And its over, rather quickly I thought. I didn’t get much confidence from it. They are still sticking to design decisions that most of the WvW community thinks are mistakes and apart from the answers to the ascended backpiece question and the bloodlust buff being reduced most of the answers were rather wishy washy.
- Since launch ArenaNet has made it so that no one content type is more rewarding than another.
Yeah they have, TP flipping, it remains easily the easiest way of making money in this game. Personally I find it ridiculous because as you say they have made all other areas of the game relatively socialist. So why should it be different?
There was no gap between exotic and legendary in the first place. Legendary weapons were purely vanity items with exotic stats. Prior to ascended items being introduced to the game I was completely satisfied with this game, I had a full set of exotics for each character and for each of their builds, I was free to WvW without needing to grind moe gear and if I wanted something that looked cool, I would put the effort into getting it for vanity purposes. I bought this game because it was marketed as anti-power creep, with Legendaries being the only real grind We now have power creep and it’s hiding behind a massive grind that forces you into a single character with a single build. It is not me that is having trouble understanding, I understand, I don’t like it and I am voicing my opinion to arenanet that I don’t like it. This was the right game for me as it was advertised, I would like it to stay that way but the future is looking bleak.
This is so true my best time in the game was early this year before world XP was introduced in WvW. I had karma to outfit my l80s, I was easily able to experiment builds and easily gear up for new builds and just play and experiment to my hearts content. I had to make sure I did dailies and monthlies for laurels but whilst they were something of a job it wasn’t that bad. I was able to use some mats to make some vanity weapons like abyssal scepter and the anomaly.
Now I have to do dailies and monthlies, I have to do my daily ascended crafting, I have to make sure I mine my quartz and convert it to charged quartz. I’m restricted in the builds I can experiment with cause BiS is so hard to get. And I have to make sure I get some orr mat farming in for high level crafting.
I’m restricted in terms of what characters I can use in WvW because to maximise the rather large benefits from WXP being character bound I can only use 2 to 3 characters (out of the 8 level 80s I now have).
Everything is a job or we’re restricted from playing how we want.
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One key to understanding our philosophy to building worlds is that we don’t give more attention to feedback simply because it is the noisiest, most aggressive, or delivered in the most inflammatory way. We take on board all constructive feedback and actively discuss it, and then make a decision to backlog the item or move forward with it (the development of which can sometimes take longer than some give it credit for). Therefore do not expect feedback to be implemented just because it is something you feel very strongly about. We just don’t develop like that. We instead work with our community to help us navigate these uncharted waters, taking on board all advice and measuring them against the pillars of the Guild Wars 2 and the direction we ultimately want to move in as a whole.
Some of this stuff is repeat again, but important to note is that they haven’t put more time into feedback as being part of their philosophy, because of how unrefined most of it actually is. Again a lot of it is raw emotion with a lot of negativity, which most people would prefer not to filter through, because people don’t like negativity (even companies are made up of people).
Most importantly of note here, is that ANet measures feedback against the pillars of Guild Wars 2 and the direction they want to move. This is crucial. This means that regardless of player feedback, ultimately ANet is in control and driving this game. This is possibly one of the most important things to keep in mind when understanding how/why the game is going in the direction that it is.
But what are the pillars NOW? Because they have definitely changed over the life of the game and one of the big issues is that anet haven’t communicated enough about why and what they are doing.
It’s worth noting that almost everyone that started playing this game was supporting everything they were doing at the beginning. That’s why people bought the game to begin with.
We all had expectations that weren’t fufilled over the course of a year. People didn’t start getting angry overnight. It was because of the actions the devs took that caused it. Over a year of short comings and other nonsense is what sparked all of this.
Spot on I was an ardent defender up to last November but that started everything changing.
Building a game together you say? Well.. some guys on your team consider that “Violating my game mode”
Yes that did say rather a lot about certain developers.
Personally I think the concept has merit, but the half-measured implementation of the “Living Story” currently is not very strong. Implementing a dynamic world is fine, but to do it right entails revamping the Personal Story to jive with it, reordering and cementing the timeline of the game out of this weird, nebulous “everything is happening concurrently” state it’s in now, and focusing a great deal more on plots, pacing and character development such that people care about where the story is going and are not just looking for the most optimal way to farm the new content.
I think they need to define living world better if they truly want collaboration. As it stand I think of the term as a sandbox but GW2 is clearly not a sandbox. If its merely things like voting for 2 candidates that anet chooses then its not living its merely branching.
Thanks for this post Chris – though I think you have to be “black and white” and your choices you’ve made in game.
So far, what i’ve seen is:
- Ascended gear was added not because we asked for it (in fact, you guys stated you didn’t want to be like other games and add another tier of gear), instead it was because you found that people were gaining their legendaries too fast for you too curb. You underestimated player’s potential then fumbled and released something which Anet had openly said, they’d wished they’d released it in a better fashion.
Not to mention stating that there would be multiple ways of getting ascended items then implementing it such that there is 1 major way of getting each ascended item and maybe another way that costs significantly more. If we misinterpreted what Chris said then perhaps he should have explained it further. Seriously its not hard to see why there’s anger here.
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They made PVP ranks and other titles account wide in GW1 after a year or so, I’m surprised they went back on that for GW2
Its not the same company any more. That much is patently obvious.
I would certainly imagine the prices of all lower tier mats would decrease rapidly. Imagine tens or hundreds of thousands of new people are starting from level 1 at the same time and gathering everything. The shear amounts of mats hitting the TP will be astronomical.
And of course we couldn’t have that, have to protect the integrity of the TP which an entire tier of gear is excluded from.
I’ve never gotten anything ‘cool’ out of a BLC.
This.
Certain servers, like SoR could possibly have guilds that would require you to do an all call for WvW or gkick, but its your decision where to go.
Why would it be just SOR and not guilds on BG or JQ?
To the OP just echoing the comments about SOR has a fantastic and welcoming WvW community and commanders who do know how to relax occasionally and not take it too seriously.
but if u like blobing during Eu / Na. SoR is way to go because map blob is in their blood.
Yeah well at oceanic/early sea time its the opposite.
3 days after the manifesto to give clarification on the very stuff people have been bringing up lately isn’t a timely manner?
Well if what Vayne says is the clarification then what people are bringing up is stuff that wasn’t clarified and therefore people are still holding them to it.
Today, the only people who really complain about the manifesto are the people who are ignoring the other stuff. But back then, when it was made, there WAS no other stuff.
Wrong, the majority of the marketing was similar to the manifesto, look at the blog about fun for another example.
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As far as I remember Anet stated that exotic gear wasn’t meant to be achieved as fast as it could be at the time so they added ascended gear to make up for that design-flaw.
How is this an 180?
Colin state that with the intro of ascended weapons. Its a 180 because the original intention was that BiS items should be easily obtainable by level 80.
In fact at the original launch of ascended trinkets Chris Whiteside said that ascended was being introduced bridge the gap between exotic and legendary.
JQ blob chasing 3 IRON because we capped a camp right before them <3
A JQ blob chased my lone mesmer last night OC time because I had the gall to take one of the ruins from them on SOR. It was almost funny to see a whole zerg divert to take down 1 mesmer.
BIS item in WoW: http://www.wowdb.com/items/105349-bracers-of-the-pristine-purifier#contained-in-object
3.4% droprate in a endgame raid
Yeah I’m sure you have this in a few tries. Do you want more of those exaples?
Well I assume there would be multiple bosses plus they have token systems to make up for the RNG.
Exactly, it’s quite easy to gear up in GW2 too, exotics are achieveable almost instantly when you get 80.
For a new player I wonder how true that is now with the reduction in karma rewards.
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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?
In built into it is another upgrade path which doesn’t require a new tier, infusions. They could in the future end up with more grinds for higher level infusions.
- “loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end”… I actually wish this were the case, but Anet stayed to this statement.
Tequatl disagrees with you.
- “raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play”… well you don’t have to organize still since the whole server participates in the Tequatl/world boss encounters. If Tequatl would be instanced, then yes – Anet would have gone against their statement. As these encounters are open world and everyone can participate and leave at it’s own schedule, it’s exactly as stated.
Sorry but the fact that its open world doesn’t take away form the fact that it is exactly how he described and the other boss encounters are probably going to be changed similarly.
- “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol.
To get 1 item, yeah it is crazy, in most western mmos you should be able to get almost fully geared in a new tier in that timeframe.
…the start of the Super Adventure Box thing. Has the game drastically changed for the better?
Nope gone backwards the last few updates
Thank god I bought a set at around 3g each.
Do you have a quote that Anet said this because I would doubt highly for such a thing.
It was said prior to launch, its been quoted in a multitude of threads about the manifesto and whatnot.
Also, on a related note: talking about the grind, GW2 is designed around the TP. The idea is that you don’t have to do stuff you don’t like, you do the stuff you do like and get what you need from the TP. This is fine in theory, however, ANet rewards boring things.
That is until the introduction of ascended weapons, where that idea is thrown out the window.
Its ok, you can keep trying to spread your SoR propaganda but sadly the lost of MERC and RISE are much less of a loss than you’re trying to make it out to be. Its quite pathetic that even after I complement SoR on there win you’re still trying to chest thump. I’m not going to sit here and make excuses for BG, SoR rightfully won and BG didn’t.
To stay on topic:
1st JQ/BG
2nd
3rd SoRSoR tears are so great that I would gladly help JQ win to hear the next SoR forum warriors line of excuses.
So you complain about chest thumping then you chest thump yourself……
So what I’m gathering is you want end-game rewards to be just as easy to acquire as the 2nd best tiered item?
You want everything to be easy enough to acquire in short time?
Well anet did say BiS items would be easy to obtain and any grind would be for cosmetics.
Wildstar has a lot going for it and I will probably check it out myselkittenda nice that its scifi and the humor seems awesome.
But seriously I am confused how people annoyed with Gw2 for introducing a single tier with a promise that others arent going to be introduced for years to come if ever would think thats unacceptable and say they’re switching over to a game that has a gear treadmill part of its core design.
Cause Carbine are being upfront about their intentions. Cause BiS equipment in Wowish games is actually easier to obtain than ascended items in GW2. Cause the game design is driven by endgame content.
I’ve now seen the video and read the clarification, and in my personal opinion ANet could have avoided a lot of PR flack by simply not releasing it to begin with. That being said, this “manifesto” seems to me more of a statement of intent than a “written in stone” game outline, and as such they’ve pretty much kept to the spirit of that intent.
No they haven’t, you’ve got to look at it in context which was the entire campaign at teh time including other blog posts and interviews eg. Colin’s blog about ‘fun’.
this merging was bad. There was one thread for people talking about how ascended armor shouldnt be released and a whole different thread on how it looked…those are not the same thing at all…now its just going to get muddled
Maybe that was the point.
<shrug> It’s not a case of “allowing” SoR do anything. Last night in SEA/Oceanic, SoR were focused almost exclusively on BG.
No we didn’t, I was on TCBL with a significant group all oceanic evening.
No.
I’ve been here from the beginning. There were some threads complaining about “no endgame” from the content locusts. It wasn’t nearly as huge as you’re making out. And only a fraction of those were specifically asking for new tiers of loot. Most of them were just asking for something new to do.
Crazy how people expressing dislike of ascended weapons and armor are a vocal minority, because people who enjoy the game play it instead of posting on forums, but forum complaints about the need for new gear levels to chase somehow represented a vast portion of the players.
Well said, I agree about what was happening on the forums at the time, they only really blew up in Nov and then with the intro of asc weapons.
Plus I’d argue that the content locusts are getting that new content now through the fortnightly updates so why continue with the introduction of asc weapons and armor which is clearly going to annoy a lot of players especially the way they did it.
The game may have begun shedding players again but thats certainly not reflected in the PR. There’s a disconnect there.
You guys crack me up…you are all excited about getting not one, but two, guilds which care very little about server PPT and more about just fights. Yeah, be rejoiceful. LOL. Oh, and the more you run with Jarvan, the easier it is to digest the screaming and such he does….
So let me get this straight……………… the server that prides itself on being about the fights should not welcome guilds with a similar philosophy?
I really don’t see any problem here.
I don’t mind the item but IMHO its contradictory to their stated design goals with WXP.
Why do you continue to play the game if you are so convinced that Anet is an evil greedy monster?
Lack of a competitor and the fact that my guild are a great bunch of people, and my server is a great server for WvW.
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Everything in games are a grind. Otherwise what’s the point of playing? Do you want to log-in one day and have all your ori’s available in your inventory?
Or do you actually want to go out and work for your items?
Do you actually want to try and frame an argument or do just want to make up strawmen?
They’ve introduced new tier of gear, because they felt exotics are too easy obtainable.
Only if you believe that statement, which I don’t.
With Ascended, they’ve done two things – made professions, which were skipped by most players very important and cut off these kids, buying everything off from TP from ew shinies. Same for tequatl, since you couldn’t buy achievments, sunless weapons and you had to kill hardest world boss to get them, QQ started.
Keep ascended bound, do the same for Legendaries.
Why should players have to craft if they don’t like it? How can they try and make the BLTC a free market simulation and some sort of game in and of itself and not have a whole tier in it?
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No they shouldn’t be unbound. If you want it, put in the time and work for the highest tier of gear. This game needed another sink.
Why?
Legendaries shouldn’t be sellable either. The dev’s even said that they regretted this decision for legendaires in the past. I don’t think they’ll make the same mistake twice.
They make a mistake with legendaries so they make a lesser tier of weapons account bound. That does not make sense. Its like shutting the barn door after the horse had bolted.
Think this is a real possibility , legendaries weren’t tradable for months.
Wasn’t that only because the first players to make them didn’t do it to sell them, and it took a while for the traders to obtain them.
So much for WXP being a character progression system, here buy your way to mastery.
Bridge the gap shouldn’t mean eats up the mats you were going to use for your legendary…. just sayin’
This is the entire flaw in their warped logic. The whole “bridge the gap” line was something they just fed to us so they wouldn’t have to confess that the whole system is here to get the 10 hours a day players to shut the kitten up about lack of content for a month or two.
Yep, it doesn’t make sense and is contradictory to statements they made in November last year when ascended trinkets were introduced.
Those armors are terrible, all of them.
Do you know anything about owning a business? How is maximizing profits equate to being greedy? Your responses are that of a person who just wants stuff handed to them.
Strawman.
You play a game that is entirely free to play other than the initial cost of the game. The game is constantly being updated and added to at no additional charge to you. Anet is in business to make money and do it while they can before the games life cycle comes to an end. You and everyone else who complains all the time on these forums would do the exact same thing if you were in their shoes, but I guess it’s much easier to come on here and QQ about how greedy Anet is.
When the game becomes largely oriented towards players buying gems and becomes a chase the carrot grindfest and the complete antithesis of the ideals espoused prior to the games launch then yes it does lead to the conclusion that chasing the dollar is their priority now over creating a good gameplay experience.
If its needed to maintain the game then the model is a failure because it requires poor gameplay and an unhealthy reliance on exploiting the OCDness of mmo players.
But then I wonder if they have really tried to rely just on the fortnightly content to keep players in the game and buying gems. If player numbers were decreasing prior to ascended weapons being introduced that would imply its not enough however maybe the issue is with the quality of the fortnightly content.
You do realize in the grand scheme of things the glitch last night wasn’t exactly game breaking. It is a pain that it happened and left some people hanging around for a long time but it isn’t some huge thing. Yet people are here expecting some long drawn out explanation and apology for a relatively minor issue. What next? Do you want them to give you some free gems for your time and being oh so inconvenienced? Get over it. These things happen.
Not a game breaking issue but certainly not a minor issue especially while we are still in the Tequatl Rising Living Story phase. They should have communicated far earlier.
Google -> gw2nodes -> enjoy.
Still a grind. When T7 mats became the higher level T6 mats availability should have been increased. I said in another post that I felt like gouging my eyes out after farming to 500 artificer and I’ve still got weaponsmith and huntsman to go.
For one, not everyone plays the new content or at least they don’t necessarily play every single 2 week content. I know I am one of those players. I will play the ones I find interesting and skip the others. So, how do they keep people like me occupied and logging in regularly?
By improving the fortnightly content.
Secondly, everything hinges on driving gem store sales. It is the ONLY thing that generates revenue for anet. That being said and based on their history of content release, they are going to release things so that everything drives players to log in as much as possible. They obviously feel that is what keeps gem store sales high or at least keeps the potential high.
So greed then, because certainly the new content also drives gem store sales.
Rewards were again increased greatly. Borderland bloodlust was added, and in today’s update again rewards have been increased as well as both incentives to play and to do well. And then seasons starting in a couple of weeks with new rewards and incentives.
Some rewards have actually been decreased now via some sort of stealth change (badges) that has never once been addressed by the devs. It wasn’t in the patch notes and they never replied to the thread on it.
I’m not justifying the system and stating it is right or wrong. I am stating that I understand WHY they need to keep people IN GAME and the realities of the economic system being used here.
Why do they need such a system to keep people in game when they have significant new content every 2 weeks? I’ve asked this question a lot and no-one has been able to give a satisfactory answer.
MMOs are 24 hour operations, if they don’t have support 24/7 its an issue.
They have 24 hour support. That doesn’t mean they have staff members hanging out in Sparkfly Fen watching every second or refreshing this forum every second to see what is going on. I wonder, did anyone complaining about this submit a support request using the online support?
I think its far more likely that someone did across the whole game than they didn’t. If they don’t have someone on that can at least give an acknowledgment of issues at any time then they’re doing it wrong. It was 14 hours, that is a long time.
Wow it’s still down? I mean I realized you guys made a mistake….but….it’s still down?
P.S. Hope it’s fixed while I drive home from work….or else i’m probably going to get infracted for a post when I get home! lol
Teq didn’t spawn for over 12 hours and they didn’t even communicate anything. At least here there is some communication.
However once again Anets lack of proper user testing brings them undone.
People act like Anet staff never gets time off from work. It was a bug that happened after most business hours. In games of this magnitude bugs happen especially around update times. Get over it. The whole game didn’t implode and all your gold and items didn’t go missing.
MMOs are 24 hour operations, if they don’t have support 24/7 its an issue.
We’re aware of the issue preventing Tequatl from spawning. We’re investigating the issue and will update you when we have more information. Thank you.
Serious question, why did it take over 12 hours to respond to this critical issue?
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