, with enough practice, can beat the raids.

The problem is that the other side refuses. So we are at an impasse.

Can you imagine how ridiculous the non-raiders would sound if their reasoning was applied to legendary weapons? Consider the world completion requirement. Someone says: “I hate open world pve. It takes too much time to complete maps, and it’s boring.” Your response would be: “Then maybe you shouldn’t be going for a legendary weapon!”

The same reasoning applies here. If you can’t put in the time to learn raids, then maybe you shouldn’t be going for legendary armor.

And there is no statistical advantage to legendary armor. You can have the best in slot gear without raiding.

What about someone who doesn’t have enough time?

Sarrs.4831:

Idk it could go either way.

It could be a big rewards patch which drastically adjusts item prices for map currencies, map currency drop rates, adds collections for currently-unobtainable Ascended trinket combinations.

It could just be “everything in HoT zones costs half as much, bye”.

I’m almost 100% positive this is not the case, though it may be part of the solution. We’ll see in a month.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Beldin.5498:

I liked mostly all of the initial ideas from GW2. For me it is no longer great because
with HoT the shoved them all into the trashbin

Esquilax.3491:

I still have no idea why they’ve decided to drop the one design philosophy that made this game unique and drew in their initial audience (lots of open world friendly group content) in favour of adding more generic, elitist crap like raids.

Beldin.5498:

Next expansion will only consist of 10 new raid wings. Why new world content ?
You know what the raiders always say .. you can still play the old content.

These posts disturb me a lot because it tells me that there’s a sharp disconnect between what ANet is actually doing and what people like you think they’re doing. I will point out that there are four new maps released with Heart of Thorns intended for open world gamers, a whole new story that casual players got to enjoy, and that the only reason you’ve seen two raid updates so far is because the entire raid wasn’t available at HoT launch and they staggered it instead. They’re not suddenly transitioning their game to be about raiding; there aren’t even a half-dozen people making raids out of the 300+ working on Guild Wars 2 currently. You’re not forced to play raids, and if you seriously care about the story ANet made it so that you can enter a friend’s cleared raid instance, experience the whole story, and even replay any cinematics therein.

They haven’t dropped their casual-supporting philosophy, on the contrary they specifically stated from the get-go that the players who desire a challenge in-game (re: not elitists, just people who like a challenge) had poor retention and they wanted to add more end-game content. This is why things like raids were introduced, and why fractals were and continue to get revamped, and why the difficulty of the open-world HoT maps is marginally higher than other open world maps. This is not a departure from their original philosophy, simply an addition to it. Future expansion packs will feature new raids in addition to all of the open world events and maps that get added; Mike O Brien confirmed this both in the recent AMA and in the past before that.

Let’s not forget that they completely redid a world boss to be casual-friendly and more exciting than it used to be. The Shatterer update is a great example of ANet catering to the casual crowd, and that is the trend you should expect to see in Living Story 3 and forward (which will be coming later this year).

If you’re still upset even after having read this post, then I would suggest you look into managing your expectations appropriately. It’d sure be nice if every month they released a new open world map or something like that, but such a development schedule is unsustainable and ineffectual. You’ll get more things that cater to the type of player you are, you just need to be patient. And remember, you aren’t paying a subscription, so feel free to take a break and come back when the next expansion comes out. Playing GW2 and other games are not mutually exclusive endeavors by design.

To be fair, there are things about those maps that some casuals hate, such as having to spend two hours or so to get through dragon stand. That’s two hours all at one time. That’s not very casual at all.

Anet admitted they unintentionally created something that was more limiting and didn’t support different play styles and they’re going to make an attempt to fix that.

So it’s not just raids that are the problem with HoT for some casuals. Me, I like it, but you know, I’m not everyone.

cptaylor.2670:

Yeah, but the sound of it this is just going to be a maintenance patch with “better rewards” and fixing collections for legendaries.

So I don’t really know how it’s going to be a quarterly update and not just something they could have implemented in a patch before the end of April. Unless they’re just timing it that way so that it’s after Season 2 and they can decide to grace us with balance changes.

Who knows, maybe they have something surprising in store that they haven’t shared with us, like a new map or the unreleased areas of Dragon Stand or something else.

Doubtful.

Also, yes please to Ventari Stance. Does anyone actually use it? The tablet mechanism is just… terrible. At least for the miniscule amount of healing it does when you move it.

I’m pretty sure there’ll be fairly sweeping changes to the HoT maps, all of which is time consuming.

The HoT maps haven’t been well received over all. Some people do like them but not enough. Mike O’Brien said they want people who solo and people who play more casually to be able to play those maps and I don’t think that’s necessarily an easy fix.

From a content point of view, sure, it’s not more content. But if a bunch of people who didn’t access that content suddenly find it accessible, it’ll be new content for them.

As soon as the issue was first raised in Guild Chat by Colin, I pretty much stopped playing in new zones. In fact, I’ve take some time off from the game. This way when the changes hit, I’ll be in a position to enjoy them.

Keep in mind some restrictions take up to 4 days to go live like access to the TP. This is insurance against gold sellers using stolen credit cards.

Welcome to Tyria. Glad you’re having fun.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’ve got a different opinion. GW2 was a great game until ANet started trying to bend every which way to appease the people who wanted this game to be like every other MMO out there.

That’s not to say that the game does not have problems. I just don’t see the same ones the OP does.

I think you’re right, but for different reasons. I think Anet tends to be willing to try things out more than just about any other MMO. We like how the game started, so we’re focused on what that game was. But there are 300 devs in the game and we also know that Anet has often given them their reign to do stuff. That’s how SAB and the combat mode came into existence after all. People working on stuff they wanted to do.

My guess is that not everyone who works for Anet sees the game as you or I might (and I do think I like many of the same things you do). They come in to replace people who were here and they bring new passion and new ideas. My guess is that if they love something and they think they can produce something that really adds to the game, Anet will give them a nod.

We keep saying it’s Anet giving in, but just as gamers are divided on what makes a good game here, what makes you think that gamers aren’t divided about what makes a good game at Anet?

From where we stand, it looks like a mess with no real structure, but that could very well be because we attached ourselves to a vision that was stated years ago and new people are there now doing different things.

Look at how many of the top guys inception aren’t here. Jeff Strain, Eric Flannum, Jon Peterson, Jeff Grubb, Chris Whiteside, and now Colin. There are more, many more.

But as people change in a company, so too can the vision for where the game should go next. We only know really what Anet had planned for this game before launch, but afterwards, there was plenty of room to fill in the gaps.

Take challenging content. The game had very little even moderately challenging content, for me anyway, before recently. Yeah, Liadri when it came around. Maybe a few of the achievements, but once you do those, they’re not repeatable.

People say Anet was driven by the fan base to do stuff they really didn’t want to do. I believe there were probably always elements without Anet that thought there should be more challenge, or raids, or even something like gliding. As the staff changes, so to do the visions of what this game should be.

I don’t know what people expected from a Korean grinder. Mind you I’m sure Black Desert will have people who like that style of play, but I knew as time went on that it would eventually consume itself. It’s the nature of the beast.

We’ve seen it time and time again, games that were going to kill this game. Neverwinter, ESO, Archeage, Wildstar, Blade and Soul and now Black Desert. Why hasn’t it happened?

Because it’s easier to make an MMO sound cool than it is to produce a really cool MMO. Words are always easy.

And the biggest potential threat of them all, Everquest Next, was just cancelled before it ever launched. The stated reason?

Though the game looked great on paper, when they put it all together they found it wasn’t fun.

Yes, the game has it’s flaws, but it’s done a whole lot of things right too, and often doesn’t get credit for that.

Pretty sure Colin will return as a raid boss. Just saying.

If you experience a bug, the best way to report it is to use the in game /bug report feature. The reason for this is because it timestamps the event and provides information to the dev team that they won’t get from just seeing the post on the forums.

In addition to that, there’s a section of the forums devoted to bug reports which might well be prioritized since it’s designed for that purpose.

Laurie.1698:

Saying it doesn’t happen, never did I say that, saying that for each and every person that plays there is a perspective that is different than yours, an experience different than yours, is true. There is a problem that needs to be addressed and has been stated by many people. However, I do not believe it will be addressed any time soon. To dismiss an experience as a lie does not contribute to helping the real issue that is there.

I do not lie. And this is the last I will speak on this topic in this thread or any other. I have had my say, said my experience as have others. Its being read by those who need to see it. Good day.

Your quote:

“For the last couple weeks, there has been no one running these timed events”

It’s factually wrong, since I’ve run them in the last couple of weeks and I can tell you with some certainty I didn’t solo them. Saying I haven’t been on a map that has done them is substantially different than saying no one is running them.

There are experiences and opinions and there is facts. I’m not saying anyone is lying, but the way you worded this definitely makes it seem like you believe no one is running this content…and that’s simply not the case.

If you want to say you think less people are running them, that’s a different story and I wouldn’t have bothered posting since I have no way of knowing. But these meta events are being done daily.

Thaddeus.4891:

Vayne.8563:

The gaming population is aging. The age of the average gamer is now over 30. People have more commitments and less time. I’m not alone in a shoe box. I’m part of an ever growing group of casual gamers who can’t necessarily commit.

You kitten those people off at your own risk because there are a lot of us. You think it’s like three guys in a basement in Iowa? lol

Wow this discussion is going nowhere dude. What the kitten are you talking. I never talked about those things and now I’m kitten those people off at my own risk?? Why are you quoting me and responding to me and then not responding to my point. Instead responding to point that I never made?

Just to be clear. I’m a 28 year old with commitment that advocate for an easy mode for dungeons. Man I don’t know how to respond to you, seriously. Your respond is just so freaking weird.

Must have replied to the wrong guy, it’s like 4am here, not sure how it happened. There was a conversation going on, which you came in the middle of. Sorry about the mix up.

I’ve done TD and AB at least recently. If you’re just randomly thinking people are going to show up like the fire ele, it doesn’t work like that. Use the LFG tool (sort of why it’s there), get into a full map and you can do any of the metas in HoT.

Saying it doesn’t happen or no one is doing it is simply not true.

Anet is aware of the problems with the megaserver and they’re working on it. They’ve said as much. They also said it wasn’t a quick fix. Apparently they’ve already been at it for a couple of months.

Talyn.3295:

Vayne.8563:

Andulias.9516:

Vayne.8563:

Andulias.9516:

Vayne.8563:

Andulias.9516:

Vayne.8563:

Avarice.2791:

Vayne.8563:

You’re making the assumption this has been a positive financial change. I’m making the assumption that those numbers aren’t in yet. Of course they’re going to finish the raid,t they’ve been working on it, it was supposed to come with the expansion, but these chips haven’t been counted yet.

I’m stating the fact that a surprisingly decent amount of players have cleared/worked on content in the raid wings.

According to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/47um5k/raid_5/

41.5% of players have at least stepped foot in the raid and attempted a boss. About 21% of players have cleared a boss, or wiped enough to gather up 50 magnetite shards. What’s more is this is an understatement since a lot of raiders do not use gw2efficiency. You may think “Well 21% (Most certainly more) of the player-base is not significant.” I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. It was speculated that HoT sold about half a million copies. If 21% of the player-base came to this game to raid, or raiding keeps them interested I’d say this is having a positive impact on sales. As time goes by the content will become natural and more and more players will participate. Evidence points to you being the minority when you account for all aspects of this game.

I personally wouldn’t mind seeing these numbers matched up with WvW’ers, sPvP’ers, Dungeons, Fractals, Open world Meta’s, or… what do you guys complaining do? Mine ore all day and SV trains?

Vayne.8563:

There’s been a signficant backlash from the casual community against raids and HoT in general. Significant enough for Anet to revisit HoT and even admit it was too grindy and didn’t mesh with their stated objectives. That kind of backpedaling doesn’t happen when all is well in Denmark.

There’s been a signficant backlash from the casual community against raids and HoT in general. Significant enough for Anet to revisit HoT and even admit it was too grindy and didn’t mesh with their stated objectives. That kind of backpedaling doesn’t happen when all is well in Denmark.

Correction, there’s been a significant backlash from the 1% of casuals that take up these forums. Also, Anet is revisiting HoT outside of raiding. That statement is pointless to this conversation unless you want to show me where Anet stated they were revisiting raids in April.

@Aenorio

Tl;DR I’m guessing you had a bad pugging experience. Part of raiding in pugs is dealing with people who have already cleared the content you are learning. These are people who read up and watched videos on the fights. If you come in, messing up the mechanics or whatever your role is the people running the pug have two options. They can give you constructive criticism, which pretty much no one online can take, or they can kick you out and replace you. It’s fair game and this isn’t elitism. It’s called looking for people of similar skill. If you are looking for people to casually raid and learn together. Find a guild! It’s not that difficult of a concept!

I don’t know what Anet can do about you feeling like the raiding community is “toxic.”

It’s not 1% of the casuals, and for each person that posts, you know a hundred won’t. But aside from that 41.5 percent set foot in a raid means 60% of the playerbase never set foot in a raid, and that includes pretty much everyone in my guild who wanted to see the inside who never raided. Lots of people are curious.

20% beating A raid boss means 80% haven’t beat a raid boss. That means you’re taking a chance at alienating a majority of the player base. Those numbers also include people who have bought raids, because some people sell them.

So tell me, how have you determined this 1% number, may I ask? Can you show me your calculations?

In most single-player games 20-30% of the playerbase never reaches the end. Does that mean that no ending. Does that no mean no ending should be provided?

You obviously have very little understanding of how to read metrics. Face the simple fact that raids were embraced by a large part of the community and are being played a lot. I just cannot even fathom how you even being to rationalize being against OPTIONAL CONTENT that doesn’t require that much resources to develop, people enjoy and play, but you don’t? And to repeat, it’s COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. None of your arguments have even the slightest shred of logic backing them up, especially in the face of the fact that NOBODY is forcing you to play raids AT ALL.

No one is forcing me to play this game at all. And if I get disenfranchised enough, eventually I’ll leave it, as I did Rift and other games before that. I don’t want to leave, but I certainly will.

I’m not the one reading metrics. Anet is. We’ll see down the road, when it’s had time for the novelty to wear off, how many people enjoy it, how many people continue to enjoy it.

But I’m thinking more people are feeling annoyed by the push toward more challenging content than are embracing that challenging content. That’s an opinion, just like you have an opinion.

Neither of us has evidence, but Anet knows. Still, I dont’ think Anet would admit there was a problem if they didn’t perceive it to be a serious issue of the player base.

Time will tell. I’m happy to wait and see.

So if nobody is forcing you to play it, lots of people love it and it has basically no impact on the development of other content, mind explaining what the hell is your problem with it?

I already have. To get armor on which I can switch stats, I’m pressured to play something I don’t enjoy. There’s no alternate route. You think that’s okay because you like raids. I think it’s not because I can’t raid.

Stat swapping? That’s it? That’s you argument? Even though you’ve been playing all this time without it and even though this gives no statistical advantage whatsoever?

I sincerely hope you realize how ridiculous and petty that statement sounds.

It would change the way I play the game. I’d experiment more with builds rather than having to get a whole new suit of armor every time I wanted to test something.

It might not be important to you. It’s extremely important to me.

It wouldn’t change the way you play the game all that much.

As in most other post dealing with this we know that Runes need to be changed to make builds effective. Unless you plan on buying and swapping runes in your legendary armor frequently swapping stats is meaningless.

Given that I have made close to 9 legendary weapons at this point in the game and haven’t changed the selected stats on them in over a year other then for my torch when I I swapped it from Beserker for my guardian to Viper for my burnzreker warrior I don’t see how stat swapping is going to make all that much difference, now that we can change stats through the mystic forge.

Truth is I doubt very much that Legendary Armor is going to be a drop reward at the end of raids or the collection. It’s probably going to need to be crafted just like a legendary weapon. Given how much Legendary weapons cost I am going to also assume that the armor will be on par with that. If you really care about being able to swap builds around you will find it is much cheaper to just get a few sets of armor rather than try to craft legendary armor for the stat swap.

Hence just as with legendary weapon stat swapping won’t effect your game play in any significant way

I played Guild Wars 1. I changed up builds quite frequently there. I like the idea of being able to change stats. I own 8 legendary weapons and I don’t change stats on them quite frequently only because just changing the stats on the weapons doesn’t so much. But if I could change the stats on armor, I would change the stats on weapons more often.

I enjoyed playing around with builds in Guild Wars 1 and trying different approaches out. I don’t do it nearly as much here.

Andulias.9516:

Yes, there have been a number of them since the last AMA when we found out it’ll take longer to get to LS3. Coincidence? Definitely not.

Right now you are just grasping at straws, because everything you said can be countered with three words. You ready for them?

IT

IS

OPTIONAL.

A lot of people like optional content you don’t, so you want it removed. I fail to see the grey area here.

There isn’t a gray area. It’s optional. Playing the game is optional. Being optional or not optional isn’t the point.

If I went to a vegetarian restaurant, because it was a vegetarian restaurant, and suddenly they started serving meat, I’d start feeling like that restaurant wasn’t necessarily for me anymore.

You seem to forget that a lot of people bought this game because it wasn’t raid-centric. I’ve left other games before because I didn’t want to raid, and the only way to get the top tier of gear was to raid. That was a reason to leave those games…for me.

I came here because there were no raids. There were other ways to get the top tier of gear. Now they’re taking some items and locking them behind a type of content that didn’t exist before I purchased the game.

Sure it’s optional. Guild Wars 2 is optional. Computer games in general are optional. If this kittenes off enough people, some of them will play less and some of them will leave. That’s how it works.

If you think Anet doesn’t care about that, I’m not really sure what to tell you. Telling me that I can’t get something I want because you think it should be locked behind content I’m not willing to invest that kind of time into is really besides the point.

And you simply don’t have access to the numbers. You’re trying to say not enough people feel the way I feel. I’m not sure how you hope to prove that.

Andulias.9516:

Vayne.8563:

Andulias.9516:

Vayne.8563:

Avarice.2791:

Vayne.8563:

You’re making the assumption this has been a positive financial change. I’m making the assumption that those numbers aren’t in yet. Of course they’re going to finish the raid,t they’ve been working on it, it was supposed to come with the expansion, but these chips haven’t been counted yet.

I’m stating the fact that a surprisingly decent amount of players have cleared/worked on content in the raid wings.

According to this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/47um5k/raid_5/

41.5% of players have at least stepped foot in the raid and attempted a boss. About 21% of players have cleared a boss, or wiped enough to gather up 50 magnetite shards. What’s more is this is an understatement since a lot of raiders do not use gw2efficiency. You may think “Well 21% (Most certainly more) of the player-base is not significant.” I’m here to tell you that you are wrong. It was speculated that HoT sold about half a million copies. If 21% of the player-base came to this game to raid, or raiding keeps them interested I’d say this is having a positive impact on sales. As time goes by the content will become natural and more and more players will participate. Evidence points to you being the minority when you account for all aspects of this game.

I personally wouldn’t mind seeing these numbers matched up with WvW’ers, sPvP’ers, Dungeons, Fractals, Open world Meta’s, or… what do you guys complaining do? Mine ore all day and SV trains?

Vayne.8563:

There’s been a signficant backlash from the casual community against raids and HoT in general. Significant enough for Anet to revisit HoT and even admit it was too grindy and didn’t mesh with their stated objectives. That kind of backpedaling doesn’t happen when all is well in Denmark.

There’s been a signficant backlash from the casual community against raids and HoT in general. Significant enough for Anet to revisit HoT and even admit it was too grindy and didn’t mesh with their stated objectives. That kind of backpedaling doesn’t happen when all is well in Denmark.

Correction, there’s been a significant backlash from the 1% of casuals that take up these forums. Also, Anet is revisiting HoT outside of raiding. That statement is pointless to this conversation unless you want to show me where Anet stated they were revisiting raids in April.

@Aenorio

Tl;DR I’m guessing you had a bad pugging experience. Part of raiding in pugs is dealing with people who have already cleared the content you are learning. These are people who read up and watched videos on the fights. If you come in, messing up the mechanics or whatever your role is the people running the pug have two options. They can give you constructive criticism, which pretty much no one online can take, or they can kick you out and replace you. It’s fair game and this isn’t elitism. It’s called looking for people of similar skill. If you are looking for people to casually raid and learn together. Find a guild! It’s not that difficult of a concept!

I don’t know what Anet can do about you feeling like the raiding community is “toxic.”

It’s not 1% of the casuals, and for each person that posts, you know a hundred won’t. But aside from that 41.5 percent set foot in a raid means 60% of the playerbase never set foot in a raid, and that includes pretty much everyone in my guild who wanted to see the inside who never raided. Lots of people are curious.

20% beating A raid boss means 80% haven’t beat a raid boss. That means you’re taking a chance at alienating a majority of the player base. Those numbers also include people who have bought raids, because some people sell them.

So tell me, how have you determined this 1% number, may I ask? Can you show me your calculations?

In most single-player games 20-30% of the playerbase never reaches the end. Does that mean that no ending. Does that no mean no ending should be provided?

You obviously have very little understanding of how to read metrics. Face the simple fact that raids were embraced by a large part of the community and are being played a lot. I just cannot even fathom how you even being to rationalize being against OPTIONAL CONTENT that doesn’t require that much resources to develop, people enjoy and play, but you don’t? And to repeat, it’s COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. None of your arguments have even the slightest shred of logic backing them up, especially in the face of the fact that NOBODY is forcing you to play raids AT ALL.

No one is forcing me to play this game at all. And if I get disenfranchised enough, eventually I’ll leave it, as I did Rift and other games before that. I don’t want to leave, but I certainly will.

I’m not the one reading metrics. Anet is. We’ll see down the road, when it’s had time for the novelty to wear off, how many people enjoy it, how many people continue to enjoy it.

But I’m thinking more people are feeling annoyed by the push toward more challenging content than are embracing that challenging content. That’s an opinion, just like you have an opinion.

Neither of us has evidence, but Anet knows. Still, I dont’ think Anet would admit there was a problem if they didn’t perceive it to be a serious issue of the player base.

Time will tell. I’m happy to wait and see.

So if nobody is forcing you to play it, lots of people love it and it has basically no impact on the development of other content, mind explaining what the hell is your problem with it?

I already have. To get armor on which I can switch stats, I’m pressured to play something I don’t enjoy. There’s no alternate route. You think that’s okay because you like raids. I think it’s not because I can’t raid.