Guild Wars 2

I suspect Arena.net hasn’t said anything (and will continue staying mum) because they’re holding out hope they’ll be able to find a happy medium in the future so that NCSoft will give the green light for a Canthan expansion (or living story seasons).

But at the same time, they don’t want to express that desire only to never get that green light and just disappoint everyone more than they already are. Gotta remember, Arena.net’s been raked over the coals plenty of times by this very community for stating intentions that they weren’t able to deliver on.

Saying “We have every intention of going back to Cantha” and then not being able to would result in the worst blowback they’ve ever received, and I think we all know it.

Kohlteth.3715:

You obviously do not play a Mesmer or Ranger

Bugs in skills since launch and even moreso for Mesmers since latest patches …… go check out the forum for mesmers !

For the record, my main character is a Ranger. Our main problems have been things that are not particularly easy to fix. The Pet AI is a problem that is shared with ALL AI in the game, and hitting that sweet spot isn’t a simple affair (other players whine when the AI is too smart, as evidenced in early beta). Our effective damage builds are limited considerably by the condition dilemma (well, and the legion of bearbows that refuse to accept that the games mechanics tilt heavily towards melee play… but that’s a player-side problem).

Both are issues that extend beyond just Ranger, but hit Ranger harder, and they are both solutions that are easier said than done. I’ve just reached a point where I’ve stopped asking, “are we there yet?” They know what’s wrong; they don’t need me to keep reminding them.

I could not care less if a developer responds to feedback.

I care that they listen to feedback.

They quite clearly are, and the adjustments made to the game over 2 years demonstrate that. Do they implement EVERY suggestion? Obviously not… but that doesn’t mean they aren’t listening.

pdavis.8031:

RIGHT!?

This actually kinda makes me happy. Grats Anet!! But I can see it as a slap in the face to all the haters who say the game is dying and people are leaving. Thats one major reason they have for the implementation of megaservers, because the game doesn’t have the population to support seperate servers. Oh yeah, also that Anet is losing money because Q3-4 2013 showed total sales were down. Still high in the black, and certainly not up to the level of launch. But 7 million dollars kinda puts that theory out to rest. :P

A lot of the doomsayers really haven’t EVER had a leg to stand on, and I think deep down everyone knew that, even the doomsayers. The financial aspect of the game has always been pretty strong right from release (the game has never at any point been in the red, though there was a moment of concern early on).

But let’s also acknowledge the flipside; just because GW2 has been a success financially doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the greatest game or greatest MMO or even the greatest GW game ever. There’s definitely a lot of people for whom the game just isn’t what they are looking for. And that’s fine. There’s a lot of games out there that are. You don’t have to like GW2 to tip your cap and say, “Hey, not my cup of tea, but congratulations.”

But what it DOES mean is that GW2 clearly appeals to enough people that it has turned a nice profit for the people who make and publish the game. The only people who would earnestly HATE that news are people who wanted to see the game fail for selfish reasons.

I honestly think for most people, this news doesn’t affect them. Either they are pleased that the game is doing well, or they are impressed with the sales figures while saying, “Not the game for me, I found out, but good for them.”

For me, the news that 7+ million people bought the game is good, but really impacts my feelings on the game less than kitten all. I’ve bought plenty of games that the masses didn’t like. Hell, I happily toil away on a “failure” of a console (the Wii U).

The only people that this news would genuinely upset is a small cadre of “players” who had a vested emotional investment to see the game fail and die because of a misplaced feeling of betrayal that the game wasn’t GW1 with graphical updates.

Dunno if it’s “elegant,” but this is the look I went with for my norn mesmer.

Porterhouse.6304:

Do you know any of this for fact?

Because, unless Anet is sending you private updates, this looks like 432 words of pure conjecture. Almost a stawman argument.

Why not say that the Anet headquarters were hit by a meteor? Much like the scenario you presented, Anet has neither confirmed nor denied that either.

I’m sure you mean well. But this Scrooge McDuck situation only exists in your head. Asking us all to come along for the ride is too much.

Personal experience in game development speaking (thought not for an MMO), as well as knowing people who HAVE worked in the MMO industry. Sure, it’s conjecture. I’d more call it an educated guess. Do I know specifically what’s going on behind closed doors right now? No, nor would I get a straight answer if I tried (but I already know and accept that).

What do you think they’re basing these decisions on then? Spite? You think they’ve decided to run a select group of fans off for… reasons? You think the game is dying and they’re just out to bleed as much money as they can before it all goes under? I really am curious what you think is the issue.

I’m not really arguing because you’ve really offered nothing other than “Arena.net hates us.” It’s raw emotion. I can’t debate with emotion. I can’t reason with emotion. The only thing I offer is educated guesses based on my experience. You think it’s wrong? Please… enlighten me why you think so.

Lostyus.4250:

Why would you have to consult a website? lol. You’re making it sound more complicated than it was.

All I ever used to do was log into a high pop server if I wanted more people on an event/boss. No need to search the web.

Even for highly populated servers, sometimes finding an open instance for the Citadel of Flame, for example, required one of the party to guest over to find an open one because the home instance failed.

Or finding an open Temple of Balthazar to get Shards.

I get that sentiment… the events are more frequently getting done. Is that worth it? Your mileage may vary.

It certainly has its merits. Anywhere that you saw a low population in the past has benefited.

Anywhere that was already highly populated is having a pretty significant adjusting period, one that they don’t think was necessary.

Ashen.2907:

Donari.5237:

They deliberately left it out and created the TP instead, to reduce scamming. If you trade on the honor system then it’s on you if the other person cheats you.

I wonder if the real reason was to reduce scamming rather than to more readily apply a surcharge to all trades in order for the basic function of an economy to act as a gold sink.

Oh, I’m sure it was the primary reason.

It’s kinda funny… one of the complaints in GW1 was that it didn’t have an auction hall, and that you had to go out-of-game for an ebay equivalent.

Realist.5812:

/snipped for brevity

You’re both right… and wrong. Bear with me here.

Arena.net doesn’t communicate well. This is very true. They tend to love the “vague statement, then followed up with a slightly less vague statement, then followed up by a reveal that they should have known wouldn’t match the rampant speculation that the forum community had built up, then picking up their ball and going home with no further comment.”

It’s dumb. Either say what you’re going to do… or don’t (I personally would rather they just stay mum). It really doesn’t matter as long as you deliver.

Now with that said, they really DID try the transparent “this is what we want to do” route in the past. They were frequently raked over the coals by fans who decided that meant a “promise” and were enraged when that “promise” was “broken.”

That’s pretty dumb too. The answer to a company’s silence isn’t to crank up the hyperbole and the petty volume trying to incite an answer. It really… well… doesn’t work.

Porterhouse.6304:

chemiclord, are you trolling us at this point?

Why would even say something like that? I just mean, wow…

Because it’s not a matter of “is it possible” (it is), or “is it the right thing to do” (it would be), or “would it be awesome” (it would) or “were they losing money” (they most assuredly weren’t).

You aren’t wrong. Hamfast isn’t wrong. Yes, it is entirely possible that they could have been put together and supported simultaneously.

But it wasn’t particularly practical to do so. You’d be asking them to support a system they had no intention of adding to (and they weren’t going to, they really began pushing the town clothes sets over individual pieces some time before even implementing the wardrobe). Really, the entire “outfit” setup was something they had decided would be their direction several months ago, when you think about it (they sold individual armor skins, yes… but town clothes were being sold as entire sets for quite some time). The wardrobe really only allowed them to make “all or nothing” mandatory.

That is dead cost. They are spending money simply to keep an old system with no future running. That would be a REALLY hard sell to their parent company.

And I firmly believe that is the reason for this change. It’s not just a matter of making money with a feature or a system. It’s about making ENOUGH money. Granted, I personally don’t have much experience with in-game cash shops, but from my experience, you had a revenue (or profit) benchmark you had to reach with a product, and if you didn’t reach that benchmark… guess what? Your budget or your entire division was cut.

I strongly suspect Town Clothes fell well short of what NCSoft was looking for as a return on investment (although granted that’s just an educated guess… I really did not see people in town clothes very often… even on TC, the “unofficial RP server.”

At that point, the memo was sent to cut costs and increase production. I see the new outfit system, and that’s exactly what I see; cheaper and easier to produce that theoretically targets a larger group of players. Turning older, discontinued town clothes sets into tonics rather than putting in the manhours to make them full outfits compatible with all armor weights? Yeah… also cheaper and easier to do.

It completely sucks. I don’t entirely think its right, either. I think it makes business sense, but it still completely sucks to do to your players. It’s very unfortunate… but I really don’t think the alternatives that players were and are asking for would have gotten the green light from the people holding the purse strings.

Porterhouse.6304:

chemiclord.3978:

Arena.net decided Town Clothes, as they were before, wasn’t worth the investment.

For virtual items they got people to buy with real life currency, this really shouldn’t be an option.

Oh… so you think the people who designed and coded the items did it for free, do you?

Yes, it IS a “top of my head” statistic. Very good. You can identify a rough estimation. The point is still clear, as I do believe the number of people who were uninterested in Town Clothes was a LOT larger than the people who bought into it.

I know you’re upset. I know you’re bitter and angry, Hamfast. But it wasn’t simply a matter of “leaving the old system alone” because they completely rebuilt the system. I’m sorry, but it’s true. They couldn’t keep both without a lot of effort they deemed wasn’t worth it.

I’m sorry you don’t believe it. I’m sorry you think Arena.net said, “F*** them. We hate them and want to make them cry,” and stole your mix-and-match town clothes from you out of spite.

Palador.2170:

Okay, I’m going to explain something to you. I’m going to try to make it very clear.

Wardrobe did NOT require the destruction of Town Clothes.

In Town Clothes, you could do any skill 6-10, with full animation. You could use bundles, conjured weapons, engineer kits, and warrior banners. You could use all emotes, run, walk, dodge, and jump. The ONLY motions you couldn’t do were the very few exclusive to weapon skills, and swim. There was nothing stopping them from making Town Clothes work in combat just like Outfits do now.

So, why did they scrap Town Clothes? Well, there’s two parts to that answer. The first you almost have right, and the second is to make it easier to make Outfits.

Yes, they could have converted the existing Town Clothes to armor skins for the three combat weights. It would have taken work, and some of them may have looked a little bit different. They decided that wasn’t worth the time and effort. For that, I can’t blame them. It would have been a lot of effort, and the results would have looked pretty awful.

The other, more damming reason, was to make it easier to make new Outfits. Unlike Town Clothes, Outfits are all one item. They can make them robes, or long coats, or bathing suits, and all the parts work together because you take them all together. You don’t mix parts, because you can’t. This means that they can make things that wouldn’t look right with ANY of the combat armor classes OR old Town Clothes. Hell, they can make a “stickfigure” Outfit now if they want, I bet.

When they brought out Town Clothes that covered up more than one section of the body, though, they got complaints (Mad Prince, for example). To make the one item Outfits acceptable, they lowered the standards by removing all the mix and match items.

Did they get complaints? Yes. Would they have gotten complaints if they had allowed Town Clothes to be used in combat (which, by the way, would still require the toy conversion that also happened) and then come out with Outfits that equip on the chest and cover the whole body? Also, yes. I think most of us can agree, though, that they chose the greater of the two evils here.

Of course it was possible. But it wasn’t worth the investment of time and money.

Ya wanna know what’s neat about the outfit system? It can be done quickly and cheaply. They don’t need multiple developers working on the mesh to try and make it compatible with other pieces. Whip it up, make sure it works with itself, and zip it off to the gem store. More production, less cost. Every business’s dream.

Arena.net decided Town Clothes, as they were before, wasn’t worth the investment. For every person who loved the concept there were twenty who weren’t interested. Because they didn’t play GW2 to roleplay. They didn’t buy the game to mix and match clothes that would disappear the moment they tried to hit something.

They want to hit stuff and look “cool” doing it.

If Town Clothes made Arena.net money, it wasn’t much, and at the same time, there was a potentially untapped market of players who really didn’t care about mix-n-match but might be interested in looks that they can wear while joining the Queensdale champion train.

Keeping both systems, while more than possible, most likely wasn’t very practical. From a purely business perspective, it’s a sound move; take resources from a poor investment, and try fishing for something with a better return.

Now, with all that said, what is a sound business decision isn’t always the right decision at the end of the day. We’ll see if the twain meets this time.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Porterhouse.6304:

Buttercup.5871:

The only reason the devs and customer support are swamped right now is because they LISTENED to the community and implemented many, complicated far reaching yet awesome changes that take time to handle and properly adjust – based on constructive feedback – satisfactorily, often going customer by customer

Who requested that that all of the town clothes be turned into tonics? O_o

^^^^^^^^^^^^^I’d like to know what was in their minds when that crap was thought up.

Just need to find the thread it was discussed in. Long story short, people wanted a wardrobe and town clothes that were used in combat… something that was incompatible with the old system.

Remember the early LS rewards, where you were given a light, medium, and heavy variant? Remember how that changed later on so that it was on size fits all? Many of the discontinued town clothes that were designed before that change were turned into tonics because the effort to make them outfits across all armor weights wasn’t worth the the time and manpower investment.

So yes, the wardrobe WAS something that fans wanted, but had a side effect that a section of the community DIDN’T want. Believe it or not, that’s pretty common when you significantly change something in a game.

CuteLilKittenHugz.2064:

Hate hate hate LongBow i will never use it, don’t understand why so many rangers prefer it.)

Hey, it does have its uses. When I’m in the open world, and a huge world event starts up that spawns a heap of mobs, Barrage followed by Hunter’s Shot (after all the barrage ticks end… that is very important) deals a nice amount of AoE damage and clears aggro for a few seconds. Rapid Fire can be nice if the people you’re with aren’t maxing out Vulnerability readily (though that rarely happens).

Learn to avoid the “4” when you’re on longbow, and it’s not terrible, just very situational.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I don’t know much about rangers, but I see lupi speed clears using them all the time, so they have to be doing something.

It basically boils down to when you play ranger right, it’s an amazing asset to the team. But when you play ranger wrong, it is very obvious and it hurts your team more than probably any other class when played wrong.

At the core of the issue is that ranger in this game plays very differently than other classes of its archetype in other MMOs, and a great number of ranger players either don’t know, or refuse to adapt (“I’m called RANGEr, k?”).

In Guild Wars 2, any class above light armor really is expected to be an inside/out class (and even among light armor classes, some of their best weapons are “melee”). Your primary damage is supposed to come from melee. If I’m with a solid group of guildies, I run sword/warhorn and either greatsword or dagger off-hand in my secondary set. In PUGs, yeah, I’ll use a shortbow secondary because sometimes you gotta get out of the kitchen and you can’t rely on proper buffs from people you don’t know well.

But with the ranger class, you have a large glut of these “bearbow” players who run Longbow/Shortbow with a tank pet (like you play WoW’s Hunter class) and not only does your damage plummet, you’re usually out of range for your unique and powerful buffs to affect your party (presuming the bearbow ranger even brings them to the table).

And since there’s no way to really know just what ranger you’re accepting into your party until you’re already underway, most speed-clear PUGs just decide it’s not worth the gamble. It sucks… but I understand it, and I don’t entirely blame them.

Devata.6589:

That’s not completely true. People want hard fun content and get rewarded for it. But if there is an easy way out to get the reward people will likely pick he easy way out. In general I don’t get a special mini from a special boss, I just buy it for gold (that’s the case for most mini’s) so I am not rewarded for the skills of killing that boss.

No… they really don’t. They want easy and rewarding. You can go through any MMO, and find the same phenomenon; the more challenging the content is, the fewer people will play it. Endgame raids will on average host about 5% of your player base.

Challenge is a terrible motivator for the MMO market as a whole. They will always seek the path of least resistance, and nothing you do outside of forcing them to take on tougher challenge to get what they want will change that.

But nowadays, trying to force them down a challenging path, with the number of MMOs out there nowadays… they’ll just quit and go somewhere else that gives them an easy road. Arena.net has to cater to this crowd; they have no other choice.

I can’t say I’ve heard much grousing in-game about the megaserver OUTSIDE of Divinity’s Reach where you’ll hear an RP group (and the trolls that harrass them) raising a stink.

The general sentiment I’ve seen (in-game at least) is at worst a “we’ll see how it shakes out”, and a lot of delight in previously low-populated areas.

Zepidel.5349:

To iterate, take jormag. If you solo him you get a chest and 2 rares. If you kill him with 200 people… you get the same chest and 2? rares. If they used the warhammer system…

… you kill the game. Period.

The people who zerg do so for two reasons.

1) It’s easy.

2) It’s rewarding.

Take away either of those things, and the locusts will not break up into small groups and learn how to be better players. They’ll just quit and play something else. Ergo, Arena.net has to cater to them. They represent the bulk of the playerbase (and really the bulk of the MMO market). Sorry.

A more accurate generalization in my mind would be:

There are a small group of people who decided the Megaservers were going to suck long before they were implemented.

There are a small group of people who decided the Megaservers were going to be awesome long before they were implemented.

These two groups are beyond changing their mind. Making any decision in the hopes of swaying them one way or the other is fruitless. As a developer, yes… you ignore those people.

Then you have the bulk of the players who are still trying to adapt and having varying reservations and approvals, with varying levels of being able to communicate their concerns or likes. These are the people you need to engage, and keep engaged. It doesn’t necessarily have to be through forums or blog posts.

Believe it or not, seeing “A New Build Is Available” also helps to do so (and in my opinion, does so better than any words can). It tells them that you are still working on it, even if it doesn’t always address their particular concern. Actions still do speak louder than words.

Just not on official forums, which by and large tend to be the domain of those first two groups.

I dunno, to me it seems like the way to go (if possible), would be to link those Orr zones together as part of one Megaserver shell.

CHIPS.6018:

If Anet, right from the start, give indications that they actually listens to the community, they would be respected and none of this would have happened.

Ascended gear (nearly all GW1 players hate) is the prime example. Dhuumfire (nearly all necromancers hate, before it was released) is another.

I do agree that the community is now highly toxic. There are generally two types:

1) Anet bashers.
2) Anet die hard fans.

The first type would of course bash Anet none stop, even when it isn’t fair. The second type would defend Anet’s action no matter how little sense they made.

What we need are more people in the middle somewhere.

I think there’s a lot more people in the middle than you think. But you see two things happen:

1) The extremes tend to be the loudest. They’ll be the ones that post repeatedly and create multiple threads (sometimes about the same thing). An interesting fact about most forums (and where the idea of such official forums being a minority) is that the bulk of the posts come from a small number of people. Let’s take a forum of a half million users with 5 million total posts… 70% of the posts will usually come from 15,000-20,000 users.

No those numbers aren’t exact. It’s a very rough estimate to paint the picture of how forums tend to work.

2) It’s very easy to create a mental picture in your head of “defender” or “hater” and no matter what, that bias lingers. A lot of the “haters” aren’t types that just blindly rage… but the rage posts are what stand out. Same thing for the “white knights.” People who blindly hate and blindly support are truly very very rare. Yes, they exist… but that number is FAR smaller than the number that people perceive.

To the OP… these forums aren’t “toxic” in the sense that they are any worse than the official forums you’ll find for ANY developer. It really is “okay” in that sense. Yes, the bulk of the responsibility to be peaceable falls on the developer. Is that “fair?” Not really… but you sign on to this sort of job KNOWING such an imbalance of decency is GOING to happen.

You are GOING to get hate from a select group of players no matter what you do. You are GOING to get spit on and cussed out and screamed at. That’s simply the fact of the matter, fair or not. Developers have no real option but to accept it and deal with it the best they can.

There is nothing that goes on here that doesn’t occur in kitten near every official forum of a “major” title. When you sell millions of copies, you are GOING to get wide swaths of people that are disappointed with it, and will make that displeasure known… usually very loudly.

But one thing that I WILL promise you is that 100% of the sentiment on these forums reaches developer ears. They DO know what upsets you. They DO know what annoys you. They even know your reasons for it. It’s very easy for players to equate not getting an answer with being ignored. They “ignore” you for:

1) There’s really nothing that can be said on the matter due to non-disclosure agreements. A lot of technical matters fall under this category (like exploits and hacks). No matter how much you demand an answer, it will not and can not be given.

2) They’ve already given their answer, and the only thing they would do is repeat that answer ad nauseam. There is literally no point in saying, “No. We will not change this” and repeat it for days on end each time a new handful of players voices that same complaint.

3) The interaction wouldn’t actually solve anything. As much as players think that it would help so much just to get a, “We’re still looking into [x], but we don’t have a suitable solution yet, and there’s no time frame that we have to address the issue” the simple fact is that it doesn’t help… at all. It doesn’t quell rage, it doesn’t soothe tempers, if anything it tends to make the anger worse (THEY’RE JUST THROWING OUT PR SPEAK! THEY AREN’T LISTENING! THEY DON’T CARE! RAAAAAAAGE! FUUUUUUURY!!!).

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

I’d like to know more about that griefing. Specifically:
– Did the ANET employee use any dev tools, or did he only do things a player could do ?
– What happened to the employee afterwards ?

He didn’t “grief” anyone. He told several players that they weren’t playing WvW the way they were supposed to be, then popped his company tag. No one was banned, no one was punished, and I find it funny how the fans here like to neglect that the two guilds in question were harrassing and telling the A.net employee to “gtfo” of their GvG before he popped his tag.

A lot of feathers got ruffled on both sides, some egos got bruised, but at the end of the day, nothing happened to anyone. It was much ado about nothing.

Hamfast, you’re not going to get a response on your continued demands to change town clothes back or even restore part of that functionality. Because they’ve already given you their answer, and that answer is, “No.”

It really is long past due for the ability to mask all particle effects except the user’s, at the very least. If you want your mechanics to be based on identifying what the enemy is doing and reacting to it… we need to be able to, ya know, SEE what is going on in front of us.

I really think the question players should be asking is, “Is this game for ME?”

If it is, great. If it isn’t, stop playing and find something that IS for you.

That’s great for Gazillion. They are perfectly free to interact. I’ve seen several Arena.net devs in game as well. What’s your point?

Arena.net doesn’t HAVE to tell you a thing. They are under no obligation to share anything with you. They don’t owe you or any of their customers “transparency”, and seeing the blowback they repeatedly get whenever they HAD tried to let people look inside what they’re planning to do in the past, I don’t blame them for going mum.

I’d rather they not say anything and just focus on getting their work done, honestly.

The OP basically answers his own question.

Every company and developer has to keep their investors in the loop. In the case of Star Citizen, those investors are those who offered the crowd funding. In the case of Arena.net and Guild Wars 2, that is NCSoft’s shareholders, which you likely are not one of.

Arena.net simply doesn’t owe you anything. You’re just the customer. They don’t have to tell you anything they don’t want to. If that breaks the game for you, then I dunno what to tell you other than to enjoy Star Citizen.

But I do kinda have to roll my eyes at the idea that GW2 lacks passion and desire from the developers. I got news for ya Wolfheart, there is NO ONE at Arena.net developing this game that is doing this for the fat paycheck.

Probably the first guy who stared down the edge of Rata Sum and thought, “I wonder what’d happen if I were to jump…”

It’s for your own safety, as you’ve clearly demonstrated your willingness to throw yourself off Rata Sum.

From at least what I saw from the few times charr and norn interacted in GW1 was that while norn were taller (at least in the sense of being more upright), charr were definitely larger and more massive.

Another thing to note is that while you are seeing precursors nearing or exceeding 1000g, you should also look at how much players are actually willing to SPEND for those same items.

An example, for The Legend, which is being offered at nearly 1000g at points, the highest buyer offer is a little over 850.

DDCarvalho.2071:

I don’t know what are the developers reasons for not implement dueling, but there are probably some. Like:
- Ability for a third party to “tamper” with the duel by giving boons to one of the parties, or kiting a mob against the other party.
- They could avoid the 1st scenario by locking both characters from receiving boons that are not from “self”, but it can be complicated depending of how the game is coded.
- To avoid the 2nd scenario (mob kiting) they could make a “closed zone” that stops people or mobs that getting into the “duel arena”, but this “closed zone” could be used to tamper with events and making them much easier or impossible to complete.

One way to solve both problems is to include a little Duel arena in most maps so people can use it without tampering, but this option would create its own problems.
- Many people want to duel in Queensdale! So one duel arena is not enough. How many then?
-Where will we put the duel arena in map X? Where does it make sense, lore-wise?

So, with each problem, we get closer to the current solution, which is: small battles in PvP and large battles in Obsidian Sanctum.
- Hey, another idea! When people choose to duel, they are transported to a PvP mini-map instance for dueling that is quite like a Jubilee arena. Other people can right click the duelers and be transported as expectators.

I think that if people come up with a solution that solves arising problems in an elegant way, it makes it easier to the devs to implement it.

As I’ve said before, I would have no problem with specifically designed dueling arenas. I wouldn’t even have a problem with such arenas in the open world. I just really don’t like the idea of free-for-all open world dueling because I’ve seen the sort of behavior it causes, and they aren’t positive experiences. Considering the entire design point of GW2’s open world is supposed to be cooperation, open world dueling runs contrary to that.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Straight up untrue. Sorry you had a bad experience that one time.

People hang out there because it’s right outside a major city.

Anyway, I suggest you stop worrying about how other play and whether or not they choose to duel. It’s really none of your business.

Straight up true. There would be plenty of other places to go, yet the “dueling crowd” happens to choose the one convergence point for new players. Uh huh. Same thing happened Horde side at Razor Hill (which was halfway across Durotar from Orgrimmar).

Pull the other one.

And it is my business when people want to change the way that the game currently plays, a way that I happen to like. I don’t want open world dueling, and I will say so whenever the topic comes up. Deal with it.

Considering that such fights were specifically designed with large guilds in mind… not really. This is Arena.net’s version of “raid content”, and it isn’t for everyone. If you’re not willing to join a guild for that purpose, you’re going to have a VERY hard time completing them.

It because those fights require some degree of pre-planning, coordination, and understanding specific mechanics.

To a great number of players, they just want to have fun, not study fights before hand. As a result, the bulk of the pick up and go crowd aren’t prepared, don’t know what to expect, and it often leads to failure. After a while, the crowd gets discouraged, and stops trying.

Dusty Moon.4382:

You can setup your own PvP arena for Dueling – Invite the person, DONE.

People want open world dueling so that they can be irritants. They want to be able to harass others and flex their kittens. They want to roll flavor of the month dueling builds, play their scissors and specifically hunt down their paper to cut, then crow about how awesome they are.

Otherwise, they’d be fine with specific arenas where they could easily find other people like them. But that would mean they’d actually have to fight other people who are built for dueling… and well, they can’t have THAT.

That Goldshire example I mentioned earlier? There’s a reason that dueling crowd hangs out in a low-level zone, and it’s not because it’s easy to find others duelists. It’s so that they can harass “easy marks”, low level players who are either new to the game or new to a certain class and might not know everything about it.

Dark Catalyst.1028:

WoW has open dueling and they’ve had it for years. I can count the times on one hand where someone tried to duel me and couldn’t take no for an answer. /ignore fixed that. Then they added an option which allows you to auto-decline all duels and that was that.

People who want to duel in the open world usually end up congregating in a couple of areas anyway. If that’s what annoys you, then too bad. They have the right to be there as well.

And WoW has some of the most obnoxious and toxic twits hanging outside Goldshire that I have ever seen.

You want open world dueling, too bad. You’re not getting it any time soon, if at all.

Max Lexandre.6279:

That’s the thing, this end-game things are getting more expensive every day, yet, we are getting our gold from events nerfed, not to talk that events gold is not balanced, go do The Maw, Elemental and other world bosses to win some amazing 30 cooper per event!

If i understand correctly ANET wants more grind, it seems there is not enough already.

They’re nerfing gold to DROP the price of things.

You really don’t seem to get it. Want to know when the price for precursors started skyrocketing? It’s no coincidence that it happened at pretty much the exact same time that you started getting increased rewards.

It’s called inflation. More gold in the system means it costs more gold to get what you want. Want to reduce prices? Reduce the gold in the system.

I think what you’ll find from the “no dueling” crowd isn’t so much that they are against dueling as much as they are against OPEN WORLD dueling. I personally fall in that crowd, as I have found open world dueling tends to encourage some annoying behaviors that I’d rather not have to deal with and runs contrary to the cooperative nature that the open world in GW2 is designed to encourage.

Now a dueling arena in a controlled environment in capitol cities or a rebuilt Lion’s Arch where players could spectate in real time? I’d be down for that.

Erick Alastor.3917:

The main issue with the flamekissed was not the fact that you could wear it on other races, most of the hate was because it was a cooler version of the already existing T3 and you could directly buy it from the gemstore, apply it without crystals and in the end spending less of what T3 user paid. So… many of them felt cheated.

Oh, but a good deal of the rage WAS “human T3 is human only! Capiche?” The “exclusive” argument was very prevalent, and it would be again.

I think really THAT is the issue. I really don’t think it’s “No Cantha. Full stop.” I think it’s “No Cantha unless we (NCSoft) okay it.” I suspect they have to go back and pretty much rebuild everything they were going to do with Cantha from square one. Bear in mind it took GW2 roughly SIX YEARS to get just to a point where it could be released (and some would argue still not even close to complete).

That’s also probably where you get the few developer comments of “a few years down the road” from. I’m sure Arena.net would love to go back to Cantha, and I bet NCSoft isn’t inherently against them going there either. But both sides realize that it’s going to take a very long time to get there, especially considering they are still developing the game currently in front of them.

I also suspect that has a lot to do with the silence from Arena.net on this score. We’ve all seen how rabid fans can get when things don’t go exactly as “promised.” The LAST thing Arena.net wants to do is say, “Yeah, we’re working on Cantha and we’d love to have it ready by [insert year here].” Because no matter how many qualifiers they’d put to such a statement, if they weren’t ready to release Cantha at 12:00 PST on January 1st of that year… you know as well as I do that there would be unholy hell to pay from an army of irate fans burning this forum to the ground.

psyt.9415:

None of this crap makes any sense. There is Pandaria, Age of Wusu, Silk Road, Blade and Soul and a whole host of F2P Asian themed titles for which there is no public outrage. Pick one Asian style and stick with it, if that’s the issue. Something doesn’t add up here.

Create the continent in the style of Zephyr Sanctum even.

What is sounds like is one executive at NCSoft got his panties in a twist, and got enough of the company to support his worry that Cantha like it was portrayed in Guild Wars 1 would upset players in China (where a lot of big money for a MMO can be found).

Whether that fear is rational or not (and I’m steadily leaning towards not rational the more I read up on the issue) is irrelevant on Arena.net’s side. They don’t have a choice in the matter. If your parent company tells you to do (or not do) something, there’s no debate. There is no “standing your ground”; there is no “keeping your integrity.” It is “you do it” or “you’re fired.”

It’s a big problem when it comes to “AAA” business. Those big publishers effectively force you to sell your soul to them in order to get the resources necessary to make those “AAA” titles. That tide is changing (slowly), but in 2006, there really weren’t any other avenues for a company like Arena.net.

Obsidian.1328:

Not really.

If a publisher orders you to not include most of your previous work, should you bow out? Absolutely. How would you react if an art dealer tells you to only show a 3rd of your painting? ANet could have simply refused, lost NCSoft as a publisher, and waited until they found another. Does that suck? Yes. Does it mean a lot of people might have to take a pay hit? Yes.

But at least they get to keep their integrity.

Integrity and $5 might get you a decent latte in the Seattle area. Maybe.

You don’t pay bills with integrity. You don’t keep people employed with integrity. You do those things by producing things people will buy.

And you seem to be forgetting that NCSoft is more than Arena.net’s publisher. They are Arena.net’s PARENT COMPANY. Arena.net CAN’T refuse. The people there wouldn’t lose their publisher. They’d lose their jobs.

They wouldn’t be able to find another publisher, because the Guild Wars IP is the property of NCSoft. That’s kinda what happens when you… well… BUY Arena.net whole hog.

Guild Wars 2 was going to be made, and it was going to be made by whatever terms NCSoft demanded. If that demand was “No Cantha”, then guess what? Guild Wars 2 was going to be made without Cantha. Period.

You have set a standard Arena.net could not meet, and are blaming them for not meeting it. That is pretty much a dictionary definition of “unreasonable.”

Obsidian.1328:

chemiclord.3978:

Even if it’s (2) then what exactly would you propose Arena.net have done instead? NOT make Guild Wars 2?

Yes.

Then you’re being wholly irrational and unreasonable. There is absolutely no way they DON’T make a game. That’s just ridiculous.

For what it’s worth, I’m not defending NCSoft’s decision at all. I do think there’s some merit to the concern, but not nearly as much as they seem to be worried about.

What I’ve been rolling my eyes at is the idea that if Arena.net would just “stand their ground” they could somehow force NCSoft to publish a Canthan expansion or Canthan content.

Finding Sanity.1283:

Didnt the Chinese just get a GW2 beta like only a month ago? Anyways if NCSoft was dictating what could or couldnt be in my game I think i’d find another publisher/producer.

Good luck getting out from under the parent company that owns the rights to the IP you want to take from under them.