Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

Coulter.2315:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

What’s sad is that there’s no longer even a pretense that they care about the players. Content that takes 2 hours without even a player’s choice in the matter of when they want to start their 2 hour sessions, that’s insane. There’s no other word for it.

In the age of the rise of on-demand media, this is an abomination I really can’t get my head around. I’d post what I really thought of it, but I’d get infracted.

That’s just ridiculous. They don’t care about their players because they made a meta event that’s long that’s liked by a whole lot of people? That doesn’t make sense.

When you thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know which) create content that anyone with a shred of common sense could predict will rub a lot of people the wrong way, you certainly don’t care about your players. If some do like it, that’s fortunate, but I file that under “even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while”.

Can you please post the poll you took which seperates people who agree with you into “a lot of people” and those who don’t agree with you into “some do like it (but rare).”

Oh wait.. You really have no idea cause you didn’t do anything but assume you were in the majority thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know).

Devs have all but confirmed that in the latest stream, and admitted that the design did not work out as good as they hoped, so what he says is not as baseless as you seem to imply.

Yes, the expansion didn’t meet with the reaction the devs had hoped it would meet with, at least in the sense of publicly on the forums and reddit. This much is obvious and has been from day one.

This isn’t some sort of secret. But there are some people in this thread claiming Anet doesn’t care, because they offered a product they thought people would like and there are others saying that Anet thought this was a good offering and got it wrong. These are very different statements.

Anet overlooked how many casual players were in the game. They saw the feedback we want harder content over and over and over and they made harder content. Longer content. They weren’t saying oh I like these guys more than I like those guys. They were saying this is missing from our game, and this demographic of fans has really had nothing. They tried to find a middle ground and in some cases failed.

Of course, there are casual players who have come here and said they’re enjoying the expansion, so it’s not like all casuals even feel the same way.

And there are people who come here just to agitate, just to troll, because that’s fun for them.

At the end of the day, the expansion was met with mixed reactions. It’s not all bad and it’s not all good. By the same token Anet is once again listening to the play base and trying to make it better for everyone.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Galen Grey.4709:

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

What’s sad is that there’s no longer even a pretense that they care about the players. Content that takes 2 hours without even a player’s choice in the matter of when they want to start their 2 hour sessions, that’s insane. There’s no other word for it.

In the age of the rise of on-demand media, this is an abomination I really can’t get my head around. I’d post what I really thought of it, but I’d get infracted.

That’s just ridiculous. They don’t care about their players because they made a meta event that’s long that’s liked by a whole lot of people? That doesn’t make sense.

When you thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know which) create content that anyone with a shred of common sense could predict will rub a lot of people the wrong way, you certainly don’t care about your players. If some do like it, that’s fortunate, but I file that under “even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while”.

You’re way oversimplifying the issue.

You say “When you thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know which) create content that anyone with a shred of common sense could predict will rub a lot of people the wrong way, you certainly don’t care about your players.” okey fair enough but lets take a minute to look at the opposite scenario…. If you created content just for people who enjoy short bursts of play and always ignore people that like long stretches of content does that make you caring of players? Cause I dont know but seems to me when you create some content for everybody you’re being way more caring towards players then if you had to ignore a subset of players all the time!

Dont forget, this is an MMO, millions of players play it, some players like X some players like Y and more often than not X is opposite of Y.

Its physically impossble for any developer to create content thats tailored for every kind of player. A caring developer splits their effort between content for all their players. Naturally they cannot do it all at one go but its unfair in my opinion to say they just dont care about their player cause they happen to release some of their content targeted at player who like Y when you enjoy X when overwhelmingly the game still happens to be made of X.

They could easily have created content for every type of player that likes some content in the original game. The expansion fails to deliver variation. They pretty much knew the types of players they had after hosting the game for over 3 years. They chose to ignore several segments of them.

If there was enough there to enjoy to warrant the price tag, I’d have no complaints. I knew I wasn’t going to go into the raid. I knew I wasn’t going to do the new sPvP mode. I haven’t complained about either because I knew going in that it wasn’t for me.

The problem is, the content that I thought was for me, turns out not to be for me either. The open world PvE content is pathetically scarce and single-mindedly tied to timers I abhor. The original game wasn’t like that and I had no inkling that the expansion would depart from it so drastically.

Also, if I’d say that the fractal revamp is also on the light side, I’d be describing it too favorably. It’s just a repackaging, there’s nothing to “expand” it. The only thing the expansion does with regard to fractals is to lock the rewards and split the player base. It’s not “buy the expansion and gain access to exciting new content” If only. It’s “don’t buy the expansion and our fractal revamp will inconvenience you!”

The precursor crafting is also completely void of new content. It’s basically nothing but shopping lists of old content with some excursions to HoT content thrown in for good measure. Neither fractals nor precursor crafting offers anything new and worthwhile.

I dare say they made no effort at all to appeal to all existing types of players even though they were acutely aware of them. If they had, there would be more in the game to show it.

Yes it’s called filling in the gaps in their product.

Torolan.5816:

Of course it has not happened out of spite. There are surely some companies that are led by megalomanial dynasties or billionaires who would do something like this just to flex their muscles, but Anet has not the muscles to flex in that way.
It is also viable that they follow their business strategy, I just don´t get it or overlook a significant piece in that strategy.

From a business perspective, it makes perfect sense to me what they did with the nerfs of Dungeons and the priorisation of HoT maps. But I guess it is also hard to deny that this did not sit well with many people who either did not have HoT but bought the core game and now were left hang out to dry.
And this already has and probably will cost them customers in the future. Goodwill can´t be counted or drawn in circles, but it tends to turn into anger and bad propaganda when it is not petted.

I’m going to say this is not true. That is to say I don’t know anyone who plays MMOs that doesn’t expect to buy expansions, even subscription MMOs. That is to say if you don’t buy the sub you don’t get the new cool stuff in every MMO on the planet. That even included Guild Wars 1, even though it wasn’t an MMO. You want the new cool Rit, you have to buy the new game. You want the new skills, you buy the new game. You want to glide, you buy the game.

People who play buy to play games should expect to have to buy expansions. If they are free to play players, in most others free to play games, you are treated worse than here. And no one bought the first WoW, didn’t buy the expansion and expected to hit level cap, because you can’t. Here you can.

This whole we are forced to buy the expansion or we don’t get cool stuff is normal for the genre and outside of a handful of people who didn’t expect it, it will be treated as every MMO on the planet. The core constituency is going to buy the expansion. Do you know the percentage of people in my guild who didn’t buy the expansion? Zero percent. If they were playing the game they bought the expansion.

The only people who didn’t are free to play players we recruited after the expansion released, and most of those people are saving for the expansion and want to buy it.

Sages.3496:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure I should say. lol It’s over 12,000 hours though.

Some one who has managed to beat me! I am honored.

Not sure it’s an honor but nice to meet you. Again I’m logged in that amount of time, I’m not playing for all of it. How many achievement points do you have (or do you bother with them?).

Torolan.5816:

The funny thing is, I actually assume that the expansion was a financial success for the next shareholder meeting. People with my mindset preordered it last minute in the belief that Anet would deliver content they would like. Others bought it weeks or even months before its release without looking what they were actually buying. If that assumption is true is up to anyone individually, but for the present this means that Anet can drum on it´s chest with a good result. Future results may not be so good, but that is indeed speculation an probably part of the risky game they played.

Controversial does not mean bad. HoT has it´s strong points if you just wander around in it like I do. If I was bent on playing it for success, I would probably go nuts with it.
I was merely interested in the thought process of that decision.

It would have been a witchhunt if I had accused the devs that they just wanted to implant the vision of the game they like and told anybody else to love it or get lost.

And do you really believe that Anet had HoT already in the drawer when they announced an expansion would come? They probably had some concept art and some codes, but it has so much filler that I am hard pressed to see it as anything but rushed.

Well that’s what I’ve been saying all along. We won’t know if the expansion is a success or not, till six months from now, not the next report. If people are truly kittened off in enough numbers to matter, it’ll show in the bottom line with falling gem store sales. If people are happy it won’t.

Those new zones, are complex and took ages to create. They didn’t just throw them together when they announced the expansion. They didn’t just put gliding into the game then either. The amount of stuff in the expansion is more than a year’s work.

What happened was they had a number of products which they were going to deliver in the living story and people demanded an expansion. Often and loudly.

I’m not saying Anet didn’t have to scramble. I think it’s obvious they did have to scramble. But that said, I don’t think they did anything like this sort of sinister Dr. No villain character people are trying to make them out to be.

I’m pretty sure Mike O’Brien isn’t sitting his his office, twirling the end of his mustache and cackling about how he’s fooled everyone. He’s either happy if the game is doing well or sad that it’s not….or most likely happy with some things and not happy with others.

I think Anet underestimated the number of casual players who would be frustrated by the new zones and I think they’re taking steps to make it more approachable for casuals. That’s what they said.

After years of hearing the game is too easy, they made a harder expansion and it met with mixed results.

But there’s not some devious plot going on here to kitten you off. That’s just not what’s happening.

Yes, they want to make money because they’re a business and that’s their job. By the same token they also want people to enjoy their game, because that’s ALSO their job.

They have to find a balance that works for everyone. It’s not always going to be easy or smooth riding.

Torolan.5816:

Just my take of common sense:
I have a product. I have customers. I have numbers who show me if my game draws people and keeps people.
Then numbers for my game begin to fall. So my advertising strategy either fails, or my product is not good enough anymore or it is outdated because of the hype train driving elsewhere (I´ll leave the more shady stuff like greed and management failure out of this) .

What would the common person probably do?
My product holds still some customers in it´s old state, so lets keep it that way.
Then add something to make it more interesting, but it has to be so appealing that the largest majority of my players can make it for a long time until I am ready to bring out a new product again. The new addition has to be at least as good or even better than the old product or I will just make a quick buck until people realize that the addition is garbage. In my mind, it makes sense to cater to the largest base of players first and foremost, but maybe I get it all wrong?

What did Anet do?
Nerfed some content of core Tyria to officially battle a perceived problem of said core Tyria, inflation. Then they quickly assembled the few patches that were left of the last campaign with ls only and put out a product that is controversal to say the very least.

I can assume that Anet knows much better than me what this means:
You alienate the content core players to maybe/maybe not gain a piece of the raid and difficulty crowd cake. Of course it makes sense business wise with GW2 going F2P that core Tyria will be nerfed to give an incentive to buy HoT. But the shoehorning is so blatantly obvious that Anet should be ashamed of themselves for perceiving people to be such morons and trust that the competition is so weak that they won´t lose many players.

This is only your perception of what Anet did and why they did it. You’re guessing. You don’t really know, unless you happen to be sitting in their meeting rooms. There are different ways to interpret every single assumption you’ve made, down to them having to react to the game not doing well, which at least quarterly reports don’t bear out. NcSoft has always said they were fine with the profits and they’ve met expectations, which is all that really matters in the corporate world.

You’re assuming that Anet nerfed dungeons to drive people to buy HoT, but since HoT has nothing really to replace dungeons (raids certainly are a different beast) there’s not a huge point to doing it for that reason. Maybe Anet had numbers about how many people actually ran dungeons and it was a smaller percentage than you believe it to be. They figured it was a small percentage of people making a lot of money. They made a decision, perhaps, for the benefit of th game as a whole. Not the dungeon runners. I’m not saying that’s how it happened, I’m saying it’s an alternate possibility.

You’re down on the expansion so you want to assume the worst. That doesn’t make it true. I’m enjoying the expansion so I don’t want to assume the worst, which doesn’t make what I believe true either.

But until we see numbers we don’t know how well the expansion is doing. We don’t know how well the game is holding up. And we’re not likely to know for a while yet. So this theorizing is all well and good, but it’s just your opinion of why stuff has been done.

You then say Anet should be ashamed of themselves for doing something they may not have done. It’s one thing to make accusations, but if you can’t prove them, then they’re just that. Accusations.

In the middle ages, people accused other people of being witches and they said those people should be ashamed of themselves too.

People are down on the game, and so the witch hunt begins. It happens whenever people are angry. But it doesn’t make what they’re saying true.

Raizen.7981:

Vayne.8563:

Raizen.7981:

so no new legendaries in spring? oh boy

They didn’t say no new legendaries in spring as far as I know. I didn’t watch it though. But I think if they said that it would be in the notes. I wouldn’t make an assumption one way or another.

Yes but they announced ad infinitum completion. So I feel that if LS3/Raid wing/3 new leges would be released this spring, they would’ve announced it. Anyway, keeping a positive attitude

They announced Ad Infinitum because it’s been the subject of many complaints and it was supposed to be in at launch, though. They’re fixing issues and that’s an issue people have.

nacario.9417:

Vayne.8563:

Fenom.9457:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure I should say. lol It’s over 12,000 hours though.

WHAT that’s like 4000 a year how is it even possible?!

Game is on most of the day whether I’m playing it or not. I tend to duck in and duck out. I’m mostly homebound, so there’s little reason to turn it off. Often I’m just chatting with guildies, but yeah, it’s possible. Check out my achievement points. lol

If your character goes afk for more than 1 hour u will disconnect, and the hour count doesnt count when ur in the character screen? In any event u had been present at your character at least every hour.

You mean I had to pass by my computer desk and type a message to someone in the guild once an hour? Yes, I’m sure that usually happens. I’m not sure what’s remarkable about that. The computer desk is pretty much in the room we spend most of our time in.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

Manasa Devi.7958:

What’s sad is that there’s no longer even a pretense that they care about the players. Content that takes 2 hours without even a player’s choice in the matter of when they want to start their 2 hour sessions, that’s insane. There’s no other word for it.

In the age of the rise of on-demand media, this is an abomination I really can’t get my head around. I’d post what I really thought of it, but I’d get infracted.

That’s just ridiculous. They don’t care about their players because they made a meta event that’s long that’s liked by a whole lot of people? That doesn’t make sense.

When you thoughtlessly (or maliciously, I don’t know which) create content that anyone with a shred of common sense could predict will rub a lot of people the wrong way, you certainly don’t care about your players. If some do like it, that’s fortunate, but I file that under “even a blind chicken finds a kernel of corn once in a while”.

Vayne.8563:

It’s a long meta, which took a long time to design. They build a whole map just for that meta. From one point of view, in my mind the most reasonable, is that they wanted to give people the feeling of an epic events and for me, it is an epic event. Lots of people seem to like it.

And lots of people seem to dislike it. When you build something starting from a flawed concept, the result will be bad, no matter how painstakingly you put your heart and soul into it. It’s actually sad that so much obvious work went into something so inherently flawed.

Vayne.8563:

They cared enough about the players to make an event chain epic. Those horrible terrible Anet people.

No, they didn’t care, or they’d have considered the very, very, very obvious problems 2 hour meta-cycles would bring with them. They didn’t care enough to think of different mechanics for different maps. They made something up and went with it, completely indifferent to how many people were sure to receive it. It’s not rocket science that these rubbish 2 hour cycles wouldn’t work for many people.

Vayne.8563:

They used to be totally caring about us, and make really short events so we wouldn’t get hurt. Now they want us all to destroy our bodies so we can’t play their game any more and spend gems.

Going from “Hey, haven’t you been playing too long? You’ve been here for an hour.” to “Hey, better get online when we tell you to and play for 2 hours straight!”, something sure changed.

Vayne.8563:

You and I live in very different universes apparently.

I live in a sane universe where games are supposed to bend to my whims, not the other way around. How is yours?

This is a ridiculous overstatement. I’ve gone to the movies to watch movies that require more than two hours to see. Most people who see movies, watch them in one sitting. They don’t watch them 20 minutes at a time. They make the time, they watch the movie. This isn’t some evil plan created by Dr. No. It’s an event chain in a video game. That’s all it is. It’s an event chain that’s meant to be the epic end fight of the expansion. Is it long? Sure. Is that evil, no? Does it mean they don’t care. No.

They probably thought most people wouldn’t do it thousands of times, and they could make the meta longer, because people could find the time to do it. Even people who work have days off. It was an oversight that probably affects a relatively small percentage of the population. If you’re one of them, I feel for you, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing to do.

Because there are people who do like it. It’s a popular and populated event. You wouldn’t by any chance of the numbers of people who don’t like it compared to the people who do, would you?

It’s sort of funny because all the world bosses are on timers and you have to be there when they’re there to do them. If you can’t make it for certain world bosses, you can’t do those bosses. And though some people did complain about that, world bosses are still one of the more popular features of this game.

Just because a design decision negatively affects a percentage of people (and I maintain that decision isn’t killing a large percentage of people), doesn’t mean Anet doesn’t care. At the very worst it was an oversight. They were TRYING to provide an epic experience. That’s all this was.

Unless you have evidence to the contrary I won’t be replying to you again on this.

Phy.2913:

Astralporing.1957:

Phy.2913:

Sister.9612:

xXRichiXx.3846:

Sister.9612:

Phy.2913:

Sister.9612:

There is only one thing to say – Shame on you ArenaNet for locking mastery points behind mini games!
Why would anyone like to play a game that locks you out from being able to enjoy all the new mastery abilities?

There are 129 mastery points available in HOT, you need 114 for all the HOT mastery tracks.

Yes, I know that. I also know that here are 31 mastery points from the mini games and 1 from Tarir challenge winner. 129 ./.32 = 97.

of those 32, you can get half of them really easy, just get gold in the babys mini games and in the difficult ones try to get silver (not so difficult)

in VB only shotting gallery its a pain in the kitten , with a little of practice you can get silver

in AB you got 2 games that with a little of practice you get gold fast, the rest you can aim silver with not too much problem.

in TD, ley-line run, bettle feast and drone race, the same thing: a little of practice and you get gold.

with that you are more than ready, also you can toss another 12 points with not getting nuhoch alchemy, the most useless mastery.

What seems to be easy for you might not be easy for everyone. For me it is impossible to do fast-paced, single-mini games. I can’t even score bronze in the “babys mini games”.

The game will never be balanced around the lowest denominator, sorry.

It shouldn’t be balanced around the assumption that everyone is a veteran arcade era player either.
No, minigames do not need to be made easier – but locking mastery points behind them when there’s not enough of alternatives was a bad decision.

There are enough alternatives. If you can’t do ANY adventure, then it’s a L2P issue.

I can do quite a few adventures, and I still believe this is a bad decision on Anet’s part. It’s conceptually not part of the MMO experience and it’s putting undo pressure on people to do stuff they really don’t like to do. It’s not good or smart on their part. Surely adventures could have been in there as an optional feature, without gating points behind them.

The problem is the more Anet pushes the envelope to make the game more challenging, the more people it will leave behind, and some of those people won’t be coming back.

You shouldn’t have to go play arcade games to get mastery points. It’s a bad design decision in my opinion.

Fenom.9457:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not sure I should say. lol It’s over 12,000 hours though.

WHAT that’s like 4000 a year how is it even possible?!

Game is on most of the day whether I’m playing it or not. I tend to duck in and duck out. I’m mostly homebound, so there’s little reason to turn it off. Often I’m just chatting with guildies, but yeah, it’s possible. Check out my achievement points. lol

Manasa Devi.7958:

What’s sad is that there’s no longer even a pretense that they care about the players. Content that takes 2 hours without even a player’s choice in the matter of when they want to start their 2 hour sessions, that’s insane. There’s no other word for it.

In the age of the rise of on-demand media, this is an abomination I really can’t get my head around. I’d post what I really thought of it, but I’d get infracted.

They don’t care about their players because they made a meta event that’s long that’s liked by a whole lot of people? That doesn’t make sense.

It’s a long meta, which took a long time to design. They build a whole map just for that meta. From one point of view, in my mind the most reasonable, is that they wanted to give people the feeling of an epic events and for me, it is an epic event. Lots of people seem to like it.

They cared enough about the players to make an event chain epic. Those horrible terrible Anet people.

They used to be totally caring about us, and make really short events so we wouldn’t get hurt. Now they want us all to destroy our bodies so we can’t play their game any more and buy gems.

You and I live in very different universes apparently.

Manasa Devi.7958:

What’s sad is that there’s no longer even a pretense that they care about the players. Content that takes 2 hours without even a player’s choice in the matter of when they want to start their 2 hour sessions, that’s insane. There’s no other word for it.

In the age of the rise of on-demand media, this is an abomination I really can’t get my head around. I’d post what I really thought of it, but I’d get infracted.

That’s just ridiculous. They don’t care about their players because they made a meta event that’s long that’s liked by a whole lot of people? That doesn’t make sense.

It’s a long meta, which took a long time to design. They build a whole map just for that meta. From one point of view, in my mind the most reasonable, is that they wanted to give people the feeling of an epic events and for me, it is an epic event. Lots of people seem to like it.

They cared enough about the players to make an event chain epic. Those horrible terrible Anet people.

They used to be totally caring about us, and make really short events so we wouldn’t get hurt. Now they want us all to destroy our bodies so we can’t play their game any more and spend gems.

You and I live in very different universes apparently.

I’m not sure I should say. lol It’s over 12,000 hours though.

Kraljevo.2801:

Press F to pay respects.

Awesome story there, bro. They copy pasted from Call of duty, by the way lol.

Yep Call of Duty invited paying respect. /s

Manasa Devi.7958:

The minimum time required for one complete play-through of the content that the maps are completely built around, is longer than it takes GW1 to remind you that you should ask yourself if you haven’t been playing too long.

Sad.

I don’t know why you find that sad. It just means Guild Wars 1 didn’t have lengthy content. Or did some of the content in Guild Wars 1 take 2 hours to play anyway?

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Calydro.7268:

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

I disagree. having people pay in advanced for content doesnt keep them around. Case in point, check the forums / reddit. You will find many posts especially around the time HoT launched of people claiming to have quit soon after launch and are thinking of coming back. With the core game purchase price they also got 3 years of free content but that didnt keep them around did it?

I even more strongly disagree with greedy business model. Look at what most other b2p MMOs do. They still cut their content in chunks, because it takes X amount of time to develop or on purpose is something thats debatable fine… but what they do is sell that content for “cheap” at regular intervals. $10 every quarter is most common. Well $10 per quarter for 3 years is $120 more then twice what Anet charged for the same period of time. How is that better?

Besides which modern MMO releases an expansion more often then 2 years?

Additionally were they really less greedy before? You had to pay Box Fee and Subscription. Sure content was less content and quicker to develop and you had an expansion every year which also carried a box fee. 2 years of your mmo back then would end up costing $480 are you really sure they were less greedy?

You’re equivocating. System A is bad but so Is System B, but System A is worse therefore we should exonerate System B.

I laid out the facets of the the game where the greed and underhandedness is evident. You’ve pointed me to prior games that also have a greedy model. Does that nullify the points I’ve made? does it exonerate A-net? Guild Wars 2 isn’t the first game to milk its players, there have been many before and will be many after. . .

But you haven’t proved greed. In your opinion it’s greedy. In my opinion it’s competitive. It’s almost as if certain players are greedy expecting more and more for free included in the price, even though stuff takes long to make at greater expense.

Calydro.7268:

Vayne.8563:

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.

Really? They did it with the original Guild Wars a very very long time ago. The last Guild Wars 1 product came out 8 years ago, and at the time Guild Wars 1 was pretty much the only free to play multiplayer fantasy game and it still wasn’t an MMO.

Cut to today, which is a completely different market.

Every console game does what? Has 20 guys, maybe 30, makes the game and sells it? Sure. Makes a console game for 5 years with 300 devs? Not even close. How can anyone compare a console game with an MMO.

And many console games today have downloadable content you can buy for it anyway, piecemeal, so even that’s no longer true.

But tell me how long does the average console game take to make and how many people work on it? How many copies does that game have to sell to break even? How many people continue to work on that same game once it ships.

I don’t see why you’d compare this to a console game or talk about what happened 8 years ago in an industry that has changed. Why am I condoning this behavior? Because I don’t see it as bad behavior. I’m not even sure why you do.

Calydro.7268:

Vayne.8563:

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

They did it with the original Guild Wars. Every console game did it. Every MMO did it at one point, until developers discovered how to coaxingly milk players. I’m not sure why you’re advocating this new behavior.

Really? They did it with the original Guild Wars a very very long time ago. The last Guild Wars 1 product came out 8 years ago, and at the time Guild Wars 1 was pretty much the only free to play multiplayer fantasy game and it still wasn’t an MMO.

Cut to today, which is a completely different market.

Every console game does what? Has 20 guys, maybe 30, makes the game and sells it? Sure. Makes a console game for 5 years with 300 devs? Not even close. How can anyone compare a console game with an MMO.

And many console games today have downloadable content you can buy for it anyway, piecemeal, so even that’s no longer true.

But tell me how long does the average console game take to make and how many people work on it? How many copies does that game have to sell to break even? How many people continue to work on that same game once it ships.

I don’t see why you’d compare this to a console game or talk about what happened 8 years ago in an industry that has changed. Why am I condoning this behavior? Because I don’t see it as bad behavior. I’m not even sure why you do.

Glenstorm.4059:

Vayne.8563:

Redenaz.8631:

Vayne.8563:

As for the visual noise, I’m not sure why it’s not a slider, but presumbly with the way the game is coded that’s simply either won’t work or will take too much time to implement, so they did what they could.

Did they over nerf some affects? What percentage of people even notice or care? I didn’t see thousands or even hundreds of posts complaining about the nerf. But I’m absolutely positive I’ve seen a lot more complaints about the issue they’re trying to fix.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Visual-nerfs-Merged

I haven’t counted the for/against ratio of this 870-post thread, but it wasn’t my impression that the people in it where generally pleased.

If they told me, “We’d like to do a visual effects intensity slider, but it’s technically unfeasible, so we erred on the side of people seeing more clearly,” I would understand. I might disagree and be unhappy, but I’d understand. I’m usually pretty generous about accepting what can and can’t be done, but I think it’s assuming too much to assume this option isn’t reasonable.

So a single thread. As compared with dozens of threads and random posts with screen shots, over the years since launch saying that that skill noise is a problem.

Did 100 disparate people in that thread actually complain (I don’t think so). Even if 100 people did actually complain (because 850 posts isn’t 850 people and some people posted that like the changes), then 100 people out of the million more or less playing makes this not a hot button topic.

You need a lot more people to show some sort of consensus. The old trait system, upwards of 90% of the people who posted in that thread disliked it immensely. That was an issue that Anet really did need to fix and it took a long time for that to happen.

The nerf to visuals is an improvment for some people. I don’t know one way or another about the slider, but if it’s not doable, or no doable in a time frame that makes sense, Anet should say so.

That’s one thread, yes, but made up of many merged threads. A cursory glance shows that while there are multiple posts by a few people, there are many more individual posts expressing dislike of those changes.

I don’t disagree that skill noise was, and is still a problem, and that more people have probably complained about it than about the visual nerfs. The point is that they nerfed the wrong effects. Fireball, Auras, Overload Air weren’t as problematic as on-hit visual effects that scale with the mob, which were untouched. Moreover, the changes to Auras arguably made them harder to differentiate in combat. Also, they disproportionately targeted Elementalists, when other classes’ effects are just as bad, if not worse (Mesmer Wells, Necro AoEs, Guardian flames.) This is also why I think even more people aren’t riled up…because their professions weren’t targeted, yet. They also forced this onto everybody, like it or not. If they didn’t have the tech to implement sliders or something similar, then they should have waited until such tech was ready to be rolled out. It’s not like the nerfs have actually improved combat visibility.

Another, anecdotal reason for why I’m annoyed. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the one thing that persuaded me to buy HoT was how amazing the animations for Tempest looked. I truly enjoyed running around casting those skills. To have them stripped away without warning is a bit galling. All it has done is made me wary about buying anything from them again.

I’d be wary of buying any MMO ever then. You’re better off with single player games, because the MMO rule is change not the exception.

Buying a game because how a skill looks seems a bit odd to me. Different strokes for different folks, maybe, but I can’t see that, for most people as the reason they buy an expansion for $50.

Manasa Devi.7958:

Vayne.8563:

If I want achievements I hunt achievements. If I want skins I play for those. If I want collections I work on collections. If I want every alt with ascended trinkets, then weapons then armor, I can work on that.

The problem with HoT is, it doesn’t add a significant enough amount of varied content to make all those pursuits interesting.

You may well not find them interesting, but clearly some people do. The question, as always is about percentage.

I find the HoT zones more interestings than the core zones, because of the complexity. But I’m not a meta focused individual generally. I still like to go do my own thing sometimes.

If all I did in the HoT zones was meta over and over again, it would probably be a lot less interesting for me too.

Some people hate the mini games and some people like them. I’m 50/50 on them, I like some but not all of them.

For a guy like me, the expansion brought enough of the kinds of content I like to keep me playing…but that’s obviously not true for everyone.

Just a Fleshwound is indeed doing something amazing. Why? Because no one else is doing it. Take the credit, you deserve it.

As far as Anet communicating, I know we’re all in the habit if saying they’re not communicating, but I think they’re communicating more. We do have a clear road map of what’s coming when. We’ve gotten more info on what they’re doing in 3 months time. It’s a great improvement over the past.

Will they answer every question or post in every thread? Of course not. But they are answering.

For example they’re not posting in the thread about This Game Used to be Casual, but they’ve indicated they’re going back to look at the new zones and make changes to them based on feedback. That sounds suspiciously like communication to me.

Calydro.7268:

Galen Grey.4709:

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

Is that really a bad thing though?

MMOs are getting more complex, more detailed and that means they require more time to build. Just compare Gw1 with Gw2… old zones had a handful of models, new zones have 100s takes time and man power to build. Even the terrain itself, its one thing to have a game with plain terrain thats essentially automatically generated by a heatmap denoting elevation to zones we have in Heart of Thorns were everything needs to be created manually. We know for sure work on Heart of Thorns started at least 2 years prior to launch (source: Maclaine stated on Guild Chat he started working on HoT soundtrack 2 years ago and probably the sountrack wasnt the first thing they worked on just saying) All things being equal we’ll get another 2 years of free content before the next expansion hits.

Free content releases after an expansion hits does sound exactly like a season pass but whats the alternative? wait out those extra 2 years until Anet finish all the content and release it all at once? And whats the advantage? you’re still paying the same amount for the same exact amount of content, is getting it all at once really better then getting it in chunks?

People keep comparing Gw2 with Gw1. Only they just compare raw numbers and ignore all the details. Sure any Gw1 expansion had a ton more maps, does anyone really think it takes the same amount of time to build a Gw1 map as it must have taken to build one of the new maps? How about content wise? Gw1 campaigns/expansion didnt change the game that drastically. They didnt introduce things like Gliding, Add new mechanics to existent professions or even provide new game types like Adventures. Does anyone here thing these things come easy? Flip as switch or something? To implement something like gliding you’d need to do major changes to the engine and that also means major testing. This is a double edged sword of course, major changes to the engine means less time to develop content but at the same time its a one time cost and it allows for a great variety of content in the future.

Yes, its a bad thing. Developers don’t release things in small bundles like this because they have to, they do it to keep players around for longer. I’ve explained this in an earlier post— turning a player into a long term investment is now the business model for several developers, a trendy flaw that NCsoft failed to deviate from, like they did with most other MMO conventions (thankful for that). Content is withheld that otherwise 10 years ago would have come with the box. This keeps players looking ahead, because they want the legendary armor they’ve been lead to grind for months.

You can obfuscate their intentions all day long, but its not out of a lack of time or resources that we have a season pass instead of an expansion, it is solely the result of a greedy business model.

It may be the result of a business model, but it’s hardly the result of a greedy one.

Unless you seriously believe that a company can make content faster than people can beat content, there’s nothing about this system that’s greedy. It’s called being competitive.

If Anet gave everything up front. Everything they could. Every single thing they had ready at the moment it was ready, and then people burned through it, they’d leave and go to other games that were trickling out their content keeping people playing.

It’s the job of a company like Anet to keep people playing their product. That’s not greed. That’s like saying me advertising my shop is greed because I want people in my store. Calling it greed doesn’t make it greed.

This is a market shift and if you want to be in the market you have to play by the market rules. You can’t do your own thing and ignore the market, because you will be crushed.

Anet has already tried deviating from the market when they came out with a game that has no end game gear that you had to work for. It cost them and they made a change to the game.

You can call that greedy but it’s really just survival.

Five years in this industry is a very long time and what games could do back then, they can’t do now. Voice acting is far more expensive now than it’s ever been. Game developers are paid more. It’s a different market.

Calling it greedy is like saying a subscription company is greedy for charging a sub. It’s just their business model.

Maximillian Greil.1965:

There were options before on what content you could endgame. The original idea of GW2 was everything is endgame.

Now, if you don’t like doing content where the rewards takes a very long to get, example: legendaries, there’s nothing to do. If you’re not into raiding or legendaries, you just get to farm money to spend on nothing.

But this was always true of legendaries even at launch. The fact is, even casual games need something for people who want to strive to strive for. The end game hasn’t significantly changed for me.

If I want achievements I hunt achievements. If I want skins I play for those. If I want collections I work on collections. If I want every alt with ascended trinkets, then weapons then armor, I can work on that.

None of it is fast, but most of it isn’t impossible. Are there easier things to do? Sure. The Wintersday meta wasn’t impossible to get. In fact, it took me a couple of days so for a more casual player it should have been easy in the time frame. The shoulders were for harder core players, who wanted to do that. You don’t really need the shoulders, but the meta for Wintersday, almost anyone could do it. That would be end game for some people.

Don’t stop payment unless you want your account closed permanently. You didn’t enroll in some blade of soul monthly plan did you?

Blindfoldedchaos.9265:

Calydro.7268:

Players were promised raids and legendary armor with HoT. None of these came with HoT. It was a blatant lie. A single wing was released, but as far as I know, the 50$ spent didn’t say “50$ season pass for all content we’ll be releasing over the period of a year”.
A single new arena was released. There were 45 pvp maps in the first Guild Wars.
Two new armor sets were introduced.

No it isn’t worth $50, you’re not mistaken. The standards are just low.

Welcome to MMO’s where every expansion is the equivalent to a Seasons Pass.

I remember being told before release that raids would NOT be coming at launch and that when they did come we would get a single wing. Legendary armor I can’t say one way or another, but before launch I knew just want to expect with raids.

Maybe people need to a pay more attention.

We were also told they weren’t going to bring gliding to central tyria and they did and we weren’t told about the redone shatterer fight, so that’s already two things that we didn’t know were coming.

And we know Living Story Season 3 is planned for later this year, so in fact we are getting more than what was in the box, which I was saying since before the product launched. It is more akin to a season pass than just a product.

Anyone who’s been around since day 1 should have known this. Anyone knew could have found it out pretty easily.

Check your mail for a product key that you use to unlock the game by adding to your account on your account page.

Go to account.arena.net and log into your account. They click on content and add that number to it. It will unlock HoT.

Raizen.7981:

so no new legendaries in spring? oh boy

They didn’t say no new legendaries in spring as far as I know. I didn’t watch it though. But I think if they said that it would be in the notes. I wouldn’t make an assumption one way or another.

I noticed this too and thought it was interesting. It might not be how Dragon Hunters came to be, but it certainly could see Braham end up using the bow in the future.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

While it’s nice to see something positive for a change (most happy players are just in the game, enjoying it, after all), Guild Wars 2 isn’t exactly free of long standing issues requiring fixes or connection problems. I stay here because I enjoy the game; but oddly enough, this is the game I see more problem with when I make comparisons.

Still, it’s luck of the draw depending on what you want to do, when you want to do it and where you are. This game isn’t free of issues, but it’s still a pretty good game.

Every MMO has problems however…

I’m not waiting in queues to get into the game. I’m not sitting and waiting each week or two with four hour downtimes. My patches go live pretty fast when they come out.

I’m not fighting over kill tags for static quests.

These are issues that Anet addressed years ago, that are still coming out in current games.

For me it’s not about a bugged quest. I’m not going to wait in a queue for two hours just to get into a game. Not after playing this game.

People take the basic stuff here for granted and focus on the minutia. With the exception of WvW, which is getting some fixes hopefully, this game has solved a lot of the problems that other MMOs seem to be okay with.

Because casual players who will never grind for a legendary don’t need any content for them. I mean we hardly ever hear any complaints from legions of casual players…oh wait.

My experience with precursors is different. I crafted Leaf of Kudzu, since I want kudzu. It’s a bow that is like a living bow and the first step has me gathering flowers from all over Tyria. Some were in Fractals, some on the far side of JPs. There is no MMO I can think of where you don’t repeat content. It’s just usually the current raid. This gave me more variety.

Part 2 was the expensive part and it was painful. I could have just farmed gold and bought it, but by doing the work it made it more mine. Buying it feels like a cheat…to me anyway.

The third part had me go and gather seeds, fertilizer and water for my private garden. I thought it was a very cool thing to do.

There’s a lot of read between the line stuff. It doesn’t really give you a story of the legendary but I felt like I was doing stuff to work toward making something very cool. If you can’t do the read between the line bit, it’s just repeating events.

For an immersion player like me, I enjoyed it. A lot more than I would have enjoyed farming gold to buy it.

I don’t prefer instances personally, but I never thought anyone should make a game that only I would play. I always prefer open world to instances, except as a vehicle for telling stories. That’s obviously better instanced.

For the rest of it, I’m satisfied with the ratio now, but I wouldn’t be crestfallen if there were no new instances. This is why my opinion shouldn’t count. lol

Mortifer.2946:

What about the players who started the same time as you, didn’t miss out AP from releases and only ignored monthlies because they were too much time consuming, and dailies which are just simply annoying? This way veteran player can catch up with these dedicated veteran players like you.

I like the cap.

I didn’t do all the monthlies either. I’m still not sure about it. I didn’t commit one way or another.

msalakka.4653:

Vayne.8563:

We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.

They nerfed the MtD rework right out of the gate because they “tested it on golems and found it too strong”, so no, I wouldn’t “know” they have a QA “team”.

I say we know they have a QA team because we’ve seen members of them in some videos. That’s how I know they have a QA team. And if you think the number of bugs coming through shows that things aren’t being tested, you’ve never been in a game software testing environment. Are their issues. Sure there are.

But if there wasn’t an QA team the issues would dwarf what we’re seeing.

I hit my 15,000 cap just today. I’m in mourning now. 28,410 achievement points. My wife is not that far behind me. She found out I hit my cap she cheered.

I’m not really sure about the achievement cap. The original purpose was to let new players catch up, but new players will never really catch up, because so many of the achievements I have no longer exist.

Either way, it’s sort of bittersweet right now.

VaLee.5102:

Vayne.8563:

Because no one in wow every complained about balance issues. lol

No, but WoW never had this 48h after releasing a patch (and expect more to come):

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

Bug Fix:

• Fixed a server crash.

Bug Fixes:

General

• Fixed a client crash.
  * When each player in a raid enters combat, their boon prioritization will be locked in based on the composition of the subgroup they are currently in. That prioritization will not change until the player has left combat, even if their subgroup composition changes while they are in combat.
  * Added messaging for swapping squads in the Enhanced Squad UI.
  * Fixed the Shatterer’s defiance bar text.

Skills and Traits:

• Necromancer:
  * Wells: Fixed an issue that caused these abilities to go on full recharge when interrupted.

• Dragonhunter:
  * Wings of Resolve: This ability is no longer able to be activated in midair.

• Warrior:
  * Wild Blow: Fixed an issue that caused Wild Blow to not remove all weakness.

• Thief:
  * Flanking Strikes: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to not have a reduced cooldown when paired with Trickster.
  Staff Autoattack—Staff Strike, Staff Bash, Punishing Strikes: Increased the damage by 36%, 15%, and 33% respectively.

• Ranger:
  * Moment of Clarity: The effectiveness of this trait has been reduced from 100% stun and daze durations to 50% stun and daze durations.

• Druid:
  * Ancestral Grace: This ability is no longer able to be used in midair.

• Elementalist:
  * Ride the Lightning: This ability is no longer able to be used in midair.

• Engineer:
  * Static Shot: Fixed a bug that prevented the correct number of confusion stacks from displaying when the Chemical Rounds trait was equipped.

• Guardian:
  * Shield of Courage: Added text to the effect description to indicate the active block.
  * mite Conditions: Fixed an issue that was causing this skill to remove only 1 condition instead of 2.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue in the “Defeat the Marmox Packleader and his Pack” hero challenge that prevented the Veteran Marmox Packleader from spawning.
  * Squads can no longer be used in PvP matches and activities.
  * Fixed a bug preventing certain party sizes from advertising in LFG.
  * Fixed a collision issue that was blocking access to the Stronghold of Ebonhawke vista in Fields of Ruin.
  * Ranger:
  * Healing Spring: Fixed an issue that prevented this skill from triggering after the trap was placed.
  * Thief:
  * Guarded Initiation: Fixed a bug that caused this trait to grant bonus vitality.
  * Guardian:
  * Wings of Resolve: Fixed a bug that caused this ability to be affected by movement modifiers while underwater, or when paired with the Soaring Devastation trait.

Bug Fixes:

• Items
  * Superior Rune of the Trooper: Fixed an issue that caused some shout skills to cleanse conditions incorrectly.
  * Fixed an issue that could prevent object markers from being properly removed when the object leaves the visibility of all squad members.
  * WvW Capture and Hold guild missions have had their timers increased to 1 hour.
  * Dolyaks in Eternal Battlegrounds have had their movement speed increased.
  * Fixed a bug that could cause the warning message for launch pads to erroneously display for players who had trained the Glider Basics Mastery.
  * Fixed an issue that allowed players to kill the Mossman in the Fractals of the Mists with underwater combat.
  * Mesmer
  * Feedback: Fixed a bug that caused this skill to use ground targeting while submerged. When used underwater, this skill will now cast on your current target.
  * Ranger
  * “Search and Rescue!”: Fixed an issue that could prevent some players from gaining access to this skill.

I don’t know if WOW has ever seen that or not. Maybe WoW has that many bugs and doesn’t fix them as fast.

As for the server crash fixes, the server technology here is hands above anything on WoW. It probably needs to be watched more carefully because servers are created as needed here. They’re not fixed servers.

On the other hand WoW has to come down for maintainence every couple of weeks for four hours and you have to wait to patch.

WoW has had plenty of bugs and bad decisions. Some of them have gone on for a long time. Do you remember the death knight? How long did that nonsense go on for? Why didn’t the PTR pick that up?

Xanthin.2814:

league has a ptr and look where it is in terms of esports,
wow has a ptr and look how long that games was hailed as the king of mmos
eve has a ptr and look how well balanced/ awesome that game is ( i do play it, i also play this because you cant smash dragons with a hammer in eve )

the majority of the problem seems to be the lack of willingness to collaborate with players on balance issues. Having a PTR would help that significantly

Because no one in wow every complained about balance issues. lol

EVOS does this encounter without voice chat. They talk to everyone in map chat. It takes longer but they often succeed.

Rift had a PTR and look at where that got them.

Redenaz.8631:

Vayne.8563:

As for the visual noise, I’m not sure why it’s not a slider, but presumbly with the way the game is coded that’s simply either won’t work or will take too much time to implement, so they did what they could.

Did they over nerf some affects? What percentage of people even notice or care? I didn’t see thousands or even hundreds of posts complaining about the nerf. But I’m absolutely positive I’ve seen a lot more complaints about the issue they’re trying to fix.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Visual-nerfs-Merged

I haven’t counted the for/against ratio of this 870-post thread, but it wasn’t my impression that the people in it where generally pleased.

If they told me, “We’d like to do a visual effects intensity slider, but it’s technically unfeasible, so we erred on the side of people seeing more clearly,” I would understand. I might disagree and be unhappy, but I’d understand. I’m usually pretty generous about accepting what can and can’t be done, but I think it’s assuming too much to assume this option isn’t reasonable.

So a single thread. As compared with dozens of threads and random posts with screen shots, over the years since launch saying that that skill noise is a problem.

Did 100 disparate people in that thread actually complain (I don’t think so). Even if 100 people did actually complain (because 850 posts isn’t 850 people and some people posted that like the changes), then 100 people out of the million more or less playing makes this not a hot button topic.

You need a lot more people to show some sort of consensus. The old trait system, upwards of 90% of the people who posted in that thread disliked it immensely. That was an issue that Anet really did need to fix and it took a long time for that to happen.

The nerf to visuals is an improvment for some people. I don’t know one way or another about the slider, but if it’s not doable, or no doable in a time frame that makes sense, Anet should say so.

I’m sure build templates will arrive at some point. I’m also sure most people never even look at their builds, even if you would change yours Guhracie. I have a guild full of people who don’t even know how to make a build or what a build is. I’m pretty sure most players log in, kill some stuff and log out most of the time. Or they just look up a build on a site and stay with it and never change it. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a great QoL feature for me, because it would be. But I’m not convinced 50% of the population would ever use it, and it’s probably much less than that.

As for the visual noise, I’m not sure why it’s not a slider, but presumbly with the way the game is coded that’s simply either won’t work or will take too much time to implement, so they did what they could.

Did they over nerf some affects? What percentage of people even notice or care? I didn’t see thousands or even hundreds of posts complaining about the nerf. But I’m absolutely positive I’ve seen a lot more complaints about the issue they’re trying to fix.

You could be right. It could be over done. Anet does have a tendency to over compensate.

But that doesn’t mean that more people aren’t happy with the change than unhappy.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@Vayne Well lets look at the patch notes.
Most of the balance changes are not major code changes, they are variable changes.
Set piercing to yes. Set base duration to this. You are just setting variables to alternate values. Most of this is something 1 entry level programmer could do in 3 days. I have spoken extensively with programmers about this. Altering table values and then debugging does not take that much time. If they have other priorities to other parts of the game thats fine. But if you say its over 300 people, shouldn’t there be dedicated people for each content?

This is the most fun I’ve had in a long time.

Okay most of the balance changes are tweaking numbers. You win. That’s easy.

However, getting them to play nice together over all with other balance changes aren’t. You can tweak a million numbers and end up with an unmitigated disaster, because every single change you make to balance is going to affect something else.

I believe Anet did get some of the balance issues wrong in this patch but not most of them. However the time and complexity of balancing has nothing at all to do with how easy it is to change a number.

We know for a fact Anet has a QA team that tests things. They have to go and play against each other in say PvP and figure out which changes are too strong, which are acceptable, which work and which don’t.

So why changing a number is easy, putting the right number in it’s place is complex.

Do you know, when they send rockets into space, it’s very easy for them to change variables. It’s just the press of a button. But what do you think happens if they plug in the wrong numbers? lol

The visual nerfs thing was a request feature by a whole lot of people. Some people don’t like it, but I’m pretty sure I saw more people complain about noise than I ever did about the visual nerfs.

I’d like to see a build template made too. I’m sure it’s on a list of the stuff they’re working on. It’s obviously not a high priority for them.

Maybe because they have metrics of what people, by percentage ever change their build.

Daniel Handler.4816:

zenleto.6179:

How many people is “so many”? And how does Anet financials effect your gaming experience in GW2? Just asking out of curiosity. There could be an interesting discussion here.

Because financials show where priority lies. A cash shop company just has to look pretty, it doesnt neccesarily have to have depth. While a company that needs successful expansions at least has to put more effort into getting people buy it.

That’s funny. If there’s no depth there’s no game, and no one will pay just to look pretty. You might not like the direction of the game, but there’s plenty of people who are enjoying it. I have about 100 people in my guild who log in every week and 2 of them aren’t enjoying the expansion as far as I can tell. Everyone else is enjoying themselves.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t problems.

But if you make something easy, the people who want hard core content complain. If you make something hard, the people who want easy content complain. Everyone has a threshold. We saw that the Garent fight was too hard, and people complained about it. Anet made it easier. Now people are complaining it’s too easy but they’re different people.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Vayne.8563:

You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.

Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.

Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.

Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.

When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.

Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.

Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.

Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.

Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.

The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.

I’m just looking for some concrete data. Almost everyone I talk to is dissapointed in things.

You mention the game is very complex. Can you elaborate for me what you meant? Its vary hard to see a 1 to 1 conversion between the amount of work shown in updates and the amount of time spent on them.

Of course the game is complex. It’s got multiple modes. it’s got probably a million lines of code and everything interacts with everything else. I can’t even imagine the amount of work it takes to get everything to work nice together. How can you think ANY MMO isn’t complex? And why do ALL MMO forums look like this?

Have you even looked at the patch notes?

You must be new to MMOs. I think you should go look at WoW’s forums. Or Archeage. Or anyone for that matter.

Active MMOs all have forums that read just like this one.

Point 1. That doesn’t mean most people are unsatisfied. It means a lot of people who are unsatisfied complain.

Let’s say we see 10,000 people complaining and there are half a million players (clue we haevn’t seen close to 10,000 people complaining). Also some who complain are just trolls, I know because they’ve admitted to me that the only reason they complain is to rile up fan boys.

When you have a million people together a bunch of them are going to be dissatisfied and they’ll complain. It means very little unless a majority are complaining about something. But it’s only really bad press if it’s a) reasonable and b) not happening the MMO forum for every successful MMO.

Point 2. A lot of the things people complain about are handled quickly. However some things people complain about are simply not going to change, no matter how many complaints. For example, when someone nerfs a profession, someone is going to complain that it’s not fair, whether it’s fair or not. Most people are actually reasonable. Most people know that certain professions needed a nerf.

Point 3. Anet is a company comprised of over 300 people. Those 300 people work a lot of hours to bring a program. But when you have that many people all working on different projects, sometimes things fall through the cracks. That’s because people aren’t perfect. They make mistakes. When I ran a store, I made thousands of decisions every week…a few dozen of them were bound to be wrong. It’s not reasonable to expect that mistakes won’t happen, and it’s even less reasonable to believe they can be fixed quickly, particularly if you’re talking about programming mistakes. These games are far more complex than most people think they are.

Point 4. None of us really know how many people by percentage are unhappy with the game, but of the unhappy people, they’re all complaining about disparate things. Which people do you listen to? I know for a fact Anet has made some changes to the game based on what people were saying. Are you suggesting they make a thousand changes to the game all at once? What would that do to their code.

Seriously. Go spend some time on the official forums of other MMORPGs. This is pretty much the norm. And the bigger the game gets, the more attention it gets, and the more people tend to complain.

The happy people? They’re playing the game. They have very little reason to be here.

Mirta.5029:

IndigoSundown.5419:

If you have no desire to play through the HoT content again, why do the HoT Masteries matter to you?

I really needed to respond to this. If OP is too casual to raid, too casual to get a legendary, what is left for the OP in this expansion pack to do?

There’s nothing wrong with horizontal or vertical progression. However people want meaningful progression. It means one where you can see fruits of your labour fairly often (for example gaining levels, or climbing the gear ladder in a traditional MMO), or one that is challenging but relatively fast to achieve if you know what you’re doing.

OP is likely not the challenging type. Those types have raids to tackle, even though I would argue, there isn’t enough reward for doing so. OP is likely wishing to see his fruits of labour quite often. Original leveling really provided this. You either gained a level, gained a skill point or entered a new zone. In this case for the longest time you’re grinding the same courner of the map.
But lets say you got trough the initial grind. Well if you’re not a hardcore type that can go raiding, what new content are you left with? Well the masteries of course! The very grindy and slow masteries that you can only achieve trough exp gained in HoT maps where you do the same events over and over again…

EDIT: one could argue that nothing has gone missing from GW2 vanilla and that OP could go back to do that. Yes do what the OP has been doing for 3 years now, except with far less reward this time around.

What is there to do? The quest chains and the story in the new zones. Achievements in the new zones, of which there are many.

I haven’t made a legendary since the expansion launched and I don’t raid, yet somehow, I’m finding plenty to do.

Dynamic events are what casual players do. Collections are what casual players do (not all of them are hard core). We did some wintersday and now I’m playing dragonball, which I enjoy.

You could just hang out in VB as a new player, get crowbars, open chests, get currencies and buy one of the tonics or armor pieces.

The stuff for casuals to do is really the same as it’s always been. You do story. You do zone complete (which yes, requires a bit more challenge…but it’s doable). You explore. You do events. That’s what you do as a casual anyway. You unlock skins. You get achievements, you do the collections you can do.

I have a guild filled with casual players who play HoT. They chip away at stuff. They’re not raiding (only like three people in my guild raid) and they’re not working on legendaries, but they’re playing the game and apparently having fun.

Ragnarox.9601:

You will get new legendaries in next expansion late this year.

I assume you mean update, not expansion.

New legendaries can’t be made. Old legendaries can be. But as a free to play player I don’t think you can buy a precursor from the TP, so you’d have to be massively lucky and get one as a drop or play the mystic forge for one, which also requires a lot of luck.