(edited by chemiclord.3978)
I find it amusing the amount of griping about the lack of rewards in GW2 content.
Those people either (A) never played GW1, or (B) have forgotten that the vast majority of “rewards” for content completion in GW1 was cosmetic at best, if not outright garbage.
But there should be compulsion. There should always be that urge. You should feel like you are missing out or wasting something if you don’t log in. GW2 learned the lesson early on that you can’t just tell players “leave it and come back whenever you like”.
Nope. If you are coming up with way to make people feel they HAVE to play, that’s just a cheap replacement for compelling content. You should make people WANT to play, not HAVE to.
Not that I think GW2 has always had perfectly compelling content, mind you… but if I don’t like it, I don’t have to give them my money. I prefer that immensely over “Here’s my $15, no matter how crappy your updates are!”
That is a good thing. MMOs should make you feel like you have to play them. Not randomly log on here and there. Which is exactly why GW2 has things like dailies and perma content. They want you to log on and have the urge to log on.
And yet, if I don’t like those dailies that day (like today’s made me go “meh”) I feel absolutely no compulsion to do it. I’ve already got my money’s worth, and I like that feeling.
As a result, I will NOT play ANY game that has a subscription fee anymore. I don’t care how good you think it is.
15 bucks might be a lot to some people, who am I to criticize that, but to me..it is barely anything. It literally cost my girlfriend and I 30 bucks to go see gravity in 3D over the weekend. It was great, but it’s not like I can walk into that theater all month long and watch it as many times as I want during that time. That’s just how I look at it. I’ve had many problems with world of warcraft, and I’ve subbed and unsubbed more times than I can count since 2006, but it was never about the money…it was about other things about the game.
My problem with sub fees is that (at least to me), I find myself forcing myself to play to make that month’s investment worth it. It doesn’t matter whether I like the content provided that month, it’s $15 out of my pocket. If I play 200 hours that month, or 200 seconds; $15. If the guild officers are on vacation and we don’t do anything together for those weekends… yep. Still $15.
And the company can claim that I’m a proud subscriber on their fact sheets.
Whereas with a cash shop option; I can actually show my support for content I like. If I don’t like what GW2 offers that month… I don’t have to pay them a dime. If I approve, yeah, I’ll drop them $10 on something I want.
Never bought a Black Lion Key. Never bought a random mini-pack, or anything else from the Gem Store that’s tied to RNG.
But apparently a lot of people do; because they’re still there. A lot of people like that gamble, and I’m tired of trying to tell them they’re idiots. Oh well.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
I would agree that I doubt 1-5% of the GW1 came from GW2. My gut instinct would say it’s probably more along the lines of 15-25%.
Regardless, I also believe that the bulk of the current playerbase are from outside the GW “veteran” fandom, and those players want something more akin to “traditional” MMOs. They are the ones that ripped through their way to 80, and felt there was nothing to do because there was no “endgame.” They’re the one who clad themselves in exotics easily, and asked, “Where’s the Tier 1 raid?”
At that point… something had to give.
I mean, that would be a band-aid solution, really.
The answer is honestly, to make support and control more viable. With everyone and their mothers able to stack all boons pretty much with equal effectiveness regardless of your build… why wouldn’t you maximize the part that DOES become more effective with stats (damage)?
Meanwhile, as control is really only viable on trash mobs (thanks to defiant) and trash mobs can be burned down fairly easily… why bother with control skills?
Lately I’ve been wondering. Why is it that MMORPGS get away with this?
In a lot of other industries, you tell your customers/audience that something will be available on a given day, and you either produce it or end up giving costly concessions to your customers.
What is it about MMORPGs that makes the standard different. Don’t promise anything so your customers don’t expect anything. This post probalby sounds a lot more emotional than it is. I’m truly wondering what it is that makes a few industries different in this aspect.
I don’t turn on the television to see, “Oops, the episode took longer to edit than we thought, check back next week.” And at any decent restaurant if the food takes way too long to get to the table, the management comes around, apologizes, and reduces the bill. I’ve never gone to my boss and asked that we move opening night back because the scenery wasn’t ready yet.
I guess, one argument would be that, in the case of GW2, we’re not paying additional money to get any of these changes, which is a pretty good point.
And, to be fair, one of the things I liked from the start about ANet was that they seemed ambitious about the things they wanted to achieve. And when you’re ambitious, you sometimes fall short in time, resources, or ability. Guess I’d rather have them shooting high and missing, then flat out saying things can’t be done and aiming for easy to hit targets all the time.
If you were to go to any producer right after they announce they’ve picked up an option, and ask them what specific date it will be released, just watch that producer give you the evil eye and not be any more specific than a seasonal window (like Winter 2014).
You will find in nearly every entertainment industry there is an element of “it’s done when it’s done.” By the time you get a “release date” for a movie or TV show that four or five months in the future… that movie or that season of shows is either already complete or very close to it. When you see a release date for a book this winter… that book could probably be in stores within two weeks… but usually the publisher wants to get the media cycle humming and get the hype going.
Games are a little bit of a different animal than other forms of entertainment in one regard, though. It’s really the only one in which changes and alterations can be made relatively easily after the fact. Those changes, however, are subject to the same development cycle that can really be hampered by any number of factors. And like anywhere else in entertainment, you REALLY don’t want to make any hard and fast commitments to something still in development.
Because while YOU might be forgiving, Gibson, the vast overwhelming percentage of customers are most certainly NOT, and they WILL rake you over the coals if you miss your set date by even a few hours.
IMO, there is no way they won’t have an expansion. When MMO players who have quit a game hear the word “expansion,” they almost instinctively come back to try it out. It’s a tried-and-true way of getting people back and excited about a game again. The word has too powerful a connotation that Anet will not be able to resist.
And this is the reason why we will most likely see one. The market doesn’t like big changes. It’s why you still see posts here thinking that GW2 should bring back the classic “trinity.” Or cries for “moar loot!”
Same thing here… the same trap players are falling into. Expansions are familiar… safe… they’re what they know. Arena.net could package up content they’re doing now, burn it to a DVD, call it an expansion, and players would gobble it up.
Wow… only months ago everyone was onboard the MF sucks and doesn’t work train and was convinced that MF had to go.
Now that the vocal minority has screwed over the farmers out there, everyone is so happy to find out that MF actually does work.
What you are seeing is the nature of official forums.
It’s not 1,000 people suddenly did a 180 and now hate precisely the thing they wanted before.
It’s those 1,000 people are now happily playing the game while a different 1,000 people are grumpy and upset that the thing they liked was changed, and are charging to the official forums to voice their displeasure.
Point is, its not the gear itself that is too good but the content too bad that in the equation of risk vs reward; there is too little risk for too much reward.
I think it’s a combination of a couple things. The one above (where there is no particularly greater risk of damage in most PvE content that makes Vitality and Toughness worthwhile)…
… as well as other potential stats not particularly being up to snuff. Healing Power is largely worthless, and I’d argue by design (as giving Healing Power too much bite could potentially creating a “healing” class that Arena.net doesn’t want to create), but at the same time, having no healing power doesn’t really hurt your self-heal either.
Condition damage (Rampager’s or Rabid) at least purely on it’s own isn’t a horrible option (and in rare cases is superior to Berserker), but those situations are extremely rare, and loses a vast amount of its effectiveness once more than 2 or 3 players are involved… which is a bit of a problem in a game that encourages group play.
I kinda get the idea GW2 was TRYING to go with; that they wanted players to be able to stack conditions with each other to try and promote cooperation and coordination.
But it clearly isn’t working the way it was intended.
My solution would be:
1) Each player gets one stack of a condition, reserved to them. You get one bleed, one burning, etc…
2) Further “stacks” increase the duration, not the intensity or frequency of ticks. Yes, it would require reworking of the damage and base duration as well as lot of tweaking to current traits and sigils among all classes. That WOULD take a lot of time to sort out.
3) Increases to base condition damage is only checked when a condition is applied, rather than with each tick, cutting down on the number of checks it makes to the server.
If Arena.net is considering a complete overhaul of the condition mechanics in this game (like the above would be)… yeah, that would take a LOT of time to square away.
It doesn’t work better or worse in a pure numbers sense than it did before.
It IS nice that it’s not attached to your gear.
I don’t miss the trinity at all. It can stay gone.
I think GW2 is my favorite MMO “currently.” The most fun I’ve had was probably WoW’s Burning Crusade expansion (but I suspect that was more because I was in a kick-kitten raiding guild that could actually complete the hardest content).
At this point in my “career” any subscription based game is a non-starter for me, so that naturally limits my selection considerably.
That would be a cool addition to the game. Nice idea.
Oh yeah, and then have these boards aflame with rage that Arena.net has done ANOTHER 180 on their manifesto by ruining the community and encouraging people to NOT work together in the open world.
That is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea.
Why would a company do a 180 on a majority of their customers and expect to make money out of it?
The answer… they wouldn’t. That makes no sense.
The cynical version is: GW2 sold more copies to traditional MMO fans than ANet expected. Keeping those people became more of a priority because, well, they have other games to go to. Where can someone who believed the sales pitches and preferred that model go? ANet gambled that they could retain more of the MMO fans and still retain a significant portion of their old fan base, leading to a bigger pool for gem store purchases.
The idealistic version is: GW2 will soon be released in the East, and NCSoft fears that GW2 will not have enough of what eastern players are used to. They are pushing ANet to put in more progression and grind and ANet is taking a compromise approach to try to please grinders east and west, while holding on to some of their ideals.
Either version supports a change in direction and an expectation to make money.
Well, I think the second version is a little too pie in the sky. Arena.net should have guessed that they’d eventually try to target the Eastern market in that scenario, and would have (presumably) planned accordingly.
I suspect the first scenario is a bit closer to the truth. They were targeting two groups of people in addition to appealing to their prior fanbase; people who were tired of the traditional MMO experience, and people who found MMOs to be rather inane to begin with.
I think they were semi-successful with the first group; “Hey… it’s an MMO without the insane gear grind and constant chase of the next tier!” The problem is, that first group discovered they actually LIKED the gear grind and endgame. They LIKED that constant pursuit, and started to quit the game because GW2 lacked it.
Meanwhile, the second group I don’t think ever really gave it a chance to begin with, and never manifested in any sizable numbers. It’d be like making a bowl of curry for people who don’t like curry. Sure, you might get a handful give a shot, and some may even like it… but the majority are just gonna say “No thank you” because (gasp!) THEY DON’T LIKE CURRY!
On top of that, I really don’t think the bulk of GW1 veterans really followed to GW2. I suspect a good many of them played the betas, saw it wasn’t a direct sequel in spirit to GW1, did a couple laps to make their money worth it, and gave it up.
So at that point, you really only have one group of people left… the traditional MMO players that want the things that you really didn’t want to do to begin with. I suspect the falling in line more with what is considered “good” in Eastern markets more coincided with the traditional MMO market than a direct plan to cater to Eastern players.
Can we let them fix the broken aspects of this game first before they release an expansion?
Just saying… it might be better if they fix what’s there first before dumping more stuff on top of it.
They will but very slow as you can see. Fixes does not make them money as it won’t sell them any gems. But when then can work on an expansion they can and must (to prevent negative feedback on the expansion) also handle much of those bugs.
And making fixes would take resources away from the expansion you are convinced MUST happen to save this game. Meanwhile, MMO players are NOT patient. They will NOT wait for an expansion if they are bored.
I find it amusing how the players here CLAIM they want GW2 to be different from other MMOs… yet on this very forum I see:
- Cries for a traditional “expansion” model.
- Instanced “raid” content.
- Hard modes.
- Tank/DPS/Healer trinity
It sure doesn’t sound like you all really want things to be all that different after all.
I think Tequatl is an attempt to see if raids can be an open-world thing rather than instanced.
I suspect they’ll discover players will only go so far with that. We’ll see 10-man “raid” instances at some point in 2014, I’m sure.
I’m being deadly serious.
And if you don’t believe me, check the dungeon forum, Guang and Zelyhn ran numbers and staff auto + lava font DPS is meant to be close to lightning hammer DPS which is extremely high.
Rangers are fine too, just because 99.9% of them are bearbow scrubs doesn’t mean the class itself is bad, it just means there’s a lot of bad rangers. Spotter is basically a second banner of discipline for your group, and frost spirit is a great DPS boost as well.
I’m not sure that I’d say Rangers are “fine” (considering how much of our DPS is tied to a pet that’s about as intelligent as Lloyd Christmas)… but they are certainly more viable than you would think listening to its class forums.
Honestly, I think they want to try and push an expansion level of content through the Living Story because it would actually cost them a LOT less money to do so.
Producing, manufacturing, and shipping a DVD set, while not ridiculously expensive, isn’t exactly cheap either. If they can produce that sort of content via direct download for a fraction of the cost… I mean… it’s worth a shot.
Funny, the defenders of the about face keep asserting that the player base was tanking because of the original vision, so it had to be scrapped or the game was going to crash and burn.
Because there really isn’t a better explanation. The “Hot Dog Lovers” simply want to chalk it up to… reasons… something something hates us…. something something money. Why would a company do a 180 on a majority of their customers and expect to make money out of it?
The answer… they wouldn’t. That makes no sense.
Arena.net had the metrics, and claim they were hemorrhaging players a couple months after launch as players devoured their content, rushed to 80, then started quitting because there was no progression, or endgame, or anything to do like traditional MMOs.
It makes sense to me because I watched my original guild (a 40 man guild, mind), and 39 of them left for precisely those reasons. To a man.
The GW1 veterans simply weren’t enough to sustain the higher overhead of Guild Wars 2.
From my perspective, the Living Story is an attempt to keep players logging in. Ascended Weapons (and eventually armor) are just busy work. Keep players in game while they fashion the endgame content that the MMO market demands. From there… who knows?
I’m not entirely fond of it, but… I know MMO players, and I also know Arena.net has to try and cater to them (at least to some degree) if GW2 is going to have a place in the market.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
They did it for Guild Wars.
Truth be told, GW2 is just making money for WildStar. That’s NCsoft’s main game now. GW2 is just here to make money for the development of that game. Watch and see. Everything that was supposed to be in GW2 from the beginning will be in that game.
GW1 ALSO had a cash shop, for the record… one that you couldn’t use in-game gold for, at that.
grabs popcorn
This is gonna get good.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner? 3 years ago Anet gave clarification on what they were talking about in the manifesto, and 3 years later people are saying that Anet lied, even though Anet gave clarification 3 years ago. Not Anets fault that people decided to watch JUST the manifesto but never read anything else from them in 2 years prior to the release of the game.
That kinda IS Arena.net’s problem… because they should know how people are.
When a publication runs a massive headline that turns out erroneous, how many people actually read the very small correction the publication makes on the back page a day later? You can even directly SHOW people where the correction is, and a good many of them won’t believe it because it isn’t in big print on the front page.
If you’re going to offer clarification and/or corrections, you kinda have to make it as big and as loud as the original statements if you expect people to process and retain it.
In a town of hamburger joints, a lot of people were excited to see "Coming soon: Hot Dog Hut! Home of the World’s Best Hotdogs!’
Hot Dog Hut opened. They made some pretty good hot dogs. After a very short while, people stopped going to Hot Dog Hut because they wanted burgers. Burgers started appearing on the menu, but the same number of hot dogs remained on the menu.
Wiener aficionados complained. They pointed to the name of the restaurant and said, “What the…?”
The management said that there were so many people that wanted burgers that it was the only way they could stay in business. The hot dogs are still there if that’s what you want.
But the hot dog lovers whined that they were losing hot dogs even though it was clear they weren’t. Clearly there weren’t enough of them to support Hot Dog Hut, and, as a business, it needed to change; and it was hard to take the hot dog enthusiasts seriously because they were resorting to raw emotional hyperbole rather than rational observation. Besides, no one needs to order a burger, because there’s still the same number of hot dogs on the menu.
And the name of the restaurant is irrelevant, obviously. It was chosen way back before they even broke ground on the building. It’s an unfortunate circumstance of the market not allowing things to change too much all at once.
Fixed that to reflect a more accurate analogy. You’re welcome.
(edited by chemiclord.3978)
Max I ever had was 570g. I had it for all of five minutes before purchasing The Lover.
There might be on the extra stuff, but the coffer is guaranteed (and that’s where the bulk of the value is found).
What would you define as “meaningful content”?
A new zone that players will chew up in a week then moan there’s nothing fun to do.
Again, players need only look at themselves when assigning blame for this.
A constant gripe was that a realm would wind up playing the same two realms week after week after week after week (I dunno how much kittening I heard in Tarnished Coast along the lines of “Fort Aspenwood and Dragonbrand? AGAIN? That’s like ten weeks in a row!”
Yet again… an example of Arena.net “not caring” is really a player-side problem.
Well, I DO think it’s a valid question.
If a person loathes something so much… why keep doing something you know you’ll hate? Why keep going somewhere that you know is only going to anger you?
There comes a point where the fight really isn’t worth it. When it comes to video games, that point should come very, very quickly.
If you ignore any kind of player group, you are ignoring paying customers and potential paying customers. Its fine and dandy when you cater to all of the bad players, but when you only pay attention to them without considering the other people you are essentially killing customer relations.
Those players will eventually say, “You don’t deserve any more of my money” and customer loyalty dies.
That’s all well and good, and the ideal is that you’re able to give something to everyone.
But there WILL come times where what two groups want are mutually exclusive; and at that point, it becomes a sheer numbers game. The hope is that you can make it up to the crowd you slighted later… but sometimes, you really can’t. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a bullet a business will take for the greater good of their profits every time.
Ok so Colin said this was going to be the last tier. Do you believe him? If that system didn’t work in the past, why did Colin say this new ascended was the last tier?
I believe he wants it to be. Will it be? I have no idea. But it really doesn’t matter if he means it or not. My feeling is that Ascended gear is meant to be busy work while they put together the “endgame” content people have been demanding.
If it is the last tier, we’re cool. If it isn’t, I’ll most likely quit. Other non-starters would be a level cap increase (though if current gear will scale to that level than I could probably suffer it), and if Arena.net were to add a subscription model (I refuse to play subscription games at this point).
I’ve made that opinion pretty well clear, and not just on these forums.
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Sure. They missed the chance to do so in beta. They apparently wanted to give their manifesto a shot in the wide open world.
But that doesn’t change anything really. Should they have stuck with what wasn’t working since it was post-release?
By kittening over the people that actually WANT to get better? Sure thing, bud.
shrug I dunno what to tell you.
If I design a product, if 100 people are willing to buy it for $10 each, unless you’re willing to give me $1000… guess who I’m gonna design that product for?
I’m not exactly sure what the point of Defiant is, either.
I guess Arena.net feels that if a zerg can simply stun/daze a legendary or champion mob to death that it would be too easy. Personally, if a zerg can coordinate their interrupts and CC that well to render such a mob impotent… more power to ’em.
I really hate when people make posts like this.
I understand that Anet is a business (well ncsoft..) but they made an mmo. mmo’s unlike other games need people to continue playing so yes its their business to make the most they can, but making people kitten ed and leaving isnt going to help this game in the long run. The community is as important as the business.
And I hate when people make posts about being “betrayed” or “lied to” or “slapped in the face” or whatever.
They made a decision that apparently was something the majority wanted. They seem to think they made the right decision. The head brass didn’t wake up and say, “Ya know all those fans we had from Guild Wars 1? Kitten ’em. I want to make them cry.”
They had to do SOMETHING. You didn’t like what they decided to do. I get that. And you have every right to voice your displeasure. But you weren’t “stabbed in the back.” You weren’t “lied to.”
You don’t like what they’re doing. Hell, I don’t like much of it myself (the direction of the living story is tedium distillate, for example). It’s not personal. And I’m not taking it as such. Nor should anyone.
snip…
The only grind is for Legendaries, which like their statement implies, is for looks only.
Well, it IS true that Ascended (at least in the iteration it became) was NOT part of the original plan. And it IS true that the claim was that it shouldn’t take too much effort to get “Best in Slot” gear. And it IS true that Ascended either requires a LOT of gold, or a lot of time.
So, yeah… it’s DEFINITELY a 180 from the original plan… but it was a 180 demanded by a LOT of players who were abandoning the game. They WANTED a vertical progression, and there was enough of them that Arena.net felt they HAD to compromise that particular vision in order to keep the player numbers they wanted.
There’s only so far that your audience will allow you to change the genre; so I’m not particularly blaming Arena.net for having to back off on their ideals, nor am I certain there was a way they could do that without kittening off SOMEONE.
Tolerate “dishonesty and breaking promises?”
Hunh. I didn’t realize Arena.net was my friend. I thought all this time they were a business and were going to whatever they had to in order to cater to the audience they’re targeting that will give them money; even if I’m not in that group.
Boy is MY face red.
When “scrubs” make up the vast majority of your prospective customers… uh… you better kitten well believe I’m going to cater to “scrubs”, thank you very much.
It continues to blow my mind how an expansion of content that people don’t like will somehow magically fix the problems they have with the game.
Ya know what. I DON’T want an expansion. I’m not going to drop $50 or so if I don’t have to. Arena.net wants to try and give it to me for free through the Living Story? I’m gonna let ’em try.
So… they should just go down with the ship, then? Commit to that initial vision as they are hemorrhaging players? I think you would find roughly 0 companies that would take that angle, at least none that actually want to stay in business.
“Core fans” REALLY need to get in their heads that they AREN’T more important than anyone else.
They are approaching the issue wrong, instead of doing a complete 180 they need to take smaller steps. This way they don’t anger the fans that bought the game for reasons they advertise.
Who said the core fans are more important? No one did.
You are correct. I misinterpreted you, and have since edited the original content.
And I’m confused by what sort of “gradual change” you mean. The shift has been known since November 2012, and STILL hasn’t been completed. Hell, from this forum, I get the sense that the permanent changes aren’t happening fast ENOUGH.
Oh I agree with this 100%. Their whole mantra wasn’t working and people were leaving and leaving fast. So they did a 180. But here is my problem. A developer should make changes like that during beta. Not after live, when many people bought the game based on their original mantra.
Now what they have is a whole lot of their core fanbase angry at them. And I am sorry they have to deal with it, but it is the bed they made.
So… they should just go down with the ship, then? Commit to that initial vision as they are hemorrhaging players? I think you would find roughly 0 companies that would take that angle, at least none that actually want to stay in business.
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When you are comparing GW2 to WoW Heroic raiding, that itself should be a sign about how far this game has done a 180.
No one is using the Manifesto to say the game is bad. People use the Manifesto and articles like “Is it Fun” to show how far from their original design the team has come. They completely abandoned their original goals and went with the same old MMO formula. The point was for GW2 to be different in terms of core game design, not minor differences here and there which all MMOs have.
When GW2 tried to be like every other MMO, it also started competing with every other MMO. It is not good for the game or its future.
Companies do have the right to judge where they take their game, but companies can also be very wrong when they do.
Well, now ask yourself… why would Arena.net make that 180?
The answer (in my opinion), because the feedback they got (not just from the official forum) said this was the way they needed to go to retain their players. I’m sorry you don’t like that. I’m sorry that they felt the game to your desires wasn’t sustainable.
Did it turn out to be the right choice? Arena.net seems to think so, and I don’t think the predictable complaining on the forums is going to change their mind. The way you change their mind is by walking away, and hoping enough people feel the same.
After all, that’s how they got to this point, by people not playing their game.
That’s not true. Again, I’m a console player and that’s mainly because the lot of games I play are geared around game play, not loot. If they can get me, then why can’t they get the hundreds of thousands of other console players?
If Anet wants to be truly innovative, then they can devise a way to move this mindset over to the game play & combat etc.
How many MMOs do you play? Because EVERY one I have is entirely gear focused. It’s all about gettin’ the next tier.
It seems to me that Guild Wars 2 tried to appeal to two groups of people initially; (1) players who were tired of the carrot chasing of “traditional” MMOs, and (2) players who disliked MMOs to begin with.
Judging from the response Arena.net has had, it sounds like Group (1) was a lot smaller than they expected, and Group (2) never really gave the game a chance because… well… they hate MMOs.
For the recorded, I decided to play this game becuase ArenaNet said they were going to innovate the MMO genre. I haven’t played any other MMOs other than this franchise, so I’m not familiar with the loot mindset, but I certainly tell you that if that’s what makes the MMO genre… then that’s BULL kitten!
IMO, this mindset is an infection and needs to be destroyed.
There’s a LOT of conditioning that MMO players have that I think needs to be slapped out of them… but companies can’t be the one to do it, not unless they want their game to fail.
There’s only so much a company can do to break that conditioning, otherwise players won’t bother anymore. My first guild in this game to a man left because exotics were too easy to get (everybody’s got ‘em, that’s stupid) and there was only one “endgame” dungeon (Arah explorable). They didn’t want to “go back” to “lowbie zones.” That’s where the “noobs” are.
I’m the only one of that group (that numbered 40 people) that is still playing.
THEY represent the MMO fanbase, I’m afraid. Without them, Guild Wars 2 can’t succeed with the costs the game has.
You say that they should focus on making the game fun, however could you give suggestions how?
The game is not fun because the primary focus seems to be rewards, loot etc. That’s a terrible way to run a video GAME.
You need to focus on the game play itself. The skills, the combat, the character development that impacts your skills and so on. People should be signing in because they actually want to go out in the world and just fight stuff. That’s not happening. People are signing in because they’re grinding for loot… BOOOOO!!!!
There needs to be more depth with skills and combat. It needs to be fun to play, not because it’s a “challenge”, but because just using the skills is entertaining… not redundant.
In fact, like a lot of successful games that pull this off (albeit different genres), people are rewarded for just using the skills… and not with loot, but with character animations, cool effects, an impact where you feel the power of your skills being used on your enemy. That’s a good reward. You put this reward behind a deep and complex skill system, where the customization is high and results in many different variations of combat that people can enjoy.
That’s a video game. That’s fun. Not this rewards mindset that people are seemingly conditioned to. D;
Everything you describe here are player-side problems.
MMOs players have been conditioned to be loot-driven. Everything about the game is about getting the biggest stat shiny thing. They have to target a larger audience than GW1 did, and guess what… that larger audience wants phat lootz. Sorry.
MMO players could care less about how “fun” a mechanic is as long as they get their “purples” (to borrow the WoW term). They don’t care about grind, they don’t care about time. As long as they can sit in Orgrim… I mean… Lion’s Arch with their hot swag, then it’s all cool, man.
There’s only so much you can break conventional thinking before players push back and quit. I understand that frustrates and angers “veterans” who think Guild Wars 1 with graphical updates would have been enough. It wouldn’t have been. I’m sorry.
It’s Arena’s fault. They made dungeons unfit for lowbies.
Yup. I think the base level requirement is misrepresented as well, explorable paths are really better suited to 80s anyway. Most of the gear you can buy with tokens is max-level.
You can blame the players for that, actually. The original gear found in dungeons were of the level that the explorable was set at (for example AC gear was level 35, CM was 45, etc). Players complained and complained that it wasn’t max level until Arena.net caved.
The problem with conditions isn’t the conditions themselves. Against mobs that can’t be crit, or mobs with higher than normal defense, conditions CAN actually shine.
The problem is the limit to condition stacks, that make it completely unfeasible to have more than 1 or 2 in any given group, no matter how large that group is.