Stop relating to WoW’s level cap, gw2 doesnt have this and you look like an idiot. The elite specs are new so people want to use them, you’re right. but when someone that has never played engi before runs a scrapper and beats experienced players just because the class is overpowered. a normal engi vs a scrapper the scrapper is bound to win. And this i believe is what Anet tried to do by getting as much pocket money out of all of you that have purchased HoT because you PAYED MONEY FOR IT the classes ( or Elite Specs) are going to be stronger than the normal class itself, and if eventually Anet realises this, they still won’t make Elite Specs balanced to normal classes? why would they? you have payed money to get the elite specs so why would they give people who have payed money an equal chance to play the game towards people who only have the orginal GW2. it’s simple. why would you?
Obviously Anet is try to make money from you.
So is every mmorpg in the world. Every mmorpg in the world is either trying to sell expansion or is pay to win or is dying(the game company give up). Why do you expect Anet to be any different.
So if you are telling me GW2 is purposely trying to sell a lesser product than GW1, I dont’ think so. Because they actually spend more resource.
But why it didn’t live up to “your” expectation, I really don’t know. Maybe because Anet spend too much time updating regularly. Or GW1 some how are better at managing resource etc.
But one thing about GW1 is when I tried it, I felt it is a dump down game. Dump down as in I felt they didn’t spend much resource on the “non-important” thing. But focus on the important things.
They did, however, add an option to spend real money to buy something that provides an advantage in PvP (at the same character level) over those who do not buy it.
Pay real money to have a competitive advantage over characters of your level.
It fits the term Pay to Win.
That said, I do not think that this is intentional. I believe that Anet did intend for the Elite Specs to be more about variety than power creep. I also believe that Anet intends to address the imbalances, but fully expect that this may take quite some time. Anet has seemed to struggle with game and class balance throughout the game’s history and I do not expect that to change any time soon.
This isn’t MOBA.
Which mmorpg don’t require you to buy expansion if you want to pvp at the top tier?
That being said, it’s probably not a bad idea for Anet to make their spvp free for everyone. Or give people the ability to earn elite spec as a f2p player(or base game).
I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts
Maplestory is probably a bad example.
But other typical mmorpg raise level cap in their expansion. How are you going to pvp in those games?
I can tell you no one playing those mmorpg ever talk about pay to win.
That’s because, like stated above 9/10 people agree that bringing out the Elite specs in regards to competitive aspects of the game ( so not regarding PvE ) has made them much stronger, for example. I don’t remember a normal Tyrian Gw2 Guardian auto attacking for 3.4k dmg every second and a half with a longbow, and then using another skill on the longbow that has a 6 second cooldown that does almost 10k damage. Or maybe a revenant who has basically all classes put together to make it, if a thief fights a revenant (even though thief has been turned into a evade spamming button mashing class now which is why i don’t main it anymore) what can it do? thief only has so much stealth and if you don’t have the expansion you can only dodge twice instead of dodging 7 times to evade a simple revenant sword 3 skill. ( i forgot to add that this also adds evasion to the attack aswell making it even more stronger.) HoT was added to give an unfair advantage in competitve terms of the game which is why myself and many others above are calling it P2W.
Of course Anet want you to buy the expansion.
That being said, do anyone playing Wow say “Oh I need to buy the expansion else I’ll get pawned by higher level people”, “or I’ll need to buy the expansion else I won’t be able to compete in competitive pvp”?
In mmorpg you buy expansion. That’s pretty much the buttom line. If you don’t like it, try to play other pvp games which isn’t a mmorpg.
In order to stop botting you simply have to reduce grind the less grind you have the less bots you’ll get because all things are obtainable by all people in a state of equality, I’m not saying that everything should be handed too you on a silver platter either, but more care needs to be taken, 10,000 drinks for example is just idiocy 101 -only- because this is an event held around Christmas! that’s the season for giving not grinding.
There are so many “highly addicted” players. If you don’t give them something to grind for, they just quit the game.
And Anet make money from selling gems. Some grind is there just so paying real cash can bypass it.
I have played maplestory for plenty of time and this expansion is exactly the same, its just not as extreme as what Maplestory is. it’s okay to defend the expansion if you clearly purchased it but you gotta face the facts
Maplestory is probably a bad example.
But other typical mmorpg raise level cap in their expansion. How are you going to pvp in those games?
I can tell you no one playing those mmorpg ever talk about pay to win.
I been banned quite often for online gaming over the years. Some of it because I’m really cheating, some I’m wrongfully banned. What I find is if I sent a ticket, and I’m really wrongfully banned, my account is usually cleared.
Is hard to believe you joined a T4 attempt and nobody was at Axemaster.
Only case is that the attempt just “failed” and people left but that’s rare.
Usually the attemp doesnt reach t4 in night (because people don’t defend before bosses and dont get the map at halfway to T2 at least).
Just try another taxi maybe? And be there before actual bosses phase?
I can’t get it done too.
But, it’s pretty stupid to spend a whole weekend trying to do something that can’t be done, because you didn’t find a good map.
Just be patient, and check the map time to time, and eventually you’ll find a good map.
Let’s be honest, there are many * in the world’s. And customer service take a bunch of bash.
Take for example, Costco pretty much have a 100% refund policy. People abuse it like crazy, especially US citizen. It just show you how many * are in the worlds, especially in the United States.
So just because you are a customer, don’t mean you are right, and people need to listen to you.
It was exactly my point. Everyone is claiming that I need the right gear. What kind of perfection in build do I have to slave to create in order to be tougher than a level 13 character…lol.
Good luck.
At least use masterwork gear. Everytime you reach level listed below, upgrade your gear. Put the best dps gem in armor, or seals of assasin(50) medallions of the assasin(lvl65). You can try privateer rune at level60, or find cheap alternative. Use sigil of fire and sigil of lightning. You can keep using rare sigil of fire and sigil of lightning, since the superior sigil is too expensive.
Use food which boost your might/power/ferocity. Sharpening stone is useful too mainly for boosting your exp.
Also one thing you need to understand, those level13 could be using “exotic” gear. Not only that they could be using gear specific for leveling called Ineffable.
26 strong
32 strong
38 strong green
44 strong green
50 strong green
53 strong (weapon only)
56 strong green
59 strong (weapon only)
62 berserker
65 berserker green (expensive)
68 berserker green
71 berser (weapon only)
74 berser
You can use any class at any level and kill monster in 2 second just autoattacking in starting zone. Once you reach lvl50 zones, it start scaling a bit.
Wear the highest dps gear, highest dps rune and highest dps sigil.
Any class at any level can kill monster in the beginning zone in 2 seconds just auto attacking.
Make sure to wear gear appropriate to your level. Also wear gear with might or berserker prefix. Either put dps gem or inscription in your armor. For sigil, it is best to use fire and lightning. Since if it procs you pretty much 1 shot the monster.
It’s your gear. It have nothing to do with your class. Any class can kill monster in 2 seconds in the beginning area.
Let’s say you are level 54. You should wear “dps” gear near level54. And put either dps ruby/inscription in them. For sigil, it is best to use sigil of air and fire. Since if it proc, you pretty much 1 shot the mob.
For example: Linen is around ~5 silver per piece, but ideally Anet “players” want it to be 50 copper per piece.
The game have been out for 3 years already. Everyone should made enough money to craft a set of ascended gear.
Ascended gear is really cheap for new players too. 50 hours of grinding or a few more hours just playing the game and you should already made enough money to get a set.
That is in my opinion not a valid argument. Because there is a lot of stuff to spend your gold on Guildwars 2. Say you want a Ferrari and can’t afford it. Someone comes up and says : “Well it’s 2015 and Ferrari exists since 1947, you are 30 years old, should’ve been enough time to get the money”. 30 years is maybe enough time but you have to probably neglect spending your money elsewhere.
Also, some of us maybe want multiple sets of ascended armor. Sure you can interchange it between characters and switch your stats but you can’t switch the armor class from heavy to medium or light.
It’s not even an opinion or argument.
I’m just saying if you need to have a Ferrari to have fun. Your life will probably be very miserable. Unless you have money.
If you don’t need a Ferrari to have fun. You might still be happy even if you dont’ have money.
And we shouldn’t even be talking about Ferrari. We should be talking about if you have enough money to get by. You don’t even need ascedned armor to get by. You just need exotic gear to play 90% of the content. After you finished 90% of the content, you should have enough money to get ascended armor for the rest 10%.
In my mind the main problem is the DRASTIC increase in leather requirements from the change from Damask to Damask Patches in insignia. This led to a more than DOUBLING of leather requirements over the set of 18 ascended armor pieces. AND it’s even worse than that because the bump in demand for leather has caused prices to increase as well, meaning the cost of leather for armor has more than doubled in HoT.
FURTHERMORE lower level leather is the one thing that is very difficult for a lvl 80 char to obtain. There are no nodes, racks or piles. This makes the supply very inelastic – a price increase doesn’t result in much of a supply increase.
This really needs to be changed. It has really completely unbalanced this aspect of the game.
Player “asked” for the leather change. Especially from players playing mage class.
Players keep complaining why leather is so cheap and silk is so expensive.
I’m not sure you could find me a single business in existance that doesn’t aim for “cost efficiency.”
SquareEnix once threw an Final Fantasy XI event in my college town. Admission was free. Pizza and drinks served all day long was free. Entry to the Q&A panel was free. Mingling with the models they’d paid to dress up like Mithra was free. Entry into the tournament was free. Entry into the level 1 race through an endgame zone was free. Entry into the costume contest was free. They gave away all kinds prizes, up to and including a PC in a tower with a custom FFXI graphics design. And great fun was had by all.
Given that all of this cost SE a lot of money, and they recouped none at all from admission, how was that event “cost efficient”? I’ll tell you; because though “good will” isn’t listed on earnings reports, it can greatly contribute to profitability.
By my estimate, ArenaNet burned all of their good will some time ago and now they’re just milking whatever loyal customers they’ve got left while the milk’s still flowing. You can disagree with me if you want, but one look at the cash shop offerings over the last year contrasted to those added in-game will tell you quite clearly that I’m right.
I’m not sure how large that FF events is. I would think a local community events wont’ even cost that much.
Anet also spent lots of money on events, their so called esports, advertisement, and video game conference.
Quite honestly I almost never spent any money on the cash shop. The most money I spent is probably buying 5 accounts and buy 5 expansion. I don’t felt like Anet is milking me. I played enough Nexon game to know what milking players mean.
But obviously, if you have no self control to buy cash shop item, you are probably better of playing subscription game and pay money every month.
Yeah, sure, that’s called spin doctoring to explain poor numbers and not look bad for poor reinvestments back into their current games…
Sure, lets blame marketing when gamers don’t care about marketing, they care about a good game. WIIFM my friend… Look it up in sales strategy… That’s what players/customers/consumers/end users care about the most…
Those explainations are for money people not game people… But you don’t get that concept…
Cost efficiency and patch notes are all we need to see to know… Sorry.
But why do you use cost efficiency to explain the development flaws if it is clearly a money people explaination, as you have stated?
NCSoft stopped investing into GW2 development long ago, all they do, is take Anets earnings and use a part of those profits for marketing their product.
Where is the correlation between marketing budgets and game development flaws?
Anet is wholly owned by ncsoft…
So maybe it’s time to reinvest and make them better bread winners…
NCSoft does reinvest in GW2. Continually, to the tune of millions of dollars per year.
Also Anet increased their employee numbers over the year. That is how they reinvest in the game.
So I’m not sure how else people want NCSoft to reinvest in GW2. Other than some of their employees complaining about salary or the office getting crowded.
Wanze, these are the game boards so I’m using this medium constructively… Your arguments are null and void. Thanks. I’m not going to negotiate ncsoft’s role anymore or use of these forums unnecessarily. There are bigger messages to discuss.
You yet have to lay out how their statement, which you based your OP on, is related to development of the game and not marketing costs.
Cost effective marketing has nothing to do with the flaws you see in this game.
The conference call didn’t say that they were looking to do something like reinvest into their games to increase long term revenue and earnings now did they? Right?
Instead they are building a new mobile studio, has 60 employees out of the planned 100 and leveraging (gambling with) a new ip instead of propping up their current bread winners…
Gw2 is an amazing game in ways and just added 2 million new users since play for free and has a 3.1 million monthly concurrency rate now… So maybe time to reinvest and boost momentum and staying power and growing power for gw2 into 2016…
It’s simple to separate “cost efficiency” and “reinvest”… It’s pretty self explanatory… The rest is just PR money talk mumbo jumbo for people who look at their accounting statements wondering what happened… It’s different for the boots on the ground…
Anet have rumored 250+ employees. How many mmorpg have that many rumored employee?
NCSoft are always reinvesting in their game. How do you think they pay all the expense?
Hypothetically assume a game from NCSoft made 10 million$ a year, and 5 million$ expense. Those 5 million dollar is used to “reinvest” already.
That’s where the expense come from. Stop being so delusional. You sound like all those youtube comment about GW2 profit being used to pay for Aion or Lineage expansion, when those games were making even more money.
For example: Linen is around ~5 silver per piece, but ideally Anet “players” want it to be 50 copper per piece.
The game have been out for 3 years already. Everyone should made enough money to craft a set of ascended gear.
Ascended gear is really cheap for new players too. 50 hours of grinding or a few more hours just playing the game and you should already made enough money to get a set.
An integral part of their business plan? Who told you this rubbish? Go and do your research.
It makes a once good game appear cheap and desperate.
I’m not sure if GW2 can even survive without the cashshop.
But even if it can, the profit is so small, Anet will either have to cutdown employee or it is quite likely NCSoft will close Anet, or Anet will have to spam us with 20$ small size DLC.
If GW1 can survive so can GW2. They should just push up the price of the original one-time-purchase game.
That is true. But GW2 won’t be a high budget game.
And GW2 won’t have “rumored 300 employee” without the cash shop.
Not saying you can’t make great mmorpg with low budget. GW1 obviously did it, and some of my favorite mmorpg are low budget niche game.
Wanze, these are the game boards so I’m using this medium constructively… Your arguments are null and void. Thanks. I’m not going to negotiate ncsoft’s role anymore or use of these forums unnecessarily. There are bigger messages to discuss.
You probably over read too much.
NCSoft probably mean they are trying to be more cost effective on “running their company”. And they expect 4th quarter revenue for GW2 to improve. (and obviously because GW2 released an expansion in the 4th quarter)
I’m not Korean so I’m not sure what’s going on with NCSoft or Nexon. But I think the reason NCSoft said that is because previously Nexon called out on NCSoft as their profit margin is really small. So even NCSoft have decent sales, their profit is small. There are also probably some accusing on NCSoft CEO taking too much money etc.
I dont’ live in Korea, so I don’t follow Korea news much. But all this company take over or attempted take over is quite intriguing.
The thing intrigue me is how much Anet actually spend on this game.
I don’t think that’s something anyone would know.
But I would guess NCSoft would reinvest half of the sales back into the game. So if anyone tell me Anet is really a cash cow, and NCSoft won’t reinvest back into the game, it is pretty dumb.
There are also comments about NCSoft ripping Anet off by taking the profits and use those money for games like Aion or Lineage. Which is quite a laughable comments. First of all asian workers are cheaper. Second of all those games actually sale really well in asia.
A better reality is Anet is funded by profits by Aion or Lineage, because it is really hard to find US investor that are willing to take a chance in mmorpg.
I’m sorry but the entire Win10 thing makes no sense. It’s the most successful and backwards-compatible version of Windows in history.
My story is when ever I have graphic card incompatible problem(and I have a few time over my mmo career) , and I asked in the forum. People always bash me.
People always say nothing is wrong, because 95% of the people don’t have problem. Even though there are 5% other people complaining.
And fast forward a couple month, after a new game patch, everything is fixed. So a lot of time there are indeed some compatibility problem.
I’m not saying you are wrong. Maybe their college IT department is incompetent. But you can never be so sure on things you don’t know.
Blizzard and CCP pretty much give up on making new title.
So only Koreans are pumping out mmorpg like no tomorrow. Some of those koreans mmorpg are indeed quite fun, just really grindy and have a cash grab cash shop.
An integral part of their business plan? Who told you this rubbish? Go and do your research.
It makes a once good game appear cheap and desperate.
I’m not sure if GW2 can even survive without the cashshop.
But even if it can, the profit is so small, Anet will either have to cutdown employee or it is quite likely NCSoft will close Anet, or Anet will have to spam us with 20$ small size DLC.
If company makes money they are more willing to reinvest in the game.
I personally don’t know how much money Anet is reinvesting in the games. Only thing people know is Anet sales. You can have an overall idea on the NCSoft expense though.
The thing about GW2 is there are people who play way too much video game. And those people need to receive rewards for their play time.
Now all the casual player complain that those players get something they can’t get.
And the thing is GW2 reward is already pitiful. What is there to motivate those hardcore players if there aren’t rewards. Since if Anet rewards them with anything, casual players complain.
Extremely well said. I wonder how some of these people would fair in game that had a raid where you had 40 people competing over just 3 pieces of loot drops per boss and each player had to be geared out to make it to the next raid, and raiding was 4 hours a night 4 days a week.
Then of course there were the consumables for raids which meant flying around looking for a specific plant that grew in the game world in only 3 or 4 spots and you needed between 80 and 160 of them per raid and you had to compete with other players for those plants which would only spawn maybe every 3 or 4 hours. Than once you had the plant you had to do a 2 hour mini raid dungeon to go make the consumables for the raid because the only place to make the consumable was at a special lab table in the dungeon. Then to get to the raid dungeon you had to have your raid group split into 4 different groups and fight there way through another mini raid dungeon to get to the main raid dungeons instance wall. And that’s just a couple of examples out of dozens that could be given.
So yeah, no one complaining of a grind in GW2 has a clue what a grind really is.
I don’t consider that grinding. A typical raid in other mmorpg take about 3 month to move on to the next raid instance. It sounds like a lot, but actually you probably only complete the raid like 12 times.
Consider that to the farm in GW2 it is nothing. I don’t even know how many times I complete cof path 1. Probably a few thousands times.
The thing is there are always those people who play too much video games. In GW2, Anet rewards those players with some terrible rewards so casual players won’t complain. But those casual players keep complaining.
Did you even read the post I made that you quoted? To even go into the raid just one time requires a grind. GW2 has nothing like it.
And you are wrong, you would do the raid more than 12 times. You had to. You had to fully gear 40 people when each boss dropped 3 items that had to be split between those 40 people. You had to do it to move to the next raid because there was the gear grind of constantly needing to improve your gear to be sustainable for the next raid.
No players actually like raid is going to tell you they are grinding. Just like no players that actually like pvp will tell you they are grinding.
But I can tell you everyone doing SW farm, mining farm, COF farm, wintersday jumping puzzle farm felt they are grinding.
I understand your point because you don’t actually like raiding. That’s why you felt that way. Not everyone grind mmorpg to look pretty in town.
Also you have to understand doing a raid 12 times is 3 month. I’m not sure what mmorpg you are playing but most mmorpg come out with expansion every year. If raid really take that many month to finish, no one will finish it. Even if you reapeat a raid for 6 month, it is only 24 times.
Extremely well said. I wonder how some of these people would fair in game that had a raid where you had 40 people competing over just 3 pieces of loot drops per boss and each player had to be geared out to make it to the next raid, and raiding was 4 hours a night 4 days a week.
Then of course there were the consumables for raids which meant flying around looking for a specific plant that grew in the game world in only 3 or 4 spots and you needed between 80 and 160 of them per raid and you had to compete with other players for those plants which would only spawn maybe every 3 or 4 hours. Than once you had the plant you had to do a 2 hour mini raid dungeon to go make the consumables for the raid because the only place to make the consumable was at a special lab table in the dungeon. Then to get to the raid dungeon you had to have your raid group split into 4 different groups and fight there way through another mini raid dungeon to get to the main raid dungeons instance wall. And that’s just a couple of examples out of dozens that could be given.
So yeah, no one complaining of a grind in GW2 has a clue what a grind really is.
I don’t consider that grinding. A typical raid in other mmorpg take about 3 month to move on to the next raid instance. It sounds like a lot, but actually you probably only complete the raid like 12 times.
Consider that to the farm in GW2 it is nothing. I don’t even know how many times I complete cof path 1. Probably a few thousands times.
The thing is there are always those people who play too much video games. In GW2, Anet rewards those players with some terrible rewards so casual players won’t complain. But those casual players keep complaining.
