Guild Wars 2

evilunderling.9265:

ZudetGambeous.9573:

To sum up: they advertised A, they did not provide A, and say they refuse to provide A. Therefore they falsely advertised about A.

Wrong. They did not advertise A, and no reasonable person could argue that they did.

There is a difference between someone selling a box of chocolates that’s half-empty and someone offering to, say, make you a chair and then coming back a while later to apologise and explain that their lathe is broken and they can’t make you a chair right now.

This is the latter, and there is nothing in their advertising that any sane person could argue contradicts that.

They’re advertising it right now. It’s still listed among HoT’s features on their own website.

And your broken lathe analogy doesn’t fit this situation. Anet currently has about 200 “working lathes”, that they chose to not use to complete the product they advertised. The existing legendary team’s inability to complete the task in an acceptable time/fashion does not mean that Anet can’t deliver a complete set of legendary weapons. Anet consists of far more than just those 6 incapable/mismanaged/etc devs.

Ranael.6423:

Spira.4578:

Yea, did you also not pay for the fractal leaderboards that were canceled?
Or for the guild anthem that was heavily talked about in one of their blog posts?
Or how about the masteries like bark cutting?
It’s not just the legendary crafting that got scrapped.

That is why they always say that things are subject to change before release. And while I admit that too many things were planned for after release (which doesn’t make it half an expansion but a rushed expansion) this has been the case in every MMO since ever.
Bark cutting removed is really not a good example because there is no bark to cut anymore…
If you think this is a good example then you should have known that such promises are often taken away : engineer shield absorb, mine kit, skills that were supposed to change when jumping or when we climb in trees (back in 2007 !), dragons attacking the village as part of dynamic events, environmental bundles giving different skills for every professions, racial traits, traits on weapons, free distribution of statistic points, energy potions, energy cost of skills, necro DS back travel and as downed state…..

In fact they cancelled much more “promises” before they launched the core game as for this expansion.

The things you list are features mentioned in development blogs for a game still in fairly early stages of design and development. Anything at that stage was known be subject to change. These things were never marketed as de facto features of a retail product. Legendary weapons were marketed as such, and still are right now despite being put an on indefinite delay.

This information is still on HoT’s website at https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/maguuma

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will let you begin your journey toward the first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of 20 that were included in the launch of Guild Wars 2. The first three to be released will be the celestial axe named Astralaria, an experimental energy pistol called H.O.P.E., and the raven spirit staff named Nevermore. Additional legendary weapons will be released in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of 16 has been added to this game.

As of the start of this thread, that information is patently false. This is not development-stage information that is subject to change. This is marketing information about a product that is currently being sold, for consumers to base purchase decisions on.

mtpelion.4562:

AysonCurrax.3254:

It reeks of bad managment, and there is no way to argue with that.
Even if the legendary weapons project team only had 6 developers, there is no way in hell that a team of 6 produces single to no results in 6 months time, unless said team had been severly miss managed and tossed around between other tasks instead of letting them work on what they are supposed to work on.

It is the industry standard in software. I know everyone is mad at ArenaNet right now, but you cannot find a software company that does NOT do this exactly the same way.

One big difference between this situation and others is the fact that a legendary weapons aren’t just some feature mentioned as part of an upcoming (unpaid) update, or as part of a development blog that can easily be explained as subject to change. These weapons have been, and still are to this day, a listed and marketed key feature of Heart of Thorns.

It can be difficult to hold a company to their word on features announced as part of updates and other free enhancements. Sure, it’s a blow to their credibility, but they aren’t really obligated to provide those features. On the other hand, if you slap a feature “on the box” and use it in your marketing materials as part of the persuasion to buy the product, you kitten well better be able to deliver that feature.

Heibi.4251:

If they didn’t “intend” to return to it, they would have said “canceled”. Think – not many in this thread are. They are yelling and screaming instead. They have a right to be disappointed, sure, but they aren’t looking at the big picture, only their tiny little corner of the game. I, too, am disappointed, but as I stated I offered ideas on how to proceed to mitigate the issue. But you’d have to search thousands of posts of yelling and screaming to find any of the great suggestions. Very sad.

If they actually stated the feature was cancelled, it would open them up to much easier claims of false advertising. An indefinite delay is much more ambiguous, and leaves them more room to counter such claims.

I’m not saying this actually means it is cancelled. Just that even if it were, they would be quite stupid to actually say it. We have no way of actually knowing what their intentions are at this point, but I do have to say that it doesn’t look favorable for us as customers.

Mirta.5029:

Aidenwolf.5964:

As this post was begun by the head of Anet I’ll assume it’s being monitored. As cotent I paid for will not be delivered (new legendary weapons) and hasn’t been implemented (cool WvW) I am formally requesting a refund on HoT. I’ll play you the announcement video and cite each instance you as head of the company promised and failed to deliver on if necessary. I’ve played since GW1 and not seeing the same company I used to love.

I’ve always been critical of decisions I’ve disagreed with but until now I’ve haven’t been able to say for a fact that you sold me something you 100% didn’t deliver on.

I paid you aren’t delivering so I formally request a refund.

contact support. If they don’t provide it, do a charge back on the grounds of being scammed.

I think that’s a pretty shady thing to do, and even asking for a full refund at this point might be too much. Incomplete as it is, HoT has been out for over 5 months, and unless your purchase was very recent you’ve likely gotten a decent bit of gameplay out it, or at least had the opportunity to do so. I’ll be the first to grab a flaming pitchfork and march to Bellevue, WA to say that we should see some compensation for lack of receiving the advertised product, but I think asking for a full price refund is taking it too far.

I bought HoT not too long after it’s release, for a price I’m still not totally sure it was worth (around $37) in relation to the base game or other games. I did, however, get a decent amount of playtime out of that purchase, even if a lot of that time was spent repeating the same content. Repetition is expended in this genre to some degree, but I do feel that HoT’s content relied on that far too heavily. But, despite that and how I feel about this recent revelation, the time and enjoyment I did get from HoT does still mean something. To me, requesting a refund for a product I did use and get enjoyment/entertainment from is dishonest.

I’m not going to try and name a price I think it was worth, because there is little point in doing so. I made a reasonably informed decision (main reason I waited till after release) and bought HoT for a price I thought was acceptable at the time, based on what I knew. That was my decision and I am fine living with it. However, that was a decision also effected by advertisements and promises by Anet of future additions that were to be included in that purchase. Future additions that we now learn are not being delivered. It is this, and only this aspect, that I feel warrants the need for compensation to customers. (Recent purchases, and those purchased after this statement, while the HOT website still lists a set of legendary weapons as a feature, should have a full refund available)

I don’t know what the compensation should be, or how much value it should carry, but some compensation is certainly in order given the misleading terms HoT was sold under. To offer some suggestions, the most obvious would be Anet’s own currency of gems. Though, I’m sure that won’t mean anything to players that are leaving the game over this decision. We’re all obviously PC gamers here, so perhaps some arrangement with store credit/funds from another game retailer (Steam/Origin/etc) would be more suitable. I’m sure someone at Anet, or on these forums, can come up with something that would be acceptable for most people. An alternate compensation solution also avoids the difficulties of trying to handle refunds for game copies sold outside of Anet’s own store/website, ensuring that even those customers receive fair and equal treatment.

tldr;
We’ve been playing this thing for months now, and it’s a bit late to ask for a full refund for a product we’ve used and gotten entertainment from. However, some compensation is in order for failure to deliver on aspects of the game that were advertised as included features and likely impacted purchase decisions.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I suppose there’s no grounds to make Anet accountable for their reversal via a class action lawsuit, but it doesn’t seem right that they can sell something and then decide for whatever reason that they are no longer going to deliver what people paid for.

MMO developers really can get away with things other, more traditional businesses can’t.

Perhaps because a lot operate more as a service rather than selling individual products, particularly those still with subscription fees. Most decisions to pull previously mentioned features don’t involve that feature being marketed as part of a retail product. It’s a breach of customer trust, but if it was never explicitly marketed or sold there aren’t really any other issues with it.

However, Anet’s decision to not continue with legendary weapon does not give them that luxury to hide behind. A new set of weapons was, and still is, a listed feature of a retail product. They are still obligated to deliver that product, in full, as advertised.

ODB.6891:

Obtena.7952:

Celtic Lady.3729:

So far, I have seen zero successful dismissal of arguments. The arguments still stand.

No argument presented is going to change the fact that Legendaries as content do not have a good ROI; this is low impact. These are business decisions, first and foremost.

Customer retention is high impact. They can start making decisions based on what the lowest percentage of players and what the highest percentage of players want, but guess what…eventually…when you lose enough of those lowest percentages…you aren’t going to have much left. Not the first game I’ve seen go with that strategy. Every one that has done that…has ended up as a failure.

This isn’t even something that should even be up as a business decision, and it’s certainly not something we as customers should accept as one. Anet backing out on their 2013 statement of having a new legendary set by the end of that year was a business decision. Cancelling a set of legendary weapons that were a “listed on the box” feature of HoT is misleading customers in order to sell a product. It really doesn’t matter what Anet decides is a better business decision at this point. They should be obligated to provide their product as it was marketed.

The following is still stated on the HoT website, and only thing keeping it from being completely, blatantly misleading is the fact that the remaining legendary weapons are only “delayed indefinitely” instead of being outright canned.

Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns will let you begin your journey toward the first new set of legendary weapons to be added to the game since its original set of 20 that were included in the launch of Guild Wars 2. The first three to be released will be the celestial axe named Astralaria, an experimental energy pistol called H.O.P.E., and the raven spirit staff named Nevermore. Additional legendary weapons will be released in small groups at regular intervals until the full set of 16 has been added to this game.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Zero Day.2594:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Zero Day.2594:

You know what will be very annoying at this point?

If the continue to systematically release armor/skins in the gem store… Because a dev has said that it requires a lot of resources to make (armor – and I’m guessing, by extension gem store armor skins, since they are essentially armor).

Source:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0wftvl

If by gemstore armor skins you mean outfits, they said the outfits are about 10 times easier to make than armor.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dev-quotes-from-Reddit/page/3#post6023796

I’m kind of curious as to how. They’re just lacking stats, and aren’t in pieces. Still have to adjust per race, per animation, and so on.

Presumably because they’re one piece, not 6, and they don’t have to fit them against all the other armors of the same weight already in game. But they didn’t say.

I think there are some older dev statements that say basically that. The difficulty in armor comes from it being in pieces that have to all fit together with all other individual armor pieces without gaps, extreme clipping issues, etc. It’s a lot faster to make a seamless style when you don’t have to worry about those issues.

However, I don’t think that excuses the complete lack of new armors. Some time ago (I think back in 2014 or early 2015) Anet did state that they would not be putting more armor skins in the gemstore, instead only using the store for outfits. Since that time, the number and rate of new outfits has increased drastically. While the number of new armor skins has been zero, save for the very few new armors HoT added (which require buying HoT to get).

I suppose we can’t say Anet didn’t keep their word on that part, but they sure did take the most extreme and absolute interpretation of it. They seem to have no interest in adding any skins, armor or weapons, that aren’t tied to the gemstore either directly or through black lion keys.

Sartharina.3542:

bluemaize.4368:

They are already working on expac 2….seriously, why would they do that?

Because that arc of the story requires far more development time and sophistication than a simple Living Story seasonal release. New zones, new elite specializations, new storyline, and possibly even a new race.

And there is nothing, aside from their own business decisions, that says those things can’t be released as living world content. The fact remains that they are already putting like 1/3 of their employees/effort into a second expansion, while canning/delaying unreleased parts of their still unfinished first expansion.

The more appropriate (and ethical) thing to do would be taking people off of xpac 2 and have them help get all of HoT’s annouced features into the live game. Going back on already promised features, while annoucing that you’re already preparing the next $50 (or more) product puts out a really bad company image.

This isn’t ok when some upstart indie dev does it.
This isn’t ok when EA/Ubi/etc does it.
So why should it be ok when Anet does it?

I can almost get how some people see this as a good thing. But if you look back at the majority of previous living world content, there is a lot of very light (and lackluster/buggy) content there. A living story chapter release on its own is, at best, a reason to log occasionally for an couple hours of content. A bit more if you want to go for achievements. But this type of content is not much reason to keep consistently and actively playing.

Sure, season 3 sounds like it’s supposed to be bigger and more polished, but even the biggest season 2 releases that came after several month content gaps were still just a one-off reason to log in, complete, then go back to other goals or ignoring the game. The only existing living content that actually gave players a reason to stick around were the Dry Top and Silverwastes releases.

On the other hand, legendary weapons do provide a more long-term goal and on-going reason to log in and play various parts of the game. And it’s not hard to see that legendary weapons are for more than a small minority of players. There are a lot of players that have them. There are probably a good bit more that don’t have them, or aren’t really interested in them. And that is likely why the majority of the studio was already working on living story content. But what is the actual impact of moving 6 people away from legendaries to join a 120-dev live game team?

The (likely) majority of players just got an extra 4% manpower working on content for “everyone”(not everyone cares about it), while all the players that do care about legendaries lost 100% of the devs working on something that matters to them. Something that they were told was part of the expansion they paid them for. It was bad enough when Anet announced that HoT was releasing with only 3 new legendary weapons, pushing the rest back as if the expansion many had already pre-ordered was some sort of season pass. Now we’re being told that something used as marketing hype to sell copies of HoT isn’t coming at all. Whether or not the majority of players care about them, a full set of legendary weapons is something Anet does, in fact, owe its paying customers.

As has been mentioned by others in this topic, Anet should get their act together and finish their first expansion before pushing so hard to get the 2nd unfinished one out the door. All of the players still waiting on HoT’s marketed features when xpac 2 goes up for pre-order might not be so thrilled to shell out money for more broken promises. I already had serious doubts about HoT before its release, and still feel that it did not come near justifying its full cost(a price I did not pay, btw). After this, there is almost no chance of me paying any price for xpac 2 unless all announced features are included at launch.

This is the type of ridiculous stunt that destroys indie devs trying to peddle half-finished games on Steam’s early access program. There is absolutely no excuse for a AAA dev with a massive publisher behind them doing this nonsense.

Whatever the cause, it’s something wrong with data in the game files locally (your game installation). No reason to worry about your account security, or anything else related to your game account.

Problems like this usually get fixed when you verify/repair your game files. You can manually force the game to check all of the game data by using the -repair command line argument detailed on the wiki.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Command_line_arguments

They have QA testers, and some pretty good people in that department that do post on here. But if I had to guess, I’d say that they don’t even see the updates before they hit live, outside of maybe checking to make sure it doesn’t make the game completely implode. Some of the bugs that make it into live are just so bad and obvious that they had to either be untested, or they somehow considered them acceptable to release anyway.

This bug has been around since release. Various updates seem to have made it occur more or less often, but I can’t recall any time where it wasn’t a problem at all.

At least with the more recent versions, it appears to sometimes be triggered by dodging immediately after a movement skill or closely chaining two movement skills. This usually ends up in a situation that be fixed by using another movement skill or /dance.

There is also another, possibly related, movement issue where the running animation and movement stop at seemingly random times. The character pose freezes and you get rooted. The pose unfreezes and normal movement works as soon as all movement keys are released/repressed. The fix is quick and simple, but as with the other bugs, it can easily cause a death in the time it takes to recognize that it’s not a legitimate root and react appropriately.

You didn’t mention how you triggered it, but this will happen any time you waypoint within the same map while under water.

I came here to make a topic about this very thing, before I spotted this one.

Three notifications is a pretty big chunk of screenspace with the font size and spacing used. It’s actually larger than a lot of dynamic event trackers. Add in the personal story (which I have no plans to complete on many characters) and daily trackers (also not really relevant when I’m not actively working on it), and something like 20% of the vertical space in that area is taken up by useless information. And that is with normal interface size at 1920×1080. It is even worse with a larger setting or lower resolution.

There is no point in telling me about Wintersday, constantly, for nearly a month. I don’t really care about pvp leagues, and even less for ESL, which is also currently plastered onto loading screens. There really needs to be an option to hide at least these special event notices. Seeing them once is enough. Let us hide/close (clickalbe ‘x’ perhaps?) them, of disabled them entirely via the options menu.

Crimson Clouds.4853:

What Wanze said in his previous posts (regarding clipping) is also very true. Outfits are far easier to make than full armour sets. My guess is that they also sell better because they’re slightly cheaper and any armour class can use them. Outfits appear as regularly as they do because they’re easier to make. You certainly can’t expect to see 3 armour skins in-game (one for each weight) in the same time you can expect to see one new outfit.

But we can expect the disparity to be far less severe. Maybe a new armor set for every 3-5 outfits. That would give us a few new sets a year, which seems pretty reasonable to me.

In 3 years, they managed to add only a couple sets that are obtainable ingame. I think it’s like 3 or 4 for the core game, and that’s being generous by including the brilliant/hellfire sets that very few, if any, have actually been able to get yet. We basically have the glorious sets from pvp, and the carapace sets from Silverwastes. I really don’t want to count luminescent, as it’s just carapace with a blue texture or shader effect over it. And it’s also only obtainable if you have LS2 unlocked, which is not free unless you were actively playing when it was released.

HoT gets us 2 new somewhat easily obtainable sets, and 2 more that are linked to guild halls and walled behind massive upgrade barriers (are these even full sets?). And at some point legendary armor will become obtainable.

Of course, during the first couple years a more reasonable selection of sets was added via the gemstore. But that was only way they were being added, which a lot of people didn’t like. Unfortunately for us, Anet’s “solution” to that was to go the greedy route and promise to keep the gemstore additions limited to outfits, and make new armor skins in-game items. They have technically kept their word, but completely ‘forgot’ to actually add armor sets to the game, in favor of simply cranking up the production rate of outfits they can sell for gems. HoT hasn’t even been out for 2 months yet, and they’ve already added more new outfits since its release than (realistically obtainable) armor sets included with it.

PyrateSilly.4710:

Blaine Tog.8304:

Ceesa.1350:

To those of you saying that precursor crafting is more expensive in terms of gold cost, you’re doing it wrong.

The cost to craft a deldrimor ingot is about 4 gold. Yes, I know it’s time gated, but I’m only talking monetary cost right now. If you take your time and actually do the crafting part yourself instead of just buying all of the materials off the TP, you save a ton of money.

You clearly haven’t read the thread. Yes, we know crafting the mats is cheaper than buying them off the TP. That isn’t the issue. The issue is that you could’ve crafted the mats, then sold them on the TP, bought a precursor with the proceeds, and ended up with more gold than if you’d crafted the thing.

This has been mentioned repeatedly.

Sooooooooo

You are complaining about how I (and others) choose to do a legendary? That we are not doing it the way you feel is best? Too bad. I will do the legendary how I feel like. If I want to craft everything without selling all my mats and just buying the precursor then I will do that and you can’t do anything about it. I am over 18 and I will do it how I want.

Of course we’re all free to obtain them in any way we see fit. But it’s not a matter of someone feeling that one way is best. It’s matter of (at least with some precursors) buying them having a serious advantage over crafting. No matter how you obtain the materials for crafting, the fact is that you are inputting x amount of gold (via mats) into crafting. If x value exceeds the price of the precursor on the TP, then you’re just throwing away money/time/effort.

I do actually like some of the scavenger hunts. They can be more interesting than just throwing gold at it. But the crafting aspect of the ‘journey’ makes the rest of it a waste. There isn’t really any reason to do it, other than simply going through the effort to be able to say “I did this”.

Ceesa.1350:

To those of you saying that precursor crafting is more expensive in terms of gold cost, you’re doing it wrong.

The cost to craft a deldrimor ingot is about 4 gold. Yes, I know it’s time gated, but I’m only talking monetary cost right now. If you take your time and actually do the crafting part yourself instead of just buying all of the materials off the TP, you save a ton of money. It’s not hard to get the mats for an ingot either. I found that 30 min/day of hitting all of the rich iron and plat nodes got me more than enough ore to craft an ingot per day, plus enough to stockpile and send to my wife so she could craft one a day for me as well. Then I send the excess ore that I still had leftover to guildies who generously crafted me a few ingots, and this was enough so that last week I was able to finally get Sunrise.

In total I think I spent about 300 g, and that’s only because I got impatient and started buying iron and plat ore directly from the TP instead of mining it. I never bought a single deldrimor ingot.

I also found the scavenger hunt fun, as it took me places I hadn’t visited in a long time. So complain about it if you want, but for many people precursor crafting is a fun and worthwhile experience and, for me at least, a much cheaper way of getting a precursor.

Or you could wait through the timegates, make your ingots, sell them, buy the precursor off the TP, and probably still have some extra money. Doing all the gathering and ingot crafting isn’t really saving any money. It’s using up more time, in addition to costing the same amount of money. Every ingot you use is the same as spending its current TP value.

In considering making Meteorlogicus, I took a look at Storm’s collection and found that I’d need close to the same value in ascended mats to craft it versus buying. No matter how I went about it, I was going to be out 400-ish gold. Even if I gathered all the mats myself, and waited out the timegates, that is still 400g worth of mats I could sell. Plus all the time spent doing that, which could have been used for something more productive.

They’re adding outfits because they can sell them in the gemstore for $9 each, or stuff them into a forced bundle with unwanted junk for $25. Anet stated a while ago that they wouldn’t be putting any more armor sets/skins in the gemstore, so this is what we get. It lets them keep their word, while being greedy at the same time.

Yeah, Anet is a company and companies exist to make profit. But there needs to be some sense of balance between the profiteering and giving some value and appreciation to customers. kitten expansion added a month or two worth of new armor sets and weapon skins. In fact, I think we’ve already seen more skins added via the gemstore (counting BL weapons, because they are gemstore skins) since HoT’s release, than the expansion itself added.

Gav.1425:

I don’t see all the fuss.

It was public knowledge that DnT had tester status, but you’d also make some noise if you were on the team that cleared it on live too. I don’t think they’re honestly claiming a legit world first, but I don’t care to search out and read every post by every member like some of you.

You’re right that they weren’t trying to claim a legit first, but only people aware that they were involved in testing would even guess or assume that. One post on reddit did forfeit the claim to an official first, but that post was quickly deleted. Everything else made it appear as if a well-known multi-game guild had finished a brand new raid only minutes after it was released. The other comments further supported that idea, and made it sound like the raid was very easy and not the challenge it was supposed to be.

I don’t frequent this section of the forum, and I had no idea that Anet had announced DnT as part of their raid testing last month. The first thing I saw regarding DnT and the raid was a truncated Google Now page suggestion for the reddit post that only mentioned that the raid boss was killed, and that they weren’t claiming an “official world first”. The post had already been removed at that time, and I had no indication of why that first wasn’t being claimed. My first thought was that there was simply no way to track it officially, and that others most likely completed it around the same time since it was “easy”. My impression of the raid was that Anet had failed and released something that was already proving to be easily farmed.

That initial impression is one that I’m sure others shared, and likely continued accepting as an honest and accurate depiction of the raid. And that is why those comments are so damaging, and such a big deal.

Zenith.7301:

Well, in 20 hours of practice Snow Crow beat Wing 1, so I don’t get how somehow that isn’t taken as a damaging statement to the reputation of raids considering that to clear a raid in any other MMO it has taken weeks to months.

Probably because they didn’t claim to have done it in 15 minutes, completely leaving out all the practice and failed runs before that. And DnT’s comments were far more negative than simply “we beat this in 15 minutes”.

I still think penalizing and shaming an entire guild full of members for the lack of tact of a single guy and his tweets was beyond overkill.

That single guy is the leader of the guild, and there were still other people posting things on the main guild twitter account and website. It’s not just a couple errant members making comments that shouldn’t be taken as representative of the guild. This crap was coming from the leadership.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Unless you have personally signed Anet’s NDA then you can’t really comment.

…especially if you have, you can’t really comment.

I wasn’t going to validate this whole strawman tangent with a response…
But setting up your point so that countering it involves disclosing your access to a non-disclosure document is a self-defeating logic that’s probably good to highlight, just to make sure folks are properly warned to mind the First Rule of Fight Club when it comes to NDAs.

I’m guessing that was probably unintentional, but that ended up as kind of a mean tactic.

That would depend on whether or not the NDA includes its own content under its restrictions. But that is something often included in an NDA.

In any case, I doubt the NDA DnT was under prevented them putting an “our guild. tested this for a month” disclaimer on their posts. Given the fact that their involvement was publicly announced, I’d guess the NDA likely just restricted them from sharing information on the raid content itself or which specific individuals were participating. It’s pretty clear that there was no excuse for DnT’s announcement of their “accomplishment” to not include a disclaimer stating that the guild had been invited to test the raid. NDAs I’ve seen have often explicitly excluded information that is already made public. And that is definitely public information.

I think Nike’s original (and soon after, deleted) reddit post even mentioned the guild’s involvement. So I don’t see how the same person/group can later claim that they couldn’t disclose that involvement. His/their bragging was an intentional cry for attention, and not disclosing their previous access was their own decision to facilitate that goal.

timmyf.1490:

If negative comments about ArenaNet or their content get you kicked from partner programs/raid testing/whatever, I think there’s a long list of people who apparently got exceptions (and continue to get them regularly). And if being salty, offensive, or childish gets you kicked, I can think of a handful of streamers ArenaNet regularly promotes who deserve the boot.

DnT wasn’t removed because it was negative or childish, even though their comments were both. They were removed because the posts were completely lacking context and were very misrepresenting of the raid’s content.

Jockum.1385:

There are professional ways to deal with it. For example make clear that they were in the beta. Invite the first “non beta team” to an interview or give them a prize. You could still kick DnT out of the beta, but its stupid to do it in public. It will give other people the impression of a company where public humilation is still an accepted punishment.

The only ones publicly humiliating DnT are DnT’s own members. Their involvement in the beta was publicly announced by Anet, and then further acknowledged by Nike in the deleted reddit “first kill” post. The same person posting out-of-context “#firsts” on twitter. They went about with this bragging and drawing attention to themselves knowing that they were being dishonest in their claims, and that many in the community were aware of their involvement in testing.

They were, as they deserved to be, quickly called out on their “#first” claims by other players before Anet made any statement on the matter. Their official post in this thread is nothing but a denouncement/disassociation of DnT, due to their inappropriate and immature behavior. The community backlash and ridicule DnT is receiving now is a product of their own actions, not the result of Anet’s statement. This same discussion would exist without Anet making any comments on it.

Dahkeus.8243:

They’re certainly not the only people in the game that can theory craft pure dps builds, even if they’re the ones most well known for doing it.

They just go through the extra trouble/effort to attach DPS numbers to it, and post guides explaining it. The builds themselves are largely common sense and being able to read/comprehend how traits work. It’s usually not too difficult to see which traits are going to give you the highest damage boost. I ended up with at least a couple of the same new builds they posted, before they ever posted them. And that’s without having any beta weekend access to new specs, as well as not buying the expansion until 4-5 days after release.

If this situation ends up hurting their reputation enough that people want to find other sources for builds/guides, there are plenty of others able to step up and replace them. In my opinion, this should happen as DnT have shown that they have no respect for this game or community, and deserve no respect or attention.

Jockum.1385:

AlphaWolf.2709:

I don’t understand why Anet is being blamed here.

You don’t fire someone in front of everybody else. That’s just unprofessional.

You do when they have made public comments that could be damaging to your company, sales, reputation, and community.

Had DnT kept quiet about their rapid completion and profiting due to having early test access, this would have been an internal issue resolved by silently removing the guild from testing. However, DnT decided to make their actions public which demanded that Anet react to it in the same public manner.

Zenith.7301:

Zanshin.5379:

Not only did they clear it first thanks to their weeks of testing and bragged about it on their website/twitter/reddit but they also took advantage of it by being able to sell the specific loot from the raid first, therefore setting their own price.

What a bunch of doochebags.

What a ridiculous post.

So, if they put in the effort to clear something, they should just let the items rot in their inventories out of “fairness”?

That is precisely what any guild that respects themselves, the game, the devs, and the community would have done. Either hold off on completing the content until a few other guilds/groups have done it, or least delay selling their rewards until that time.

Taking advantage of early knowledge in order to profit in the live game is akin to insider trading in the real world. If I were in Anet’s position, I would have banned the members doing that. Especially the ones taking it even farther and bragging about it, while making comments that make the raid content appear trivial.

Windsagio.1340:

People are a lot less mad at DnT than they are enjoying a case of the birds coming home to roost. You might not think that’s a terribly postiive attitude either, but you don’t get to be tastemaker any more than I do, do you?

I think this is probably true for a lot of us.

I’m not mad at DnT, but I do think it’s quite funny that they got shot down for acting like a bunch of trolly children. What they did was extremely childish, disrespectful to both Anet and the rest of the community, and potentially damaging others’ opinions of the raid.

DnT should have just quietly went about their business after testing was done and raids released. Better yet, they should have waited until some other guilds completed it before doing so themselves. Or at least refrained abusing an unfair advantage of getting the end rewards before anyone else had a chance to.

Someone mentioned earlier that some DnT members were bragging/showing off high-priced items they got from the raid. If they were taking advantage of their experience as testers to make a profit from selling those things, I think those players should be dealt with much more harshly.

Firebaall.5127:

mrstealth.6701:

In Tyu’s case, an Anet employee made a bold accusation based on automated flagging, without investigating the matter himself. While there was really cheating and/or other forbidden activity occurring on the account, he should have looked at the situation more carefully before accusing. The accusation was premature and unprofessional.

This was from a senior Anet staff member. The senior SECURITY lead did this. Not only that, but the support staff did nothing for this player. It took a massive heartfelt/desperate public appeal on reddit to even get this looked at. That’s disgusting.

There was no cheating occurring the account… The detected activity was on another player’s account entirely.

There actually was, as the offending software was active while that account was being accessed by the other person. It’s clearly stated in this reply from Anet in the very reddit topic you linked. https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3rfdmt/hello_reddit_it_is_me_tyu_again_i_had_a_post/cwpkpeg

That situation was bad, though. I’m not going to defend it as if it’s not. Appealing a wrongful ban(though Anet was well within their rights to ban this guy for two separate offenses) can have way more hoops and hurdles than it should. And there was no reason or need for the public callout/shaming. But that case is also very different than what happened with DnT. I don’t see the two instance as being very comparable.

The two unrelated, and dissimilar, incidents are not evidence of some “culture” of harassment and bullying by Anet.

Firebaall.5127:

Jack.1469:

Lost it at that part. This is too funny. You’re blowing this way out of proportion in your crusade to paint Anet as the ones in the wrong.

The tryhard is strong in this one. Keep trying.

Not a crusade at all. I’ve expressed my opinion. Gave an explicit example of recent similar behaviour to back it up as well. What more would you like?

The situations aren’t all that similar. One could even argue that the statements made against DnT are more of a denouncement/distancing measure than outright shaming. And partly a warning/example for guilds/players invited to future testing.

Painting Anet’s actions as being against players is also misleading. DnT were also acting as partners with Anet in their testing, which makes their relationship with the company closer to that of a employee. They are not ‘just players’ while acting under an officially announced partnership/arrangement with Anet. They should be held to a higher standard of conduct and be more harshly reprimanded for breaching that standard.

In Tyu’s case, an Anet employee made a bold accusation based on automated flagging, without investigating the matter himself. While there was really cheating and/or other forbidden activity occurring on the account, he should have looked at the situation more carefully before accusing. The accusation was premature and unprofessional.

What DnT did was a blatantly unprofessional, immature, and trollish misrepresentation/trivialization new game content. Anet didn’t make any accusations they weren’t sure about. DnT’s posts, tweets, comments, and pictures are there for everyone to see. We know for a fact that they were bragging about being the first, even if one of their several posts did disclose the involvement in testing and forfeit their claim to an actual world first. In fact, the very same person that posted that (somewhat) more honest claim on Reddit, posted a bragging “#first” message on Twitter. His replies following that tweet are a series of troll responses and claiming that “everyone knew DnT was testing it” made it all acceptable.

I had no idea DnT was involved in raid testing till just a few hours ago. And that was after I saw the reddit post via Google Now. A limited preview of the deleted post that only showed up to the point where he claimed it was not official world first. I had no idea, at that time, why the leader of one of the most well-known guilds was forfeiting his claim to a world first. And I was quite surprised that they had managed to finish it so quicky, given the previous beta raid access was much a smaller section of the wing and took longer.

And that is why Anet needed to make a statement and denounce DnT’s behavior. They were trusted with privileged access and chose to abuse that access for their own gain(fame and ingame rewards). A public clarification was needed to prevent their bragging and trivialization from damaging opinions of the raid, the game, and Anet.

Dovienya.6597:

Have any of the people making these complaints unlocked their fractal masteries yet? It increases amount/value of rewards you get significantly (I just got 5 gold out of a few ina row, and so did 2 others in my party) and gives you a high chance of getting keys back from the boxes.

Unfortunately, Anet decided to lock the entire mastery system into the expansion. Including the Central Tyrian Mastery lines that have nothing to do with HoT. So anyone that didn’t buy Hot, can’t access Fractal Mastery.

They took a big chunk of the rewards out, and are trying to sell them back to us.

Unloveableone.6082:

mrstealth.6701:

Unloveableone.6082:

RedBaron.6058:

I really hope ANet sorts all the issues with HoT.

I would love to try it.

But right now it seems a waste of money.

Sort it out? They don’t need to sort anything out.
There is nothing wrong with it. Play the game or don’t.
That’s your decision, not theirs.
The game is finally challenging and has some real progression going for it.
And the whiners STILL flock to the forums.

A lot seem to disagree, and see problems they think should be addressed.

I wouldn’t really call it real progression, aside from the elite specs themselves. The masteries are mostly gating, instead of progression. You gain some new exploration abilities with gliding and mushrooms, but the lore masteries are just there to slow down content consumption and make it seem like there is more to the expansion.

Even the process of unlocking the elite spec is gated behind the mastery system, or by wvw ranks and badges. The general expectation was to play though most of HoT using your new elite spec, not having to play through the majority of HoT just to get your new elite spec. Currently, it seems that fully unlocking a single elite spec takes about half as much time as it would take me to get a new character from 1-80 just playing pve. That’s a lot of time for just a spec/trait line, a new weapon, and a few new skills.

No. The vocal minority disagree. I have yet to hear a SINGLE person in game complain about it. And gating? It’s not gating. You don’t know what gating is.
Needing to play the game to progress is not gating.
I’m already on Part 4 of the story. I love it. I wish it was slower so I wouldn’t get done with it so fast.
Stop being lazy and just play the game.
You casuals have had 3 years to instant win everything. It’s time this game felt like GW again. And it does.
So PLEASE. If you don’t like it, just leave man. Because this is amazing. And the rest of the community agrees. We just don’t come to the forums to show as much as you negative nancys

I’m not saying it’s a majority or minority. The fact is that good number of people disagree with that. And you also have to consider the number of people that don’t post here, no matter how displeased they are with something. Or those that just simply leave, without saying a word.

And I’ve seen quite a few complaints in game, from just friends and guild members. You certainly do not speak for the “rest of the community”. You speak for yourself, which you absolutely have the right to do. As do those that are not happy with the expansion.

There are many popular positive changes that came about by “negative Nancys” bringing attention to them. And there were plenty of accusations of them being a vocal minority, by what turned out to be just another vocal minority calling them whiners/complainers/negative Nancys. I think the only real constant is the fact that most people are just part of the silent majority, and we’ll never actually know which opinion is really the majority.

As for gating, those lore masteries are almost nothing but gating. They allow you to pass arbitrary barriers that exist only to give the lore mastery a purpose. There isn’t any value in them being there, other than to slow down progress through the game and through other masteries that you actually want. For example, you need to stop training gliding/mushrooms and train lore masteries (whether you actually want to or not) just to progress through the story.

The gliding and mushroom masteries are gates themselves, as you cannot access certain areas without them. But they are gates that make logical sense and give you a tangible benefit. Gliding mastery gives you better gliding abilities that improve your overall experience with gliding anywhere in HoT.

Unloveableone.6082:

RedBaron.6058:

I really hope ANet sorts all the issues with HoT.

I would love to try it.

But right now it seems a waste of money.

Sort it out? They don’t need to sort anything out.
There is nothing wrong with it. Play the game or don’t.
That’s your decision, not theirs.
The game is finally challenging and has some real progression going for it.
And the whiners STILL flock to the forums.

A lot seem to disagree, and see problems they think should be addressed.

I wouldn’t really call it real progression, aside from the elite specs themselves. The masteries are mostly gating, instead of progression. You gain some new exploration abilities with gliding and mushrooms, but the lore masteries are just there to slow down content consumption and make it seem like there is more to the expansion. I think some gating should be there, but not the way it’s currently being handled. For example, the story mastery requirements might be much better if they simply required mastery level, instead of ranks in a specific mastery.

Even the process of unlocking the elite spec is gated behind the mastery system, or by wvw ranks and badges. The general expectation was to play though most of HoT using your new elite spec, not having to play through the majority of HoT just to get your new elite spec. Currently, it seems that fully unlocking a single elite spec takes about half as much time as it would take me to get a new character from 1-80 just playing pve. That’s a lot of time for just a spec/trait line, a new weapon, and a few new skills.

I’ve always criticized GW2 for having very overdone skill effects, but they really overcompensated on this change. It’s barely noticeable.

Wolfeng.3784:

I wont even bother reading the whole thread:

The personal story has level requirements.
The new story for the expansion has mastery requirements.

SAME DEAL!

Stop complaining just because you want to rush everything.

They aren’t the same thing at all, aside from the fact that they are displayed as a bar you push up by doing events/etc.

Level requirements in the PS were met by simply leveling your character. Levels are a ‘generic’ mechanic that you’re always progressing. No matter how you choose to progress your character, you’re always making the right type of progress toward accessing the next story chapter.

Mastery requirements in HoT’s story mean that you must choose to level a specific mastery in order to continue. You want to work on your gliding because you like gliding? Or your mushroom mastery to access more parts of the open world? Well, too bad, because you need to stop leveling those and work on some lore mastery in order to do the story.

With level-gating, it is impossible to play the game and not be making progress toward your next story chapter. With mastery-gating, you’re making no progress unless you select the right mastery to level, which is very likely a mastery you don’t want to level.

It would be much better if the story was gated simply by mastery level/rank, and not having a specific mastery. That would be no different than having a level-gated story. The issue lies with the fact that you must level a specific mastery in order to progress the story.

Unknown.2796:

I wanted to wait around a bit before making the final decision on purchasing HoT by just doing what I usually did which is running around in WvW, claiming & defending stuff but… “Your guild does not have all the upgrades required to claim this objective”.

Really arenanet? What are you expecting from me? spend 45 euro to buy content we already had achieved? gg.

My personal guild and as well as my smaller friends guild had access to some wvw claim buffs. So I guess that stuff is all gone now, too. I hadn’t even tried to do that yet.

That is a core mechanic of wvw, and should be accessible through the initiative HQ.

I already had all 3 at 100% on my guardian and got no rewards for any of them. I’ve not tried with other characters, which are a mix of completed and uncompleted.

MashMash.1645:

It’s basicvally raising the level cap, without having to raise the level cap.

It’s grinding to 80 in disguise – but I don’t even have the story to alleviate the boredom. I don’t have the masteries to even get that far.

All it’s missing is having to replace/upgrade your gear to match a new level cap. But they could just as easily have made masteries 10-20 new levels, and replaced the process of getting hero challenges for the elite spec with a grind to upgrade gear to level 100 stats.

They’ve already made some existing content (dungeons and fractals) largely irrelevant by nerfing the rewards, and it’s hard to claim that increasing the level cap would really be any worse than that.

Not that I think this is actually a good idea. I don’t want to see this kind of thing happen. And it would have a devastating impact on wvw. But it is somewhat comparable to HoT’s grind.

nosleepdemon.1368:

Sicarius.4639:

What Anet assumed was they could stretch what little they had out to make it look like a fully fledged Expansion. Locking and time gating a bunch of stuff to make it feel like it was more than it was.

This was my concern and why I’ve not bought the game. I’m still trying to get a grasp on how much new content there actually is. The length of time to acquire it isn’t bothersome if there’s plenty of it and it’s fun to play. I shall have to hop on and actually see the zone sizes before making the ultimate choice, $50 is not cheap afterall!

It’s the impression I’ve had for a while, and the main reason I have not bought it. After seeing guildmates complain about having difficulty finding (or getting to) events and having hero challenges that are designed as group events, I’m doubting its value even more.

I don’t mind working for something, but not when it requires doing the same events over and over just to be able to get to a hero challenge or story chapter. And the time it takes to unlock an elite spec seems to be quite long compared to character leveling, even if it were done through more varied and interesting gameplay.

If the times mentioned here are right, in the time it takes to unlock an elite spec for 2 characters, I could have a new character from 1 to 80 with all everything else unlocked. That seems just a bit over the top.

I get it, it’s an elite spec and it’s gonna take a bit longer. But half the time it takes to level a character from scratch is too much.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

mrstealth.6701:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

phys.7689:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Fractals are pretty much dead to me now. At least until Fractal Mastery is 100% completed. Even then probably still dead because I’m not at all ok with needing to spend coin to get my final rewards from Fractals.

What do you need to spend coin on to get your rewards? Do you mean tons of experience for the fractal mastery?

they give you treasure chests when you beat a fractal, but in order to open them you have to buy a key that costs 20 silver from the npc usually you get back 10.
the daily.
you can get 6 keys from dailies, but you get like 12 chests

basically, you spend gold to open chests hoping to make it back by random luck

You don’t have to open them up. You can just sell the boxes on the TP and vendor the keys.

Sadly, that seems like it might be the best option. But that also means throwing out your chance to get fractal skins or ascended ring drops.

Wait, that’s how you get the fractal skins and ascended rings? How about the ascended armor/weapons?

If the info here is correct, then yes.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Dungeons-and-Fractals-Nerfed-to-Death/first

I assume that ascended weapon/armor chests can still drop from any other source that drops ascended mats.

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

phys.7689:

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

TheFantasticGman.9451:

Fractals are pretty much dead to me now. At least until Fractal Mastery is 100% completed. Even then probably still dead because I’m not at all ok with needing to spend coin to get my final rewards from Fractals.

What do you need to spend coin on to get your rewards? Do you mean tons of experience for the fractal mastery?

they give you treasure chests when you beat a fractal, but in order to open them you have to buy a key that costs 20 silver from the npc usually you get back 10.
the daily.
you can get 6 keys from dailies, but you get like 12 chests

basically, you spend gold to open chests hoping to make it back by random luck

You don’t have to open them up. You can just sell the boxes on the TP and vendor the keys.

Sadly, that seems like it might be the best option. But that also means throwing out your chance to get fractal skins or ascended ring drops.

Wow, so I just saw that other topic about the encryptions (loot box) and keys. Doing 3 (different) scale 1-20 fractals gets you 1 key, but you get an encryption for every fractal.

The 2nd daily, doing 3 scale 21-50, gets you 2 more keys. And the final one, 3 of scale 51-100, gives you 3 keys.

Overall, to get 6 keys you need to do 9 fractals across the tiers of scales. And that’s assuming you’re doing doing all of the tier scales. You’re then stuck with 3 boxes you can’t open unless you pay 20 silver for a key.

If you’re only doing scales 1-20, you’re getting 1 key for every 3 boxes. And just piling up boxes with zero keys if you do more than 3 scale 1-20 fractals in a day.

Basically, it’s only “worth it” (and seems that it’s still not even that) to do 3 scale 51-100s per day. That way you get 3 boxes and 3 keys. Doing anything under scale 51 will get you more boxes than keys.

edit
Oh, and of course, you’ll get access to more dailies (and more keys) if you buy HoT and level up Fractal Mastery. Which also says it gives you better rewards, on top of that.

I was holding off on buying HoT until I knew the extend of new PVE content, as well as having some concerns about how features like this were being handled. I knew fractal mastery had the potential to drive a wall between core and HoT players, but I was hoping Anet would not go that route.

But after seeing this, how core-only guilds are being treated, and who knows what else that we’ll discover over the next few days, I’m even less likely to buy HoT. Greedy decisions like this give me doubts as to whether I’ll continue playing the game at all.

I think what Anet needs to do is just let everyone have access to Fractal Mastery, and perhaps the other non-HoT-related masteries. There isn’t really much reason to keep the central Tyrian masteries restricted to HoT owners. The name even suggests that they are core game features. On top of that, there is the fact that the precursor crafting/collection/mastery (for the original core set) was supposed to have been a free feature update back in 2013, not a selling point for a 2015 expansion.

Though right now, I think Fractal Mastery is the biggest issue with the mastery system that needs to be addressed. It’s directly impacting game rewards and players’ game experience.

phys.7689:

yeah its the same model.
usually when they go hybrid, they have some sort of legacy for people who bought the game, its like one step above f2p, but you will constantly be reminded to subscribe, and get gimpi exp/loot/etkittenil you subscribe.

thats essentially the plan now, if you dont buy the expansion you will suffer. basically if you arent buying hot, they dont mind if you quit

This stunt doesn’t make me want to buy it, so it’s certainly backfired as far as I’m concerned. It’s a good reason to not buy it.

phys.7689:

basically core is f2p now. They are deliberately saying kitten off if you dont buy the game and grind masteries.

they literally take the rewards and content from basic, and put it into expansion.

I thought mike obrien said he didnt need to force people to pay. Oh well

I wouldn’t be too bothered if free accounts had some of these sort of restrictions. I don’t really like it when games go that route with their free vs paid players, but it’s kinda hard to complain when you’re playing the game without having to spend a cent.

But we’re not free players. I bought my core game 3 years ago, and everyone else able to post here has paid for their copy of it as well. We should not have to pay again to get rewards for content that is part of the core game.

I’d rather just be prevented from doing fractal 50+ than have rewards for lower scales cut off. Without the rewards, there isn’t really a reason to be doing them anyway.

vespers.1759:

Does this also means people without HoT can’t get fractal weapons too since the vendor is walled off behind mastery?

I think they still drop as random loot. But if the vendor requires mastery, you wouldn’t be able to trade in relics for a weapon crate to pick a specific weapon.

There are some good updates in there. I do really like some of the changes made to the core game. But I had an expectation (a reasonable one, IMO) that HoT was an expansion intended to add content to the game. Not a way to sell higher rewards for existing content, and treat those not buying it as second-class players.

Having new rewards in new content is expected, and important to players. But players being rewarded differently for doing the same content, based on whether or not they buy an expansion, just feels dirty. I’d be perfectly ok with this if the mastery was for scale 50+, and those scales required the mastery (and HoT) to access. They are part of the new content, after all. But if I’m doing a fractal scale that has been part of the core game for nearly 3 years, I should have access to the same rewards as the other players in my party.

I noticed that one of my dailies in the new Fractal Dailies section was to do a scale 31 fractal. But the game kindly informs me that I’ll need to unlock the first tier of Fractal Mastery to actually get that reward. Looking at that mastery line on the wiki, I see a couple tiers of it that increase fractal rewards. This presumably effects all fractal levels, and not just the new 50+ scales added with HoT.

I knew new scales and the mastery line were coming, but I had kind of expected the mastery to be centered around the new fractal scales HoT added, not walling off rewards for those that only own the core game. Anyone that does Fractals will be getting less rewards if they don’t own HoT and have the mastery unlocked, even if they’re doing scales under 50 that have been in the game for years. This really doesn’t effect me personally, as I only rarely enter fractals with friends, but the idea of locking rewards for existing content behind the expansion paywall does bother me quite a bit.

Mosferre.1246:

@mrstealth.7601 – how much do you need? We have a small group of friends with a guild with 11k inspiration. We only set it up a week ago. Where does that leave us?

I’m not sure how many people it really takes to claim a hall. But 11k influence doesn’t mean much now. It’ll convert to a small amount of favor, but earning more favor could be a problem. I know favor comes from guild missions, but I’m not certain if there are other ways to get it or not. Unless there is a secondary way to earn it, guilds that aren’t large enough to effectively complete missions are pretty much screwed over now.