Guild Wars 2

Sarrs.4831:

At a guess, it’s going to be a test to see if the playerbase responds well to it.

Why would they need to test that? They already know how ppl will respond to uneven matches because its happening now.

Vayne.8563:

On one hand, the world is busier than I’ve seen it in a long time. Obviously this has worked for them. It has done what Anet wanted it to do.

Thats the removal of culling.

I agree with the OP ‘you know it makes sense’

xephire.8324:

Chuo.4238:

I just wish they’d design content that didn’t have anything to do with tier gear. I’d rather have a new dungeon. Or even have them fix one of the existing ones. Or even spend more time making the LS actually good….

They fired their dungeon designer ,don’t expect any new dungeons soon.

Who was that?

Doon.2364:

Legendaries should be account bound rather than soul bound. And they shouldn’t be able to be sold on Trading Post.

The implementation of ascended items is bizarre its like they knew they made a mistake with legendaries so they implemented asc weapons the way they though they should have implemented legendaries, but because asc weapons are a whole tier of weapons they have just ended up needlessly punishing the vast majority of players who don’t want a legendary but want BiS.

Its poor game design and reflects badly on the professionalism of anet.

HiddenNick.7206:

But you know what? Just put your tail between your legs and get us back on track! Make the game dead again!

So your contention is that there was no other way these things could have been achieved?

HarriHellYeaAmericaToTheMAX.1093:

morrolan.9608:

This doesn’t explain why loading times into LA have increased exponentially since the game launched with the same hard drive.

Yea I remember when the game first was released loading times were quicker but its really nothing crazy compared to now…. 11 sec still fine for me

Can take me around a minute sometimes. It wasn’t remotely that long at launch, more like 10-15 sec.

Maybe I need to download a clean copy of the game.

This doesn’t explain why loading times into LA have increased exponentially since the game launched with the same hard drive.

LordByron.8369:

I think you should find something more fair to keep deflation in check and ecourage less speculators…as its now despite global economy may work, if you look who pays the deflation is a mess

Thank you.

You’re talking to the wrong guy, you should be addressing it to Colin Johanson or Mike O’Brien. John Smith is only doing the job he is paid to do.

The issue is with the game design of having a sandbox style TP in a theme park game. The aims of the 2 are contradictory as can be seen every time anet intervenes and manipulates or affects the game economy.

Zeph.5927:

Anet is so kittening out of touch with their players and their own game it’s pathetic. Seriously….who is the dumb kitten at Anet who thought adding WAY MORE GRIND to the game, especially at this point in its life cycle (aka not a good time), was a good idea?!?

And they thought it was a good idea to not even add asc weapon drops to the BLTC where at least if we didn’t want to craft and grind we could buy them. How ridiculous that we can buy legendaries but not ascended.

Chipster.6713:

So you want to play an MMORPG where there ois no grind? Good luck with that.

But it was the game GW 2 was promised to be.

Chipster.6713:

Ascended weapons are to be considered a long time goal, just like legendaries. If your goal isn’t to get one of those items, then you’re better off playing Tetris or Super Mario..

Why do we need long term goals apart from legendaries in a game where we get significant new content every 2 weeks.

dalendria.3762:

youkai.2394:

The point is that the Gw2 community wants everything instant. Farm is boring, give us 1 legendary per player via mail!

Why is it that whenever anyone talks about how ridiculous the requirements are for obtaining max stat gear, someone says “we” want it instantly? That is an extreme statement without ever considering a middle ground.

Its called a strawman argument and yes it is annoying. The vast majority who object to the ascended implementation do not want it handed to us on a platter.

Blix.8021:

He’s right though, if people just abandoned the last 9 or 12 servers, the population of the top 12 would be much more evenly distributed.

Maybe this is what anet wants to happen.

Stealth.8150:

JJBigs.8456:

Did SoR give up? Thanks to JQ for the great fights and challenges!

guess you didn’t read my post so i quote it for you.
you will notice that they also tank their trolls for procedure to go smooth

Stealth.8150:

according to my source on sor.
they tanking the score til wvw season 1 starts to get more guilds in.
they also said they are trying to get more eu guilds

So you’re resorting to making stuff up now.

stof.9341:

Celestial craft isn’t in the same league as the other crafts since it’s so different. They said you’d be able to select a set of stats from similar source. Well you do get every normal craft as choice, but not the special time gated Celestial.

Knights wasn’t an option though.

Klawlyt.6507:

morrolan.9608:

Probably not but I think this applies: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

I like that. A lot. Mind if I borrow it?

Well its not my phrase here’s the origin of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I had Jatoros set it gave me the option to change it to Dire.

However my complaint is I wanted to change it to Celestial, why weren’t all the crafted combinations there? Even Knights wasn’t an option.

Vayne.8563:

Anet saw the writing on the wall, decided to act to save the game. Because what are the odds that someone at Anet woke up one morning and said, “You know those fans that love our game? Kitten them?”

Do you really think that’s how it went down…because I don’t.

Probably not but I think this applies: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

Niim.9260:

They are too busy setting up league play for wvw to work on functionality that should have been in the game on release.

Or to ensure that ascended mats are included in WvW on a basis equitable with PvE.

Zepidel.5349:

Not a single thing this patch addressed the major problem with crafting… the fact that you cannot in any way shape or form make money from any crafting prof, before it was just a means for rich players to level an alt to 80 in a day, now its just a means to grind for ascended gear.

And a gold sink.

They changed their target group last November.

Daddicus.6128:

By the way, I don’t disagree with their decision to eliminate gear-based MF. As I said before, it wasn’t fair to other players. But, it WAS legal and was the chosen path for a very large contingent of players. So, they really have no case for what they did; it was just wrong. I hope they admit it and correct the problem. I DON’T WANT THOSE RINGS with they’re substandard mods. I want the ability to re-tailor my gear to focus on one or two attributes again. But, I don’t have enough laurels left to do it.

They don’t even need to provide a refund all they need to do is to allow us to pick the stats we want for those items like they did with the other items. The functionality is already in game.

Devils.3679:

i stopped reading after the first few comments. All i can say is haha i’m glad you feel ripped off Using MF to benefit yourself in a team game forcing others to do more so you could get more.

You would have a point about primary magic find items but celestial is different and certainly the reason why there was no compensation is because anet obviously feel that the stats are sufficient for all content.

Clockradio.3257:

Honestly, with the whole league thing the very least they could do is lock transfers/new accounts on SoR/BG/JQ until the other server start to have the kind of turn out we do…

Maybe they want people to transfer……..

Edeor.9720:

Kallist.5917:

Vol.5241:

You know what’s really brilliant though?

Introducing a gold sink in disguise by encouraging people to use or TP blues/greens rather than vendor them.

Way more brilliant than the dust/ecto salvage fix.

Ive played a lot of MMO’s, but never one where the economy is as well controlled as it is on here.

I’m sorry but I do not agree, the economy of Guild Wars 2 is pretty simple, and I struggle to define well-controlled an economy that create a monstrous inflation in one night. Among others things, the new crafting system creates a strong and irrational discrimination between players. You use sword and staff? Good luck, you have to raise two crafting skill; you use sword and greatsword? Is you lucky day, Linsey Murdock decided that you can save a lot of money).

However, if you want to see a game with a well done economic system just buy Eve Online, since it is even the subject of university studies.

The economy is essentially bunk without the ability to buy BIS weapons on the BLTC.

Nuka Cola.8520:

morrolan.9608:

Nuka Cola.8520:

morrolan.9608:

Can ascended weapons that drop be sold (as opposed to the crafted asc weapons)? Or are they account bound on pickup. I would be amazed if there’s no way to buy ascended weapons.

be amazed cuz you can’t buy them.

So those that drop are account bound?

yes

Thats kittened up, essentially forcing us into crafting to get the stats we want. What happened to the BLTC being a simulation of a real world economy such that they needed to emply an actual economist.

Ynot.8397:

morrolan.9608:

Rhaegus.8924:

You guys should all remember that most of the devs have their accounts on Sanctum of Rall and play WvW on that server. Of course they wont see the problem :p

There’s only 1 dev on SOR regularly. An issue is actually that most of them are on lower ranked servers so the top ranked servers arguably aren’t represented enough.

If that was true there would be 4 leagues because they would understand the differences in population.

Well there is another answer to that but its probably infractable.

Nuka Cola.8520:

morrolan.9608:

Can ascended weapons that drop be sold (as opposed to the crafted asc weapons)? Or are they account bound on pickup. I would be amazed if there’s no way to buy ascended weapons.

be amazed cuz you can’t buy them.

So those that drop are account bound?

Can ascended weapons that drop be sold (as opposed to the crafted asc weapons)? Or are they account bound on pickup. I would be amazed if there’s no way to buy ascended weapons.

Domino.1359:

Lafiel.9372:

Theftwind.8976:

The sheer amount of materials required to fashion an ascended weapon is ludicrous. I have read fantasy novels ever since I was knee high to a grasshopper and considering “Stormbringer”, “Excalibur”, “Sting and Glamdring”, “Werewindle”, and “Callandor” nowhere could I find a sword that requires over 800 ingots of metal to create. (not counting all the other materials). One can overlook the 1,500 ingots used to create a Legendary such as Twilight as those are used to create a “Gift of Metal” which then becomes part of the sword’s creation. With Ascended however they do not even bother to hide the grind behind the story of a “Gift”, just throw all this stuff into a forge and you will get a sword light enough for you to wield with special powers.

They could have done it differently and still dragged out the process as long as they wanted to. Clues in the world to special recipes, certain beasts to kill for special reagents, skills that need to be required by practice, and so on.

Sadly game developers have lost the ability to tell stories in their games and to make those stories believable. That lack of believable storytelling is what turns great games into a grind. They take the easy/lazy way out by increasing or inflating the costs for items in materials or gold rather then adding real content and sadly this process exists in all games. A game starts out with great promise; there are new stories to be told; new discoveries to be made that fit the story being told but eventually they reach the point where that story no longer makes any sense. It gets lost in the inflation of gold/materials/time or more commonly known as the grind to fill in the gaps.

Single player games have a finite timeline. They have a beginning and an ending to tell a story and thus can be made to be more believable. MMO’s are meant to be ongoing so the timeline they can encompass does not end. The lack of a good story is filled in by the grind and this is a good example of that. One day, hopefully, a developer will begin to understand that the greater and more believable the story you tell the greater your game will be.

This game does not need more developers, it needs more story tellers.

Very good point.

Re-quoted – excellent point. I couldn’t have put it better.

It is excellent and its how legendaries themselves should have been implemented.

anzenketh.3759:

morrolan.9608:

I don’t think Chris Whiteside actually said it was planned, a few people have pointed out recently that he qualified his statement back then with an IF.

Nevertheless what Colin says here doesn’t make sense:
1. Max stat gear was meant to be easy to obtain, it was cosmetics that were meant to be a grind.
2. Why make changes to make exotic gear easier to obtain after the Nov patch via karma jugs etc and increasing how many dungeon tokens were earned.

Quite simply by the time those were implemented they had planned to so something about how easy it already was.

I actually wonder if Colin is getting mixed up, back in November they said ascended gear was being introduced to bridge the gap between exotic gear and legendaries because legendaries were being made quicker than they expected, which makes more sense. I know for a fact that they were annoyed at how fast people made legendaries after launch.

Atistheso.4657:

I totally agree with this post. This is the biggest aberration in this patch.
I appreciated though that they decided for once to make all resources available from WvW but the balance between all of them is terrible. I took 2 keeps today and I got 8 dragonite ore in total. It means that in order to get an ascended weapon from WvW you need to take over 125 keeps. It would take months to get a single weapon and it’s totally unfair in comparison to PvE players … After the previous patch that was giving away an enormous amount of resources to PvE players and this, I really have the feeling that despite all the nice talks about fair rewards in WvW, the game keeps taking the opposite direction.

Yep, Devon you have to address this LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD. Those who want to create ascended weapons and mainly WvW are clearly behind the eight ball here.

Rhaegus.8924:

You guys should all remember that most of the devs have their accounts on Sanctum of Rall and play WvW on that server. Of course they wont see the problem :p

There’s only 1 dev on SOR regularly. An issue is actually that most of them are on lower ranked servers so the top ranked servers arguably aren’t represented enough.

Mungrul.9358:

So contrary to what they initially claimed (that Ascended was planned all along), Colin specifically states in that interview that Exotic WAS supposed to be final tier and Ascended was added because they underestimated how quickly people would get Exotic.

Ignoring the fact that people like being able to get max stat gear quickly so they then only have to worry about aesthetics, here we have proven that ArenaNet did outright LIE back in November, and that Ascended WASN’T planned prior to release.

I don’t think Chris Whiteside actually said it was planned, a few people have pointed out recently that he qualified his statement back then with an IF.

Nevertheless what Colin says here doesn’t make sense:
1. Max stat gear was meant to be easy to obtain, it was cosmetics that were meant to be a grind.
2. Why make changes to make exotic gear easier to obtain after the Nov patch via karma jugs etc and increasing how many dungeon tokens were earned.

Why are they worthless?

Wukunlin.8461:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Unintended-Monthly-Achievement-Rollback/page/2#post2764214

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

After investigation by our programmers, they have determined that the fix to this issue would be too risky and could end up making the situation worse than it is. Unfortunately, this means that we’re not able to make changes to correct the issue. We’re sorry about this and we will be implementing ways to ensure this doesn’t happen in the future.

greeeaaaaattttt

Yet this has happened before. Where is the quality control?

TheDaiBish.9735:

I don’t get it.

I got a lot of them mats playing around 6 hours a week, and I’ve already got half of the Bloodstone from 10 bags. Hardly a full time job :/

OK now think about how many alts you have and how many weapons for each. In my case 5 alts at level 80 with minimum 4 weapons FOR EACH.

TainoFuerte.8136:

I’m not even worried about the materials, because as far as I know I’m actually expected to craft these jokes myself, which implies sitting for who knows how long in front a stupid crafting station leveling all the way from 1 to 500 because I hate crafting.

About to ragequit the game.

You will be able to buy them but I would think the cost at least initially would be pretty high.

As for the mats its 1 drop per location per day so no keep trading, however this raises another problem as to whether the amount of mats received will be sufficient given the weapons require 500 of each. I personally would say the minimum drop should be 10 but I have no faith in anet to be equitable and would not be surprised if its between 0 and 5.

So no reply on this?

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

I feel like I’m on a treadmill now even before asc weapons are introduced, thats the only valid thing to me. If you or anet want to ignore that feedback because you/they think I’m talking out of my kitten fine but they’ll have lost a customer.

If Anet can’t understand what you’re staying, it can’t be fixed. If they lose customers because customers can’t communicate properly their concerns then I’d say it’s the customers problem first and foremost.

My concerns and those of others have been clearly communicated, the fact that you dismiss them out of hand is a problem for you and anet if they think similarly.

style.6173:

Good. Anything to increase offense and get people out of standing on siege all day is a good thing.

Its PvDoor though and so amounts to the same thing except we’d be getting rewarded for it.

Vayne.8563:

If Anet has no intention of making a treadmill and you complain about there being one, then Anet can ignore the thread completely because they know they’re not planning on making a treadmill.

I feel like I’m on a treadmill now even before asc weapons are introduced, thats the only valid thing to me. If you or anet want to ignore that feedback because you/they think I’m talking out of my kitten fine but they’ll have lost a customer.

mrstealth.6701:

I can get weapons with Sigils of Night and Smothering on them for only a few gold, and have them right now. Show me where I can do this with ascended weapons?

That is the problem. Not that they are better, it’s that they are better and have ridiculous timegates attached to getting them.

This, I was just about to say the same thing. Plus there is the grind to get to the end of the defence against guards mastery.

BillFreist.1527:

Don’t expect double FPS overnight . Also, the changes I mentioned will mostly only be noticeable in combat or in large groups of creatures/players.

Thank you for the update. What about load times?

Erasculio.2914:

You can just look at the quote in my signature to see ArenaNet contradicting itself. Saying:

Mike OBrien

I think players are kind of maturing past the point of wanting to be on that treadmill – wanting to be in that obvious pattern of every time I catchup you’re wanting to put that carrot in front of me

[…]
What really amazes me is how there is no reason for those comments. We understand the direction the game has moved to. There is no justification for ArenaNet to say GW2 is a “game that’s not about continued vertical progression” when they have been telling us for quite some time that yes, they will continue to add vertical progression to the game. This kind of speech may have been fitting to the game by the time the Manifesto was released, or maybe with the release hype (does someone else remember the “Prepare for the revolution” marketing?). Saying it now… Is simply a lie. A pointless, transparent lie.

Yep this is quite frankly unbelievable and not remotely defendable.

Vayne.8563:

Lie implies intent. What evidence do you have that when Anet devs made these quotes they didn’t think them true.

They may not have lied then but the above shows that things are different now.

Free transfers happened. One of the biggest mistakes anet made was not implementing the game with guesting already in and paid transfers.

Ostra.3927:

Thats exactly what it means.

Zerging and flipping is more profitable still… even more so now… then defending.

Defending costs money. Flipping makes much more.

Whats the bet anet won’t even have though of this. I predict a rise in tower/keep/camp trading.

colesy.8490:

Defense against guards in WvW increases your HP by about 2.5k. Nobody complains. BUT OMG ITS A MASSIVE DEAL COLESY. Nah, nobody cares.

I’ve seen complaints about it.

IndigoSundown.5419:

…that a subset of the players would convince GW2 to abandon this philosophy — with the exceptions of leveling speed, and that the loot drop systems with crazy low chance RNG are not in dungeons — within a year of launch.

Its worse than that though, it was basically abandoned within 2 months of launch.

Vayne.8563:

I agree the game is grindier than it was originally supposed to be. I also think if the game wasn’t grindy and they just kept cosmetic upgrades, there wouldn’t be a game by now.

The fortnightly content release schedule hadn’t started when ascended items were introduced so that assertion really can’t be made with any certainty.

Vorch.2985:

Mike O’Brien:

“We’re left with a balancing act. Some progression is OK, but pushing players onto a gear treadmill isn’t OK and isn’t what the game is about. I don’t think [the ascended gear] invalidates the fundamental concept that GW2 can have gradual stat progression without being a gear treadmill game.”

Honestly, if WvW didn’t have PvE gear, there would be no issue, imo.

If they had given ascended gear exotic stats with the inclusion of infusions there would be no issue.

To be fair I don’t think Mike O’Brien was lying when he said it just like Colin wasn’t lying about the ‘fun’ element. But the fact is they panicked and have gone back on these statements and their original vision for the game. A vision that was used to market the game. Now they appear to have no overarching vision going forward.

Klawlyt.6507:

I didn’t buy other games. I bought Guild Wars 2. (Ok, I have bought other games, but stopped playing them when they became more like jobs.) I bought GW2 because “You shouldn’t have to grind to get to the fun reward.” New gear tiers screw up WvW, especially when acquisition of said gear is so heavily slanted toward PvE. May I remind everyone that EQ Next isn’t even going to have levels, I think GW2 could survive just fine with its initially stated grind free gear system.

Of course it could, especially with the fortnightly content release schedule. With that schedule they don’t need all this time gating and grind to keep people playing.