Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Hmm,

The definition listed in wikipedia matches what I find in GW2. Repetetive killing of AI controlled mobs in order to access content.

I’ve been grinding to get BiS for three years now (and am still not there). I’ve never played another game where, based on an average of one piece of BiS per year of play, I can expect it to take seven years to finally be outfitted (and be able to begin what I enjoy most in an MMO).

Actually no. What it meant was grinding mobs rather than events. Not just killing mobs in an event. Essentally if you ran out of quests in games you had to grind mobs. No event. No story. Just klling without anything to break it up. That was the difference.

If you have multiple events that are repeatable that all give experience, that you can switch off too, it would never have been considered grinding.

Having to repeat events is grinding by any definition.

Nope. It’s not. Having to repeat the same event is. But since there are dozens and dozens of events, and adventures, and now a raid, and killing and gathering, you’d be incorrect.

The difference between grinding spiders, and doing events spread across four zones is myriad.

Lol, you do understand that by this definition you also destroy the definition of grind you talked about before.. killing mobs… because you know.. there are many different mobs you could kill, all with their own mechanics and looks.

Same as with the events. Multiple events is not grind? Sure then multiple mobs is also not grind.

You successfully destroyed the definition of grind you were holding so strong on to yourself.

You’re still not getting it, so I’ll say it again.

There are five day time event chains in VB. That’s a number of event chains that are all substantially different. There is night which has very similar events all over but lead to five different bosses. There are adventures which give you experience each day, and they’re very varied.

You can call it grind if you want, but you’d be wrong for the standard definition of what grind meant.

If you kill spiders or farmed CoF to grind up your masteries, that’s grind. 100% choice, but it’s grind.

But Anet greated four big zones to play in, and you can play in any of them, doing any of the things in those zones,. including gathering and now raids, and get experience for doing stuff in those zones.

You can call it grinding. But I’m doing different stuff all the time, in different places, with different bosses, different AI, different skills.

And my masteries go up pretty fast, using boosters particularly.

Deathpunkin.5261:

>,..,>
Special events don’t really count.
I’m talking year round things.

Oh so a mini that comes once a year doesn’t count? Okay then. So we move the bar. And we move it again.

For a lot of casual players. Obsidian armor took ages to get. Some people never got it. It’s just one of those things.

There’s very few things in Guild Wars 2 than even a causal player couldn’t get in three years if they put their mind to it.

But there are exceptions like things no longer in the game.

But many casual players have gotten say legendary weapons in three years. Without knowing specific it’s hard to answer you.

Deathpunkin.5261:

Guildwars 1 minis were all through birthday, iirc.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Miniature_Polar_Bear

Deathpunkin.5261:

When something’s been available for 3 years..
and you’re STILL trying to get it…

That’s a bit ridiculous, no?

There were minis in Guild Wars 1 you could wait/grind for pretty much forever and not get.

Grinding is a choice and a mindset. I grind very very rarely because I choose to. You can also just play the game casually and not grind and not worry about getting stuff fast. It really is a choice.

It’s funny, you’re finding HoT frustrating but there are many people finding it fun. What’s frustrating about it to you?

Because some of us find HoT to be a lot of fun. In fact, HoT as more fun for me right now than the base game.

Well, let’s ask a couple of questions.

How many people by percentage are actually not going to spend money in the gem store. I ask this because it seems those gem store gliding wings are all over the place. Someone must be buying them.

The logic of your question is how many people are going to stop buying compared to how many new people will be buying who didn’t buy before?

See you can’t please everyone. No game developer can. So some decisions you make will disenfranchise certain people and others you make won’t. Two examples.

For years people have been complaining about too many particle effects making it impossible to see what’s going on. A lot of people for a very long time. Now you have a few people complaiing about nerfs to their visual effects. It seems to me that those people might stop spending money on gems, if they’re really disenfranchised but far more people were helped by this change than hurt.

Another example is the hard content. Some solo players (not all) and some casual players (not all) find the jungle too difficult and too confusing and some of those will stop buying gems, or even stop playing the game. But other people have been asking for harder content for a very long period of time. I’m pretty sure there are more of them than casual players who aren’t happy. At the end of the day, you’re making the erroneous assumption that the bulk of the playerbase is negatively affected by some of these decisions.

There are groups of people who have legit complaints and some of those will be handled in time, but the time thing can’t really be avoided. That is to say changing a program this complex, even a little, takes time.

At the end of the day, you’re right, Some people will stop buying gems.

Shrugs.

Gliding is by far my favorite thing added to the game since launch. I love gliding. I don’t love going back into core Tyria and forgetting I can’t glide and jumping off stuff, but I love gliding.

I love the Verdant Brink. I think it’s my favorite area in the game now. I particularly like night there. It’s a blast to play and level up the outposts and kill one of the bosses. It’s like the Silverwastes, but with more options.

I like flying around in the canopy and discovering stuff. I even like many of the minigames lag and all. I’m happy I can get away with silver on most of them, because living in Australia makes those minigames tough to get gold on.

We had a VB zone completion event in our guild yesterday. 20 people showed up for it, and we had a good time. We got about 80% of the zone done in one go. It took a bit longer than expected because herding cats and not everyone had stuff like Nuhoch Wallows unlocked so we needed more time and a couple of mesmers. But everyone had a good time.

enlightened.5396:

Vayne.8563:

enlightened.5396:

Really. Read a few more forum posts.

Lots of people saying the same thing doesn’t make a thing true. And if you took every single complaint about being ignored from this forum and compared it to the number of people who play the game, you’d find it’s an insignificant percentage, too small for anyone who knows anything about data to draw an definitive conclusion.

You believe something to be true, so you therefore find evidence for it to be true. That evidence doesn’t really exist.

Anet has talked about certain things and hasn’t talked about others.

Presumably they’ll talk about stuff when they’re ready to talk about stuff.

I’m not going to hold my breath. Anyone that can’t detect the rising sense of frustration that many players have with this game, it’s myriad of bugs and incidences of broken content and the failure of ANet to adequately engage with the players is delusional..

I read reddit and I read these forums. Many people on these forums are frustrated. Far less people on reddit are frustrated. Some are, but not all, and not as frustrated.

People don’t like change. And some change isn’t for the best. But many people that complained early on are starting to warm to HoT, even though it still has some problems and some people have left. There are more than enough people playing and enjoying the game for Anet to continue to function as a company.

My guild is far more active now than it was before HoT. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

So yes, if your guild was focused on dungeon running, you might be less active. If your guild was focused on fractals taht might be true too. And we all know WvW is in a bad place, including Anet.

However, a bunch of people asked for more challenging content and a bunch of people got that, and some of those people are happy with the changes to the game.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t frustrated people. But there were as many, perhap more frustrated people when ascended gear came out and I don’t think that hurt the game’s population long term.

Anet makes changes all the time and people say it’ll be the end of the game. The NPE was supposed to be the end of the game, but it wasn’t.

People who cry doom and gloom because they don’t like something make the erroneous assumption that they’re in some kind of majoirty.

It’s happened before and it’ll happen again. The game is fine. The game almost certainly has more players now than it did six months ago. And thinking it’s not so is delusional.

See how easy that is?

enlightened.5396:

Really. Read a few more forum posts.

Lots of people saying the same thing doesn’t make a thing true. And if you took every single complaint about being ignored from this forum and compared it to the number of people who play the game, you’d find it’s an insignificant percentage, too small for anyone who knows anything about data to draw an definitive conclusion.

You believe something to be true, so you therefore find evidence for it to be true. That evidence doesn’t really exist.

Anet has talked about certain things and hasn’t talked about others.

Presumably they’ll talk about stuff when they’re ready to talk about stuff.

Since devs post on their own time. they’re free to post wherever they feel most comfortable. Looking at reddit and looking at the official forums, if I were a dev, I’d feel more comfortable on reddit too.

I feel like I find less biased posts on reddit, and more analytical informative posts there.

Also because the community maintains reddit, banal, insulting or worthless posts are usually downvoted to oblivion, where as constructive criticism often gets a lot of upvotes.

So Reddit does their sorting for them.

If part of a dev’s official responsibility was posting to these forums, you might have a point OP. But it’s not. And in their own time, Anet employees can post anywhere they feel like it.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Hmm,

The definition listed in wikipedia matches what I find in GW2. Repetetive killing of AI controlled mobs in order to access content.

I’ve been grinding to get BiS for three years now (and am still not there). I’ve never played another game where, based on an average of one piece of BiS per year of play, I can expect it to take seven years to finally be outfitted (and be able to begin what I enjoy most in an MMO).

Actually no. What it meant was grinding mobs rather than events. Not just killing mobs in an event. Essentally if you ran out of quests in games you had to grind mobs. No event. No story. Just klling without anything to break it up. That was the difference.

If you have multiple events that are repeatable that all give experience, that you can switch off too, it would never have been considered grinding.

Having to repeat events is grinding by any definition.

Nope. It’s not. Having to repeat the same event is. But since there are dozens and dozens of events, and adventures, and now a raid, and killing and gathering, you’d be incorrect.

The difference between grinding spiders, and doing events spread across four zones is myriad.

Ashen.2907:

Hmm,

The definition listed in wikipedia matches what I find in GW2. Repetetive killing of AI controlled mobs in order to access content.

I’ve been grinding to get BiS for three years now (and am still not there). I’ve never played another game where, based on an average of one piece of BiS per year of play, I can expect it to take seven years to finally be outfitted (and be able to begin what I enjoy most in an MMO).

Actually no. What it meant was grinding mobs rather than events. Not just killing mobs in an event. Essentally if you ran out of quests in games you had to grind mobs. No event. No story. Just klling without anything to break it up. That was the difference.

If you have multiple events that are repeatable that all give experience, that you can switch off too, it would never have been considered grinding.

I’m enjoying it. There are some bugs, but the upside for me far outweights the downside. It has a lot of longer term goals for people who like that sort of thing and the content is much harder than core tyria, which is refreshing.

ChrizZcE.5981:

Ayrilana.1396:

And people would stop playing the game within a month due to lack of things to do.

If that were true everyone would´ve stopped playing vanilla GW2 two weeks after launch after they hit max lvl.

Actually that did happen for a whole bunch of people. Maybe you weren’t reading the forums back then, but there was an epidemic of posts about people leaving due to getting their max gear and having nothing to do. Not one or two posts. A few posts every day until ascended gear was introduced.

Both my sons stopped playing and came back to get ascended gear.

Yes, people need stuff to work on that they have to work on. No idea why.

Palador.2170:

Vayne.8563:

Grind to me, is defined as doing the same thing over and over to get a specific reward. Not a bunch of different stuff at different times with no reward in mind.

…………………….

Grinding has always had a definition in the past, which was killing mobs to level because there weren’t enough quests. That’s what it originally meant. It says so in Wikipedia even.

People keep shifting the bar with the definition of what grind is, but you know, its’ never once felt to me like I’m grinding because I’m PLAYING.

I want to take a small moment to address the points I’m quoting, if you don’t mind.

First of all, I took the time to look it up on Wikipedia. It says that is what it commonly meant, but not all. Here’s the link for those interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_

Now, that is indeed what it used to mean, back in the day. Back when that’s how the problem manifested, in those older games. But as games themselves change and improve, it’s only natural that the target of “what is a grind” should shift some as well. At least, I’d hope people’s views on games have changed over the years. If they haven’t, something is wrong.

I think a more general definition of “Grind” might be “An unenjoyable extended process engaged in strictly to advance towards a goal.” “Unenjoyable” is pretty subjective, however, so one person’s grind is another person’s enjoyable gameplay.

For someone that doesn’t like the personal story, but wants the rewards at the end, doing the personal story may be a grind. For someone new to the game that is only interested in raids, getting to level 80 may be a grind. For someone that loves playing with crafting systems in games, going out into the game world and clearing hearts to buy account bound materials and recipes may be a grind.

Grind is in the eye of the beholder. It’s in ANet’s best interests to keep the game from feeling grindy for as many people as possible, so long as it does not harm the game itself. Going by an outdated and set in stone definition of what “Grind” is would be a disservice to them and us as well.

Meaning and change in words isn’t always a good thing and in this sense, for this debate, it muddies the waters considerably.

The manifesto was made five years ago. The definition of long term players, people that have played since EQ lets say is dfferent from today.

So new guys come in and say there’s grind but odds are the devs have been playing games for longer. From their defintion, as they said it, there isn’t grind, because it’s optional.

They’ve now given us their definition and if we want to say there’s a different definition that’s fine. But quoting them when we now know that’s what they’re talking about is either disingenuous or uninformed.

The devs defined what they meant and by their definition there is very little grind in this game. By other defintions their might be, but now that they’ve defined it, it’s irrelevant to say my definition is different. Because they have defined it.

Devata.6589:

Vayne.8563:

Original post is original. And shows a lack of understanding. There’s very very little required grind in this game. There’s some of you want to do high level fractals, or raids, but that’s about it.

The grind is optional. I don’t grind, I have lots of stuff.

You do grind. Remember we had this discussion a year or so ago and talked about what you did. You told you did do a lot of things with guild-members. When asked what those things where, it turned out it where grindy things.

So you do grind, but define it as “doing things with guild-members.”

Btw, remember all our talk about grind and how I said it would be bad for the game, and that with an expansion people who they scared of before would come back and you would not want to have that grind with HoT because the release of HoT was very important.

Now HoT is here, and while Anet did try to make steps in the right direction (specific rewards for raids, precursor crafting, mats by mats) it also made steps in the wrong direction.

Now Lo And Behold.. many many threads of people complaining about the grind. I might have been right after all.

Of course you can say it’s optional (While I am pretty sure, the (type of) people calling it optional here now, back then considered what we now have with ascended gear and raids as required) but that does not matter to the people that feel the grind. Like I also said that.

But all those who say it’s optional are right. It is.. You can buy your way out most of it. And besides, the whole game is optional.

Anyway, as I said (over the last 2,5 years) people feel the grind (no matter if you feel it or not) and that is what matters. They are now (back) here and you don’t want to scare them away again.

Anet had a few more months to fix this if it does not want to scare those people away. Problem simply is that gold is still to important, for a big reason because of the gem-store.

I guess this is in a way my “Told you so” comment. Have said enough about it the last 2,5 year. Hope they finally manage to fix it.

Grind to me, is defined as doing the same thing over and over to get a specific reward. Not a bunch of different stuff at different times with no reward in mind.

Grind has an implication.

So I play the game.

Leveling in this game isn’t a grind, because I can do virtually anything and level.

Masteries would be slightly more of a grind, but I’m still just playing the entire game in those areas.

I can get lost playing some of the adventures for fun. I’m playing for fun. That’s not grinding. It’s playing for fun. Do I get experience for it, sure, I do.

I can get lost doing events in the new zones, or exploring looking for stuff. Is that grinding? No.

But I’m getting stuff done as I do it.

And of course, helping people is repeating content, but I’m not repeating specific content.

Grinding has always had a definition in the past, which was killing mobs to level because there weren’t enough quests. That’s what it originally meant. It says so in Wikipedia even.

People keep shifting the bar with the definition of what grind is, but you know, its’ never once felt to me like I’m grinding because I’m PLAYING.

I’m not doing what I did in AIon where I ran out of quests and the only way to level was to kill the same three bosses over and over again, because there was nothing else I could do. That was grinding.

If I wanted grind out masteries, I could, by killiing spiders over and over again, but that would be a choice and it’s not what I’m doing.

In fact, I did choose to grind out some of the Tyrian masteries, by doing events in Orr this time. I didn’t have to. I CHOSE to grind.

But if I didn’t, I’d have gotten there without actually doing anything different than I normally do. So if you want it NOW you have to grind.

On the other hand, I don’t want things now. In fact, now that I have gotten all my Tyrian masteries, I sorta of regret grinding, because now, I have no use for the experience at all, I preferred it when I was progressing.

I think the problem here is that there’s a noun grind and a verb grind.

Saying something is grindy doesn’t mean I grind it anyway. I take my time and get stuff eventually. Or you can choose to grind.

But it is a choice.

I don’t know what you think Anet should do. Lower the price of the game just for Canadians. I actually feel your pain, since I’m in Australia. and everything is more expansive here/too expensive here. But the value of the Canadian or the Australian dollar isn’t Anet’s fault and has nothing to do with Anet.

As for the $50 being too high for an expansion, I’m not 100% sure I agree. I mean games with subs might well charge $40 bucks for an expansion but you’re still paying $15 a month. And games that are pay to win can give away expansions for free, because people have to keep spending money to play them.

I paid a whole lot of money to play DDO and Lotro and Perfect world, even though they were free. Far more than kitten expansion. And that’s the problem. In a buy to play game, you have to buy it to play. But you don’t get the you must buy this to survive, you must engage in an optional sub to be competitive, or have to pay a sub.

A lot more goes into MMOs than most games. So they have to charge for that.

On the other than, it’s already on sale for less than $40 in some places and it’ll probably go down again soon.

I’m enjoying HoT quite a bit. Just unlocked Leyline Gliding, but haven’t gotten a chance to use it yet.

I think VB is my favorite zone, because I enjoy defending outpost at night. Those are my kind of events. I enjoyed the story, but the last mission is far too buggy for my taste, and I dislike the whole “penalty box” concept, which I find unnecessarily punishing. Some of the adventures are hard to do in Australia due to unusually high ping as well.

But that said, I’m still enjoying the hell out of the zones. I’ve been working on a legendary collection (Kudzu) which I’m enjoying. Love the last tier of the Pact Commander mastery so I don’t have to spam F to pick up stuff…wish it worked in WvW.

Enjoying the Guild Hall, we’re just about up to getting Tavern too, just waiting on aetherium.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

kuritsutian.2987:

Grind is optional

I never understood this response yet I hear it all the time.

Yes of course the grind is optional. This is a video game, the whole thing is optional. How is this relevant to the discussion?

The grind is optional in ALL MMO’s. You never have to grind if you don’t want to. But compared to the optional grind in other MMO’s GW2 has much more grind for a similar level of achievement.

At least based on my personal experience with SWG, SWTOR, WoW, Rift, LOTRO, WildStar and GW2.

It’s relevant to the discussion because it’s not like grind in other MMOs. Now, I played Rift and if I wanted to do dungeons at all, I couldn’t do them in the equivalent of greens and rares. Once you got to max level, you needed certain special stats which you could only get from doing dungeons and hoping to get them as random drops. That was the only path available. If you didn’t get the drop, or if the piece dropped and someone rolled higher than you, you were pretty much screwed. You had to run that exact same content again.

The dungeons and even fractals until you get to the top top levels aren’t cut off from me for not grinding. I can do fractals casually in whatever I’m wearing. I can do dungeons casually in whatever I’m wearing.

Sure I can grind out a set of ascended gear. But I don’t have to. I can just casually go about my business, doing other stuff, and I’ll eventually have a set of ascended gear. What I don’t have to do is run the same dungeon over and over again for a chance of getting the gear I need to PROGRESS IN THE GAME.

That’s the key difference between Guild Wars 2 and most MMOs. If I don’t have BIS gear, I’m not very limited at all.

Original post is original. And shows a lack of understanding. There’s very very little required grind in this game. There’s some of you want to do high level fractals, or raids, but that’s about it.

The grind is optional. I don’t grind, I have lots of stuff.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Tenrai Senshi.2017:

3: Gating exclusive rewards behind challenging content further alienates your playerbase

This is another worry I have with Raids, and that is that exclusive rewards like legendary armor will be unattainable by a vast majority of players because of the difficulty of Raids and the inconvenience of forming Raid groups.

Unlike legendary weapons, which can be acquired regardless of what game modes you play, legendary armor will seemingly be a Raid only affair. Not only do I feel this is unfair for players who might not enjoy Raids, but I also believe it hurts the “play how you want” policy that ANet has been punting for years and yet have somehow completely ignored as they’ve further developed the game.

Before I respond, I’d like to point out that I haven’t beaten the Raids yet.

Now then, gating exclusive content behind challenging content is perfectly fine. Legendary armor was meant to be hard to get. Meaning, a vast majority of the player population will never get it, and that’s working as intended. That’s not to speak negative on the skill levels of an individual, but rather how hard the challenge ahead is.

As for your little dig at “play how you want”, Raids don’t prevent you from playing the game. You can play Raids any way you like. Doesn’t mean you’ll be successful. If you want the exclusive rewards at the end of a successful Raid, you need to earn it.

Finally, don’t count out Anet just yet. I’m sure there’ll be more challenging solo content in the future. Liadri was a good challenge when the Queen’s Gauntlet is around. I’m hopeful there’ll be more like that.

Yet it’s hard to deny that the casual player base of the game feels marginalized by HoT in general and raids in specific.

Once you start feeling the game isn’t for you anymore, you start thinking about whether you should keep playing. After all, they made an entire expansion for people who basically enjoy harder content.

And yes, we’ve heard from a number of people who feel the game has changed and it’s no longer for them.

If you think Anet can ignore those people with impunity, I’m willing to wager that they make up a significant portion fo the player base.

I said this would happen before raids released and I’m not thinking I underestimated the effect on the game’s casual population, even if some people deal with it.

morrolan.9608:

Sicarius.4639:

morrolan.9608:

Broom.2561:

PyrateSilly.4710:

This has been answered so many times as it is now ridiculous to even think about bringing up something that was just a “this is what we would like” and as things change and grow things get cut and added.
As for the grinding …… I have been playing since head-start/beta and I have yet to grind. Not once have I grinded and I have played just about every day. I am not only doing the old Bolt but also every other new legendary weapon in the game at the moment. I am collecting as I go and not worrying about how fast I get them done. For me it is not a contest to see how fast I get them done. I am just letting the pieces come when they come. Having too much fun just playing to think about “oh crap I don’t have this legendary yet”

You may remember that just before release, the company making GW2 was taken over by another one, who had a bit of a reputation for being cash hungry. They made all kinds of assurances that they would stick to the original vision of the developers, but pretty much the first thing they did at launch was to start break promises.

Let’s just say I don’t think the original vision for this game is being adhered to anymore.

NCSoft bought Arenanet long before GW2 was released, I think when GW1 was in its prime. And Nexon never took over NCSoft just bought a stake in it which they sold a few months ago.

See this is what I thought, oh well easier to blame scary old NCSoft then lay any blame with actual developers.

Yep I think the change came with the 2 founders leaving and Mike O’Brien being left in charge.

I dont’ know, one of those developers went to Tera, and the other opened a studio making a Zombie MMO, neither of which is considered to be particularly runaway successful. It’s easy to say stuff like this, but it’s harder to acknowledge the real issue.

Too many different groups compete for what you want in an MMO. If you target a niche, you end up with a niche. If you target everyone, most of the harder core groups aren’t satisfied.

My guess is the people who are most satifised in this game are people who are more tolerant of deviation from what they require.

If all you play is WvW, this game is horrible right now, but it’s not horrible for me to occassionally jump into WvW. If all you play is PvP and that’s all you do, of course the flaws will stick out.

If you’re a hard core PvE player that knows every exploit of every dungeon and fractal and you only run that kind of content, of course the fractal rewards suck.

But if you’re like me and you play a bit of everything, ,and you’re not casual enough to worry about how hard HoT is and you play with people because you’re social, you’re going to have more fun, because it’s easier to shift about to fun content.

I’m not worried about WvW that much, because I can wait till they fix it. I’m not playing in a PvP tournament so the balance is less of an issue for me (and no game is balanced anyway). I’m not worried about dungeons and fractal rewards, because I’m not only running them and I still run the ocassional dungeon or more frequently fractal. The rewards aren’t that important to me, because I don’t plan on living in fractals.

The reason that the game has some many complains is because the fan base has so many requirements. If Anet released HoT with the same difficulty level as core tyria, and made it so you could solo,. we wouldn’t hear solo people and casuals complaining at all. They’d be playing the game they loved.

If they didn’t nerf dungeons the dungeon crowd wouldnt’ be complaining. They knew that would happen and did it anyway, for what they consider the good of the game. I’m sure many people are ticked off about it, but I doubt it’s 30% of the game’s population. But you’ll hear about it from the 5-10% (guessing here) that are absolutely affected.

This game isn’t in the current situation because a couple of guys left years ago, since so many people liked the core game anyway. It’s in this situation because so many small groups are so demanding and pleasing one absolutely means disappointing another in so many instances.

If Anet had simply not nerfed dugneon rewards and they gave small guilds a smaller guild hall, we’d hear less complaints.

But if they nerfed HoT, we’d here a lot of complaints. It would just be different people complaining.

Try using a site like gw2timer.com to tell you when things are happening. It’ll make your life a whole lot better.

Trying not soloing everything and joining a guild. Joining the right guild can make this game a much much better game.

morrolan.9608:

Broom.2561:

PyrateSilly.4710:

This has been answered so many times as it is now ridiculous to even think about bringing up something that was just a “this is what we would like” and as things change and grow things get cut and added.
As for the grinding …… I have been playing since head-start/beta and I have yet to grind. Not once have I grinded and I have played just about every day. I am not only doing the old Bolt but also every other new legendary weapon in the game at the moment. I am collecting as I go and not worrying about how fast I get them done. For me it is not a contest to see how fast I get them done. I am just letting the pieces come when they come. Having too much fun just playing to think about “oh crap I don’t have this legendary yet”

You may remember that just before release, the company making GW2 was taken over by another one, who had a bit of a reputation for being cash hungry. They made all kinds of assurances that they would stick to the original vision of the developers, but pretty much the first thing they did at launch was to start break promises.

Let’s just say I don’t think the original vision for this game is being adhered to anymore.

NCSoft bought Arenanet long before GW2 was released, I think when GW1 was in its prime. And Nexon never took over NCSoft just bought a stake in it which they sold a few months ago.

NcSoft owned Anet before the first Guild Wars 1 was released, long before it was in its prime. By the way, some would argue its in its prime now, at the height of its playerbase.

Labjax.2465:

People keep coming back to the manifesto because it was such a show of “we’re doing things differently” and a lot of people believed them. They had no reason not to believe them, either – in the beginning (to my knowledge anyway) they stayed pretty true to that manifesto.

Over time, they only seem to be drifting further away from it. I kinda feel bad for them because they have to eat their words now and the manifesto is going to follow them until this game is dead and buried, and probably long after. The manifesto they wanted didn’t get them the monetary success they wanted, so it keeps evolving. I’m pretty sure it’s as simple as that.

Nah they’re still doing lots of things differently. I don’t remember a whole lot of expansions that came out without a new tier of gear and without raising the level cap. I mean if you wanted the absolute best gear in most games you had to run dungeons and raids.

This game continues to be different. It’s just not different in the way people specifically want it to be.

thisisit.6954:

Better still, why don’t you learn to program, then you take a “couple of hours” and do it for them?

Yeah the couple of hours thing made me laugh.

Needing an event to fail is bad design. I’d have expected this particular lesson to be something Anet had already learned. I can only assume different developers worked on the legendary collections than those that worked on the told trait system, because it had the same issues.

Mr Vivi Ornitier.4271:

Vayne.8563:

Devs have communicated about Fractals and they said they’re working on WvW. They’ve alluded to balance patches for PvP as well.

Hysterical post is hysterical. The game doesn’t need saving. It needs more patient players. The only people who really are in the dark right now are the WvW players, but they are aware Anet is working on a fix.

Fracs
as you can see above i acknowledged the fact they have a fractals patch coming i just pointed out that every patch up to now has slowly made fractals worse not better

WVW
the only post i have seen about any sort of work for wvw was a very very vague comment that a dev posted on a engineer fixs reddit post and it was on the lines of “we are doing something”

PVP
has needed a balance pass for a very long time and with all the massive changes to the balance and system they should have planned massive balances passes before ESL and before the returning of ranked it just shows poor management that they didnt

and its not hysteria when you know it will be at least early to mid next year to get the coding done for these big changes especially if these things where only thought of after HOT release and by that point alot of people will be long gone

Colin stated they were aware of the problems with WvW and they are working on a solution but it was too big a problem to tackle before the expansion launch. This indicates to me that major changes will be taking place.

We have no idea what those changes are, but that was definitely said. I’m sure someone will come along and link a quote at some point.

GreyWolf.8670:

They are following the same path that led Blizzard to lose over 50% of their subscribers in less than a year to a tee.

Thankfully I’ve only wasted $50 on this game. Was fun until HoT launch day. It’s a shame that ANet doesn’t seem to want to address anything other than complaints that have to do with raiding. (e.g.: I must have my elites now! Nerf the HP requirements.)

Actually they haven’t followed the same path at all. The games aren’t really comparable. One is a subscription game, one is not and that changes a lot. Because there’s no barrier to entry to return to Guild Wars 2.

However, Guild Wars 2 also went free to play for the core game which WoW did not. These situations aren’t really comparable at all.

The only thing that is comparable is that some customers aren’t satisfied. However, I’m relatively sure for every person who stops playing another is having a great time. It’s either someone coming back or someone converting the free to play account to HoT.

We’ll know for sure in six months if the situation is as dire as some paint it. It won’t be the first time people said the game is killing itself and it won’t be the last.

It hasn’t been true yet however.

Azure Prower.8701:

Vayne.8563:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

My intepretation is the best interpretation given the word you used period. Feel free to disagree, but I will not say that my professional opinion on this subject, and it is a professional opinion, is less than yours.

It might not be what you meant. It was absolutely what you implied. If it wasn’t you’ve chosen your words poorly.

Well, I show you the facts, you with your superior interpretation skills make something up – a product of your fantasy.

I will stay with the facts. You do not.

With your constant attacks on any feedback you do not like and your forced interpretation on stuff, it feels like you are purposefully derailing this thread by trolling other people’s posts.

Please stop.

Look it’s really simple. If your point was some people like it and some people don’t, you wouldn’t have brought up white knights at all. You had no reason to. The only reason anyone would bring it up, conceivably, is to show that somehow the people who like this will like anything.

If you were just trying to say I don’t like it, why bring up white knights at all. What do they have to do with your point? How do they strengthen your point.

Someone said they like the game and you brought up that white knights will like anything as a response.

If there’s a another honest way to interpret that, I can’t see it.

I see you’re going over board in this thread to defend the game. If you’re not on Arena Net’s payroll. You should. Or else you’ve been getting ripped off.

I haven’t defended the game once in this thread. I haven’t even talked about this game. I have talked about an attack on white knights, or people implying you have to be one to enjoy the game, though. That’s not the same.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

My intepretation is the best interpretation given the word you used period. Feel free to disagree, but I will not say that my professional opinion on this subject, and it is a professional opinion, is less than yours.

It might not be what you meant. It was absolutely what you implied. If it wasn’t you’ve chosen your words poorly.

Well, I show you the facts, you with your superior interpretation skills make something up – a product of your fantasy.

I will stay with the facts. You do not.

With your constant attacks on any feedback you do not like and your forced interpretation on stuff, it feels like you are purposefully derailing this thread by trolling other people’s posts.

Please stop.

Look it’s really simple. If your point was some people like it and some people don’t, you wouldn’t have brought up white knights at all. You had no reason to. The only reason anyone would bring it up, conceivably, is to show that somehow the people who like this will like anything.

If you were just trying to say I don’t like it, why bring up white knights at all. What do they have to do with your point? How do they strengthen your point.

Someone said they like the game and you brought up that white knights will like anything as a response.

If there’s a another honest way to interpret that, I can’t see it.

Ping from Australia is bad too. I’m down in Tasmania. Not as bad as yours, but 400 plus sometimes.

Devs have communicated about Fractals and they said they’re working on WvW. They’ve alluded to balance patches for PvP as well.

Hysterical post is hysterical. The game doesn’t need saving. It needs more patient players. The only people who really are in the dark right now are the WvW players, but they are aware Anet is working on a fix.

The thing is people get themselves into a state. They can pop on a do a bit. It’s entirely their choice to do this. But there’s another difference between games of yore and games today. We had a lot less stuff vying for our entertainment hours.

In the old days, we played a game for a long time before anything reasonably decent came out. We didn’t have entire TV series we could watch at one time, or at least, nothing like the access to them we have now.

At this very moment, we have more and more stuff to do in our copious free time. So people feel pressure, but really, you can go and get one thing done if you want. You can’t do everything in HoT on your personal schedule, but there’s definitely stuff to do.

Like you don’t have to do an entire meta event it level masteries. I didn’t. I didn’t have any trouble walking into the HoT zones, and just doing a few events, even when there weren’t tons of people around. People want to get to that story now. Or that skill point. This content was meant to last…people want to consume it.

Plenty can be accomplished in HoT in short bursts as long as people readjust their thinking.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

What now? This is your quote…

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.”

So the implication…hell you’re just about saying it, is that this game is only liked by white knights who will defend Anet over everything.

Nope.

What he said is that some individuals (which he calls white knights) would love, “it.” Not that only white knights like the game, etc.

He did, after all, state that he likes the game (at least aspects of it).

Really? lol

This is the entirety of his FIRST post in this thread:

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.
For each their own.”

This is what I responded to. AFTERWARDS he said he likes the game. Do you get that from this post? Because I sure don’t.

Anyone who denies the implications of this post is not paying attention.

1) I was responding to the post that quoted his, not your previous post.

2) Saying that person X will love something does not mean that only person X could love it.

My sister is planning a trip to Disneyland. My nieces will really love it.

This does not translate into, “only my nieces love Disneyland.”

You can defend him all you want. But English isn’t just my first language, it’s my profession. When someone says White Knights will enjoy it, white knights be used as a derogatory term, since he’s basically saying they’ll like ANYTHING there’s another implication here. You just want to argue with me.

If you said my nieces are going to Disneyworld and I said, oh a lot of morons enjoy that, you’d naturally take offense.

There really is no other way to interpret this, unless you think White Knights is being used as a matter of fact thing, or being used lovingly. It’s not. He’s denigrading white knights by saying theyd’ like anything Anet does.

Well I’m a white knight and there are things ANet has done I didn’t like and I’ve said so. But yeah, the English here is pretty clear.

Seriously?

English is not my first language, and it is not my profession. Still I know what I wrote, and I will point out that your interpretation of what is written is just your interpretation, no matter how “good” you are with your mother tongue.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Probably still in the honeymoon phase.

After playing a bit more and realizing how little there actually is, you might feel different.

Sorry.

This is an answer to: “Even having only scratched the surface yet”

This shows that the OP has very limited experience with the expansion, he is probably still in the honeymoon phase. See, there is a probably in my answer, because it is an educated guess.

Furthermore I am pointing out the possibility that his love for HoT may change, I don’t state this as a fact. “You might feel different.” and not “You will feel different.”

Kaiyanwan.8521:

That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.

For each their own.

All I say is that some people will defend ANet no matter what. I do not specify these people but label them as white knights, as they are commonly refered to this in MMOs.

I didn’t label you there as white knight Vayne. In fact, the only person in this whole thread calling you a white knight is you:

Vayne.8563:

Well I’m a white knight and there are things ANet has done I didn’t like and I’ve said so. But yeah, the English here is pretty clear.

But this is your interpretation of a white knight not mine. You are actively victimizing yourself in this context to support your point. But again, I did not call you a white knight in my post.

Look I love GW2 and play HoT. I just think we got very little content for the amount of money we paid. Which is disappointing.

So your interpretation of what I said:

Vayne.8563:

So the implication…hell you’re just about saying it, is that this game is only liked by white knights who will defend Anet over everything.

makes no sense at all.

Stop using your “knowledge” of the English language to make things up that do not exist.

My intepretation is the best interpretation given the word you used period. Feel free to disagree, but I will not say that my professional opinion on this subject, and it is a professional opinion, is less than yours.

It might not be what you meant. It was absolutely what you implied. If it wasn’t you’ve chosen your words poorly.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Vayne.8563:

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Vayne.8563:

They’re not ignoring anyone.

cough visual nerfs [merged] cough

They talked to us about visual nerfs. It was in the patch notes. In fact, they nerfed the visuals specifically due to long term complaints about noise in battles and not being able to see what’s going on.

The visual nerf complaints is a tiny minority of posts compared to the noise posts.

The visual nerf thread is now longer than other threads where anet have responded and it’s still growing when just a little communication from anet could soothe the savage beast. Curious, don’t you think?

I think it’s curious that you haven’t bothered to add up the dozens if not hundreds of threads over the years complaining about not being able to see. It’s been a major concern for a long long time.

And how many of the pages in that visual nerf thread are people arguing for it?

Join a casual guild. My guild doesn’t exclude people due to build or profession or anything else. Everyone has the freedom to play how they want, which includes being elitist. But then, I don’t enjoy playing with elitists, so I’m happy not to.

zenleto.6179:

I tried TT for the very first time only this week and it was one EVOS were running. The commander running the head I ended up doing (wasn’t going to do the event at all; mapping at level) was very clear with instructions and I’m going to assume the others were as well because the whole thing went off very smoothly. It seemed, anyway.

I know you said they run when you can’t get on OP but for anyone else that guild is well worth looking out for. I have almost zero time for PvE commanders but these guys were good.

I belong to Evos. It’s an awesome guild.

qbalrog.8017:

Anet did suggest/hint before HoT launch that guilds would matter a lot more, so need to give them credit for that. That said, it is a lot less solo friendly.

Me, I vote with my feet. ATM I don’t even login for dailies There are many other games out there, including some 8 year old games that are more fun than GW2 is atm. Maybe they will fix it, maybe they won’t. I will certainly check in gain if they promise some solo-friendly changes but otherwise I will go elsewhere, as will may fairly game-company friendly credit card. They are a for-profit company. They know how much I spend. They can bring me back or not, as they see fit.

Happy about HoT? No, absolutely not. Sad about losing a game I used to enjoy? Yes.

For everyone person who votes with their feet, another will come back to the game for the new challenging content. However the content really isn’t as hard as most people make it out to be.

I offered in another thread to help show people how to get through the new content solo. Not one single person took me up on it.

I guess people would rather complain.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

What now? This is your quote…

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.”

So the implication…hell you’re just about saying it, is that this game is only liked by white knights who will defend Anet over everything.

Nope.

What he said is that some individuals (which he calls white knights) would love, “it.” Not that only white knights like the game, etc.

He did, after all, state that he likes the game (at least aspects of it).

Really? lol

This is the entirety of his FIRST post in this thread:

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.
For each their own.”

This is what I responded to. AFTERWARDS he said he likes the game. Do you get that from this post? Because I sure don’t.

Anyone who denies the implications of this post is not paying attention.

1) I was responding to the post that quoted his, not your previous post.

2) Saying that person X will love something does not mean that only person X could love it.

My sister is planning a trip to Disneyland. My nieces will really love it.

This does not translate into, “only my nieces love Disneyland.”

You can defend him all you want. But English isn’t just my first language, it’s my profession. When someone says White Knights will enjoy it, white knights be used as a derogatory term, since he’s basically saying they’ll like ANYTHING there’s another implication here. You just want to argue with me.

If you said my nieces are going to Disneyworld and I said, oh a lot of morons enjoy that, you’d naturally take offense.

There really is no other way to interpret this, unless you think White Knights is being used as a matter of fact thing, or being used lovingly. It’s not. He’s denigrading white knights by saying theyd’ like anything Anet does.

Well I’m a white knight and there are things ANet has done I didn’t like and I’ve said so. But yeah, the English here is pretty clear.

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

What now? This is your quote…

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.”

So the implication…hell you’re just about saying it, is that this game is only liked by white knights who will defend Anet over everything.

Nope.

What he said is that some individuals (which he calls white knights) would love, “it.” Not that only white knights like the game, etc.

He did, after all, state that he likes the game (at least aspects of it).

Really? lol

This is the entirety of his FIRST post in this thread:

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.
For each their own.”

This is what I responded to. AFTERWARDS he said he likes the game. Do you get that from this post? Because I sure don’t.

Anyone who denies the implications of this post is not paying attention.

Zoltar MacRoth.7146:

Vayne.8563:

They’re not ignoring anyone.

cough visual nerfs [merged] cough

They talked to us about visual nerfs. It was in the patch notes. In fact, they nerfed the visuals specifically due to long term complaints about noise in battles and not being able to see what’s going on.

The visual nerf complaints is a tiny minority of posts compared to the noise posts.

YaYa.5879:

What i am complaining about is a lack of them speaking to us. Informing us.
Giving us milk and telling us it’s going to be ok while singing to us a lulabby.
I am on mac, there is no 64 bit for us, and yet i paid for the game (so are the people crashing on 64). The crashes have lowered down a lot. But not in ds which is frustrating as hell after taxiing people for 15 min, and playing for 45 min, just to have your game crash and not being able to come back to your server who is now ful

Oh you’re on a mac, that explains everything.

Anet is talking to us, they’re just not talking to you specifically.

Did Anet address the complaints about elites specialization points needed? Yes.
DId Anet address the complaints about hero point difficult? Yes, they made changes.
Did Anet address the complaint about the poison gating in the HoT story? Yes.
Did they address the complaints about Fractal rewards? Yes.
Did they tell the WvW they’re still working on a solution but it’s coming? Yes.
Did they tell us more balance patches are coming and gave us a road map for the rest of the year? Yes.
Did they give us a 64 bit client for window’s users? Yes.

In fact, they’ve been communicating with us all along. They didn’t answer your particularly concern. Well you know, there are thousands of people with concerns. You’re just one of them. Anet answered a huge amount of stuff.

They’re not ignoring anyone.

OP, they aren’t silent, they gave us a 64 bit client beta, which shows us they’re working on the crashing problem.

Re the economy, they told us before HoT launched that the economy would be unstable for a period of time and then settle down. So the two things you’ve comment on, they’ve acted/commented on.

Price of T6 mats, for example is down almost across the board. People see what they want to see.

Pandaman.4758:

warbignime.4610:

If you crash at DS just use 64 bit client.

Sadly the 64 bit client doesn’t help everyone as people are still reporting crashes when they use it. It’s a memory usage problem, all the 64 bit client does is delay crashing by giving the game access to more memory to flounder in, so it’s more a band-aid than an actual solution.

It’s a solution if you don’t crash. I haven’t had a crash since using the 64 bit client. Not one.

BadBoyz.4153:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.

That’s the problem, Anet actually thinks everything is ok because these small group are here constantly defending them. Meanwhile the majority of players hate it and Anet is oblivious to it. Not even a “guys we kittened up” and try to fix it…Anet is so blind sometimes.

Back it up. How do you know a majority hate it? There’s zero evidence for this. A majority of people probably don’t like some facet of it, but I seriously doubt a majority of people hate it. And I don’t think a minority of people are defending it.

But logically, if you look at the forums, the first page is always constantly full of negative posts. So how does a minority of people defend them to the point where they don’t notice this.

Maybe, just maybe, you don’t have the majority you think you do.

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Vayne.8563:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Probably still in the honeymoon phase.

After playing a bit more and realizing how little there actually is, you might feel different.

Sorry.

And they might not, sorry.

Saying someone might eventually feel something because you feel it is a pointless exercise. I’m pretty sure I won’t feel it.

That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.

For each their own.

This is offensive. You’re implying that the game can’t be liked, because you don’t personally like it. But I’m not the only person who likes it. The OP clearly likes it. I have many people, not a few, but many in my guild who like it quite a bit.

So trying to play it off that no one could possibly like it except for a white knight is essentially putting your opinion above theirs.

I respect the fact that you’re not enjoying it. But that doesn’t mean that people who aren’t enjoying it are white knights, or that their opinion is worth any less.

Sorry, my statement was a generalization. You might have missed that.

I actually enjoy/ed various aspects of HoT. All I say is that there is not very much content in this expansion, and when you have done what is to be done, the maps feel terribly event starving and empty.

VB is the best map, you will find action all over the place at any time. But they are on rails and not dynamic at all, which makes them fairly stale after some time.
AB is OK, fair amount of events, but the map feels limited, kitten much of it is simply the central city.
TD is a riddle to me. I was heavily exploring the maps four layers and came to the conclusion, that 80% of the map is just empty space. Either ANet plans something for this map in the future or this is a giant waste of dev time and money.
DS is not a map, it is a single big event, more like a dungeon. The exploring is severely limited and in the end there is not much there in the first place, as the map is fairly small.

After that, you can raid, or grind your achievement/collections/masteries. Raids and daily grind is the answer for GW2 future? WoW.

I paid $35 for a boxed version of the expansion (well actually $70 as I bought two copies).

It was the worst content to price ratio in an MMO for years. God forbid, people actually paid $50 for three maps, a medium size instance for 150 people and three raid bosses.

One can argue that elite speccs are content too, and they are. But from my personal experience, most expansion ship with new skills and talents for existing classes and at least one new class, this is just standard MMO treatment.

Maybe I was expecting too much. Not just the stuff that all other MMOs put on the table. Now we got exactly that, just less of it. Meh.

And don’t even start, that we might get more stuff in the future. Who cares if people leave now. That argument is just a carrot on a stick and I have seen other MMOs offer more content in patches than what we got with LS2.

So what now?

What now? This is your quote…

“That’s OK. For some white knights ANet could sell an expansion with absolutely nothing in it for $100 and they would still defend an love it.”

So the implication…hell you’re just about saying it, is that this game is only liked by white knights who will defend Anet over everything.

There’s nothing wrong with stating your opinion. There is something very wrong with implying that you have to be a white knight to like this game. They are very different statements.

Your later post was better than your first post because it had some context. What you wrote here is simply inflammatory, no matter whether it was a general comment or a specific one. You’re dimissing the opinions of people who like the game.

I don’t agree with quite a few of your opinions but you’re entitled to them. I resist the temptation to label people haters or black knights or anything else, because they ARE entitled to their opinions.

It saddens me that so many people are more interested in attacking people that enjoy the game (even if it’s an oblique attack) rather than just stating their own opinion as an opinion.

Gold is something I consider a necessary evil in this game. It funds the game. There’s no sub fee, but some people buy gems to trade for gold. Enough people so that Anet doesn’t have to charge a sub fee. It’s the business plan. You either find away around it or you don’t…because I don’t see it changing.

Celtic Lady.3729:

Vayne.8563:

Celtic Lady.3729:

Tiger Ashante.1792:

- Modrem Mouth boss event is awesome, but the mechanics of that map is shocking. As if what i’ve already said wasn’t bad enough, to have all the waypoints contested at all times, makes the navigation even more horrible. But wait, there’s more. Every 2 hours (if you’re lucky to get in there at the reset of the map) you’re unceremoniously killed off and sent right back to the beginning of the map. I’ve lost count how often it took me those 2 hours just to get to the bottom of the map and b4 i could get to that HP, or vista i’ve been trying to get for days, only to be killed off and sent back to the beginning. I’ve never seen anything so ludicrous in my life. I eventually got into a habit of just logging out prior to being killed off and when i return, i’m usually in an empty map, at which point i quit the game in frustration.

DS can get really frustrating. I’m trying to get map complete on my 2nd character, but I’ve hit a snag on getting into maps where the event succeeds. It’s annoying if you spend significant time waiting for/checking LFG/map hopping to get into a populated enough map AND one with enough time on the clock to complete it, and then it fails, and you have to start the process all over again.

I’m a bit confused. Why do you need the event to succeed on DS to get map complete?

If you know how to get the vista, 2 POIs, and the HC on the other side of Dragon’s Domain without actually having done the fight, then I’m all ears.

Also, if you know how to get into the Blighting Towers areas so I can get those POIs and HCs without doing any of the events, again, I’m all ears.

I also have 3 other HCs I can’t (any way that I know of) complete unless the meta is done successfully.

I was asking because I havent’ done it yet. I tend to work through content more slowly than most. I’m in no hurry to go to the last zone until I’ve explored the next to last. Only really did the last zone’s meta today for the first time.