Guild Wars 2

Wolfheart.1938:

I wouldn’t consider spending a cent on those even if I was a 110% Arenanet supporter. It’s a ripoff.

Absolutely. I’m probably one of those 110% supporters, but I’m not stupid. I won’t buy these packs.

But let me qualify my posts a bit.

It’s not that I don’t want an alternative. It’s just that I’m extremely skeptical. It’s not like this hasn’t been tried before 100 times. It fails every. single. time. Maybe SteamOS could be the next big thing in gaming but again … I’m extremely skeptical. It’d probably good even, but I just don’t see it happen.
The Linux fans are having a field day, because once again someone is making a Windows-killer distro. That’s like arguing about WoW killers. It’s pointless. But hey … maybe this is the one. Maybe this time, history isn’t going to repeat. Prove me wrong, I’d be happy to.

I go for option 3:
never, ever introduce another tier.

Eurhetemec.9052:

marnick.4305:

I’d be very, very surprised if SteamOS ever reached 1% marketshare amongst gamers. By that I mean, SteamOS as their main OS, not a dual boot trial and remove. It’s just another Linux distro to try and never use. Add it to the list…

This is really hilarious. The idea you have that because Linux is open-source, it doesn’t have standards? I mean man what? You are literally completely ignorant about Linux.

You do realize, right, that pretty much 75%+ of the servers in the world, including those used by most major stock exchanges, use Linux, right? And you seriously think Linux has no “standards” and thus “cannot be developed for in a serious way”.

Wow. That is really… a thing. I dunno what to tell you, but you are wrong. Hilariously wrong.

EDIT – Wow, if that is true about Source 2, and they manage a good PS4 port… that could have some serious consequences for multi-platform gaming in general, not just SteamOS.

Did you realize I said that Linux should do what Linux is best at …. servers, certain embedded systems, extremely optimized code? I never said Linux was universally bad. But neither is it universally good. So don’t try to strawman me like that. I’ve been working with most major operating systems. Real work, not hobbying at home with the pc my parents gave me. I know when to use Linux but I also know when to use Windows.

You simply have no idea what you’re talking about. Have you even used Linux for one day in your life? Have you tried to run GW1 or GW2 on it? Tried to make something simple as a Razer Naga work? It would help if you had any experience about what you’re talking about. Sorry mate, not impressed. I was like you 10 years ago, posting away on my Windows 98 SE about the power of Linux. Ye … good times. But I moved on.
One day you’ll learn that strengths come with weaknesses, which is nothing to be ashamed off. Linux being an awesome OS for certain things means it’s bad for gaming. It’s like racing with a tractor against a Ferrari … on a freshly plowed corn field. Ferrari will lose. Strengths … weaknesses. Nothing is universally good. That’s the way it is.

Is there any word out yet about the permanence of TA p4?

anzenketh.3759:

1.) They will get abused. Believe it or not I am not talking about people who the filters would be designed for I am talking about the noobs. The players that want to be carried.

2. )The development cost involved for such a small subset of players is too high in my opinion.

3.) It encourages the elitist only mentality (not saying that you are one).

Filter abuse by either noobs or elitists is a bad thing but to be expected. You’re correct on all three points.

The tool is designed to get you in and out as fast as possible. It was just released people are likely using it like crazy. A TON of players don’t want to create parties for fear that they will be ridiculed for not knowing the path. So instead the LFG is empty most of the time. In time I think it will become more like how GW1 LFG system was. I fear not how it was before the Guild Wars 2 was released. Only speed runs and me sitting there for a hour wanting to complete my first successful run.

And it works. Yesterday I farmed 10g in dungeon rewards and some 20 ecto through the LFG tool in less than 2 hours. Sure, a few wipes here and there, but who cares, really. Dungeons are good fun and can now be done faster and easier than ever before.

If people really want to discriminate … gw2lfg.com isn’t going anywhere. I believe it’ll remain a niche website for speedrunners, elitists and fotm40++ types. Y’know, the kind of people I don’t want to play with.

Part of the reason why I am so jaded about elitist only is due to the fact in Guild Wars 1 I wanted to complete some of the dungeons. I never finished Underworld. I never finished most of the other dungeons either. It was expected of me to know the paths. To know the runs but I did not as I joined rather late. Never really got a chance until I joined the guild I am currently in. I tried creating a group. Waited for a hour. Nothing. Tried to join some speed runs just to finish the dungeon. I was honest and up front said I had no clue what i was doing. I was told to go away create my own group(this was after sitting around for a hour waiting for a group I just created).

That is the problem I have with most elitists. Is that they are so burned out from random pugs not willing to learn and listen. That they are not willing to take a chance on those that are.

And yet those same elitists in GW1 managed to make one of the most kittenly systems ever designed by gamers… stones. Apparently, stones showed your experience, with everyone being oblivious to the fact that stones could be traded!

Sometimes I wonder what the intelligence level of those people is … whether the lack of learning ability is truly a problem with the pugger or mere projection by the elitist himself. A little bit of both probably.

IRL I help people with problems I’ve never heard off. This forces me to learn extremely fast, often within less than 5 minutes. Usually I don’t have a second chance. And yet I’m not an elitist in game, I allow everyone to fail once or twice or ten times if necessary. I could hold everyone to my personal standards, but that’s just not fun.

I wouldn’t call either LFG or Tequatl lackluster. The next update will probably come with the kick off for WvW season 1 which shouldn’t be called lackluster either.

1/ Will TA be overhauled like AC, especially FW/UP.
2/ Will the new path be temporary or be a permanent addition?
3/ How will 2/ impact dungeon master?
4/ Will there be new rewards for current dungeon tokens?
5/ Any new lore concerning Nightmare Court?

Add more

LordHogFred.3691:

I expect there will be more. They’ve done incremental updates of the release page before.

My thoughts too

Important questions:

1/ will the rest of TA be updated, namely fw/up?
2/ is this new path permanent?

Eurhetemec.9052:

marnick.4305:

Why? Linux is the most horrible gaming OS, and everyone who plays videogames seriously owns or should own a Windows machine. Those with Linux gaming boxes are merely trying to square the circle. I don’t think it is in A.nets best interest to support an obscure Linux distro.

Valve being part of the joke doesn’t make it less of a joke.

That’s not a very rational or realistic attitude. Linux is in no way a “horrible gaming OS”, it’s just one which companies don’t offer strong support for. There is nothing inherent about it that makes it bad for gaming. Indeed, inherently, it’s got more potential than Windows.

Windows has a huge backer forcing standards. That backer is the largest software company in the world. This means that companies like AMD and nVidia can actually build videocards supported by every serious gaming machine in the world. Furthermore, DirectX allows for relatively easy programming in a stable environment.

Compare to Linux, which is at the whim of the community. That’s a real problem, for example openGL can never, ever, gain the support of directX, simply because it’s impossible to control the community and yet that’s a requirement demanded by companies like nVidia, AMD, Intel and … Arena.net. You simply don’t know what OpenGL is going to look like in 5 years, and that’s a huge problem.

Commercial firms will never seriously back community projects like Linux. It’ll always be a joke, and this time Valve is in on it.

SteamOS will live and die on whether people actually adopt it, and whether Valve can convince developers that it’s worth making a SteamOS version. Essentially, if you’re going to make a Mac version of a game, it’s probably little hassle to make a SteamOS version, as OpenGL vs DirectX is the big deal here. Given we’re seeing games being developed for PC, PS4 and Xbone, it’s obviously a small leap from there to SteamOS, because they’re already supporting one non-DirectX device.

Quote the contrary. It’s a huge leap from stable, multi-national backed hardware and software, to a collection of individual community managed software. SteamOS can only work for as long as Valve manages to define, very strictly, what all the components have to look like, including but not limited to the Linux kernel and OpenGL itself. But doesn’t that defeat the entire idea of open-source itself? At the exact point where SteamOS becomes viable, it ceases being a Linux distro.

That said, it could be a giant failure – but it is not the forgone conclusion you are bizarrely insisting that it is.

Why do people insist on using Linux for games, instead of stuff where Linux is actually useful and superior to Windows.
It’s not bizarre to insist that Linux for games is going to do what Linux for games has always done: Fail. To assume SteamOS is going to fail as a serious gaming OS is the rational and safe choice. I wouldn’t mind if SteamOS succeeded in one way or another, but I wouldn’t bet on it either.

As for GW2, I don’t anticipate a SteamOS version unless SteamOS gets big – which will not likely be for at least two years, probably longer. If they got up to even a 30% marketshare among PC gamers, I think then it would become a serious consideration. That’s a long way off, though. I’d expect to see console versions sooner than that.

I’d be very, very surprised if SteamOS ever reached 1% marketshare amongst gamers. By that I mean, SteamOS as their main OS, not a dual boot trial and remove. It’s just another Linux distro to try and never use. Add it to the list…

colesy.8490:

And why shouldn’t elitists have their rights respected?

They should be respected. I don’t join scrub groups (speedruns, zerk only and other such nonsense). I’d be very happy if scrubs let me play the way I want. I don’t discriminate except against people who discriminate.

Let us group with the vile scum who also want to actually play with non-terrible players, and then let casuals/bads group with each other and wipe and be bad with each other, that way everybody wins. Casuals get to “have fun” wiping, and “elitists” get to clear content efficiently.

Casuals aren’t necessarily bad. They do have more fun, at their own pace. I don’t get worked up over a wipe, who cares as long as we enjoy the run. So let the casuals have fun and enjoy their dungeons, while the scrubs can torture themselves in elitist groups, getting all worked up about one who doesn’t meet their silly standards.

I have no lust in the evenings to bother about being perfect. I’ve got a demanding job which requires almost all my energy and intelligence. In the evening I simply don’t care. Not one bit. And that’s the reason I don’t want to play with efficiency scrubs.

Vayne.8563:

haviz.1340:

Vayne.8563:

First of all, the same sorts of things you see on this forum, you see on other forums. Just look at Guild Wars 2 guru if you don’t believe me. There’s negativity on forums everywhere…in most MMOs, not just Guild Wars 2.

But people really were complaining about not having anything to do. The legendary wasn’t worth going for, because it was too much of a grind for the average person, and they’d hit level 80 run some dungeons and that was it.

Remember back then there were no guaranteed daily rares from world bosses, dungeons didn’t drop the same kind of loot, even, there were no Scarlet invasions. End game back then if you were a PvE’er were dungeon runs (fractals didn’t exist either) and running around Orr doing the event chains.

For a lot of people, they were farming, but for what? They already had the highest stats…and not everyone cares about skins (my sons for example).

Is it better now? You have to run like a mindless drone jumping from temple to temple, chop some saplings, use epic crafting station and then what exactly? There’s no content so why did anet in its infinite wisdom give us gear grind without a meaningful content? Is that some kind of ultimate “innovation” of stupidity in design?

The problem with stuff like this is to define meaningful content. People usually call dungeons or raids meaningful content. There’s a whole lot of people who consider dungeons and raids meaningless content, myself included. I don’t care for dungeons, I don’t care about dungeons. To me the content they’ve included is MORE meaningful than the content you want.

This is all about killing stuff on a screen and getting rewarded for it. At the end of the day, that’s all most MMOs are. So you like your killing in an instance, with all sorts of like tricks that make it “hard”., and I like my killing in the open world.

The difference is, I don’t go around posting about how your content is meaningless, while you claim my content is.

Frankly, doing both open world and dungeons is fun in it’s own right. I like a lot of the new open world content such as the invasions and scavenger hunts, but I also loved the dungeons (Molten Facility, Aetherblade Retreat). Especially since they have extremely hardcore but optional achievements.

Neither should have such a priority that the best loot only comes from one place. Fractals did that wrong, and currently Ascended is not part of dungeons. In other games, the best loot only drops from one raid. That’s not acceptable either. Open world should have the exact same stats for about the same level of difficulty.

1/ The karka pre-events have to be nerfed to solo content, and 45 minutes before a town becomes contested again. This makes it possible to spawn the boss and lure the zerg
2/ A list of Southsun achievements would be nice. Karka Slayer anyone? Karka Queen boss achievements.
3/ Some more events involving less demanding mobs.
4/ Treasure chests.
5/ Southsun fishing. If WoW did one thing right, it must have been fishing.
6/ Have the consortium set up shop with something big and useful: a material sink like the Zephyrite traders or an alternative to the Mystic forge. Think GW1 style crafters or collectors.
7/ The mists have shifted. The Asura Gate to Fractals of the Mists is now at the Karka Hive.

Southsun is the most beautiful area in the game. I want to go there, but there’s absolutely no reason.

Wethospu.6437:

marnick.4305:

fixing zerkers means doing the following:
- fix conditions
- remove defiant
- improve scaling of conditions
- make confusion and blind viable in pve
- make certain boons more useful. Let regen scale better with HP
- balance damage for bosses at something that’s deadly for zerkers yet can be tanked by other gear.

It’s not a magical bullet solution but rather solving a set of individual problems compounding the problem.

Defiant would make no difference because control is equally effective with berserker than any other stat combination. Same applies to stuff like Blind and boons (except Regeneration).

Depends. If you slot your utilities for … utility, instead of pure damage and take a set of weapons that’s more suited for support, it does make a difference.

Eg. Hammer for Warrior doesn’t have the most DPS but it does have control which greatsword doesn’t have. Would you give up 100b for a few control abilities?

Currently that’s a non-issue because defiant completely counters hammer abilities.

haviz.1340:

SamSerious.9624:

LFG tool is simply amazing. I’d prefer ANet not to add any more filter option. People who wants to filter casual players can go somewhere else to find their kind of players but for average players it is perfect.

To give an example, I could never find lvl1 fractal group. Without LFG tool I’d be waiting hours even days to find a group. With LFG, I was able to find a group in less than a minute during morning server time and not only that we did level 1 to 3 at stretch without any problem. People were so helpful and understanding. I was also able to find story mode dungeon group who did not curse for not skipping cutscene.

LFG tool is designed for such players and should be kept as it is. One of the reasons I quit GW2 was because of difficulty in finding casual players to do contents with. Now I can stick around because of LFG tool

How does pooling casuals with casuals contradict your utopian vision?

Because, on the internet, unless strictly moderated, such tools become as good as the worst part of the community. WoW went downhill due to gearscore and other elitist nonsense. Many casuals fled to this game because the community here is intended to be friendly. I hope the worst and the scrub of the internet is handled on the LFG tool. I’m talking about elitists, obviously, those who have no place in this game unless they respect the rights of the casuals.

segfault.1695:

@Inculpatus… lol thanks.

@knives… :P I have noticed those costs creeping up… though I die a lot less now than when I was learning to play.

@marnick… I think I may give dungeons a go soon… Is LA the best place to ask for things like this? Hopefully that new LFG tool will arriving soon and that will help loners like me with Dungeon content.

The LFG tool is in place and would be your best bet. I strongly recommend saying you’re a first timer as some bosses might need explanation. Most groups are social and welcoming so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem. A guild will help too.

The easiest paths are:
Citadel of Flame 1 and 2
Honor of the Waves, all three
Ascalon Catacombs, all three
Sorrow’s Embrace 1 and 3
Crucible of Eternity, all three

Don’t bother with Arah explorables until you’re well experienced. Twilight Arbor is a bit gear dependent so I would delay that until later. Caudecus’ Manor isn’t too difficult but rather confusing so that’s best done with a guild.

As for repairs… nowadays I can do dungeons, fractals and tons of other bosses without one hit of repair damage. Experience goes a long way

fixing zerkers means doing the following:
- fix conditions
- remove defiant
- improve scaling of conditions
- make confusion and blind viable in pve
- make certain boons more useful. Let regen scale better with HP
- balance damage for bosses at something that’s deadly for zerkers yet can be tanked by other gear.

It’s not a magical bullet solution but rather solving a set of individual problems compounding the problem.

I would suggest to do dungeons for full exotic (orange) armor. In about a week you should be mostly done. Get a set of weapons too.
Do your dailies/monthly and get an amulet and maybe a ring from laurels.

As soon as you’re mostly orange with some yellow, you’re viable for almost all content in the game. All in all, this shouldn’t cost you a copper if you plan a bit.

Evans.6347:

To be honest, my experiences with the tool over the last 2 days have been all but pleasant. I’ve been running AC for months now, saving up for my legendary, but the groups that were made by the LFG website were of such much better quality than what we get now.

And before you call me an elitist, I spent over 2 hours for path 1 and 2 with “experienced speed groups” in there yesterday, being mister nice guy, desperately trying to explain simple basic strategies and common problems.

In the end some just didn’t understand me, or didn’t bother to try. I’ve always been a fervent opposer of level or class discrimination in dungeons, but the arrogant, unwilling to adapt players that don’t even understand the most basic principles of their profession, which I’ve been bunched up with the last couple of days have made it really hard for me to stand by my principles.

If you promoted your group as “experienced speed clear” you have a right to report those people as griefers imho.

Aurust.8961:

Meh, you don’t really need a checkbox… I usually have atleast 2 friends in my party and we just party kick anyone that doesn’t link zerker gear ( rare exceptions of course) or has less than 4k achievement points.

Do you promote zerk only parties or do you just assume everyone is a munchkin like you?
In case of the former, you have the right to do that. In case of the latter, you’re a kitten. Just saying.

Why? Linux is the most horrible gaming OS, and everyone who plays videogames seriously owns or should own a Windows machine. Those with Linux gaming boxes are merely trying to square the circle. I don’t think it is in A.nets best interest to support an obscure Linux distro.

Valve being part of the joke doesn’t make it less of a joke.

CC Danicia.1394:

Greetings,

I clear out the forums@arena.net mail box each day (except weekends) and respond to all appeals & queries. Is that the email address you’re using?

I must call you out on that. On two occasions I appealed for an unjust infraction and I didn’t get any response. On one occasion I apparently broke the law, although the substance I mentioned is legal in my country AND Seattle. On another occasion I mentioned bisexuality in a lore thread about Sylvari sexuality which was promptly infracted. That’s just kittenly puppy. Appealed both, never got a response.

Copy-pasted the email from my infraction notice.

juno.1840:

@Reilem: you’re assuming prices won’t change when the crafting comes out — a very poor assumption based upon weapon crafting.

You had the brains to figure out which materials you’ll need but you lack the insight of preparing exactly what you need at rock bottom prices? Weird.

It’s also impossible to toss heads 10 times in a row. Right. Right???

No one has a problem with the Living Story implementing new content every two weeks. That’s pretty obvious. It’s taking away content that’s a problem.

No one complained about implementing laurels, guild missions, lfg tool, culling improvements, world experience, the wallet and all the other awesome stuff.
People complain about the removal of aetherblade retreat, molten facility, queen’s gauntlet, zephyr sanctum …

kbenton.4915:

The point is you shouldn’t have to keep up at all. We were told we could jump in and play significant roles in any part of the game. (Btw read again I don’t consider myself a casual, I just see my RL friends struggling in parts. And they are actually VERY experienced mmo players).

So am I. But I’m also rather casual. I don’t have full ascended and I’ll take my time for it.

Pink is the new orange, it’s been promised to be the final tier for as long as Colin Johanson has anything to say about it. It’s not particularly difficult to get, not even for a casual like you or me.

That said … the implementation was an a—hole move, done in the worst way possible. Mike O’Brien apologized but it obviously left scars. One doesn’t just whack someone in the face and apologize. It takes more than that.

ETA : before the end of 2013.

Maybe next patch? Maybe the one after that. No one really knows except the development team.

Vol.5241:

Stormcrow.7513:

+1 to everything there.
We were promised an update from the devs regarding a performance patch and so far I have seen 0 impact if it was included into the Teq patch.

Don’t make stuff up to promote your false opinion. We were never promised a specific update for performance. What we were promised was that they are constantly looking for ways to improve performance.

Correct and there has been many improvements in the last year, some more obvious than others. My company notebook barely runs GW2, I can feel the smallest optimization on that machine and there have been some. The team is working on it, maybe they should communicate on it but it’s obvious to everyone who pays attention.

Nuka Cola.8520:

There’s tons of games sitting on developer’s shelves right now because the average joe doesn’t want to invest into a gaming machine and is content with gaming on laptops and walmart web surfers. is fine. Of course you are going to get lag when your machine has to process

has nothing to do with weak hardware, i thought by now everyone knew that but i guess those who don’t own a gaming rig don’t… GW2 isn’t a game poorly optimized, gw2 is a game that doesn’t know the word ‘optimization’ at all. In one year there’s zero improvements.[/quote]

To those that actually pay attention to the game, how it runs, on minimal hardware, it’s pretty obvious that optimization has been done over the year. Your post isn’t so much a lie as it is pure and unadulterated ignorance.

I’m very happy with the LFG tool. I get groups almost instantly, which is also the reason why it looks so empty a lot of the time. It just works so well.

Yesterday did 5 dungeons in the span of 2 hours. No waiting around. Loved it.

timmyf.1490:

marnick.4305:

Improbable things do happen.

With 0.9 ectos per rare, to not get one in 7 salvages is a chance of 47%. That’s hardly “statistically impossible”. In fact … it’s statistically inevitable to happen to every single person in the game sooner rather later later.

Do the math before claiming things.

I think you did the math incorrectly. You did .9^7, but that’s not quite right. If it was just a 90% chance to get 1 ecto or a 10% chance to get 0 ectos, you’d be correct. Instead, it seems like it’s something more like 3 “rolls” per salvage with a rate of ??% chance for an ecto.

In that case, the chance of getting 0 ecto on 7 salvages is actually .??^21.

Or maybe I’m way overthinking it/completely wrong. But 47% seems far too high of a rate for 0 ecto on 7 salvages.

I did the math incorrectly, I know. But I did it in a way that favors your argument, not mine. Because one can get between 0 and 3 ectos, the chance to get no ecto at all is actually larger than 0.9%. As such, getting no ecto at all over 7 salvages is a very realistic 50+%.

When I do the math wrong, I always try to swing to the side I disagree with, for sake of arguments. But the argument is even stronger from my side. 7 salvages in a row without ectos is extremely likely to happen to every player sooner rather than later.

Evans.6347:

However, make no mistake, the business language of the EU is most certainly English. It’s not German, it’s not French, it’s not Spanish.

Make no mistake. This only counts for specific sectors. In other sectors it’s German all the way, especially in heavy machinery and green energy. Good luck finding in depth documentation for certain international standards in any language bar German. I’ve been there.

And trying to sell anything in France by an English-only sales manager is a recipe for disaster. If you want to become big in France, you’ll need a native French salesman.

KotCR.6024:

marnick.4305:

It means the people with 10-12 hours a day to play will not get certain things faster than me, a person who has to work 10-12 hours a day. Since people with a job are more likely to spend money in the gem store, it makes sense to cater to people with a job.

Really? I find the opposite. This game punishes people with a job. Especially those that do shift work.

I have to start 5am in the morning on the days I work, and I usally get home by about 9pm. That leaves me 8 hours to do household chores, prepare for my next day at work, and sleep. I don’t really have time to log-in to GW2 to get daily crap done.

Now the advantage of shift work, is that while I have to work long days, I do get more days off a week than your 9 to 5 worker. So in other games it wouldn’t be a problem; Can’t play the days I work? No problem, I get more days off so I have the hours to catch up with the people who can play every day on those days off.

However, this isn’t the case in GW2. If I don’t find time to log-in every day, I fall behind everyone else, there’s no chance to catch up on those days off. So I have to choose between keeping up with everyone else, or going into work like an orrian zombie. So the game actually punishes you for working or having a job; It doesn’t cater to it.

The time-gating need to be far more lenient or there needs to be a proper catch-up option before anybody can really say the game is good for the casual player or those whom have a job.

Ye that’s another problem entirely. My brother had to work abroad for 3 months and missed the entirety of flame and frost. That’s just brutal.

On the other hand, that kind of time intensive jobs also has ample financial rewards, so at least gear-wise you can catch up over gems. While not perfect, it’s better than any other MMO.

Celestial because I don’t want to play with the build I’m not playing with.

Justdeifyme.9387:

Yeah I love how I still get quoted even after I pointed out that I meant the Population of the Guild Wars 2 EU Servers, not Europe as a continent. I didn’t write that clearly enough, my bad, so you could do me a favour and stop quoting my mistake.

And yet that population doesn’t allow for discriminating in the LFG tool when accommodations have been made for other languages elsewhere. Even if 80% of the population spoke bork bork and only 20% French, the mere fact that Spanish is a recognized language in game would mean that German people have a right to use the LFG tool in their language.

An inclusive fix has to be made, not an exclusive one.

There’s a reason for this. You find wood wherever you go, but for ore you have to skim the edge of the map. Therefor, wood tends to be far more plentiful on average.

This tends to happen in almost every MMO. To balance this out, rich nodes can be hunted.

LHound.8964:

marnick.4305:

Isn’t refusing to learn a few other languages being a little too selfish? Especially since a lot of French/Spanish/German people speak exactly one language they consider to be a world language just as much as you consider English to be one. In fact, more people speak Spanish or English at home than English. That’s the primary reason why French/Spanish/German servers exist but no Dutch, Polish or Hungarian.

Marnick,

My native language is ~ twice as much spoken than german or french (Portuguese). That don’t mean i should be selfish and close myself in my native language. If i want to interact with the rest of the world, i should take a form to communicate the best i can and to the best understanding. Same principle applies!

If everyone did that, maybe there would be world peace. But as it currently stands, a lot of people don’t speak the same language. Arena.net gave people German/French/Spanish only servers. One can’t expect these people to use English in the LFG tool, mostly because these people don’t understand one word of English.

Currently, we have in EU – 14 English Spoken servers, 7 German, 5 French and 1 Spanish. We have more players speaking English (although many aren’t English native) than any other language. And we are not counting the 24 English spoken servers in NA side. So, based on this, we could well assume that English is the main language if a “CROSS-SERVER” tool is released!

I don’t think it’s as easy to assume as you might think. Do you really think that people who went to a French server because they don’t speak English at all, will volunteer to not use the tool? Come on, what do you expect?

Vayne.8563:

marnick.4305:

Vayne.8563:

I’m contesting your premise that they’re better off focusing on a niche market instead of trying to appeal to everyone…in other words, you’re entire premise.

Okay, let’s for argument sake say Anet changes and focuses on a niche. What if another game comes along that suits that niche as well or better. They’re completely screwed. The idea of player retention is to retain players…as many as possible. Not five guys who might still be playing in five years.

No big business and MMOs have become big business, can function that way. It’s not realistic.

And yet, having a niche game kept GW1 afloat for 7 years. Having a successful niche game can be successful if you’re good at your niche. No one except WoW managed to be successful without having a niche to settle in.

It was a different time, with different overheads, different investment. Sure, if they want to sack half their staff, cut back on updates, and just sort of coast, they can become niche. But there’s a staff of 300, not 50…and an MMO isn’t the same as a lobby game anyway.

You know that false dichotomy doesn’t fly. The MMO landscape has changed indeed, development has become cheaper overall, server costs have gone down. If GW2 is to succeed long term, they’ll need a loyal fanbase supportive of their niche and willing to spend the money for good content. That’s the beauty of niche games, they’re sustainable for extremely long times regardless of games like WoW.

Honestly how many multiplayer fantasy games existed when Guild Wars 1 came out? How many were free?

Can I counter that with another question?

Without counting failed p2p games, how many AAA fantasy MMOs are currently free?

This is a whole different time. There are free to play MMOs pretty much everywhere. There’s the still dominant WoW sitting there.

Every successful MMO, whether free or not, fits into a niche or fails. Being a mere WoW clone doesn’t cut it in this industry.

Do you really think a niche game today can survive the same way a niche game did 8 years ago?

Absolutely. In fact, there’s no other way.

GuzziHero.2467:

Some figures.

AMD 955 Black Edition processor, GTX670 GPU, 12Gb RAM, 11fps on medium settings at any world boss.

shrug

Shouldn’t expect first class performance with second class hardware. The game is CPU-bound and you simply have a bad CPU. You have good memory and videocard, but an AMD CPU is always going to be the bottleneck.

Tom Gore.4035:

marnick.4305:

DarksunG.9537:

omg, can we STOP with the Sylvari? getting SO SICK of Anet’s Sylvari swooning.. on top of them getting all hot & bothered over all things Sylvari (the 2nd least popular race) We have to deal with Scarlet, the most annoying character ever, AGAIN?

I respectfully disagree with your rant. I like Scarlet as a villain and I like Sylvari as a race.

You’re proven to be in the minority about the latter, and I presume about the former sentiment of yours, too.

So are you in the latter case. AFAIK not a single race has an absolute majority.

Tom Gore.4035:

marnick.4305:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Justdeifyme.9387:

most of the EU population is german.

Do you have any evidence to support this?

Only personal experiences.

1/ Germany speaks German (duh)
2/ Austria has German as the sole official language
3/ In Switzerland and Belgium, German is a minority language
4/ In the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary and Denmark, German is the most important second language. In Belgium it’s the most important second language after French.
5/ Everyone who works in automation, steel industry, green energy, … on a technical or higher level has to know German to one degree or another since it is the primary language in those industries.

Which means that German is the most important language in Europe, whether you want it or not. But hey, I’m a polyglot Belgian. I just try to accommodate. No one in the world knows my mother tongue, no one even bothers. Most in the world don’t even know Dutch is the majority language here. and just speak french for some reason.

Your example fails because the great majority of the German speaking people in those countries also know quite a bit of English aswell.

If there was one language you’d learn to be able to communicate with people all over Europe, which one would you choose?

I’ll give a hint. It’s not German.

Protip: it’s not English either. For Europe, French would be the most likely candidate after German. Worldwide, try Spanish, Russian or Chinese if you really want a vast group to talk to with just one language.

The vast majority in Germany doesn’t speak a word of English. Same goes for France, Spain and Italy. If you don’t know the local world language, you’re simply out of luck.

English merely has a few very visible niches, such as the worlds largest economy and being a de facto norm in IT. But in absolute numbers and outside those specific niches, other languages will help you more.

Tom Gore.4035:

marnick.4305:

or about 100 in a day.

Sounds a bit hardcore to me.

No wait, it actually sounds like a total no-life in order to grind VP.

Healthy, much?

1/ Legendaries are not VP, they’re skins first and foremost. Skins are supposed to take time and grind.

2/ I’m as casual as it gets, and still I can make 10~20 ectos in an evening. The 100 ectos was merely extrapolating. It’s possible but I don’t think getting your legendary would be fun in that case. Personally I’d rather take my time.

To take your time for a top skin would be the healthy thing indeed. As for an almost guarantueed 8 ecto, do COF12. In less than 40 minutes you should have 2g and 120 tokens. Convert that into 4 rares and salvage them for 1~3 ecto. Buy 6 more ecto for the 2g.

Durian.5419:

marnick.4305:

.But hey, I’m a polyglot Belgian. I just try to accommodate. No one in the world knows my mother tongue, no one even bothers.

Vlaams?

(I don’t speak it.)

Vlaams isn’t a language, but rather a dialect of Dutch, much like Austrian isn’t a language but a dialect of German. Afrikaans is a separate language, but Vlaams isn’t.

As described here, you can get all 3 starter items on one character.

Tom Gore.4035:

marnick.4305:

Stormcrow.7513:

Dungeons, once per day
Meta Events, once per day when the timer and overflows allow you
Crafting Ascended, once per day
Daily is daily :P

This WHOLE game is time gated.
Was it the intent of the designers to make the game “play it your way, but only when we tell you”?

GW1 had little to no time gated content and this made people happy.
People now are sitting in LA, waiting for the next Meta(after doing their daily runs).

Am I the only one that feels this way?

It means the people with 10-12 hours a day to play will not get certain things faster than me, a person who has to work 10-12 hours a day. Since people with a job are more likely to spend money in the gem store, it makes sense to cater to people with a job.

But you most certainly have the advantage of doing more daily stuff a day than me. I can do 3 dragons and the daily xor a few dungeons xor one fractal. You can do all of those and then some.

As “unfair” and brutal as this sounds, it’s probably what they’re thinking too.

People who play 8 hours a day (which is unhealthy by the way, get some fresh air) are not going to spend a dime in the gem store (because they can just farm gold and convert it into gems), while people who have only a couple hours a day to play (like myself) usually have a bit of disposable income to spend in the gem store.

If you put yourself into the developer’s shoes, whose intent is to make money with the game, which demographic would you develop your game for?

The truth, while often brutal, is never unfair.

LHound.8964:

Isn’t writing French/German/Spanish in a multi-cross server tool being a little to selfish? Specially because the majority of these players speak/type very well english.

Isn’t refusing to learn a few other languages being a little too selfish? Especially since a lot of French/Spanish/German people speak exactly one language they consider to be a world language just as much as you consider English to be one. In fact, more people speak Spanish or English at home than English. That’s the primary reason why French/Spanish/German servers exist but no Dutch, Polish or Hungarian.

Advocate of the devil here. The tool should have a language filter, but at no point should you consider English to be the main language on a multi-language game.

/cheers

/cheers to you too.

Nuka Cola.8520:

marnick.4305:

Nuka Cola.8520:

Perfectly said. Its 2013 and they have no plans to upgrade to DX11 rofl. Milking gem store is more important than offering a smooth and fun experience for your fanbase. I wish the current team working on FF14 came for gw2, they’re doing absolutely everything possible to please their players and are already building a DX11 patch while anet doesn’t even dream about it.

What would DX11 bring to GW2? Graphics don’t make a game, gameplay does. And GW2 has the best gameplay of any MMO by a long shot.

optimization is what it brings, removes ugly ps2 quality textures almost everything in gw2 has, adds tesalletion that removes the blockyness of this game as if gw2 came out in 2003 or something. go google DX11… there’s plenty of VERY useful things it has and not a single game would be better without it.

At the cost of 20% of the framerate, ruining the game for the average player, especially those who play on laptops. That’s not acceptable.

I have no problem with the texture. Not to mention the ps2 is the most successful console ever running against 3 vastly superior consoles. Maybe the textures were not what people were interested in. PS2 had the best games for the time. GW2 has the best gameplay regardless of textures.

I’ve been playing videogames for over 2 decades. Graphics do not make a good game. I’ve seen that time and time again. If too much money is dumped into graphics, the game as a whole suffers. GW2 is a beautiful game. Anyone who thinks differently has to get his eyes checked.
Could it be even more beautiful. Most certainly. Would that be worth the cost? Probably not.

On one hand I like these kinds of fetch mission, which are a nice departure from the regular stuff. But I liked the F&F implementation better. Three randomized spawns which had to be brought back to an NPC.

The Bazaar hunt was also a superior way of doing it. Took me a while but eventually go it.

Vayne.8563:

I’m contesting your premise that they’re better off focusing on a niche market instead of trying to appeal to everyone…in other words, you’re entire premise.

Okay, let’s for argument sake say Anet changes and focuses on a niche. What if another game comes along that suits that niche as well or better. They’re completely screwed. The idea of player retention is to retain players…as many as possible. Not five guys who might still be playing in five years.

No big business and MMOs have become big business, can function that way. It’s not realistic.

And yet, having a niche game kept GW1 afloat for 7 years. Having a successful niche game can be successful if you’re good at your niche. No one except WoW managed to be successful without having a niche to settle in.

haviz.1340:

marnick.4305:

4/ In the Netherlands, Poland, Bulgary and Denmark, German is the most important second language. In Belgium it’s the most important second language after French.

I’m pretty sure English is the most important second language in Poland and that it’s Bulgaria, not Bulgary.

Rest are pretty much spot on.

Switched Bulgaria for Hungary.
I’ve been in Hungary several times. Good luck using English in that country. A little bit of German goes a long way though.

I’m just playing advocate of the devil. I’d prefer one good language too, but that’s not what happens in the real world. I know how to communicate in 5 languages because everyone thinks his language is the most important in the world.