Guild Wars 2

Take a break is the real answer. It’s what most groups end up doing in most games. I’ve seen it time and time again in other MMOs.

My guild is strong, because we enjoy helping new players and there are plenty of those around.

I assume you’re commenting on open world bosses, rather than say dungeon and fractal bosses, which do have more variety.

Also the bosses you seem to like the best are ones that were added to the game later…Vine Wrath, Triple Trouble etc.

There’s been an evolution of bosses in this game, and there’s no reason to believe that that evolution won’t continue.

Palador.2170:

The price is high, yes, but the system is changing soon.

I suspect that ANet will quickly begin to see problems with the new system, and eventually put back in some way to buy influence/favor. As it was said, it’s an aid for the smaller guilds, but the bigger guilds don’t need it. OR, they may put in a way to “sub-rep” for a second or more guilds, so that you can slowly build favor for more than one at a time. Maybe not as fast as for the primary guild, but still make progress.

Okay I really like hte sub-rep idea. That would be awesome.

I get plenty of spirit shards from champ bags, plus 3 for doing my daily.

yakuza snowdragon.4639:

Vayne.8563:

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

Healix.5819:

If you think scrolls are bad, just wait until HoT. Guild missions only. Let’s hope they actually scale now. Considering ArenaNet basically told smaller guilds to PuG for guild halls however, I’ll assume small guilds are dead.

Vayne.8563:

And yes, I know in lore, Destiny’s Edge was five people, but in reality, the Guild Wars, for which the series of named, was about large guilds, who went to war.

The guilds banded together and went to war. Every guild doesn’t have to be large, nor do they even have to be combat guilds. Traders, banks and cooks for example were some of them.

A guild can be anything, from a few elites to a mass of casuals. Sure, you can say one isn’t a valid guild, but it’s not right. A guild is nothing more than a house. It doesn’t matter how many people live in it, it’s still a home.

Terrible example. First of all, the guild of traders probably didn’t go to war. The guilds that went to war were probably adventurers. And in fact, guilds in Guild Wars 1 seemed to imply guilds of adventurers. Keep in mind there were no crafting professions in Guild Wars 1, where this lore comes from. At all.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fraternal_Order_of_Bakers_and_Brewers

Players couldn’t learn crafting professions, but they were there.

Sure they were there but then there was this:

“Because the guilds fostered communication as well as economic prosperity, they transcended borders. For instance, a guild that held sway in Kryta might also have chapters in Orr and Ascalon. They also began to dominate the political arena. A king or council might make a law, but it was the military guilds that were responsible for enforcing the proclamation. In essence, guilds began to hold the real power of human society.”

The military guilds were the ones with the power. They were enforcing the proclamations of various royalty. Not the baker’s guild. The big guilds were responsible for the guild wars. Aside from that, I doubt the baker’s guild only had five members anyway. That would be a pretty small guild of bakers. lol

Your arguments are often filled with probability and assumptions and you try to put them across as fact which is wrong. Guilds wars 1 was based around guilds and alliances. 1 guild of 10-30 people didn’t start a war no but 12 guilds based around 10-30 each may have. Sure you may have 25k AP and been glued to the game since launch but unlike some of us who got bored after 12 months due to lack of real content updates but nomatter what your opinion, it is nothing more then that, an opinion. if you have facts quote them otherwise please restrain from assuming facts on every post someone puts up. thanks

I’m sorry do most people post facts instead of opinions? Is this a forum for discussion, or is it just supposed to be facts. We should probably remove every opinion from these forums and just leave the facts. Would that be better for you?

Yes, in my opinion, there is nothing to stop a group of friends from joining a larger guild and still remaining a group of friend. That is my opinion.

I know this because I’m in a guild with a group of real life friends. Of course, when my real life friends aren’t on, I can then go and hang out with someone else if I so choose. But I still get the benefits of being in a guild.

In my opinion, if Anet is going to gear everything so every single person guild can do stuff, it’ll take away from what large guilds can do. There needs to be some sort of balance, or there’s no real point in having a guild at all. The idea that a two person guild can do everything as fast as a larger guild seems a bit odd to me.

I’m not sure why you think my achievement points are relevant. I think you should probably stay on topic, instead of talking about me. It’s already closed one thread today.

Test.8734:

Vayne.8563:

This is the most flawed logic I’ve seen in a long time. It can be applied to anything. The playerbase is a collection of individuals and some individuals think the game is too hard, so we should make the game easier.

Vayne, Vayne. That kind of empty hyperbole is below you.

Releasing information is not a matter of “if I do this I will please a group and annoy the other”, unlike what making the game harder or easier would be. In fact, releasing information instead of not saying anything – like ArenaNet is doing right now – is simply better for everyone in the community.

And of course Weirwynn’s point is correct. The community is a collection of individuals, so ArenaNet has to release information about different aspects of the game in order to keep players with different interests hyped about HoT.

Or are you saying that ArenaNet should only talk about PvP, and ignore the PvE players? Because that’s pretty much what your point boils down to – that it would be ok for ArenaNet to focus exclusively on one aspect of the player community, and ignore all the others.

I’m saying that he’s saying that individual points of view are more important than majority point of view. But he’s ignored my other questions.

What evidence is there that if all the information was given right now, at this second, that there wouldn’t be less people playing the game during this time of less content coming out?

What will people think and how will they react when all the information is given and we still have to wait months for the game?

And of course the big question.

What percentage of the playerbase is actually hanging on every word Anet says about this. How many hundreds of thousands of people will just play the game when it comes out, without sitting there waiting with baited breath at every single word Anet says?

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I stand by what I said because I agree wholeheartedly with Swizzle given your responses on this thread and others as proof. But, by all means, turn this thread into another you versus the community.

Again, most of us actually understand the issue this thread and Swizzle’s response entrails. And despite what you might think, the thread is not about you.

Please get thicker skin.

I don’t need a thicker skin. You need to follow forum rules. Singling out posters because you don’t agree with them, off topic as this post is, is against forum rules. If you have a problem with my posts, please refer them to moderation. But you’re not a moderator.

I asked very valid questions about this topic which have been ignored.

If all the information is given up front, what are the people asking for the information going to say, while waiting for the game? Will they be happy to just wait, quietly for the game to launch. I suspect not.

More to the point where is the evidence that people won’t take a break or leave the game waiting whether that information is provided on your schedule or not?

These are valid questions. I suspect you don’t have valid answers to them, and therefore you must resort to personal attack.

Tell me, in this other game that gives people all the information up front, do they never have ebbs and tides in their playerbase? Does the number of active players not decline before an expansion comes out?

Fernling.1729:

Vayne.8563:

Healix.5819:

If you think scrolls are bad, just wait until HoT. Guild missions only. Let’s hope they actually scale now. Considering ArenaNet basically told smaller guilds to PuG for guild halls however, I’ll assume small guilds are dead.

Vayne.8563:

And yes, I know in lore, Destiny’s Edge was five people, but in reality, the Guild Wars, for which the series of named, was about large guilds, who went to war.

The guilds banded together and went to war. Every guild doesn’t have to be large, nor do they even have to be combat guilds. Traders, banks and cooks for example were some of them.

A guild can be anything, from a few elites to a mass of casuals. Sure, you can say one isn’t a valid guild, but it’s not right. A guild is nothing more than a house. It doesn’t matter how many people live in it, it’s still a home.

Terrible example. First of all, the guild of traders probably didn’t go to war. The guilds that went to war were probably adventurers. And in fact, guilds in Guild Wars 1 seemed to imply guilds of adventurers. Keep in mind there were no crafting professions in Guild Wars 1, where this lore comes from. At all.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Fraternal_Order_of_Bakers_and_Brewers

Players couldn’t learn crafting professions, but they were there.

Sure they were there but then there was this:

“Because the guilds fostered communication as well as economic prosperity, they transcended borders. For instance, a guild that held sway in Kryta might also have chapters in Orr and Ascalon. They also began to dominate the political arena. A king or council might make a law, but it was the military guilds that were responsible for enforcing the proclamation. In essence, guilds began to hold the real power of human society.”

The military guilds were the ones with the power. They were enforcing the proclamations of various royalty. Not the baker’s guild. The big guilds were responsible for the guild wars. Aside from that, I doubt the baker’s guild only had five members anyway. That would be a pretty small guild of bakers. lol

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Vayne.8563:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Gambit.8425:

Judging by another thread here on the first page even the white knights have come to a conclusion that Hot will be a thin cash grab bundle of LS leftovers while more content is coming in the “future”.

And yet they defend it like we’re calling their baby ugly. Amazing, huh? In the meantime, most of us are playing something else after we get our dailies done . . . if we bother these days.

There’s a difference between saying let’s wait to see what’s coming before we judge and defending it. People are attacking without seeing information about the content. They’re making assumptions. You might think that’s fair, but I sure don’t.

So in your estimation, what exactly is being defended. The wait and see attitude?

Because I can’t find anything defensible about commenting about the size of the expansion until we have the detail.

I like to note, for the record, I never said any names nor pointed anyone out. And that’s all I say in response to this user. Now please excuse me while I play a game that actually tells players what’s coming in the future . . . in detail.

Swizzle.7982:

I realise any kind of debate with you is entirely pointless but I think most people understand the issue.

To be fair, most of the forum community has come to the same conclusion. Welcome aboard, brother. It took you a while.

And since you are avoiding personal attacks…oh wait. First of all you don’t get to speak for most of the forum community and saying what they do or don’t do is wrong.

But you are also completely disingenuous, claiming you’re not personally attacking me and then making a post to specifically malign me, claiming that some sort of majority of the community ignores my posts. Some would call this bullying. You have no moral high ground here, this is just completely wrong.

Trying to discredit me in this personal manner only makes you look like you have no valid arguments.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Vayne.8563:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Gambit.8425:

Judging by another thread here on the first page even the white knights have come to a conclusion that Hot will be a thin cash grab bundle of LS leftovers while more content is coming in the “future”.

And yet they defend it like we’re calling their baby ugly. Amazing, huh? In the meantime, most of us are playing something else after we get our dailies done . . . if we bother these days.

There’s a difference between saying let’s wait to see what’s coming before we judge and defending it. People are attacking without seeing information about the content. They’re making assumptions. You might think that’s fair, but I sure don’t.

So in your estimation, what exactly is being defended. The wait and see attitude?

Because I can’t find anything defensible about commenting about the size of the expansion until we have the detail.

I like to note, for the record, I never said any names nor pointed anyone out. And that’s all I say in response to this user. Now please excuse me while I play a game that actually tells players what’s coming in the future . . . in detail.

I never claimed you did say any names. Nor did I claim you pointed anyone out. But you’re still making assumptions without knowledge, regardless.

Swizzle.7982:

Vayne.8563:

White knighting

That’s strange, because in every guild I’ve been in in gw2 once numbers drop off they don’t recover. I don’t know what kind of business you’ve run where kittening off your customers was beneficial but I do know that once my friends leave gw2 I won’t have much of incentive to come back either.

People are asking to be excited. You do understand that right? People are asking to know about something they want to be excited for. Things are pretty kittening bad when people are getting so kittened off at the lack of news that That_Shaman decides to show us new engineer drones. This shouldn’t be happening, Anet should be saying “HERE, LOOK AT ALL THIS SHINY NEW STUFF, we want to tell you about it, and you want to know about it!”

I realise any kind of debate with you is entirely pointless but I think most people understand the issue.

Most people don’t ’understand the issue. About 15% of the player base posts on forums and many of us have other things in our lives besides just Guild Wars 2. We have other hobbies, or jobs, or families, or whatever.

But even just basic logic makes your position look precarious.

There is a limited amount of information that can be released, That’s a fact. There are still AT LEAST a couple of months till the game is released.

If information was provided at a faster pace, what would you be doing in the months with nothing LEFT to release?

Information is being provided so that there’s a slow flow of it intentionally. What makes you think if everything was known right now, people STILL wouldn’t take a break from the game. Knowing stuff about the expansion does not necessarily equal people playing the game now in the first place.

And more to the point, you can say that no guild has ever recovered, but then we’ve never had an expansion before, So you can’t even say that without must making it up.

Healix.5819:

If you think scrolls are bad, just wait until HoT. Guild missions only. Let’s hope they actually scale now. Considering ArenaNet basically told smaller guilds to PuG for guild halls however, I’ll assume small guilds are dead.

Vayne.8563:

And yes, I know in lore, Destiny’s Edge was five people, but in reality, the Guild Wars, for which the series of named, was about large guilds, who went to war.

The guilds banded together and went to war. Every guild doesn’t have to be large, nor do they even have to be combat guilds. Traders, banks and cooks for example were some of them.

A guild can be anything, from a few elites to a mass of casuals. Sure, you can say one isn’t a valid guild, but it’s not right. A guild is nothing more than a house. It doesn’t matter how many people live in it, it’s still a home.

Terrible example. First of all, the guild of traders probably didn’t go to war. The guilds that went to war were probably adventurers. And in fact, guilds in Guild Wars 1 seemed to imply guilds of adventurers. Keep in mind there were no crafting professions in Guild Wars 1, where this lore comes from. At all.

More to the point, it’s not just guilds banding together. The Guild Wars (for which the series was named) was a historical event where large guilds become involved in confrontations with each other. The guilds were so large and powerful that nations had to get involved in the conflict.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Guild_Wars

I’m pretty sure these wars weren’t caused by a bunch of five people guilds.

Swizzle.7982:

Vayne.8563:

There’s a difference between saying let’s wait to see what’s coming before we judge and defending it. People are attacking without seeing information about the content. They’re making assumptions. You might think that’s fair, but I sure don’t.

So in your estimation, what exactly is being defended. The wait and see attitude?

Because I can’t find anything defensible about commenting about the size of the expansion until we have the detail.

Except this whole thread is about the fact that we’re waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and still waiting, and still there’s nothing shown. So yeah, people are going to start making assumptions based on the evidence of nothing being revealed.

The “wait and see attitude” has no defence, because we’ve all been waiting and yet we’ve seen very little.

Vayne.8563:

What individuals want doesn’t matter all that much, unless that individual group is so large, it’s some sort of majority. But also, what individuals want needs to be weighed against the overall good of the game.

That’s flawed logic. This is an MMO, it’s built around player interactions and things which influence one person can extend to influence more. For example, I’m in a guild. One person leaves the guild because there’s no SAB coming any time soon. Another few people leave because there’s just not a lot for them to do at the moment. A few more check in for dalies and read the GW2 reddit for news, but that’s about it and with no news coming they begin to drop off too. Another guildmate quits because they enjoy dungeons but they don’t think anything will be happening with those any time soon. Suddenly there’s no one in the guild.

But that’s ok right? None of those people were in the majority, so it’s fine to ignore them.

Anet are doing so well catering to the majority that apparently hate news and don’t want to be excited about the expansion at all.

There are always going to be a percentage of individuals that complain about everything. I’m sure there is 10% of this userbase that literally hangs around waiting for any information at all about HoT. And yes, I’m pulling that number out of my kitten.

I’m sure there’s a much larger portion of the user base who plays other games or has other hobbies, and doesn’t just hang around waiting for Anet to announce something. NO schedule of information would be suitable for people who do that. None at all. Nothing will ever make those people happy.

I’ve run businesses. A percentage of individuals are never happy and they think everyone is like them. They’re wrong. Everyone isn’t.

I’ve made changes to my business that have annoyed individuals before and they have often said that it would be the end of my business. And they were wrong. The sky isn’t falling here.

The expansion will come when it comes. People will walk away from the game and many, probably most will come back. They’ll take a break and do other things. There is more in the world than just Guild Wars 2.

I’m playing less while waiting for the expansion but I don’t see this as some sort of dire consequence. It just gives me a chance to catch up on other things.

In every MMO I’ve ever played, guild membership slumps in the months before an expansion comes out. This is normal for MMOs. I’m not sure why you think that announcing everything or stuff faster is going to make the game come out faster anyway. If they announce everything now and there are months till the game comes out, you’ll be complaining the game isn’t out.

Right now you’re only complaining about not hearing about it. Working as intended.

Chameleon Dude.1564:

Natto.5819:

The guild I’m in has maybe 20 to 30 active players, and we have 800,000 points and max guild credits. Maybe you need to invite more people to your guild?

Smaller groups of friends or people who don’t have hours to play every day are kind of left behind here. If you can field a few dungeon groups a day, always have lots of events being done and have enough people to unlock and do guild missions, yeah it’s easy. Plus as the OP said, if your members are repping another guild…

What’s to stop a smaller group of friends from joining an actual guild? The term guild wasn’t really meant to include a party sized group. You have parties for that. And yes, I know in lore, Destiny’s Edge was five people, but in reality, the Guild Wars, for which the series of named, was about large guilds, who went to war.

Anyway, Anet said in the new content, even smaller guilds will have access to just about everything a guild can do, so that, at least, should make you happy.

Weirwynn.2390:

lordkrall.7241:

We can’t start disregarding information just because we don’t care about it.
Heck, I am not really all that interested in the Specializations, but I don’t go around claiming we have gotten no information after weeks when they have talked about them.

Um—?

The playerbase is a collection of individuals, so yes, they kind of need to release enough information to keep those individual people interested regardless of their preferences, or they’ll go somewhere else.

This is the most flawed logic I’ve seen in a long time. It can be applied to anything. The playerbase is a collection of individuals and some individuals think the game is too hard, so we should make the game easier.

What individuals want doesn’t matter all that much, unless that individual group is so large, it’s some sort of majority. But also, what individuals want needs to be weighed against the overall good of the game.

My guess is the release of information is scheduled very deliberately, to gain maximum exposure in sites that follow MMOs. Every time Anet reveals something that’s news at all, there’s an article on MMORPG.com and Massively and in Ten Ton Hammer, and other sites like that. That’s free publicity, something the company needs/ wants.

If it were up to some of the individuals on these forums, we’d already have patch notes from release day. We’d know everything.

The problem is there are also individuals who don’t want to know everything before the game gets here. The other problem is that knowing more won’t cause the game to come any faster.

So after we know more, people will start saying, okay where’s the game.

Anet needs to schedule release information so that we don’t have nothing for months waiting for the game.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

Gambit.8425:

Judging by another thread here on the first page even the white knights have come to a conclusion that Hot will be a thin cash grab bundle of LS leftovers while more content is coming in the “future”.

And yet they defend it like we’re calling their baby ugly. Amazing, huh? In the meantime, most of us are playing something else after we get our dailies done . . . if we bother these days.

There’s a difference between saying let’s wait to see what’s coming before we judge and defending it. People are attacking without seeing information about the content. They’re making assumptions. You might think that’s fair, but I sure don’t.

So in your estimation, what exactly is being defended. The wait and see attitude?

Because I can’t find anything defensible about commenting about the size of the expansion until we have the detail.

Swizzle.7982:

lordkrall.7241:

Oh, I agree, but people seems to imply that we have gotten no information whatsoever for months.

The problem is a lot of this information concerns something only small numbers of people really care about. Guild halls? Nice for guild leaders and some of the larger guilds maybe. Tournaments and beta dates? Well, I know I don’t care about those. The other information, I don’t even remember that… So yeah, we might be getting information, but it’s nothing exciting or memorable. And if this is the stuff they’re showing us to build hype about their expansion.. well, I think there’s an obvious conclusion there that a lot of people are coming to.

You apparently weren’t watching the reaction of the fans during the reveal, if you think guild halls aren’t massively important in this game. Out of every feature listed, Guild Halls got the strongest response from the audience by far.

In my opinion a minority of people don’t care about them, but if you look around at players playing in high level areas, most people are wearing a guild tag. And the reaction of the audience seems to indicate the guild halls are one of the most popular features of the expansion.

For me, it’s up there with masteries and specializations.

Dinks.2478:

Yeah, Might as well just quit. A game that makes you weaker as you level is hilariously backwards.

Even if you can see the difference when using a stop watch (and I don’t know why you’d care), the idea is to make the zones relevant.

Before they weren’t. I was occasionally one shotting creatures in low level zones. New players had no chance at all to actually do the events they were in, because things would die before they could even hit them.

You may think that’s okay, I don’t.

If the low level zones are too hard for you, stay in the high level zones. I’m fine with it the way it is.

I do Living Story as a group with other people fairly often. I can see how it can be confusing, but that’s true of anything in an MMO.

The problem is, no matter how much Anet simplifies the game…it’s not a simple game.

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Please read the posts again. Seriously.

In other words, he’s right and you cannot present any argument showing how he would be wrong.

Do you have any idea of how ridiculous your example sounds? “Hey guys, ArenaNet said they would release feature X in 2013, but they told us in 2014 that it would be a little late…” Oh really?

You are only proving my point (again). Thanks for finding a link that proves how ArenaNet likes to change their minds, so we cannot believe their current promises about future HoT content.

Vayne.8563:

Do you know, can anyone really know, that when Anet wrote that blogpost it wasn’t supposed to be a free feature?

So, if ArenaNet does not fulfill any of their current promises about post-HoT content, are you just going to say “can anyone really know, that when Anet made those promises, they weren’t supposed to be implemented”?

Because, really, if your point is that ArenaNet will often change their minds so something they say they would do one way is either not done or done in a completelly different way, you are just proving my point, Vayne.

No, actually. I’ll judge them as I always judge them. As a company that has to balance what it gives customers to what they need to do to remain a viable business, which also helps customers in some ways.

You seem to be laboring under the assumption that most things we asked for haven’t been provided to us. I don’t know why you have that assumption.

See, most of the stuff that I was told would be in the game, as I understood it, is in the game. There are absolutely exceptions to that. Things I were told would be in the game that are not in the game.

One example is the bar room brawl and the shooting gallery. Was absolutely stated it would be in the game. 100% fact. Anet said there would be a barroom brawl and a shooting gallery. They didn’t tell me that there’s be Southsun Survivor. They didn’t tell me there’s be Sanctum Sprint. They didn’t tell me there’d be crab toss.

So one minigame was replaced by others. Anet said one thing and delivered something else. It’s not what I expected.

Fortunately, I like the three minigames they did provide quite a lot, even though I might have liked the bar room brawl as much. Pretty sure I wouldn’t have liked the shooting gallery much.

In my mind, Anet talked about and delivered fun minigames. They gave me something to enjoy. Now I could hang on their every word and say that two of the mini games they said would be in the game aren’t. But then, I got stuff I didn’t expect that I really enjoy.

There’s a trade off, as there usually is. Now if you’re so annoyed there’s no shooting gallery or barroom brawl in this game, you might leave the game. But that’s only if you don’t like what was offered in its place. Sanctum Sprint and Southsun Survivor are massively fun for me, even though they weren’t on my radar. I consider this an acceptable trade.

I’m going to guess most people are going to disagree with this. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take forever to get anywhere in this game. Since you can get to Lion’s Arch for free through the mists, and into any starting area, there are very few runs that take more than five, maybe ten minutes.

That said, I think the game gives you enough. If you want waypoints, unlock them.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

(or in your perceived view: 1 of 1 is 100%).

I’m curious to know how does math work in the alternate reality you live in, for 1 of 1 to not be 100%.

And really, again you are talking without doing research. If you knew what you were talking about, you would have linked the post you claim to exist from 2014, as well as the other updates you claim ArenaNet has used to tell people about their (broken) promises. Right now, all you have is a loveable pile of small cats.

Read the rest of my post and you’ll have your answer or I can just tell you again. It has nothing to do with the math but the fact you chose to use one instance and then state that Anet was 100% unable to to fulfill 100% of their promises on that one instance. In other words, the statement of yours was meaningless.

Here’s one link from a quick search. It wasn’t the one I was specifically referring to but it works.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news/first#post3780700

im sorry but that once again proves his point.
Anet changed their plans on precursors,
and they told us it was because they wanted to make it part of a new horizontal progression system
that we could expect in a future feature pack.

which essentially means they told us precursors would be coming in a future feature pack along with a new horizontal progression system (masteries) which has now become part of an expansion.

You have shown us once again any long term plans announced by anet can change, and specifically, something that was once supposed to be part of the current price of admission can be shifted to the next expansion (new price of admission)

as it relates to this thread this basically proves that even if they said we can expect some features of HoT to grow with this expansion, it can end up being pushed back to the next expansion.

thing is anet has changed plans like this a number of times, sometimes by implication, sometimes explicitly.

really, the truth is, anet changes their minds, the only things with high likelyhood of coming to pass are things that are extremely short term. Even when they do deliver, it has often drastically changed from its original intent or purpose. Im not saying they should stop saying anything, but the reality is talk of further specializations, more guild halls, more pvp maps, thats the exact type of stuff that usually gets pushed back or changed so radically it bears little resemblence. And many things been pushed back long enough that they are now content for the next expansion. So dont buy this expansion expecting them to add anything but living story, they might add more stuff, but then again they might not.

And I wonder how this might have been different if dozens upon dozens of people didn’t demand an expansion.

It might very well have been Anet’s plan to include precursor crafting for free. You make that announcement when no expansion is planned. That’s logical. And as soon as you change direction and you announce an expansion, it’s then logical to put that into an expansion being a major feature.

Do you know, can anyone really know, that when Anet wrote that blogpost it wasn’t supposed to be a free feature?

You can be as judgemental about it as you like but in reality, a good percentage of the fan base was very vocally calling for an expansion. Anet wasn’t going to, at that point, take all the stuff they had been working on and give it away free…because the way content was offered was restructured, free stuff is now going to be part of paid stuff. I’m pretty sure most people would have done the same if it was their business.

Xdmatt.3958:

In general, scaling down has been weakened, and scaling up has been increased.
Stat scaling now better accounts for level ranges at which equipment begins offering more possible stats (e.g., one-, two-, or three-stat pieces of gear).
Rarity scaling now takes into account how close you are to the maximum available rarity when scaling up or down.
Some minor “stack on kill” sigils have had their values reduced.

Is this it, as far as patch notes go? Then it wasn’t terribly clear.

What is “weakened”? What is “increased”? (rhetorical question, as we now know).
Gear is supposed to account better for rarity. Does this mean that my exotic or ascended piece should give more of a stat than a best available green piece of the same level as what I’m scaled to? This isn’t what I’m seeing (green pieces are actually better when downscaled).

Anyway… if this is the official party line, then so be it I suppose. Too bad the nerf herders won out. GW2 was fun while it lasted. Have fun using nerfs as a marketing tool for HoT, ANET

This was a much requested ‘nerf’ though. Fans did ask for this. The official party line in this case is Anet listened to it’s fan base.

Pretty good party line.

IndigoSundown.5419:

No, it’s not the end of the world. Yes, ANet would be remiss to change things at this date. Some may think that’s the purpose of the thread. The real purpose (I hope) is to make ANet think twice the next time they design a system offering choice and then think about taking that choice away from players. Every time ANet does something significant to the game, it looks (to me) like the game is moving away from being an MMO and more towards being a bloody Facebook time-waster. Yes, ANet is a business, but those who like games to challenge them to think take notice every time Anet shafts them to cater to those who don’t want to think.

Seem to be a lot of people who feel we have more viable builds now than we used to. I’m happy with the changes. There’s not been a huge backlash that I can see, and believe me this community does not shy away from criticism. There’s been more positive reaction than negative to the changes.

With regard to your other comments, Anet made a decision based on budget and time. I’m pretty sure they next time they have that decision to make they’ll make the exact same decision, because budget and time will still exist.

It’s just like when I ran a business and made a decision that would negatively influence a minority of customers. If it was a small enough pool of people being inconvenienced, and it helped keep me under budget, it was a decision I made. The customers affected might or might not understand why I did it, but that doesn’t mean I would have done anything else, regardless of their reaction.

Anet made a decision. They could have spent more time/money (same thing really) on fixing a temporary problem, or they could deal with the backlash. They opted to deal with the backlash.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Vayne.8563:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Astralporing.1957:

Baldrick.8967:

Let me clear that up for you. At level 20+ you are locked into a trait line that you did not want, and that you cannot change or unlock another until level 31 (or is it 41?)

Untrue. You can slot only one traitline, but you can start unlocking a second one immediately, and just change over.

I’d also like to point out that before the change your level 20 had no traits whatsoever. That means that contrary to being broken, your character actually got upgraded to what it was before.

Irrelevant. The issue is not the comparison between the prior level and this level, it’s that ANet generated a system that involved choice and then arbitrarily removed that choice. Given the state of game in the leveling zones, “broken” has no real meaning in terms of character viability. Hence, the word is being used in the sense of being broken as far as one’s enjoyment of the character is concerned.

Make no mistake, the people who are unhappy with the system chosen are unhappy with the removal of choice and enjoyment.

I don’t know if it’s irrelevant or not, because the information offered is wrong. Saying you have to wait 10 levels to change it when it’s not true is hardly irrelevant. You have to gain enough mastery points to unlock the trait you didn’t want at that level. Which does NOT involve leveling 10 levels. It involves going and getting enough hero challenges to get that done.

So why is saying something is factually wrong irrelevant?

Far afield from what I was pointing to, but OK. You want factual.

Let’s consider a “normal course of play” with a player taking a character through level-appropriate zones. Start at L21. To recoup the 60 points spent, one would have to gain 60 Hero points. The ten levels between 21 and 31 offer 36 points, per GW2 wiki. A zone offering 10 levels worth of content does not offer 24 Hero Challenges, not even close. Kessex has 5. Gendarren has 7. That’s 12 short of the 60, and likely more than ten levels gained.

Sure, one could run around and collect Challenges in multiple zones while ignoring anything else. But that’s certainly not the normal course the game encourages. If that’s your “factual,” it’s an empty piece of bull-gravy designed solely to “win” an argument on the internet.

For low level zones and most intermediate level zones, you usually have between 6-8 hero points in those zones. So if you do all the hero points in 3 zones, you’ll have between 18 and 24 hero points.

That’s enough to unlock a significant about of traits at low levels. That’s not including the hero points you get from leveling. So you absolutely don’t have to go 10 levels to get the hero points back to unlock what you’d have unlocked by then.

That’s factual.

No one is saying this change is the best thing since sliced bread. No one is even saying it’s good, right or fair.

What’s been said is the amount of work to create a solution for what is at best a temporary problem wasn’t worth it. That was a business decision. It may have been the wrong decision and it may have been the right decision, but I’m going to go with it’s a toss up. It depends on the number of players affected by percentage, and the amount of time making that temporary solution would have taken, with bugs, and troubleshooting and testing and all.

Anet is on a schedule. Devs have deadlines. They have a huge patch out and they have an expansion coming out.

As with all projects it’s a cost vs. perceived value thing. If 5% of the playerbase are affected by this, even 10%, that might seem like a lot of people.

But of that 10%, how many care about traits pre 80? How many understand or pay attention to traits. In reality the amount of people affected by this is probably pretty small and the amount of people deeply affected by this even smaller.

Yes, we all know it’s an inconvenience. I even believe a few people will leave the game because of this.

But that happens all the time. Every time an MMO company changes anything, or does anything, someone will leave the game. It happens. It’s only the end of the world if you make it the end of the world.

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Anet did promise those things and they did deliver on them.

Not really, as many, MANY examples prove.

Many times they made a promise and just left it hanging.

How could we possibly believe when they say they will add more legendary weapons later on? Until now, all – actually 100% – of their promises about more legendary items have not been true.

Vayne.8563:

The funny part is that people ignore the fact that this is in line price wise with other MMO expansions (not equal to, but in line)

Not really. It’s more expensive than expansions from almost all MMORPGs (with WoW being the main exception, but then again Blizzard has always charged high prices).

And besides, based on the content we know is in HoT, it looks more like a DLC than a full expansion.

Vayne.8563:

that we don’t have all the information yet

We have all information ArenaNet thought we needed to prepurchase the game. Ignoring the ethics in asking for payment for a product that doesn’t even have a release window (much less a release date), I wouldn’t be surprised if the information we don’t know yet includes a lot of bad things (like the NPE).

Vayne.8563:

and that the entire game has pretty much been redesigned. It will be a whole new experience

Not really. The levelling experience is going to stay basically the same. It won’t be a few new skills that would make it “a whole new experience”. Same with playing through the content that is already in the game, like the current level 80 areas, or the current dungeons, and so on.

If anything, what we have been told about the HoT maps make them look a lot like more of the same.

Vayne.8563:

But it’s valid to believe that I’m going to get more than 100 hours out of this game, which makes it a better deal than most games I’ve bought.

As you like to say, Vayne, that’s just your opinion. And your opinion isn’t really enough to make a meaningful argument when having a discussion with other people.

It is just my opinion. And the opinion of lots of other people as well. The problem here is people saying the game isn’t worth it BEFORE we know the extent of the content. All people can say is it isn’t worth it from what we know NOW. Which is quite a different statement.

In line with doesn’t mean equal. The three top games right now are WoW, Guild Wars 2 and Final Fantasy XIV. Of those three top games, two of them charge a sub. If you want to play them you pay every month in addition to paying for a subscription. Guild Wars 2 may charge $50 for the expansion but it doesn’t charge a sub at all and that does make a difference.

Someone, for example, brought up DDO as an alternative game. There are 4 users on the DDO reddit at this time. 4. It doesn’t matter if they don’t charge for an expansion, since no one is actually playing it.

Or you could play Archeage or SWToR, with their “optional” subscription. I know people who play SWToR but I know of no one who plays it who don’t sub to it, because you know, that optional sub…it’s not really so optional when you start playing.

At the end of the day any conversation we have here about the value of the expansion is just going to be an opinion. But when I form an opinion of a game, I compare it to comparable games out there. I don’t isolate the box price of an expansion from the rest of what I have to pay to play a game, because you know, that’s not really honest.

It’s like saying a vacation costs only the price of the hotel, without including the airfare. It doesn’t really work. If you want to play FF, you’re not paying $40 for an expansion. You’re paying $40 for an expansion and then $15 a month for every month after the 30 days you get with the expansion. Therefore that product is more expensive than this expansion, unless you only play it for 30 days and then stop.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Astralporing.1957:

Baldrick.8967:

Let me clear that up for you. At level 20+ you are locked into a trait line that you did not want, and that you cannot change or unlock another until level 31 (or is it 41?)

Untrue. You can slot only one traitline, but you can start unlocking a second one immediately, and just change over.

I’d also like to point out that before the change your level 20 had no traits whatsoever. That means that contrary to being broken, your character actually got upgraded to what it was before.

Irrelevant. The issue is not the comparison between the prior level and this level, it’s that ANet generated a system that involved choice and then arbitrarily removed that choice. Given the state of game in the leveling zones, “broken” has no real meaning in terms of character viability. Hence, the word is being used in the sense of being broken as far as one’s enjoyment of the character is concerned.

Make no mistake, the people who are unhappy with the system chosen are unhappy with the removal of choice and enjoyment.

I don’t know if it’s irrelevant or not, because the information offered is wrong. Saying you have to wait 10 levels to change it when it’s not true is hardly irrelevant. You have to gain enough mastery points to unlock the trait you didn’t want at that level. Which does NOT involve leveling 10 levels. It involves going and getting enough hero challenges to get that done.

So why is saying something is factually wrong irrelevant?

Gibson.4036:

The funny part is when people justify the cost of the expansion based on the stuff that may or may not come later.

The funny part is that people ignore the fact that this is in line price wise with other MMO expansions (not equal to, but in line), that we don’t have all the information yet, and that the entire game has pretty much been redesigned. It will be a whole new experience.

You may think that adding gliding, and masteries and elite specializations is just some minor DLC change, but I suspect the way people feel about post 80 progress is going to change.

As for content, Anet hasn’t told us everything yet, so the jury is still out there. But it’s valid to believe that I’m going to get more than 100 hours out of this game, which makes it a better deal than most games I’ve bought.

OP not only didn’t see that it was in the patch notes (which makes it not so silent), but also didn’t see that some people support the change. Nor does he realize that some people have asked for the change.

The whole idea of downscaling has always been to make content meaningful. That means you know, there’s a chance for something bad to happen to you. Maybe you don’t realize it, OP, but a lot of people have been complaining the game is too easy. This is a nerf some of us have been asking for.

Astralporing.1957:

Brandu.8150:

Vayne.8563:

1. Most people don’t give a fig about or notice builds till they’re 80. They just don’t care that much. In fact, many people don’t even pay attention to builds after they’re 80.

Really? And you’re basing this broad assumption on what evidence?

During the Marionette event one of the devs was discussing about Anet trying to teach mechanic to players. One of the things that were said was that according to Anet’s data a significant number of players (yes, level 80 too) had no traits set at all.
This was some time ago, of course, but somehow i don’t think the situation has changed much.

Yeah, it was really eye opening the hear that at the time, so I started talking to people in my guild about it and I realized, there are people playing this game that don’t even realize that the four down skill heals them. They just spam the skills when they’re downed and since the other skills interupt the heal they never realized it.

The people who visit the forum, we’re a small percentage of the community. A huge percentage of the playerbase plays this game like it’s Space Invaders.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

MauricioCezar.2673:

We will have acess with some new legendarys, with more coming on next releases.
We will have acess to some Stronghold champions, with more coming on next releases.
We will have acess to 1 stronghold map, with more coming into next releases.

What more we are receiving incomplete? There is even a rumor that we are not even taking mordremoth down, only coming in future releases.

Of course it will be released in complete. Anet is out of players, out of good will and out of money. They need the cash now.

Just look at what happened. They released a bunch of elite specs, and guild halls then asked a huge amount of money up front for the expansion. Now that they have that money we haven’t heard a single new thing about the expansion for 3 weeks and it looks like next week will be a bust as well.

The black knights are out in force, I see. The same thing happened with the core game, if you remember. Bursts of information,. periods of silence. In case you guys didn’t notice, they just came out with a giant patch, and it’s a holiday weekend. I’m pretty sure that news will continue soon.

Also like Guild Wars 2, they offered the presale long before the release date was announced. These same types of comments existed back then. But the game did come and many of us are enjoying it.

And I think you’re grossly estimated the whole out of good will thing. These forums always sound like the game is on it’s last legs. It wasn’t true two months after launch when ascended weapons were introduced, it’s certainly not true now.

dragonfighter.4098:

yes the way the screwed most of our builds is down right a big problem for most. if they said they put our traits closest to our current builds then why should i have to use hero points to open up traits when i had them all opened in the first place. why do i have to build new ascended armor and weapons because traits i liked and used are now gone. why do they keep taking away the good qualities of the game like their quote"play your way", the complete personal story, new makes no since. our traits we used to create our personal builds. they need to quit making players start over and spend all their gold and time with unwanted changes. yes its a way to get us to throw more hard earned cash at the tp to buy more gold, but this time I’m not…..I’m done . i log in daily hoping for change but till i see it that’s it i will not spend anymore cash on a game that is self destructing and being made into guild wars for dummies.that’s the saddest part i have played for 10 years and these last couple of mistakes, announcement of HOT, and screwing most builds is causing a lot of the loyal and new players to leave how sad. one day i hope they get it .

You certainly shouldn’t have to build new ascended armor and weapons, since you can now convert the stats on existing armor and weapons for a pretty cheap price.

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Funny because you did. You only brought up the archery mini-game in a single sentence.

So you completely failed to understand what I wrote. Wow. And you still think you can argue about it.

But I actually have to thank you. You have basically proved my point in this topic – by the examples you have, it’s clear that just because ArenaNet says they will add something to the game, it doesn’t mean they will actually do it. Ergo, all the talk about features they say they will add in the future… Is meaningless. All we can be sure in HoT is what we get at release, or at least the little it looks like HoT will have at release.

Vayne.8563:

Sometimes I think this community is its own worst enemy.

Let’s be honest, Vayne. ArenaNet is this community’s worst enemy.

Just look at how they dealt with the WvW beta test: players deserve to be able to join, especially those who prepurchased. Given how ArenaNet asked people to pay them for an expansion without a release date in order to be able to join betas with unknown dates, the minimum – really, the bare minimum – ArenaNet should do is allow those players to join the WvW beta.

And really, the excuse of “they are not going to be able to fit many players in there” is a very poor argument. If they are making a WvW map that cannot hold even a small fraction of the current players, well, they are basically wasting their time.

You mean look at how they dealt with the stress test, which is not actually a beta test? A four hour test that requires limited participation.

Do you really think Anet should be forced to have extra tens of thousands of people to run a stress test? Maybe they need to do the test to GET TO beta.

Of course, that doesn’t fit your pet theory, so it can’t be true.

Stress tests are designed for a reason to be a certain way. You don’t get to demand how the company tests their game before the first beta. The stress test is a step along the way to that beta.

Why not let the company make the game so you can enjoy the beta?

Miriam.2506:

Just bad for those people who paid 100€ for the game and just getting nothing with BETA Events now like promised. Even a Stress test is important and on stress tests servers should come to their breaking limit, so if a server has normally 10.000 players at stress tests those tested with maybe 12.000 to 15.000 to see where is the max limit for it.

So many as possible people should play and join those event. Having only 5% players at those maps, it not really stressing servers in any way. And I don’t think they setup only one server with this map for testing ??

A stress test is not a beta event. It’s a stress test. It’s four hours and it’s over. What we were guaranteed was access to beta weekends. The wording is extremely clear. What you’re saying is that you paid for dinner up front so you get free dessert and then they serve someone else coffee on the house and you say, I didn’t get coffee. You weren’t guaranteed coffee.

My guess is that the stress test requires far fewer people than a beta, and it’s not being set up to deal with everyone who’s preordered and putting all those people in would in fact not allow them to test it the way they need it.

Trajan.4953:

No Vayne, usually I agree with you, but this is the first real chance for WvW-rs to see this BL, stress test or not. Giving it to some streamer, who as of June 15 hit WvW rank 126, to dictate who gets in is just pitiful.

The question remains. How many people over all are being used in this stress test. To test WvW you only need 240 people. Anet is going to have to pick SOMEONE.

So who should they pick? No matter who they pick, they will have issues with people feeling they’re not picked.

At any rate, if you were Anet and you needed a few hundred people out of hundreds of thousands of prepurchases, how would you decide which hundreds get it?

Do you remember the complaining of people who didn’t get into betas. You’re right. This is the first look at the new WvW borderslands. Why does it matter who looks first? It’s a look, that’s all. It’s likely to change and evolve during beta anyway.

What do you say to the hundreds of thousands of veterans who don’t get in, if they did have some way to decide who it was?

Make your own group for new people in the group finder. All levels and professions welcome. Profit.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Phat Stackage.5329:

I have to kinda agree with op. i think its a shame that this guy that really doesnt know crap about the game gets to dictate who gets in the beta. not fair to the hardcore wvwers.

I mean, i see why anet did it. they are using his stream as a cheap PR flash. disappointing anet…

What makes you think a stress test is a beta?

It’s a 4 hour test, to make sure that the server is adjusted to handle X number of people. It’s not a beta test, it’s a stress test. In all likelihood Anet needs very very few people for this type of test.

Ricky.4706:

but if you consider both sides of this issue – simple clarity would help a great deal.

That’s the issue I’m pointing out, you have to search around for the answer – and to avoid any speculation. Make it clear, people shouldn’t have to reference, cross reference, have long debates for something that might be very simple.

you really should not be ‘tired’ nor displeasured because it’s not your fault, and it has no bearing on you and the best thing is to find what may bring understanding.

The fact is that it is vague and has to be found on several documents to be made clear, i’ve heard all sides …the problem I’m seeing is that the community is losing trust, and lack of clarity does not help encourage trust.

I want to see anet number 1, that’s not going to happen if their ‘existing’ fans doubt them every step of the way. I don’t doubt them, i just dont think they are considering that some things are causing more harm than good.

Anet isn’t going to be number 1. WoW is #1. Blizzard has a war chest that’s deep enough and a momentum that’s deep enough where nothing is going to touch it…not now and not in the future. It was in the right time at the right place. Plenty of advertising dollars and no competition to speak of.

But wanting to see Anet #1 and starting this kind of debate is exactly what prevents Anet from being #2.

No matter what anyone does, if you focus on something hard enough, you’ll find flaw. It’s really that simple. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. In your desire to hold Anet to some arbitrary standard you’ve made for Anet, you place them in a terrible situation. Because Anet isn’t a person. Anet is a company. Anet has 300 people working for them and a relationship with NcSoft all of which makes things like communication more difficult.

The demands “veteran” players are making, whether they make sense or not, are seen by everyone. This isn’t fair to Anet or Veteran players.

I’m a veteran player and I want to download and play hot. There was a stress test for HoT before the first closed beta. This is a stress test, most likely before the next step of HoT’s development. This sort of side show takes time away from development. Having to deal with this accomplishes nothing because there’s nothing TO accomplish here.

You want clarity, become an ophthalmologist. There isn’t going to be clarity because things are in motion and if every single thing needs 800 meetings to move on, then nothing is ever going to happen.

Sometimes I think this community is its own worst enemy.

Ricky.4706:

Vayne.8563:

Ricky.4706:

please kind sirs, i have nothing but love for all of you <3 stand for what is right, for the greater good. let us find somewhere that everyone can be happy, bickering about such minute details is what is causing this mess to begin with, like the front page ad about a stress test that people who paid for beta testing rights can’t attend. Surely you have some compassion for those people who supported everyone, even defended you, only to feel shut out and disregarded.

just like you have stated yourself, “But words can very often completely change the definition of the moral” – yes, “Announcing the First World vs. World Borderlands Stress Test” just like these words change the moral of “Access to All Beta Weekend Events” yes, it’s a detail, a small devil of a detail at that. All I’m asking is that you consider the people affected by this. Is that really so wrong ? must you constantly go at them ? can’t we all just get along ?

You’re not entitled to anything not advertised and you don’t deserve to be in a stress test PERIOD. Now, without knowing the number of people included, maybe it’s only a couple of hundred, how can you insist, how can ANYONE, insist that they be included. If 10,000 people all insist the be included and there’s room for 500 then what do you do?

This is so self-serving it’s not funny. Actually I think what you’re saying is more harmful to the community. It’s unreasonable, and it’s irresponsible.

wow, that’s toxic. fyi, i haven’t pre purchased, this has nothing to do with how I felt entitled….. lol I am simply pointing out reasons they can be upset and trying to help identify the problem to maybe give you a better chance at peace. But from the tone of your posts, that seems to be the last thing on your mind.

Honestly I’m dead tired about the attitude of the so-called veteran players. This is beyond the pall already. People are claiming entitlement to things they really aren’t entitled to anymore. And it’s rampant. It’s not one thing, or two things. Anything Anet does now, any move, some veteran somewhere is going to say it’s for new players it’s for this player, it’s for that player. It doesn’t matter if it’s reasonable. It doesn’t matter that the constant cacophony of this entitlement is screwing the forums completely. On reddit, most of those posts get downvoted pretty fast.

Here it just lingers like a bad smell.

So answer these questions.

1. How many people does Anet need for their stress test.
2. How many veteran players are there total and what makes a veteran player?
3. What percentage of veteran players will have to be excluded no matter what because a stress test is NOT a beta test, it’s a very specific type of test, with specific requirements.
4. By what logic is Anet required you use prepurchasers to fill a void that is probably massively limited?
5. What makes you think that if a tiny percentage of perpurchasers got in, the other 90 plus percent that couldn’t wouldn’t be annoyed and come here screaming about how they are veteran players and should get in.

This is a stress test, not a beta test. It’s four hours long. The server will be taxed and during that time, Anet will make live adjustments to it, to see how it handles different settings, until they decide what works best. That’s all a stress test is for. That’s what Anet is doing.

A stress test for WvW shouldn’t require more people than you can store on a map at the same time. Currently that limit is 80 characters per side.

So if Anet needs 240 people, how many veteran players are going to be left out, no matter what Anet does?

This veteran player entitlement (and I don’t like to use the word, but I’ll sure use it here), has reached far beyond any reasonable level. It’s become a public nuisance on the forums.

I don’t have any authority of the forums, but I can sure express my displeasure at something like this.

Electra.7530:

I’m very noob. I only just log’d into forum here. But, I have not completed my personal story. I have to kill Zhaitan, but I don’t know how. If it’s in a dungeon, I’m not good about dungeons. I play alone. I’ve looked at groups and I see something about wanting gold or pay-for-runs and that kind of turns me off.

I would like to be able to finish my personal story.

But to stay on topic with this thread, for what it’s worth, I really liked my personal story and I’m doing multiple personal stories on alts and having fun. But, that’s kind of because I play alone.

The Zhaitan fight is no longer a dungeon and can now be soloed.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For me personally, I don’t consider statements that include ‘As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.’ as promises.

But, of course, that’s just me.

Please don’t make the black knights read. That’s plain unfair.

I’m pretty sure that most people that have followed the game from the beginning, remember an entire blogpost dedicated to the iterative nature of the development cycle and how things change all the time, even finished systems that they thought they’d be happy with. It’s entirely possible, in my mind anyway, that Anet published that article to let everyone know that not all plans will pan out. That’s how I read the article anyway.

People wonder why Anet is reluctant to share information before it’s ready. That’s because there’s a loud percentage of this forum who sees every single word out of Anet’s virtual lips as a “promise”.

That’s the reason why Anet is gun shy and doesn’t want to say anything. Because a vocal minority will call them out on anything late, unfinished, scrapped, altered or missing. But that same vocal minority will often ignore the dozens of touches added to the game they didn’t know were coming at all.

the real deal?
most companies can talk about future plans, and meet or exceed those plans. The fact that anet cannot is not the consumers fault, its just how anet is. They have to figure out how to answer this question that most game developer have to deal with, based on own process.

id say silence is unsatisfactory, and not saying anything is not beneficial, so i dont know how they will solve it, but its an issue.

Most companies can do this? Are you sure? I’ve seen many long term plans by companies not come to fruition and I’ve seen fans call them out on it, but never like Anet fans.

AoC wasn’t even able to fix a bug with nvidia drives so that the game wouldn’t crash every minute or so. And Archeage told people in a prepurchase package that founders would get 10% off in the cash shop, which they were NEVER able to deliver even to this date. They changed the whole thing. Many people asked for refunds, and rightly so.

That one thing probably hurt Archeage more than any other thing that happened. They simply shouldn’t have said it.

Anet’s problem is that fans are so into the this game, anything they say is gospel. There’s no real leeway.

Down to the fact that Anet said directly that people who prepurchased would be invited to beta weekends, and people are saying they feel offended that Anet didn’t invite them to a stress test during the week.

i didnt say every company.
but notice how in your archeage example it has had a huge negative impact? Yeah thats whats expected.
Things happen, but blaming the consumer for believing people makes no sense.

regardless, every major company has to deal with having to tell people what the future holds, and being expected to have to do what they say. Different companies may come up with different answers.

right now, the experienced gw2 customer doesnt really believe anet will actually do something just because they say they will. Even staunch defenders of anet advise against taking public announcements as something to believe in.

i understand anet is the type of developer that likes to turn things on their head and is extremely mercurial. But this creates the problem of the fact that companies often need to tell customers or future customers what to expect, and yet anet changes plans often.
Anet need to figure out how to reconcile these things. Its not the customers fault for believing them, and its not the customers fault for wanting information about the future.

One end result of the overall situation is the current issue in this thread

The point is, if Archeage hadn’t said it, there wouldn’t have been the same backlash. It happened because they said something they didn’t end up providing. Anet wrote an article with a list of stuff, included a disclaimer in the article that anything can change, and there are still people who use words like lying.

I don’t really blame Anet, even though I don’t agree with their decision to remain silent.

Ricky.4706:

please kind sirs, i have nothing but love for all of you <3 stand for what is right, for the greater good. let us find somewhere that everyone can be happy, bickering about such minute details is what is causing this mess to begin with, like the front page ad about a stress test that people who paid for beta testing rights can’t attend. Surely you have some compassion for those people who supported everyone, even defended you, only to feel shut out and disregarded.

just like you have stated yourself, “But words can very often completely change the definition of the moral” – yes, “Announcing the First World vs. World Borderlands Stress Test” just like these words change the moral of “Access to All Beta Weekend Events” yes, it’s a detail, a small devil of a detail at that. All I’m asking is that you consider the people affected by this. Is that really so wrong ? must you constantly go at them ? can’t we all just get along ?

You’re not entitled to anything not advertised and you don’t deserve to be in a stress test PERIOD. Now, without knowing the number of people included, maybe it’s only a couple of hundred, how can you insist, how can ANYONE, insist that they be included. If 10,000 people all insist the be included and there’s room for 500 then what do you do?

This is so self-serving it’s not funny. Actually I think what you’re saying is more harmful to the community. It’s unreasonable, and it’s irresponsible.

Fantasy encompasses a much broader category than high fantasy or swords and sorcery. Other subgenres like slipstream and magical realism being two examples.

Bugs bunny is fantasy. I Dream of Jeanie is fantasy. Bewitched is fantasy. Mary Poppins is fantasy. The Wizard of Oz is fantasy. In his fantasy series the Amber series, Roger Zelazny introduced guns into the mix, in a pretty cool way.

Not to mention most of these worlds aren’t Earth anyway. Who’s to say what is developed when, on which world?

Ricky.4706:

Zero Day.2594:

Ricky.4706:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Ricky.4706:

IndigoSundown.5419:

That’s, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The gray needs to LTQ.

sounds like you and brainy quote have something to debate about! lol

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgesant101521.html

Probably the most well-known sentence of Santayana’s is also one of the least accurately quoted: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Scribner’s, 1905: 284)

Now I see why you’re doing what you’re doing.

i focus on the moral of the story, when you stare at the trees for too long, you might miss the forest!

God, I feel you’re trolling. And that’s not a quote.

i see what you are ‘trying’ to do. is there something wrong with focusing on the moral of a topic than knit picking the words to favor your own argument ?

But words can very often completely change the definition of the moral. For example, some people claim that Anet has lied about things, which implies the intent to mislead. As long as that word is in an argument, you will find some people uncomfortable with it. Sometimes, the devil really is in the details.

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For me personally, I don’t consider statements that include ‘As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.’ as promises.

But, of course, that’s just me.

Please don’t make the black knights read. That’s plain unfair.

I’m pretty sure that most people that have followed the game from the beginning, remember an entire blogpost dedicated to the iterative nature of the development cycle and how things change all the time, even finished systems that they thought they’d be happy with. It’s entirely possible, in my mind anyway, that Anet published that article to let everyone know that not all plans will pan out. That’s how I read the article anyway.

People wonder why Anet is reluctant to share information before it’s ready. That’s because there’s a loud percentage of this forum who sees every single word out of Anet’s virtual lips as a “promise”.

That’s the reason why Anet is gun shy and doesn’t want to say anything. Because a vocal minority will call them out on anything late, unfinished, scrapped, altered or missing. But that same vocal minority will often ignore the dozens of touches added to the game they didn’t know were coming at all.

the real deal?
most companies can talk about future plans, and meet or exceed those plans. The fact that anet cannot is not the consumers fault, its just how anet is. They have to figure out how to answer this question that most game developer have to deal with, based on own process.

id say silence is unsatisfactory, and not saying anything is not beneficial, so i dont know how they will solve it, but its an issue.

Most companies can do this? Are you sure? I’ve seen many long term plans by companies not come to fruition and I’ve seen fans call them out on it, but never like Anet fans.

AoC wasn’t even able to fix a bug with nvidia drives so that the game wouldn’t crash every minute or so. And Archeage told people in a prepurchase package that founders would get 10% off in the cash shop, which they were NEVER able to deliver even to this date. They changed the whole thing. Many people asked for refunds, and rightly so.

That one thing probably hurt Archeage more than any other thing that happened. They simply shouldn’t have said it.

Anet’s problem is that fans are so into the this game, anything they say is gospel. There’s no real leeway.

Down to the fact that Anet said directly that people who prepurchased would be invited to beta weekends, and people are saying they feel offended that Anet didn’t invite them to a stress test during the week.

Azure Prower.8701:

I don’t know why people pre-order/pre-purchase when there is no incentive to do so.

Are you afraid they might run out of digital copies?

Supporting the company is an incentive to do so for me. Because I’m really enjoying this MMO and I don’t enjoy other MMOs. How much more incentive do I need.

Unless you think the game won’t come out for some reason, and I strongly suspect it will, there’s no downside to me ordering right away.

It’s not going to happen. It would require more time and energy than it’s worth. It’ll mean that some vistas will lose integrity. Some jumping puzzles will lose integrity. It would mean a dev team not only having to go through each map, but a dev team having to constantly go back and fix each map. The maps weren’t designed for flight. All the new maps will be.

Brandu.8150:

Vayne.8563:

Fishy? What are you talking about. There has never been a way to refund skills once you buy them or even traits if you were buying them. You could change what you’re using after you’ve unlocked them, but there’s never been a way in this game to refund trait points after they’re spent, or skill points for skills. It never existed. The only thing fishy here is people’s memories.

Not a refund per se, the last time that Anet did a massive change they zero’d out (as in reset) the skills. But this time it was to difficult?
That is was I was referring to.

No, but I’ll tell you something. The last time Anet did a massive change, people ran around without builds on some characters without even realizing it for weeks. This even happened to me. I have a lot of characters.

One day I’m in a dungeon and I’m not doing that well at all. Never even occurred to me that I had no trait points deployed. The fact is, it’s easier for someone who knows the game to play with a thrown together build, than it is for someone who doesn’t really get the game completely to play with no build.

If I ran around with characters with no builds at all (and I know people in my guild did the same), then what are the odds we’re the only one.

It is a problem, it’s just not your problem. The question is, how many people had this problem last time.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For me personally, I don’t consider statements that include ‘As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.’ as promises.

But, of course, that’s just me.

Please don’t make the black knights read. That’s plain unfair.

I’m pretty sure that most people that have followed the game from the beginning, remember an entire blogpost dedicated to the iterative nature of the development cycle and how things change all the time, even finished systems that they thought they’d be happy with. It’s entirely possible, in my mind anyway, that Anet published that article to let everyone know that not all plans will pan out. That’s how I read the article anyway.

People wonder why Anet is reluctant to share information before it’s ready. That’s because there’s a loud percentage of this forum who sees every single word out of Anet’s virtual lips as a “promise”.

That’s the reason why Anet is gun shy and doesn’t want to say anything. Because a vocal minority will call them out on anything late, unfinished, scrapped, altered or missing. But that same vocal minority will often ignore the dozens of touches added to the game they didn’t know were coming at all.

Brandu.8150:

Gummi: Here’s a “strait up fact” for you. A level 60+ Necro who before the change had the Scepter skill bonus (Lingering Curse) and the Flesh Golem minion and now has neither due to arbitrary reassignment. 84 hero points to get these back is not an acceptable solution. In my opinion.

It’s even less of an answer for the level 45 who after the change got handed a whomping 3 ‘extra’ hero points to spend as they wish.

Really?

So there’s a system included to hand us ‘extra’ or ‘bonus’ hero points but not to clear the slate and let us choose from them from the get go? Something smells fishy in Denmark and it’s not the herring.

Fishy? What are you talking about. There has never been a way to refund skills once you buy them or even traits if you were buying them. You could change what you’re using after you’ve unlocked them, but there’s never been a way in this game to refund trait points after they’re spent, or skill points for skills. It never existed. The only thing fishy here is people’s memories.

If it’s not your first character, and you have 80s, play your 80s, get some level up tomes and level up some. Leave the character you’re leveling on hold. This is even faster if you PvP btw.