Guild Wars 2

Snerf said: “Also, I believe they must have have been working on this content for longer than the game has been live. Surely it would take longer than a couple of moths to plan, code, develop and implement content of this scale? We as a community can hope that they take great care when rocking the boat, and make no decision lightly. I expect nothing less from a group of professionals.”

Which calls into question why Linsey Murdock prefaced here statments about the “item progression initiative” with “As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall.” … as if the idea for item progression came as a result of their watching the live game unfold, and as if it wasn’t precisely the game design plan to (1) get exotic-quality gear fairly easily, and (2) reserve legendary skins for legendary efforts.

What she is implying is that they decided to start up item stat progression power creep in contradition to the stated game philosophy because the live game was was playing out exactly as the original team expected – indeed, exactly how they had planned it.

Even if server populations dropped (which there is no hard evidence for), this is still exactly how the game was designed, and the kind of playstyle it was supposed to generate – a game where you didn’t have to devote your time to it, and you could “drop out” for a few months and revisit when new content came in.

These posts that try to claim “something went wrong, so they had to change course” are ignoring two things:

(1) None of thosehypothetical scenarios/reasons/excuses include anything that wasn’t expected by the original GW2 team. In fact, they spoke about these very subjects at length.

and

(2) this content had to have been originated long before there could have been such information available.

Conclusion: this content direction was a top-down decision made before launch and in contradiction the design philosophy that drove 5 years of development and advertising. It was in fact, at least in the final months, a deliberate case of bait and switch.

IMO, the difference between “casual player” and “hardcore” doesn’t come down to how much time you put in the game or even the forums, what matters is the reason you play the game.

Hardcore Gamer: Primary consideration is “winning”, “beating the game”, “completing the game”, “being the best or among the best in the game”.

If you will suffer through endless hours of grind that you would otherwise never do in order to gain a piece of gear for no reason other than that it is the best, or because you need it to get the best, you might be a hardcore gamer. If you rush to complete map checklists so that you can check “complete the map checklist” off of the checklist of things you need to do to “beat the game”, you might be a hardcore gamer. If you think there is “nothing else to do” after you have “maxed out” the stats of your character and/or have completed in-game checklists, you might be a hardcore gamer. If you will put other things on hold, like going on dates, going out with friends, going outside, tending to the child or a pet, and ignore them in order to do things in game that are necessary to achieve some form of “best-ness”, you might be a hardcore gamer. If you purposefully change your work schedule or call in sick to play the game several times in a year, you might be a hardcore gamer.

Casual Gamer: Primary consideration in an MMOG is “having fun”, “entertainment”, “relaxation”, “enjoyment”.

If, regardless of what is going on in-game, you will simply get up and walk off if a friend comes over, or if a child needs a glass of water, or if the phone rings, or if the dog wants to play , you might be a casual player. If you will keep lesser-quality gear over higher-quality because it looks better on your character, you might be a casual gamer. If you would rather see the development team come out with new city clothes and dance emotes than new dungeons and higher-tiered gear, you might be a casual gamer. If you spend hours in the game having fun doing absolutely nothing that will actually advance your character in any significant way, you might be a casual gamer. If you actually avoid grouping and dungeon-crawling because you don’t want to put other players at risk when you get up and do other stuff away from the game as it comes up, you might be a casual player.

lacrimstein.5603:

GADefence.5634:

. . .

Kript : People start at low levels. People level. People move on to higher leveled maps. Time has past, so most people are in high level maps. Low level maps are emptyish. Mid level maps are empty. Ergo, the game is dead.

And you say WE need to use logic? O.o

There must be a black hole, or a secret map somewhere on my server that I don’t know about then. Sure, Orr is busier than other areas, but the population there is not even close to accounting for all the other areas.

The point is, ArenaNet has all the numbers, not us. Something that happened in those numbers must have been so great that it made ArenaNet forget about one of their core pillars of GW2’s design. The guess that is so obvious it just begs to be made: a huge population drop.

I disagree. Mr. Whiteside has said that this update is part of expansion-size content being added this month, with fully supported and integrated systems and structures. Perhaps if your product absolutely bombs at launch, you might toss out your central philosophy and throw together a huge update in a couple of month’s time.

But that’s not what happened here. GW2 pre-launch and launch was a huge success, selling over 2 million copies. GW2 led global sales in Q3 for NCSoft. Servers filled up and they had to add servers. So, this content wasn’t hastily thrown-together because the game bombed. Also, and I can’t stress this enough, they fully expected exotic-level armor to be easy to get. That was one of the whole points – maxing out your stats as a character was supposed to be relatively easy.

Also, they knew there would be massive complaints by the gear-grinders, and part of the design philosophy was that you didn’t have to spend your life in the game keeping up – you could go play other games if “maxing out stats” was all you were interested in, coming back in to play occasionally for other reasons – you know, “fun”.

Their only intermediate source of income besides box sales was going to be the cash shop. Since box sales (including digital sales) were a success, the only other thing that could possibly have generated a hasty direction change would have been shockingly low cash shop sales.

But, even if cash shop sales were low, why abandon your core philosophy right out of the gate with the first update? Why not expand cash shop sales with all sorts of tuff people have been asking for in the suggestion threads that fit in with the core philosophy? I mean, shouldn’t they have been planning on expanding the cash shop first anyway, right off the bat, seeing that it was going to be their main source of intermediate income?

The only logical conclusion is: they’ve been planning this since before launch. This is not the result of people complaining on forums, or “player feedback”, or how fast people got exotics. This is not about filling a non-existent “reward gap” between exotics and legendaries (what a hoot!).

I don’t know who Mr. Whiteside is, or when he came into a position of power, but that official statement of his demonstrates that he doesn’t know what he is talking about, just as Ms. Murdock’s use of the term “end game” in her blog post demonstrates they have abandoned the “the whole game is the end game” philosophy.

This was most likely just a top-down decision made before launch by people that came into power recently that simply held personal beliefs about what was necessary, in the long run, to have a financially successful MMOG.

slazzy.7309:

Its actually not ANet’s fault. It’s all you players out there complaining about how there’s no progression. Skins weren’t enough, no you needed gear to shoot for. You wanted it, you got it. But its another example of how the community has destroyed a game, not the developer. The developers are trying to please their customers. Unfortunately they listened to the vocal minority and changed fundamental mechanics to appease them. This is another reason why SWOTR collapsed. They listened to the wrong bunch.

Its not just about the ascended gear. Its about how legendaries will be just that much better than exotics now, the gap increased that much more, when it didn’t matter before.

I don’t understand why we can’t jump into a game and all be at the same skill level, instead of having our gear determine how we win.

Devs, stay away from the forums. Send out polls for specific things to your playerbase. Try another means to get a representative sample of what the players want to see added, removed, or changed. The forums are a cesspool, and now what was once a unique game system has plunged into the hellish hamster wheel that spins all its players into the same progression system until their eyes bleed. Only one game does it the best, and now you’ve lost to them.

You, the players, have only yourselves to thank for this.

I don’t think that player input had anything to do with this. A survey of the evidence at hand, IMO, indicates this was just a top down decision made by a few who simply believe that stat progression (power creep) is a fundamental MMOG requirement.

I don’t know if they came into power at ANET recently or if the whole “manifesto” thing was a con job from day one, but there’s really no way that live-game forum caterwauling by a few unsatisfied gear-treadmillers generated content that obviously has been in the works since before launch.

Pants.8315:

Tyr.1965:

I’ve calmed down a bit since spending all day monitoring this thread yesterday, having been vehemently against this new tier. Mr. Whiteside’s post has a self-contradicting tone at first glance, but I’m beginning to understand where they are coming from with this decision.

ArenaNet made a mistake in balancing the tiers that are already in the game. They made exotics far too easy to obtain in relation to legendary weapons. Both items are equal in power but nowhere near equal in time, effort, and resources to acquire. There is virtually no prestige at all to exotic armor yet a ton of prestige in legendary weapons. When they eventually release legendary armor, it would have been the same case. There is a very extreme gap right now.

What they want to do, is make Ascendant gear be what Exotic gear was supposed to be. Ascended will take longer to acquire than Exotic, the way that Exotic was supposed to take longer to acquire than Rare gear. However, it still won’t take as long to acquire as legendary armor and weapons, which will be eventually scaled up to Ascended level once Ascended weapons are introduced.

Of course, Ascended has to be better than Exotic because Exotic is better than Rare and Rare is better than Masterwork, and so on. We have to think of Ascended as being the new Exotic because ArenaNet simply failed to make Exotic gear live up to its name.

Many players want to work towards something but don’t necessarily want to take the big plunge from Exotic to Legendary status. This new tier will give us all something to work towards over time. When all the Ascended gear is finally in the game, we’ll look back and feel a sense of accomplishment that many of us didnt feel with Exotics and perhaps then, more of us will start working towards Legendary gear.

I know it’s all scarey and it really wants to feel like ArenaNet is turning their backs on us, but take an objective step back and breathe. All they’re trying to do is fix their initial mistake and make the last tier of gear before Legendary take a bit more time to obtain. It wouldn’t seem nearly as scarey if all this were in place at launch.

I won’t get into the Agony mechanic and the resistance gear they’re adding. I personally think that is a stupid, boring, lazy, outdated, and historically unsuccessful mechanic. It is far from eloquent and I hope they reconsider. But in regards to the new tier, I see it as a necessary fix to a system they didnt quite get right from launch.

I think now I can relax and log back into the game and give them a chance. I’m definitely going to be extremely hesitant to spend another dime in the gem store in the immediate future because ANet has handled this entire debacle very, very poorly. Sometimes the community just needs straight-forward explanations instead of convoluted public relations spins and we didn’t get that here, which only added fuel to the fire. But I understand why they’re doing what they’re doing; I just wish they got it right from the start and didn’t have to do this. Let’s hope the road forward is less rocky than it is today.

I hope more people read this, because it makes perfect sense, it’s logical, calm, eloquent and use the information we’ve been given wisely. Thanks, made me think of other points I missed when considering my own posts.

Except that a core design element of the original philosophy was that top-stat gear would be relatively easy to acquire. There was no “mistake” that exotic was “easier than anticipated” to get, because it was SUPPOSED to be easy to get (and not all of it is that easy to get).

At some point, whether now or 2 months from now or 6 months from now, people will have acquired their exotic or ascended or whatever gear and face the exact same long, boring, hard effort to get legendary gear.

If ANET was shooting to provide a more tiered journey to Legendary, the simple solution would have been to add intermediate armor sets along the way to gaining legendary that had no stat variations from the exotic standard. They could have even added gear beyond legendary as long as there was no stat increase.

There is no sound, logical reason to increase stats beyond exotic other than to provide – as Linsey Murdock explicitly stated – a sense of progression and growth to the gear-treadmillers.

This is the beginning of a power-creep gear treadmill. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have increased top stats and would have just installed intermdiate cosmetic gear. Getting to top stat/power was always supposed to be relatively easy.

Showatt said: “Is Anet crazy? Nope.”

Business people are as irrational and prone to mistakes as anyone else. The history of MMOGs (and any business) is full of really bad business decisions based on many things other than a logical route to making a profit.

Let’s look at the facts:

Fact: The Q3 sales figures for GW2 were great – it led all NC Soft global game sales.

Fact: Their primary source for in-between expansion income was to be cash shop purchases.

Inference: Therefore, the logical business decision would be to roll out a massive cash shop expansion based on what people were saying they wanted. CS expansion is the logical “first thing” to get done.

Fact: There was no serious in-game polling to find out IF they would seriously alienate their fan base. There has not been any log-in questionnaire to determine what players would like to spend more money on, or what they wanted to see in the game. This is – at best – developers looking at playing trends and guessing about what is going on.

Fact: people “not logging in” after original content is cleared was something expected by the original dev team; in fact, it was part of the game philosophy to not try and force people to be logged in to GW2 all the time. It was the game you could play while you played other games. If the population dropped (which I can’t say that it did based on my experience in-game) after people cleared the content, this shouldn’t have panicked anyone because they foresaw that long ago and it was part of the philosophy.

Fact: It’s only 3 months in and they are saying now that this “item progression initiative” is part of a integrated, supported system of expansion size.

Inference: Obviously, you don’t throw that kind of expansion together in a month or two because some players that you already knew were going to get bored and complain got bored and complained. This “expansion” was most likely in the works well before launch.

Conclusion 1: They haven’t given their original vision a chance to work by simply adding new content with no power creep and by expanding the cash shop. Their first appreciable update abandons their core philosophy that drove the success of the sales of pre-launch and launch.

Conclusion 2: This has been in the works since before launch, meaning that the decision to abandon the original vision was made well before there was any business (revenue) reason to do so.

Conclusion 3: This was not – and could not have been – a business decision based on the revenue failure of the original vision, because they never gave it a chance to work beyond its launch success.

Conclusion 4: This was most likely nothing more than a personality-driven, top-down edict made by someone who simply believes that the power-creep gear-grind, end-game treadmill is a necessary part of MMOG design. That conclusion is supported by Linsey Murdock’s blog post where she says:

“Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level. Adding item progression is a delicate process normally undertaken in an expansion, but we feel it’s important to strive to satisfy the basic needs of our players sooner rather than later.”

Whomever is making the decisions now considers an ongoing sense of “progression” a “basic need” for players, and considers “end game” something reserved for “high end” players. They also consider “item progression” to be a “normal” part of expansions.

Summary: The fundamental game philosophy was abandoned when they started designing this massive, expansion-sized “Lost Shores” content, before they even gave the original design philosophy – which generated a very successful launch and a very devoted fan base – a significant chance to generate ongoing revenue via the cash shop or B2P expansions that followed the original vision. With no log-in or CS polling, there is no data other than guesswork and launch sales involved.

This indicates that the decision to abandon the original vision in favor of item progression gear-treadmilling was a personal decision made by people who just simply believed it was a better way to go forward without even giving the original vision a chance to succeed, and without getting any significant feedback from the customer base, and in spite of the pre-launch and launch sales success (and massive excitement & hype) of the original vision.

TL:DR – Even though the original vision generated mega hype, excitement, and a very successful launch, the decision to abandon that vision was likely made before launch and that vision was never given a chance to succeed financially going forward.

MrLee said: “To have a gear treadmill there must be several sets of gear every few months.. There is ONLY going to be ascended rank gear, not multiple sets.! If you would have read what Chris Whiteside said you woudn’t be over-reacting like you are now..

Please read what Linsey Murdock said in her blog. This is not a one-time addition of a single new kind of armor; this is the very first part of their “item progression initiative” which is supposed to address “the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level”.

Obviously, if one believes that it is a “basic need”, it’s not going to be resolved by adding one set of increased-stat gear three months into the game. What happens after players with this “basic need” get that set and max it out? You either have to increase that set’s max parameter, or you have to introduce a new set.

Again, read what Linsey said: “The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.”

Banewrath.5107:

Nobody is telling you that you need to have these new armors in order to be able even survive the new content. .

Yes, they are. Quote from Linsey Murdock at the GW2 blog:

“Players who wish to delve deep into the Fractals will find that Agony makes progress increasingly difficult, until they reach the point where some defense against this condition is a must.”

CorpusRye.2968:

I really don’t understand the reasoning for adding a gap closer with higher stats when Legendary’s didn’t have higher stats before the expansion, the gap that had to be closed was simple: time and effort to get a weapon with same stats but a ‘legendary’ skin. In my opinion the gap that had to be closed was: introduction of legendary armor (with no stat increase), since there is, to my knowledge, no legendary armor in game. Even worse, the stats of Legendary’s will probably be increased to the new ascended standard. Which means they do not fill a gap between excotic and legendary, they actually create an additional gap between excotic and legendary.

I also don’t understand the reasoning that if you add more content, the armor you should have should be better (ref: GW1 -> 3 campaigns + 1 expansion -> no increase in stats on gear nor on weapons).

I don’t know yet if I think it is a bad thing (I am probably going to try and get it anyway), but i’m very dissappointed in the reasoning as it is clearly flawed.

The reasoning isn’t flawed. Linsey explained it all in her blog post. They are doing this to appease treadmill-progression gear-grinders, and logically must have been planning to do so since before launch (contrary to Linsey’s obvious prevarication on this part).

The original game philosophy is out. This is the beginning of new philosophy, where new gear/items is supposed to satisfy a “basic need” for character progression, as Linsey stated in her GW2 blog post. The old philosophy was about providing a sense of accomplishment, which could be achieved via cosmetics. In the old philosophy, progression was capped at exotic/legendary stats. In the old philosophy, “the whole game is the end game”.

Read Linsey’s blog post. The old philosophy has clearly and unequivocally been purposefully abandoned. This is not a hasty “mistake” on their part where we can show them the error and they fix it. This has been planned for many months and is an integral part of how GW2 is going to be expanding in the future.

ANET has adopted a never-ending progression-grind model for GW2. Part of a good con job is keep the mark hopeful and/or confused to the point that they go along with the con because they can’t believe people would so blatantly lie and mislead, and try to interpret what is begin said/done in a way where they (the marks) don’t feel foolish and stupid for having fallen for the con job.

They conned us. It’s really that simple. Fortunately, I got my money’s worth of entertainment, even though I dislike the fact that once again I’ve provided funding to con men. But, what the heck, con men gotta make a living too. It’s not the first time I’ve been conned out of money by an MMO developer (SOE!!!), and it may not be the last. At least for 3 months I had the game of my dreams

Gurpsmeister.9068:

Okay okay okay, we got some confirmation about how the system is going to work. It’s a gap closer between exotic and legendary not a treadmill starter. The gate mechanic is still there and that sucks BUT if it stays in that dungeon then it’s not really a big deal is it?

Can we let this beast die now? I’m ashamed I started this thread to begin with..

Except there is was/is no gap between exotic and legendary. They have the same stats. There is no need to “fill in” a non-existent gap. Legendary gear was never about feeding any sense of progression; it was about providing a sense of accomplishment, which is why the difference between top end gears was purely aesthetic.

There is no way to serve a sense of ongoing progression without a gear treadmill. If aesthetics provided that sense of progression, there would be no need to put higher stats on the Ascended gear. Period.

Mr. Whiteside confirmed that the manifesto is out the door. The design philosophy has changed. Rare gear is no longer about a sense of achievement, but rather must now feed a sense of progression. Linsey directly implicated that the_ “whole game is the end game” philosophy is dead, as they are concentrating on creating “end game content” and new “end game mechanics” for “high-end players” to serve a sense of progression that is, in her mind, a “basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level.”.

Before, aesthetic variances were offered to serve a sense of accomplishment, not a sense of progression. Gear progression was explicitly capped.

The game vision that sold many of us on GW2 is lost. Mr. Whiteside and Ms. Murdock do not share the original vision of the game as an explicit alternative to that kind of game structure; they embrace it and have been doing so since before launch, because you don’t whip up the kind of expansion-level content Mr. Whiteside spoke about in a month, after – and because – some live players complained about how hard it is to get legendary skins.

Chris Whiteside said: “Our goal is not to create a gear treadmill. Our goal is to ensure we have a proper progression for players from exotic up to legendary without a massive jump in reward between the two. "

There is no “progression” from exotic to legendary. They have the same stats. The only “reward” is aesthetic. I wonder what, In Mr. Whiteside’s mind, constitutes a “massive” jump between aesthetic rewards?

There is no reason to increase top end gear stats other than to provide a gear treadmill. Period. It’s that simple. This is a clear violation of the promised game philosophy that is obviously implicit in the fact that legendaries and exotics have the same stats. That “sense of progression” was supposed to end at a cap per character and one ether accepted a sense of accomplishment instead (for grinding aesthetics), or they find another game to play.

As far as providing that same gear over time in other areas in the game, how sly, Mr Whiteside. WoW does the same thing; when the new “best gear” comes out with new treadmill content, the old “best gear” is distributed down throughout the game over time so us scrubs can make ourselves happy with the hand-me-downs of the elite.

Also, either this “item progression initiative”, agony and ascended mechanic was developed recently and only in reaction to live game players getting exotics too fast and complaining about lack of progression, or it was an integral part of a huge expansion with supporting systems and features that has been in development for more than just a month or two. You and Linsey should have gotten your stories straight. You can’t have it both ways.

I suggest everyone re-read Linsey’s post. Look at how she uses the term “end-game”. She uses it in the traditional sense, over and over, talking about adding new “end game content” to “high end players”.

They have abandoned the manifesto and the original design philosophy and have been planning to do so since before launch. There’s simply no other conclusion that fits the facts.

Nar.8327:

Xiccarph.7352:

This is something I would dearly love to see:

“I would have been totally fine with the Ascended armor if it was just as good as exotic gear, but the infuse slot would be something for cosmetic stuff instead.

The infuse slot could just be for really, really, really awesome cosmetic animations that would appear on your character, or whatever.

Put whatever thing you will in your infuse slot and make wings appear on your character, a glowing aura which can be dyed, butterflies, bananas, carrots, bees, winds with leafs or whatever you like.”

So the door is being opened to a gear-grind with gated content. I know the company needs to make some money to keep this game financially viable but is this really the way to go?

Hire this guy.

If this was about money, this update would be about taking stuff like your suggestions above and countless similar such suggestions and making such content available to purchase from the cash shop. This update was not in reaction to lack of revenue or “customer feedback”; it been in the hopper for a long time – had to be. Everything else is spin and con.

Xeres.3724:

And, BTW, the amount of replies to this topic – even if they were all unique and all were in favor / disapprove of this topic – it’s still a fanstastically small percentage of the player base.

And yet the official blog by Linsey Murdock says that they did this in response to player feedback after the game went live. So that means they have betrayed their core philosophy based on a fantastically small percentage of the player base. The only way to get a good sampling of what the player base really wants (or doesn’t want) is to do a log-in poll. There has been no such poll, so based on what “player feedback” are they supposedly making this fundamental shift in game policy?

So now we have over a hundred pages and over 5k responses of “player feedback” that dwarfs any pro-progression posts on these forums; if GW2 is so responsive to “player feedback”, where are they? IF this was truly a “player feedback”-driven addition, then the current overwhelming player pushback should have them take the Agony/Ascended “end game” mechanism out of the content update, now that they realize that no, we really do not want this.

Comparing apples to apples – player feedback to player feedback, each as a “miniscule” portion of the player base, those against the Ascended mechanic win. If ANET is really responding to player feedback, they’ll take it out of the update.

Unfortunately, this “item progression initiative” has been in the works for much longer than the game has been live, and they’re only trying to spin it as the developers being responsive to community concerns.

Reevac.1748:

So who wants to take a list of all the people who are quitting Friday if they appear in game anytime over the weekend harasses them for being a hypocrite?

Quit? There’s nothing to “quit”. There’s no subscription. I quit EQ, EQ2 and WoW, then played no MMOG’s seriously for 3 years because of this kind of kitten from developers. As disgusted as I am, there’s no denying that I got 440 hours of great fun for about $180.

I’ll continue to play – much less than I was playing, to be sure – but there’s no reason not to continue to squeeze some fun out of what I’ve already played and time invested when there is no additional expense. I won’t spend any more in the cash shop, and I’ll go back to looking for another game to play, but there’s no reason to not continue playing until I find another developer that offers what I want.

Sure, they might pull the same bait and switch ANET is pulling, but hey, at least I got my money’s worth.

cherrie.8907:

I needed to tripple-post, I am sorry, but there seems to be a new limit of 5001 characters.
Anyway, I believe everyone should and understand what Wintyre Fraust points to:
it is not very probable that – given how ANet claims their development looks like – this change was motivated by meaningful player feedback AND designed AND developed AND passed ANets extensive Q&A in 3 months.
This all points to a very grim possibility: that it was planned before release, completely against the Manifesto, completely against the marketing claims. It;s a sad thought indeed!

Please do realize that a fix for the Hatchery was postponed for 3 weeks before it made it to live (actually, it still hasn’t).

Unfortunately, it also means that Linsey Murdock and ANET are flat-out lying to us by claiming that this update was engineered due to live game player feedback. What a crock.

This is the first day since pre-launch that I haven’t logged in. How utterly disappointing.

ChairGraveyard.2967:

Yeah just to clear up the “hardcore = wants gear treadmill” nonsense: I have over 800 hours into the game. This change is pure garbage.

Personally, I’ve come to equate the term “hardcore” with “gear-grind treadmill”, and not equate it to time invested. I have 440 hrs in the game. That’s 440 hrs of goofing off and having fun and not “grinding” for anything whatsoever. That’s what I call a “casual” playstyle. It’s not about the amount of time; it’s how you spend it.

This change caters to those that want a gear-grind treadmill, which IMO is the essence of what “hardcore” means.

After having time to reflect, I find this move by ANET to be even more troubling.

First, they said that pre-launch and launch sales were successful beyond their expectations. This means they exceeded their revenue goals – probably by a considerable margin. Since GW2 is B2P, the only significant revenue they could have expected between launch and the first B2P expansion would be cash shop and additional game sales.

Now, they sold so many games that they even suspended digital game sales, so it’s hard for me to imagine they aren’t happy with game sales. If you’re ANET and you know your main source of income for the next 6 months or so is the cash shop, it seems to me clear that cash shop expansion should be your primary focus besides getting that first expansion ready.

However, 3 months into the game and now we have a new armor tier set that goes hand-in-hand with new content gateway mechanics. This kind of thing isn’t something you just throw together at the last minute because some players are complaining about lack of gear progression, because such complaints had to be something ANET knew was going to happen. It would of course take time for the community to sort itself out, because many, many people were going to log in expecting to find the usual MMOG and would probably be dissatisfied with the lack of the usual end-game grind. This is something ANET certainly realized. They even said that they expected the game population to slack off between expansions as the powergamers consumed the content; it was part of their design philosophy.

It’s only logical, given their philosophy, that they should have had a massive cash shop expansion ready to go – new skins, emotes, animations, perhaps an expansion of the dye system, avatar cosmetics, ability to change names, custom dye weapons, etc., perhaps some new armor drops throughout the whole world, perhaps some new events scattered throughout the zones, a new zone. But the cash shop expansion should have been on the top of the list because it was going to be the revenue generator.

But, what are we getting? 3 months in – before any cash shop expansion or any other content in keeping with the original design philosophy, we get content that certainly took some time to generate (perhaps months, considering how ANET likes multiple iterations) and is clearly contradictory to their design philosophy as stated.

Is ANET really just schlepping out thrown-together design-busting content generated in a panic by nothing more than a lack of cash shop sales? If that was the case, wouldn’t it be more prudent to “schlep out” cash shop product that keeps in the design philosophy, even if they hadn’t been planning on such an expansion all along (and they should have been)?

Linsey Murdock said that this change is due to customer feedback; I don’t see how that is possible. What customer feedback? Complaints by a group they knew were going to complain? There were no log-in polls or questionnaires. Is Linsey saying that after a month or two they got feedback and THEN decided to schlep together a philosophy-betraying update including new armor and armor-locked “end game” content? In a month? Where is that famous ANET iterative process?

No, I don’t think so. I don’t think that complaints by a group they knew were going to complain due to fundament design differences, on top of sales that exceeded their expectations, and before they even expanded the cash shop in ways that customers have been asking since launch – I don’t think that precipitated a supposed break from ANET’s famous iteration-heavy development history towards schlepping together the AGONY gate armor tier and system and betraying so many customers.

That doesn’t make any sense. They planned this – this “item progression initiative” from the start, which is why the Agony system and content is ready to go 3 months into the game and BEFORE any significant cash shop expansion. This can’t be a direction made necessary by a lack of income. This can’t be a direction made necessary by any meaningful “customer feedback” since launch, because there was no log-in poll or questionnaire. The “item progression initiative” is just too big and broad to have been thrown together in a month.

Nope. The “item progression initiative” had to have been developed long before any unexpected “customer feedback” forced them to sit around and come up with a core-philosophy defying update they could throw together in a month or so. Sorry, that explanation just doesn’t wash. You don’t change the entire direction and structure of your game based on that kind of “customer feedback” at this point in the game.

They were going to do this all along. That’s why it’s coming out before any cash shop expansion and without any real polling of the customer base. It has nothing to do with a lack of revenue or “customer feedback”. There’s no logic to those claims.

Crackbone.5710:

Korrigan.4837:

Nimraphel.7819:

Wintyre Fraust.6534:

jboynton asks: “How does GW2 maintain its position as a revenue driver without that income in future quarters?”

How does aborting the design manifesto – which, arguably, drove those sales in the first place – help raise revenue from a game that has no subscription? Are hardcore players the top consumers of cash shop items? I doubt it. Are hardcore gear-grinders going to produce the same kind of B2P expansion sales (when one comes out) as launch? If ANET alienates everyone who bought GW2 because of that manifesto, and because of the non-grind “whole-world” end game philosophy, what are those expansion sales going to be?

It seems to me we’re witnessing a potential SWG moment here; ANET can alienate everyone who came here specifically because of what GW2 was billed as, promised to be, and for three months now has delivered by changing the core nature of the game. And for what? Players that endlessly run from game to game seeking a means to satiate a never-ending quest for avatar progression/power?

This post cannot be stated enough. This is the crux of the matter.

Wintyre, my new friend, you nailed it. Couldn’t have said it better.

And you don’t think they’ve gone over this internally ad nauseum? You aren’t stating anything they haven’t discussed, of that I am sure.

Every argument and counter argument for the introduction of this new tier of gear has likely been gone over with a fine tooth comb.

Well, you could have said the same thing when the game first came out, when they said there would be no gear-grind treadmill. Only thing is, they said they listened to player feedback and then decided to go off in a different direction. Okay, if they decided to go on a different direction due to “player feedback”, we’re giving them some more player feedback, because apparently “player feedback” from forums and such is how they make their design decisions, even to the point of betraying their original manifesto.

Which brings us to another point: where did they get their “player feedback” in the first place? Forums? I have an idea: before a game company decides to betray everyone who bought your game due to a core design manifesto based on “player feedback”, why don’t you run a log-in poll or questionnaire so you can get a REAL idea about how the player base feels instead of just what the most vocal say on forums?

How about a login poll that asks: What content would you like to see added first? Followed by a multiple-choice list and a place to write something in. Or: “How would you feel about adding another tiered set of armor that would make some content in the game exclusive to those that had that armor?

I remember EQ used to run log-in questionnaires. I forget what the subject was, but once the overwhelming consensus on the forum was one thing, and the log-in poll showed that the actual player base felt exactly the opposite in overwhelming numbers.

Mandrax said: “I think that people aren’t spending enough in the cash shop because there’s nothing worth buying. I would certainly spend more if there was something worthwhile. I’ll bet I’m not alone.”

Seconded. It just goes to show you what ANET will be – mistakenly, IMO – focusing on: keeping the insatiable powergamers happy.

Sky asks: The last question in my mind is – will Ascended be the final tier, and this was just a one time correction to a miscalculation… or is Ascended the first of many more to come?

They explicitly stated this is just the beginning of a new “item progression initiative” specifically intended to satisfy hardcore players and establish a new “end game” concept that directly contradicts their design manifesto about the “whole game” being the end game. They think they can kitten down our back and call it rain if they use horizontal paths to hide unique content only hardcore players can keep up with.

New “end game” mechanic Agony will enable you to exclusively farm Agony-specific content. Next – upper tier Agony content, or perhaps Psionic Content, or some other X, Y, Z – specific content that excludes everyone except the most hardcore players from pursuing that content. Meanwhile, where’s the investment of time and resources for the rest of us as ANET tries to keep ahead of the powergamer curve?

jboynton asks: “How does GW2 maintain its position as a revenue driver without that income in future quarters?”

How does aborting the design manifesto – which, arguably, drove those sales in the first place – help raise revenue from a game that has no subscription? Are hardcore players the top consumers of cash shop items? I doubt it. Are hardcore gear-grinders going to produce the same kind of B2P expansion sales (when one comes out) as launch? If ANET alienates everyone who bought GW2 because of that manifesto, and because of the non-grind “whole-world” end game philosophy, what are those expansion sales going to be?

It seems to me we’re witnessing a potential SWG moment here; ANET can alienate everyone who came here specifically because of what GW2 was billed as, promised to be, and for three months now has delivered by changing the core nature of the game. And for what? Players that endlessly run from game to game seeking a means to satiate a never-ending quest for avatar progression/power?

Acidic Vision said: “So let A.Net put those players that enjoy that sort of thing in a corner by themselves with what makes them happy and get back to the stuff that makes you happy."

Except that those players will consume that content quickly and be in need of another fix, and as the official blog said, this is just the beginning of new item progression initiative for the future, putting a lot of development resources and effort into trying to keep hardcore players from getting bored and feeling like they aren’t increasing their character’s power.

If we don’t stop this now, then this is where they have said they’re going. That’s not a game I want to play.

showatt said: Why do you guys think endgame gear progression is such an evil thing?

Nobody said it’s evil. What we’re saying – many of us – is that we specifically bought this game because of what the developers said it would be, because of what they said their core design philosophy was, and “endgame gear progression” was one of the primary things the developers said GW2 was not going to have.

What we want is a game where “X” represents the necessary power/gear progression ceiling, and once we get our character outfitted in X-suitable gear, no matter how long it takes us because of our playstyle, then we’re good for all past and future content. The whole game is the end-game. That’s what we bought and invested in, and that’s what’s being changed.

Arnath said: That blog post would have been written hours if not days before this information was released and before people started complaining, dont get mad at that blog, wait for a new update with more information and then we can have a constructive conversation.

Right now people are just getting upset over nothing.

Okay, let’s look at the most recent blog post the moderator directed us to.

Linsey said: As we watch Guild Wars 2 mature in its Live environment, we have found that our most dedicated players were achieving their set of Exotic gear and hitting “the Legendary wall. We designed the process of getting Legendary gear to be a long term goal, but players were ready to start on that path much sooner than we expected and were becoming frustrated with a lack of personal progression.

This means that hardcore players maxed out their progression, Legendaries were really, really long-term goals and hard to get, and so the hardcore player base was getting frustrated with lack of character progression even after they hit 80 and get their exotics.

Our desire is to create a game that is more inclusive for hardcore and casual players alike, but we don’t want to overlook the basic need for players to feel like they are progressing and growing even after hitting max level.

Now character “progress” and “growth” has been redefined as a “basic need” for all players in order to justify adding hardcore-specific content to satisfy one particular segment of the player base – hardcore players that burned through the available content in 3 months and are “frustrated” that there “isn’t anything else to do” but the long grind for Legendaries.

By adding challenging new combat mechanics to end-game content…

This is a devastating phrase, even if it is casually slipped into the post. They’ve clearly given up on the “the whole game is the end-game” concept. By adding unique “new combat mechanics” to specific high-level content, they’ve actually now created a separation between “end game” and “the rest of the game”.

…and ways to mitigate those mechanics through gear progression for high-end players,…

“The whole game is the end game” ? Why rush content in for “high-end players”? This is exactly what WoW and every other game does: try to appease hardcore payers by constantly adding content so they can “feel” like their character is “progressing” and “growing”.

Where are all the new level 1-79 armor skins? Where are all the new city clothes? Where are all the new emote/animations? Where are all the horizontal, non-power, non-combat paths into sideral content? How about new hairstyles, tattoos, dances? How about new weapons at every level, new weapon skills? New traits to choose from all up and down the level ranks?

Oh, that’s right, all the casual players aren’t frustrated and complaining like the hardcores who consumed all the content already, so once again, the hardcores get unique content and unique gear and the rest of us get … what?

The first end game mechanic we will introduce is Agony, which will be encountered in the Fractals of the Mists dungeon, and is mitigated by Infusions.

The first “end game” mechanic? Isn’t THE WHOLE GAME THE END GAME?

As we release more new end game content in the future…

Isn’t THE WHOLE GAME THE END GAME? This is obviously ANET panicking that they are losing the playtime of hardcores that consume content the fastest, and reaching out to them by promising a future full of item progression.

The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative. We’re going to add tons of new high-level content to Guild Wars 2 in the future. As we introduce the new high-level content, we’ll also roll out complimentary Ascended and Legendary items (to say nothing of the other rewards you can earn by playing the content).

There’s just no way to read this other than: we are catering to hardcore players who demand item progression. Maybe we’ll even toss in some scrub-sauce for casuals if we have time.

If “the whole game is the end game”, then where are all the new 2-79 gear sets?

aaron.7850:

“The new additions in November are just the start of our item progression initiative.”

Well, I’ve got to hand it to ANET .. talk about an epic “bait and switch”! Holy cow.

Showatt said:

Then MMO is not for you.

Better gear will always come out.

When level cap increase so does the quality of the gear.

When new expansion comes out so does new legendary weapons.

That’s inevitable.

That’s why I didn’t play MMOs for about 3 years after I quit WoW. It’s only “inevitable” if a game company refuses to do it differently – which ANET promised, and delivered with the original package. For whatever reason, now, they’re going WoW-clone.

Even with the additional $120 I spent in the cash shop, though, I’ve gotten my money’s worth (445 hrs played). I just wish (ironically) that i had a subscription I could cancel to register my disapproval. Dang it!

Showatt said: Gear progression is an absolute necessity to MMO. It gives you a sense of achievement, it prolong your playtime and it give you a reason to grind. In the future, when the level cap is raised, you can be prepared for new exotics that offer better stats than your current level 80s.

There are many means to gain a sense of achievement in an MMORPG without endless gear progression; there’s just no way to give that sense of achievement to the WoW-clone player base without it. There are countless ideas in the suggestion forum for horizontal progression/variation where a sense of achievement can be provided while leaving the power ceiling alone.

For whatever reason, ANET just decided to cave to the power-progression players that already have countless MMO’s to play.

Danikat said: I also have to say, and I say this as someone who’s highest level character is 37 and who has never had more than 2g in the bank, that if you’re a “casual” player by choice or because of the limitations real life puts on your game time, then you have to accept that you’re never going to be on a par with the people who devote all their time to the game. I can’t imagine where I’m going to get the time and money to get a legendary weapon, I haven’t even started thinking about exotics yet, but it doesn’t bother me. I’ve got plenty to do in this game alredy and I’m having fun doing it.

But that was the point, Danikat, of the supposed GW2 philosophy; even a casual player, over a long period of time, could in fact gear up to be on par with any other player because there was supposedly going to be a power ceiling that everyone could eventually get to, without endless power-progression “bumps” that kept pushing the ability of having an equally-powered character continually beyond the reach of casual players.

Moon.7310:

I admit I had a hard time adjusting to all the changes you did in GW2 compared to GW1, but I trusted you A-Net to do it right. And up until now I had a lot of fun in this game.

BUT now you are betraying that trust. You said on your own that there would be no item progression thing and yet now you do it. It might not seem like much if you compare stats of the gear, but the fact that there will be new gear you need to progress further in the word just proves that you were lying all along when you told us about the intentions and plans for GW2.

When you think about all the things they could have done, the countless horizontal additions and progressions offered in the suggestions forum, it just blows my mind that they’d do something like this – just give all of us that were so devoted and such ardent defenders of their no-end-game-gear-content-progression philosophy the big middle finger.

I thought ANET understood. I thought they’d value the fact that they made promises and delivered on them, that they had created a trust with a whole community who appreciated them doing what they said they would do.

And now, they just blew it.

Sigh.

nugzta.8973:

NO for me.

This is the beginning of Anet’s new direction. I feel betrayed because they are abandoning their philosophy. It may seem insignificant increase but Anet wants to gauge how far they can push the boundary. I don’t care whether it is +1 or +9999 stats increase, it is all about principles and Anet has thrown them away.

You spoke what is in my heart as well. How disappointing.

Gah. I guess expecting any company to honor their commitments/promises is expecting too much.

Linsey Murdock said:

“As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game. Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content.”

So, I guess it was all a lie – you know, the part about “the whole game being the end-game” and the equivalence of level 80 gear. How depressing. Here I have 445 hrs invested in 8 characters, and have spent over $100 in the cash shop for various upgrades (mostly maxing out bank slots), and now I find out ANET has just sold out to become another gear-grind progression WoW clone.

Ironically, now I wish GW2 was a subscription game so I could cancel it. I guess I’ll just satisfy myself with refusing to purchase anything else from ANET.

I’ve been such a huge ANET fan and supporter over the past year or so, writing many columns defending and promoting GW2 at my blog on MMORPG.com. They had a great opportunity to really be different, made all the right promises, then delivered on them and started off so good, and now for whatever reason they just sold out to the progression gamers.

There’s so many ways ANET could have gone in adding new content – there are countless horizontal ideas in the suggestion forum.

What a shame. How utterly disappointing.

Yeah, I walk quite often. Setting that hotkey was one of the first things I did in the game. It’s especially useful for thoroughly exploring cities and well-populated areas when you want to to talk to all the NPCs.

The game is designed from the ground up to serve my “world experiencer” (casual) playstyle, not exploit it in order to pay for functionally superior content reserved for hardcore gear-grinders. That’s why I bought it., have invested about $100 in bank expansions, and will continue to play and support it.

Well, that and the art. And the WvW. But without the game-design philosophy, I wouldn’t have bothered.

At about 30% of the world map explored, I have basically all the skills I want for a couple of my characters. I was thinking that instead of putting future skill points into battle skills that don’t fit my playstyle, it would be cool to have non-combat skills available. For example:

1. Dancing skills – unlock more dance animations.
2. Crafting skills – ability to craft variant styles of gear.
3. Bartering skills – discounts all NPC purchase prices, including waypoints and repair, and get more for selling goods to NPCs.

If it doesn’t, everyone would play two archetypes – the top ranged, and the top melee – and ignore preference. This is bad.

What does “top” mean here? Most DPS? Easiest to PVE? Most popular gear graphics? Most popular skills/traits? Most used archetype in sPvP? This is really my point – “balancing” doesn’t mean much in a game like GW2.

Sounds like the OP plays a guardian and scared of future nerfs heh.

I’ve spent by far the most time with my elementalist because he is difficult to play and has IMO some of the coolest combat abilities in the game. I don’t really care about class nerfing – it doesn’t make me any difference, really, because I’m not a numbers guy. I don’t play min-max style. What I’m more interested in is profession variety and keeping the game fun, instead of this constant drive to force all professions into mathematical equivalence.

Yes, I don’t mean that there shouldn’t be any effort to make a class viable – IOW, it can get to level 80 and participate well in PvP – but the idea that the classes can be “balanced” in GW2 is, IMO, a non-starter. There are just too many variables involved that have no objective metric. IMO, developers should focus more on making entertaining, interesting classes and options and not try to homogenize everything to fit a set of numbers.

You cant balance. Atleast in my opinion. its proven by any other game on the market, their will always be a build better then others, A “perfect” build if you will.

This is my view too. However, the leash on the neck of developers is that they must at least attempt to “balance” current and any new classes. I’d like to see what they could come up with by setting that concern largely aside and just try to think up stuff people would like to be able to do.

First, why do all classes center on combat? How about a class that has skills that aren’t centered on combat? How about a class that centers on getting otherwise unattainable lore out of NPCs or can read books others cannot? Or a class that centers around being able to get variant designs out of crafting? Or a class that is better suited to exploration – can jump farther, higher, climb better, run faster, see more things on the map? How about a class that can acquire variant emotes?

I’m just saying – many of us playing this game are world-experiencers, not “game players” so to speak, so attempting to define our characters in terms of a balanced, mathematical combat formula is, IMO, an artifact from 10 years of WoW-clonism that can be dispensed with.

Overall, I find the regular armor styles in the game quite appealing. My biggest complaint about GW2 art (which is breathtakingly beautiful) are the high-end gear variations. They are much, much too WoWish for my tastes. I can’t see myself abandoning the really cool armor or weapon styles I already have on my characters (none over level 50) for any of the so-called “high end” or cash shop styles. I’m hoping they come out with some non-WoW-ish cash shop variations.

What does the term “balanced” mean, when it comes to classes? In most MMOGs, IMO, a “balanced” class means different things when it comes to PvE and PvP.

In PVE, balance generally means that a perfectly played, maximally efficient class will be the functional equivalent of any other class when it comes to the acquiring content that is part of the linear character progression. IOW, when reduced to a mathematical formula, every class (when perfectly played) produces the same value when it comes to gaining levels, farming resources or gold, or contributing to group or raid content.

In PvP, balance means that a perfectly played class will result in a draw with any other perfectly played class (when measured statistically over time).

The concept of “balance”, in any non-arbitrary, objective sense, must refer to a statistical analysis in regards to acquiring specific, mathematically-reducible products. IOW, if any class is not equivalent to any other class in terms being reduced to a numerical variable towards some kind of linear product, then the class is “not balanced”.

My question is: should classes in GW2 be “balanced” at all? Or is this simply a notion rooted in the very kind of MMO structure that GW2 is designed to escape? Doesn’t striving for universal equivalence of professions limit the possible variety, and doesn’t it impose the mentality that all your character is, essentially, is a numerical value in regards to how much it can contribute in a give PvE or PvP situation?

When characters are essentially reducible to how much tanking, dps or healing they provide, then it seems they can be balanced; I’m not sure how one would go about “balancing” the classes in GW2. When you consider all of the variables – all of the variant dodge roll effects, the ability to generate combo fields, character foot speed in aiding in the evasion of MOB attacks and effects, quick revive skills, etc. – unless you just line up one class mano a mano against each other with players dedicated to perfecting those particular classes in PvP, how can anyone claim to have “balanced” anything?

It seems to me that ANET should just abandon the whole notion of “balancing” classes, free up the future for all kinds of new class variations, and just let the general population figure out what they prefer playing. Then, if very few people are playing a certain class, they might take a look at changing something – but, then again, why not have classes that few people enjoy? I think trying to accomplish an even spread of class choices is also a mistake – an attempt to homogenize class appeal. Even if a class is difficult to play, so what? Lots of people enjoy playing difficult-to-play classes.

It seems to me that the idea of a set of “balanced” classes is really only viable when the productivity of a character in a given PvE or PvP setting is essentially reducible to numbers in a formula. Given the structure of combat in GW2, I think that “class balance” should be an idea throw into the same garbage bin as the holy trinity.

260+ hrs played. Still loving the PvE !!!!

I think that what a lot of people that post here simply don’t realize is that there is a huge number of players that never got to see any real end-game content whatsoever in most MMOGs, and so “zerging” – as you call it – PvE boss mobs is new, fresh, and quite fun for us.

But, if you give us about 10 years of enjoying it, maybe we’ll get to a point where we find it “boring” too

I don’t think anyone is saying WoW is a bad game, only that they don’t want GW2 becoming another WoW clone.

Yeah, I second this. I’ve played MMOG’s that used to run little in-game surveys on specific, hot issues when you logged in, and quite often the info gathered from the log-in survey overwhelmingly contradicted the vocal minority found in forums.

The silent majority votes every day via packed server lists. I suggest that before ANET makes any meaningful changes to anything they run a log-in poll on the matter.

265 hrs played, and love it more now than ever Tyria really is enormous and just full of stuff to do.

ANET has made the perfect game for me, as well, for about the same reasons as the O.P. Well said!

If only I had this kind of return on investment for everything I spend money on!

I wanted to give the Anet team a quick shout out to thank them for a couple of things.

First, thanks for the real sense of power I have when using weapons. When I slam a hammer down and the ground is scarred, or swing it around and enemies go flying in all directions like I’m a comic-book hero, I can’t help but have a big smile on my face. In all my time in EQ and WoW, and from what little time I spent in AoC and a couple of other MMOGs, I never (even at the highest levels) had the sense of power I have even in the low levels of GW2. Every profession I’ve played so far, I’ve been impressed by the animations and sound that produces that sensation of being powerful.

I love being able to jump into the middle of 3-4 enemies that are higher level than me and lay down the hurt. That just never gets old.

Second, thanks for all the npcs that don’t show up on the map and don’t have something over their head telling you where to go and what to do, but then you talk to them and suddenly you’re following them out for a perimeter check or running out with them to take out an enemy garrison. Next thing you know, you’ve filled out a heart even when you didn’t know you were doing so.

That’s really good stuff, guys.

Okay, diving back in now

Whether the game is dying or not I don’t know. What I DO know is I’m rapidly losing interest. If nothing changes drastically for the better in both PvP and PvE, GW2 will be dead. To me.

Just like WoW is dead. To me.

Good ones, Fozzik!

Another thing you can do at level 80 is try out/master different trait/skill/weapon systems available to that character. You can also max out all crafting skills with any single character.