(edited by chemiclord.3978)
A LITTLE BIT OF LOGIC DOES WONDERS HERE. Its not a model for china simply because its a VIP membership. Meaning there is an alternate version, of which requires no monthly subscription. if Chinese laws requires a subscription fee, there can’t be a lack thereof in the game. A vip membership describing more skill points and more prestige obviously means you can play the game without paying for this subscription and simply must endure " less skillpoints" and “prestige”. Therefore the vip system is being researched for a territory that has no laws forcing a game to operate through a subscription fee.
Or… it’s an additional [x] amount per month on top of the normal monthly fee? Hence “Very Important Person” status?
Nah… that can’t be it. Clearly it’s another scheme by those dastardly villains at Arena.net to turn the game into a subscription model. It all makes PERFECT SENSE!
On the other hand you can look at it like this. Imagine things that are mostly cash shop only, not actually being a part of the cash shop. Imagine these things being Karma based instead.
Maybe even imagine a Guild Wars 2 that wasn’t forced to release early. Possibly a Zhaitan fight that didn’t make you want to commit sudoku.
Let’s be perfectly bluntly honest; there was GOING to be a lot of material in the Gem Store, no matter who had invested in the company. It’s GW2’s primary revenue stream at this point. Arena.net was/is/always will be a company with the goal to make money. That was true even in GW1 with their expansion model. They weren’t giving those expansion and stand-alone campaigns out for free, after all.
Items in the gems store weren’t going to be karma based as long as they felt people would be willing to part with their money for it, Nexon as an investor or not. Let’s be serious, take off the tinfoil, and be honest with ourselves.
As for the Zhaitan mess and rushing the game out early, I can almost assure you that was NCSoft’s call, and would have been their call no matter who their investors are. Because like Arena.net, NCSoft is a company, and their goal is to make money, and the longer that game sits in development, that’s money not being made. For a game that had been in development for over 6 years… your publisher is GOING to get impatient.
The entire “Nexon Conspiracy” is WAY overplayed, and a pretty silly overreaction.
If Nexon IS somehow pulling the strings with their 15% share in NCSoft (which is a shade of a stretch)… they’ve been keeping pretty well in line with cash shop items being largely cosmetic or of little consequence.
Maybe I’m just immune to the draw, but I can say there has been NOTHING in the Gem Store that I’ve felt forced or coerced into buying… or even look at the store at all.
So one can assume this is a test for the Asia region.
My fears have been relieved slightly, though a straight out statement like “No VIP or subscription plans” would make feel much better.
So you don’t buy it if you don’t like it.
Why does it matter to you if someone else does?
I don’t get that thinking at all.
Ah this reaction again. If people complain it’s not the game but the people.
Thats a way to ignore problems.
That’s not the point at all.
Saying, “What did the devs do to make people angry?” Is a question with no real answer… because the completely useless answer would be “everything.” Every decision they make is going to kitten off SOMEONE, and probably many someones… who will probably rush to official forums to vent their displeasure. Make a different choice down the road, and it’s an entirely different group of people raising their voices in dissatisfaction.
It’s no more constructive than “why are people always angry about everything?” Because the answer is equally useless. It’s one person is angry about [x]. Another is angry about [y]. Still another is angry about [z]. This guy is angry about [x] and [z]. This fellow doesn’t like [x] or [y], but is fine with [z]. Another one hates it all and is only here because he doesn’t have anything better to do with his time.
See what I’m trying to get at?
In this case, what we have here is a lot of people getting all worked up about something which we actually have distressingly little facts for (and that’s with the presumption this is real and will inevitably be implemented).
it’s interesting to notice how ppl are unsatisfied about the game, so that any news is a bad news, and start whining and flaming in the forum.
i think that it should make anet think more about what it’s going on here.
what they did wrong to make players so angry.
and try to go back to what things used to be, when anet still deserved some trust.
Honestly? Nothing really.
Go to ANY game’s official forums, and really take in the environment.
They are pretty much ALL like this. Official forums are where dissatisfied players go to complain. If it isn’t one group, it’s a different one. Even in your beloved GW1, you had dissatisfied barkers complaining about everything under the sun, and that game didn’t even have an official forums.
Honestly, maybe the question shouldn’t be, “what they did wrong to make players so angry” and more, “why do players always lose their kitten about everything?”
I mean, it’d be just as oversimplified a question with no real answer.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/
“no subscription fees!”
They add this, then I am getting my money back. VIP membership is a subscription model.
Well, considering I’ve heard more than handful of people saying they’d rather pay a monthly subscription over gems…
But regardless, the only way it becomes a subscription model is if you cannot run the client without having an active VIP membership. From what it looks like (presuming it is true), it’s if you drop [x] of [y] you get a bunch of perks that may or may not be gamebreaking depending on how they are implemented (the teleport and resurrect for example would depend entirely on what exactly they do and where).
From what it LOOKS like is being offered, it would impact every person who DIDN’T buy into it a massive amount of kitten all. Just a bunch of people panicking over nothing.
Or as I like to call it, business as usual in the GW2 official forums.
That being said how exactly did we kill off Zhaitan so easily? Wouldn’t he just regenerate and rise up again? It would make no sense to kill of dragons so easily now… are they stepping on their own lore now?
Some food for speculation.
Tequatl started “evolving” into a fiercer, more deadly version of itself after Zhaitan’s fall.
Also remember that whenever a champion of the elder dragons falls, a new one rises (perhaps evolves) to take its place.
Perhaps the same is true for the elder dragons themselves? When one is felled, one of its lieutenants “evolves” to replace it?
“That make like worth living.”
Yeah… I think it’s safe to say this is a troll job. A pretty good one, but a troll job nonetheless.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
No.
BIS gear was presented as easy to obtain by the time you reach 80.
There is nothing easy in obtaining ascended and more that evident that you will not get BIS when hitting 80 if you are new.So yes… gear was supposed to be left out of the grind and BIS was supposed to be in your hands before “getting to fun stuff”.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think Vayne is saying that Arena.net didn’t go against their initial plan with the entire addition of Ascended (in fact, I believe he has said the opposite). I think is point is that the Manifesto is NOT where they stated that intention, and thus using the Manifesto for that purpose is inaccurate.
“What is the advantage of temporary content?”
What’s the advantage of having it permanent, really? There’s little in this living story that I’ve personally felt was “OMG, this is so amazing it needs to stay!” In truth, a lot of the things that posters here long for to be permanent (like SAB) would rapidly turn into everything else that isn’t Queensdale and Frostgorge; boring and forgotten by the player base.
It’s not something I find myself getting worked up over… the possibility that I won’t earn some back item that I’ll never use doesn’t hurt my feelings or upset me. The thrust of every living story can be gleaned in a matter of hours, much less in two weeks time.
Permanent content is great, and it’s great that players want more of it. But that stuff takes time, and I’m not wholly convinced that if you were to throw the 4 Living Story teams into the others supposedly building “expansion level content” (results remain to be seen, mind), that the big stuff would get done all that much more quickly anyway.
It’s much ado about nothing, neither good nor bad, in my opinion.
On top of that… honestly how long would SAB actually REMAIN interesting if you could play it constantly? It’d become just like every other non-farming zone, ignored for being “boring.”
If ascended gear had been in the game since day one, nobody would have given it a second thought. People wanted “more” and asked for “it.” They got “it,” and now they’re complaining about the means to get “it.”
There is nothing in this game that is locked if you don’t have ascended gear. Yes, there are things that are immensely easier with it, but if I want to run fractals as high as I possibly can, there is nothing that pops up on my screen that says “Sorry, you don’t have the right gear so you can’t be in here.”
It’s the players that are requiring it. How many LFG have you seen that put restrictions on the players? How many times have you seen “LFG, LVL80 Asc.only?”
Again, it’s not the game that requires it. It’s the players.
Well, SOME people asked for “more.” SOME people were absolutely, violently opposed to “more.” What that second group is having a hard time understanding why Arena.net listened to that first group and not the second.
Sure, the obvious answer is “money.” Of course it is. Arena.net is a company. It’s their job to make money. And a lot of these GW1 veterans feel betrayed because they had felt that the relationship was something more. Arena.net used to understand them, man… now they don’t. It must be because all the cool people left… wait no… it’s because Nexon holds shares… no… it’s because they got greedy… wait…
I do agree that the problem is more players than developers, though. MMO players (hell, people in general really) are conditioned to certain things, and they summarily reject kitten near anything that changes what they are accustomed to. EVERY MMO that has tried to “change the game” has either failed miserably or changed to fit the “MMO meta” if you will.
There’s only so much you can change how people play their games before they reject it. Arena.net made their bed when they decided to “go big” with GW2 rather than make another game that appealed to the niche they had already carved for themselves, and that vision has to be compromised because the larger audience they need said, “Kitten that! Gimme more of what I’m used to!”
And through it all, I DO think they’re still trying to cling to as much of their original “manifesto” as they can. The Living Story and constant champion and world boss adjustments are attempts to drag players by their nose to lower level areas that players would otherwise not have anything to do with because they are “low level” zones. I don’t think it’s an accident that Ascended crafting has you going to zones that aren’t max level to get what you need (outside of the TP, at any rate).
They’re adding new tiers of gear, but scale content (outside of less than a handful of circumstances) where that new level of gear is needed. They know they have to cater to those who want the BIG NUMBERS, but at the same time, not create content that people have to chase said BIG NUMBERS to complete it.
I dunno if it’s working as well as they hoped (the forums are always a terrible gauge of overall player sentiment after all), but they seem to think it’s done the job well enough.
I don’t think this game is going to evolve into a typical MMO. I think that Anet has made strides to compromise, because the original game, which I loved, wasn’t “sticky” enough. People really could just walk away and not come back.
Now, with the achievements and the living story, the game has gotten a new type of stickiness, something proven to keep a percentage of people. My guess is enough to fund the game.
Which means Anet won’t have to go the route of gear progression anymore, because they found another route to stickiness.
They can hold and on gain more players now and new players coming in will not have the changes to deal with that older players saw as a betrayal.
I think what you’ll see is vertical content tempered by a small power curve that doesn’t force you to constantly have “best in slot” to accomplish everything the game has to offer.
What I mean by that is, you’re GOING to see a level cap increase. You’re going to see increasingly powerful stats on gear to go with it. But the scaling will be shallow and the difficulty will be scaled to say the second or third-highest tier rather than the “best in slot.”
You’ll likely see, for example, Legendary weapons scale up to whatever the highest tier at your available level is, or ways to “level up” your gear rather than completely grind out new ones.
There will be a clear vertical stat progression, but you won’t HAVE to pursue the best to complete the content unless you absolutely want to. Will that placate both sides of their player base? I have no clue, but that’s my prognostication of what is going to happen.
You’re assuming that would have been enough to placate the locusts (which I am dubious).
Oh, that’s the point – the locust simply cannot be placated, and trying to do so at the expense of more stable target group is always a bad idea. Those people did leave anyway, after all – ascended gear might have slowed some of them for a bit, but only for a bit. And only some of them. And if there are any of them remaining, it’s only because they haven’t had a game to move to yet – as soon as something like that appears, all the locust will be on the move.
No amount of ascended gear was ever going to make them stay.
This is most likely true, but that still doesn’t solve the problem Arena.net has.
When your “stable audience” isn’t enough (and by all accounts I’ve received from the few people I’ve talked to, it wasn’t)… what do you do? Arena.net had already committed to the larger company with larger expenses and overhead.
Could they be lying to me when they say the veterans weren’t putting enough money into the system to keep it solvent? I mean… sure, they could be and at some point the whole company just got greedy. But I know a couple of these people quite well, and I don’t think they’d lie to me.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that in the months and years ahead, this game will become more and more like a traditional MMO, not because the developers particularly WANT it to be, but because it HAS to be to make the money they want it to. The customer block has spoken, just like it has spoken pretty much EVERY time someone wants to change the game…
“Nope. We want more of the same. Gimme gimme gimme now now now!”
In fact, Guild Wars was founded by three guys who came from Blizzard. Are you suggesting Blizzard had influence over how they developed Guild Wars?
If Blizzard became a significant shareholder three months after the company’s founding? I don’t think it would be out of bounds to give the move a suspicious glance.
Company takeovers have happened much more subtly for the record. I remember how a “former” employee of Electronic Arts became the president of a holding company, then sold Bioware to EA… then promptly was “rehired” by EA within months of the takeover.
The entire deal with Nexon could very well could simply all be coincidence (and one should also note that GW2 is nowhere NEAR “Pay to Win” unless you want to do some painful mental gymnastics)… but I do also think it’s a justified question to ask.
As a head of a company; which would you have chosen?
Implement ascended as a component of FOTM only with no difference in stats to exotic, which gives those who wanted that progression an outlet.
Implement the fortnightly content update system with better quality control.
You’re assuming that would have been enough to placate the locusts (which I am dubious). They WANT the number creep. They would have dismissed your plan as just prettied-up exotics, and rejected it just as wholly as the initial gear progression.
And the monthly Living Story with your “better quality control” (which it really wasn’t, for the record), wasn’t enough either. Players ground through those initial offerings in days and whined they were bored.
See, the people who are trying to hold up the manifesto either can’t (or don’t want to admit) that the locusts are NECESSARY. Arena.net HAS to keep them happy to keep the game solvent. Arena.net’s original plan DIDN’T WORK. Yes, it kitten es off part of the loyal fanbase… but it had to be done.
I think they sold gw2 to just about every gw1 player, for years it was mentioned in towns, guild and alliance chat, a lot of gw fans do play gw2 still, some quit and others went back gw1, im in a gw1 guild atm with a full alliance, i play both gw1 and gw2 and have a lot of fun, i know a lot feel betrayed and you get the same reaction in gw1 guild chat if you mention gw2 as you do if you mention wow.
If they had did as they said in the manifesto and stuck to that, everyone i think would have been happy.
They sold GW2 to a lot of people, not just GW1 players.
And therein became the problem. They wanted a larger audience. They, frankly, NEEDED a larger audience. And (perhaps sadly) that larger audience turned out to come from the general MMO playerbase, who really didn’t give one tenth of one kitten about the manifesto, and in fact rejected large swaths of GW2 intent. These players found the lack of vertical progression “boring.” They didn’t want to go back to “newbie” zones unless they had to. They wanted kitten (achievement points and gear). They want (and still want) large scale “raid” content.
Arena.net was left with two options; 1) Stay the course and have the game die because the GW1 veterans that did carry over (which wasn’t all of them to begin with) simply weren’t enough to cover the larger costs of GW2 (I’m sorry, I know you hate it, but it’s true), or 2) compromise some of their original design to cater to the locusts.
As a head of a company; which would you have chosen?
I think a big problem with Defiant isn’t so much that boss mobs are immune to a lot of control abilities as much as there are only a handful of interrupts that get through Defiant.
As a result, a lot of fights become DPS races because there’s no way you can control those one-hit kill mechanics reliably.
Funny thing is that any real optimizer understands that the sort of things the Ranger CAN bring to the table make them very useful (like Spotter and Frost Spirit)… provided said Ranger knows what they are actually doing.
It’s a rather weird duality… Ranger is easy play, but it’s a lot trickier to play WELL and keep up with the others.
I was completely on target, thank you.
People were intentionally failing events in order to get champion loot, and getting hostile with players trying to legitimately complete them.
The exploiters were 100% in the wrong, and I shed not even a crocodile tear for them. If the option is Orr empty or filled with vile brats, I’ll take the former.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
because whenever someone exploits events in Orr, some people cry foul, and those interesting activities get nerfed by ANET.
Fixed that for accuracy.
You’re welcome.
Well, I play a Ranger which are traditionally pretty squishy. Maybe that’s not so in GW2. I am playing a pet-heavy setup; using the Ice Drake as my pet, and it does an awesome job of gaining and maintaining aggro. Though sometimes the enemies will get “smart” and come after its master.
I dunno, I suppose I’ll see how it goes as I progress. Maybe I’ll just need to try pushing myself a bit more beyond my own level, ’til I bite off more than I can chew. See how that works.
It’s not. Rangers are deceptively sturdy. It can take a LOT on the PvE side of things for mobs to bring one down, especially when the mobs outside of a handful of exceptions will think your pet is the most fascinating thing they have ever seen.
Pretty much every class has a period where they just steamroll the content in front of them.
I remember on my Ranger for example it was a bit of a bear into level 30 or so… then until level 70… I just couldn’t die. It didn’t matter what I was facing, how many of them… girl was unstoppable.
Then I hit Orr, and a Risen Abomination decided it was going to ignore my pet and turn me into an unpleasant smear on the bottom of its foot.
The CoF effigy fight, in my eyes, is a good example.
You have 2 roles: destroying crystals and damaging the boss. Even if they’re more focused on the damage end, it’s still two roles (that is, your purpose in a fight). You still rely on the player to do their role properly.
However, one of them mechanics (destroying crystals) can simply be ignored through sheer damage (eased along with an unhealthy dose of Poison).
Now, say we tweaked this mechanic so:
- Alongside the (boosted) regen, the crystals also provide stacking damage + condition reduction.
- Destroying crystals applies a stacking DoT and Vulnerability to the player
- Bigger crystals occasionally spawn, that if the Effigy consumes it, it gains a barrier.
So, instead of just the damage aspect, we also have:
- Control – Stopping the effigy from going by the big crystal.
- Awareness of party members – knowing when to swap.
And here you highlight why much of this is a player-side problem.
Because initially, the Legendary Searing Effigy WAS a hard fight. It required you to manage crystals while doing enough DPS to overcome the regen in phases 1 and 3. You COULD simply brute force it and get it over with faster, but playing it as intended was more reliable and required teamwork and high player skill.
Players complained and complained and complained it was “too hard” and “not fun.” The whining was loud and constant to the point where Arena.net finally nerfed it to the ground.
And that’s the problem. The people here who want more challenging content that requires more than facerolling to victory get shouted down by the MMO masses who want “Press 1 to win.”
Players need to look in the mirror to discover the heart of many of the developer’s decisions. Of course, players won’t, because they refuse to acknowledge that we as a whole are the larger problem.
If you’re going to move that much gold, both parties would probably benefit by contacting Anet customer service first.
Though I wouldn’t put it past Anet to just tell your friend “you’re quitting? Ok, we’ll take your gold”.
Oh, come on. Really? It’s one thing to be bitter about the direction they took, but to make the leap that they’d steal from their players? Grow up.
I think the Living Story CAN provide an expansion’s worth of content. It CAN provide new maps and new content. There’s no real reason why it can’t. The only limitation is how much can be given at any one time.
And that’s kinda the question with the LS. Would players be content getting say, one new zone every two months or would they rather have six new zones every year all at once? (Yes, that is entirely theoretical, making assumptions as to the amount of content that’s possible in one year’s time).
Would it be worth it financially if they lose say 25% of the playerbase who won’t accept anything less than a traditional expansion but the LS proves to have lower development costs (It IS a LOT cheaper to distribute content digitally than in physical form, after all)?
GW2 wants to try, I guess. I’m content to let them.
Yes, if he shovels off a large amount of gold, it will be flagged.
However, it’s not like there is a bot that just automatically bans people. If it’s clear that it was a one time gift and the player isn’t logging in again, they’ll most assuredly let it slide.
One could get max level, max armor and weapon in GW1 in less than 4 hours.
Faction -> first island, level 13 -> Kaineng -> Eye Of The North -> Brawl Dungeon and XP Scrolls.GW2 leveling and gear system is more grindy than in GW1.
This is true. Then again, GW2 is and was intended to be more akin to the traditional MMO experience (which is more grindy than GW1 by its nature). That should NOT have been a surprise.
But to herald GW1 as “grind-free” and “no vertical progression” is simply a falsehood.
You do realize that you didn’t have to max those titles to get the full effect of those skills/titles right? You only needed to reach rank 5 for most of them which was pathetically easy to get. You were pretty much already there just by completing the campaign.
Also, the “grind” to advance in the Nightfall story was hardly a grind. Grind means doing something repeatedly. Last I remembered most people did the side quests, which were all unique. It was also exclusive to Elonian characters. Tyrian/Canthans didn’t have to do them.
And you don’t NEED to grind out Ascended Gear. All content can be fairly quickly completed with exotic gear that flows like water. But it DOES provide a significant improvement if you do put in the time and grind for the Ascended Gear. See how that cuts both ways?
I laugh at the idea of GW1 being this grind-free utopia its hardcore fans try to paint it out to be. You liked the novelty of the vertical progression being through skills rather than gear. That’s what it boils down to.
No thank you.
GW1 combat was God-awful once you had your set of 8 overpowered skills and could faceroll.
You want Guild Wars 1? Play Guild Wars 1 and leave Guild Wars 2 alone.
What they could have done was accept that those who bought the game looking for grind would quit but work to keep their target audience.
That wasn’t an option. That group wasn’t large enough to support the game on their own.
The sold out. Plain and simple. They decided to please the easily entertained/mass audience over keeping true to their core player-base that built the game up from the beginning.
Its fine. Its pretty much expected that a developer will sell out after there first game. They are not the first (by a long shot) to do so.
They sold out to a larger audience? Sure. I agree.
Should they have? That’s the big question. Did they HAVE to “go big?” Would NCSoft have allowed them to remain in the niche they carved for themselves? Who made that call and why?
Personally, I saw a company try to redefine the MMO genre, change the way people play MMOs… and that larger market pretty much rejected the concept whole cloth… like it had done for EVERY challenge to the way they had grown accustomed to.
At that point, with you already “all-in” with GW2… what would you do? Would you honestly let the game flounder and eventually fail out of the principle of the thing?
That can work both ways, attracting people that played GW1 and keeping away people that did not like GW1 that much.
A game that does not follow the original in design, should really have a different name.
I’ll be sure to let every game series know they shouldn’t be considered a series, then.
EVERY series of games remakes themselves to some degree (the degree of which varies; Call of Duty for example has a very slow change over time, whereas the Final Fantasy series can and will drastically re-imagine the design from game to game).
It’s fine to be disappointed by GW2, but making up poor arguments is not a particularly sound way to express that disappointment.
They tried making mobs run out of AOE/out of melee range in one of the betas. It ended up being hilarious because anyone with a stationary pulsing AOE on short CD (elementalists, guardians, etc.) could just totally shut down any mob, including bosses, just by spamming AOEs and watching it run around trying to get out instead of attacking.
Not to mention the endless complaining about how the AI was “too hard” and “too frustrating” and “not fun” to fight against.
But you cannot compare the amount sold between the two games during the first year, since GW1 was not a sequel to an already best selling game. But statistically speaking, if GW2 truly does outperform GW1, then in 7 years, it should sell over 7 million copies.
To demonstrate another example, you can look at the stats of units sold on sims 2 to sims 3. Sims 3 outsold sims 2 in the first month, but ultimately sims 2 dominated sims 3 in the long run, clearly showing the favored game.Hype and backing from a previous success with the same name goes a long way in the release of a sequel, because the consumer expects the same quality or better. But once the intitial hype passes, the true stats appear. If GW2 continues to sell units on an exceptional level, then no doubt it will surpass GW1 in the time frame GW1 had.
But comparing the GW2 model to the convential marketing model, I will be in awe if it happens do to the statement that they want to provide expansion style content via living story versus conventional expansion.
Expansions can be marketed as a game, whether tv, radio, newspaper, etc. An in game update/patch released every two weeks will not get the same publicity or consideration, regardless on how it stacks up in the end of a fiscal year.
But I would love to see ArenaNet prove conventional statistics wrong and provide exceptional content with the support of microtransactions, without needing to design expansions. Time will tell the truth, it always does.
On the contrary, the only way to fairly judge is to compare them year by year.
Because the claim isn’t that the old veterans don’t have an impact; it’s that the old veterans don’t have ENOUGH impact to carry GW2 on their own.
With the higher overhead Arena.net now has, 7 million sales over 8 years would be, frankly, a failure (bear in mind, those 7 million sales came in the form of 3 full games and 1 expansion). Most AAA developers of Arena.net’s size only break even at around the 2-3 million mark (which even then is a rough estimate, and not taking DLC or subscription or cash shop revenues into account… but also bear in mind outside of subscription fees, those elements have development costs of their own tied into them).
Arena.net made the decision to go big with GW2. Which means they needed a bigger audience.
And my suspicion is that they would like to avoid the expansion model because that sort of thing requires a lot of upfront money to get off the ground (production of a physical item isn’t free, after all). But if they can entice gem store sales through the Living World and/or Story… and provide expansion level content through it… that would likely get them more money in the long run.
Over 7 Million copies of GW1 sold. GW2 currently stands around 3.5 Million copies sold.
An impressive stat on both games, but if GW2 were an initial release with no previous knowledge or backing of a game with over 7 million sold, I’d guess GW2 would be half or less of 3.5million.
To say GW1 Vets don’t hold any player base is untrue, many of the players who initially purchased GW2 (2.5 million copies within a month of release), were GW1 players, including myself. Many have since left however.
Just to add a few hardboiler points, GW1 is one of the best selling RPG Online Multiplayer game to date, even ranking among top PC games to be produces.
I understand why ArenaNet critiques GW1, and also respect players who disliked GW1. But the point is the game held and still holds a stable playerbase.
As far as the Manifesto goes, it was designed to appeal to players, and it did, which is why it is still brought to discussion over a year later.
7 million copies sold over eight some odd years. I highly doubt GW1 had NEARLY those sales in their first year (If I recall correctly, that first year was in the realm of 750,000).
As I had mentioned before in a thread that was deleted, there IS a niche that CAN support non-traditional MMOs. EVE and Guild Wars 1 demonstrate that.
Now, the question I think should be asked is why Arena.net decided to push outside the niche they had carved for themselves and if that was a good idea. At least, that’s the question that I wonder about.
Because this, in my opinion, was largely inevitable. Once Arena.net expanded their company, their overhead, and their goals… this sort of catering to the content locusts was going to happen. It had to if GW2 was going to remain solvent.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
If you’re comparing GW2 on par with RIFT… hey, I’m cool with that. I kinda liked RIFT (unfortunately none of the crowd I used to hang with did).
It’s relatively easy.
When the adjusting level is apply, instead of artificially decrease our level to X, it will be decrease to (X – selected difficulty rank).
That’s not just what I mean though. You’re pretty much adding another layer (variable) to the scaling mechanic. The server would have to keep track of that for every player in any given zone at all times. Would that even be possible, considering what we know about the limitations server-side?
I don’t know. But I think if there is a monkey wrench in the idea, that would be it.
Back on point, if they created content that couldn’t be completed without near flawless teamwork(thus acting as the gate), why can’t it be a cosmetic reward?
I think the problem is that without distinctly superior “rewards”, players will by and largely avoid more difficult content. Challenge alone has pretty much ALWAYS been a terrible motivator for players.
If you have two things that give roughly the same rewards (and the differences are only cosmetic), the overwhelming majority of players are going to whichever one is perceived to be"easier" or “less time consuming”, and abandon the longer, more difficult one.
Hard Mode
I have a better suggestion, an idea that came a long time ago in a different context.
I’m a roleplayer and a thing I would like is to use game events and ennemies in roleplay. But when you are 20 it’s worthless to consider each single wolf because he’s instantly obliterated… The idea meet yours.+ Level adjustement customization
Currently when in a low level zone, our levels are automatically adjusted. (and it’s a wonderful mechanism to play with friends of various level.)
A new option give the ability to setup the level adjustment from 0 (same as actually), to 10 levels of difficulty.Example : I’m with my 80 in an area where monsters are level 41, I’m automatically down to level 42, but I want a bit more difficulties so I set my adjustement to -3 and instantly my level became 39.
It make fight harder for people like you and for roleplayers in group they can set their level to be threaten by monsters.
Another intriguing idea… I do wonder just how easy that would be to implement coding wise. Would a server have to track that data as the base level changes? How much of a burden would that be? Remember that server limitations are supposedly the core of the entire condition conundrum.
In an alternate universe I’d love to read the forums if ANet followed the manifesto to the letter, I wonder what the complaints would be like there?
I think you’d see a 404 error; as GW2 would be shut down because the GW1 veterans alone weren’t enough to financially support the game.
I wonder how many people realize just how bad the retention rate of this game before the Living Story and vertical progression was introduced. From the devs I’ve talked to, in November of 2012 Guild Wars 2 was quickly approaching dire straits.
It’s something that supports my antecedotal evidence, so I’m inclined to believe it. For others who had a different experience, I guess I have to accept that opinion.
If there’s one thing I would hope everybody understands, it’s this: Developers at Arena.net didn’t gather up in a meeting one morning in late 2012 and said, “Ya know, all of our hardcore fans that supported us the last 8 years over two games? Kitten them. We hate them. Let’s completely go back on our word and make them cry. Because we hate them now. Truly.”
Their manifesto was largely rejected by the MMO market; just like everyone else who tried to change the game too much all at once. There’s a REASON games in this genre tends to drift towards the “WoW Clone” label… and that’s because it’s what the players want. It’s where the money is. And Arena.net (just like every other game developer) is in the business of making money.
Personally, the argument that I think we should be having is, “Did Guild Wars 2 really NEED to try and expand the niche they had established?” Personally, I don’t think so, and trying to do so was a mistake. But it’s a mistake the developers of this game have to run with at this point. They’ve already committed to the larger company and larger expenses. Now they have to make the best of it.
That… has some potential… if you’re willing to wait a considerable amount of time for that sort of content to be ready. You’re talking about a whole new world pretty much laid on top of a new one, with events that you’d have to be mindful of coordinating with ones in the current world.
I mean, how happy do you think players would be if half their group were to spontaneously die during a Tequatl event due to things they couldn’t even see?
(Yes, yes… I know… half the zerg dies during the Tequatl event to things they DO see. That’s not the point here…)
It’d take a lot of time and work… but that is a very intriguing idea I’d like to see developed further.
Are you seriously trying to tell me that is going to be a problem?
Players losing their minds over the SLIGHTEST change to their routines are the heart and soul of these forums. It doesn’t matter how insignificant the change is. Players WILL kitten about it, and they will kitten about it at the top of their lungs.
You WILL have legions complaining that your idea has ruined the “sense of community in game.” You WILL have people whining that you’re creating two tiers of rewards based on “gimmicks.” you WILL have a small regiment who cry, “Arena.net loves warriors so much that they’re giving them improved loot! My [insert class here] can’t do hard mode! It’s favoritism!”
I dunno how to put it gently man. It’s a simple fact of the matter that things that GW1 could do because of the way it was designed really CAN’T be translated well into the open world of GW2. If you impact another person’s game play in ANY way (and be honest, even an “opt-in” hard mode will do that), they aren’t going to be happy about it, and they will let you know it; most likely in the most obnoxious way possible.
Thanks for your contribution!
Although one comment that i have to do im not considering these opinions as “trolls” people are disappointed indeed and people i know WILL leave if nothing good happens in gw2. But i havent lost my faith in Anet, not yet.
If I didn’t see it in official forums of pretty much every game I’ve ever played (or even in ANY creative medium), I’d be more worried about these dissatisfied masses and the state of the game they’re kittening on.
As it is… this forum is NOTHING out of the ordinary.
And how long do you think that would last before people started flooding the forums screaming that other players are making their events harder because they are engaging Hard Mode for themselves and thus dealing less and taking more damage?
Over/Under line set at 3 seconds after the patch notes are released.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
Funny thing i made this post to speculate what we might see in the next patches and all i see is : “Anet is bad i expect nothing”
You shouldn’t be surprised.
Official forums of any game tend to be dens for the dissatisfied and the enraged. They think they’re being clever with their passive-aggressive trolling.
Humor them.
What I suspect we will see:
- A couple new zones (probably in the Maguuma Jungle), corresponding with the next chapter in the living story dealing with Mordramoth, the jungle dragon.
- Craftable precursors (whether of existing ones or for entirely new legendaries, I couldn’t say).
- More add-ons for your “home” instance (though full customization will remain a dream never to be realized).
- Improved guild interface (but no GvG).
- Quality of Life improvements (but no fully customizable UI).
- A new dungeon, maybe two, and a handful of new fractal zones (though no 10+ “raid” instances).
As for GvG… I don’t think we’ll really see it’s own game mode like we did in GW1.
The ability to be in multiple guilds (and switch them pretty much on the fly) would make a fully independent GvG mode ripe for abuse, win trading, spying, etc… especially if there were any significant rewards tied to it.
People longing for GvG I think are just going to have to accept that your little corner of the Obsidian Sanctum is the best you can hope to get with the game as it is.
What I hope for is an PvE world expansion with the addition of GvG and the return of all the content that was removed.
I wonder… are you REALLY interested in playing prior Living World content, or are you simply more comforted with the idea of being ABLE to play it even though you probably won’t? I see the latter with MMO players quite a bit across many games… they lose their minds over any change to prior content, even though next to no one actually plays it.
Company: “We are changing [x]!”
Players: “No! Don’t change [x]! How dare you!”
Company: “But you don’t ever play it.”
Players: “Well, no… but we want to stay as is for… reasons.”
Newbie: “Anyone want to do [x]?”
Players: “Go away noob. No one wants to do that. It’s boring.”
Company: [goes cross-eyed]
There hasn’t been much of anything presented by the living story that I’d consider “must play.” It’s largely been throwaway stuff… busy work… much less anything that I’d want to do again and again.
I mean, sure… I don’t think it would hurt to have some sort of “historian” character that would allow you to experience some of the pertinent details of living stories prior… but I also don’t think the world is particularly damaged with it buried in the past.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)