Guild Wars 2

I find such a disconnect with:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

…And…

BobbyStein.2315:

That’s not my decision to make. That stated, feedback regarding the cadence is useful and constructive to others so I think it’s good for people to tell us how they feel about the release schedule.

You think our feedback on that is necessary, but there’s no point, because it’s ultimately futile?

Lostwingman.5034:

minbariguy.7504:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Cadence of release: This is not something we plan to change in terms of timing and I wanted to make that clear from the outset.

Well, I guess that pretty much tells me everything I need to know about the future development of the game. Honestly, I still feel that whoever is in charge of this decision simply does not want to admit that it was a mistake, no matter how many times people say it. But if that is what you’re planning on sticking to… so be it.

I wish you the best of luck. It’s clear that this game is not for me. I just can’t support a game that insists on prioritizing quantity over quality. But at least now I know.

Ah well. Plenty of other games out there.

I think it is important to note that there are two parts in the “quantity” that you are referring to, this is “frequency” and “content”. Currently we are getting a relatively high frequency of fairly grindy content. Since ANet seems to recognize that LS achievements are becoming grindy we can hope for more story meaty and less grind meaty updates.
Although I am in the same boat as you in terms of being overwhelmed with grind, I think there is some hope.

Although even in saying that the frequency is high now with “grindy” content, I can only image the content will get lower as they struggle to find more ways to make it non-grindy.

Basically, you can copy X, Y and Z for ever and ever, and get a ton of stuff out, but it’ll be very same-y, but if you want to make A and B on the first fortnight, C and D the fortnight after, and E and F the fortnight after that, that will no doubt take you more time to create as it’s differentiating every 2 weeks and thus meaning you just can not create the same quantity of content.

I kinda think we’re getting into the territory of stagnation with this topic.
So much so we’re beginning to talk about Trahearne…which is personal story and not so much the LW.

A majority of people are saying the same thing, and what little the dev’s have said, hasn’t really guided the conversation to a new realm of discussion, or even more in-depth analysis from player perspective vs dev perspective.
I hope this progresses soon.

Neriandal Freit.2810:

• Scarlet Briar –
A hot topic it seems on here. I LOVE HER CHARACTER and I’m not sure why others don’t.

Others have stated why they don’t like her character…some in extensive detail. It would be good to hear a reason why you think her character is good?
(Besides from just saying “I like it”)

John.5732:

MeGaZlo.9516:

After so many problems caused by the sylvari, people shoud hate them all. Racially motivated conflicts, harassment, scuffles, deaths of innocents. The underground opposition groups… etc. Why not to develop this theme?

This is one of the most original and believable ideas I have seen here. This is the type of thinking that LW needs.

Sadly, humanity (meaning conscious humanoids) tend to have racism. It’s easier than solving problems to just blindly blame a people. And, with the newness of Sylvari, you’d think there’d be a strong racism stripe against them in the game. Furthermore, with Sylvari attacking everyone, that would only fuel this myopic view. This idea is beautiful in it’s simplicity and depth.

I’m honestly surprised that Sylvari are even so far up the food chain.
We’re told they’re essentially “the new kid on the block”.
Yet they seem to wield untold knowledge/power (First, Traherne, and now Scarlet?)

cesmode.4257:

I actually had a question about this insatiable need for a dragon-centric story from everyone. I did not play the original GW, and while I do like dragon fights because they tend to be epic in scale, why is everyone in love with them?

In a world where dragons are perceived as the “ultimate threat”, I always found this extra stuff to be filler.
We don’t assume it that way. We’re kinda told that from the game’s outset.

Hey Chris, Colin and Bobby…look to other games that do episodic content. Look at how they deliver it. Do not look at another medium to try and balance it upon your own.

If you really must, take a look at a game like Defiance. That’s as close as a reference as you can get to what you’re after….and they’re not doing so hot right now.

ColinJohanson.2394:

So a fun question to ask to help direct the conversation a bit: What aspects of your favorite television shows would you think would be cool to see reflected in a game medium?

To a large degree, the things we want to accomplish with living world overlap in a lot of ways with what a television series does. Or another example of our goals: if you bought your favorite RPG and the story was constantly expanded or continued, for free on a regular basis.

I’m not saying we’re doing all of these things above, those are simply the goals we have to help make Gw2 unique and something innovative in the genre through a dynamic living world we envisioned 7 odd years ago.

I personally think we have a lot of work to do to get to the point we’re succeeding on these goals, but with every step along the way we’re learning an incredible amount. Some fantastic ideas and comments in this thread, and many of them match our own feelings on living world and what would make it successful as well. Many of these ideas are things you’ve all been suggesting for months (or longer) and will be reflected in future releases. Remember what you see today we started work on 4-5 months ago (or longer), so the lag time to adjust to feedback and what we learned isn’t going to be instant, it’ll come in waves of evolutions with each round of feedback and discussion.

Q: Is there any thought at all that this method of intended delivery may not work for this MMO?

I’m curious though. If it doesn’t work, then are you still going to trying to force it because that’s your desired path?

Halvorn.9831:

There is a very general problem.

You cannot have content that creates an evolving world on the one hand and make it stay forever on the other hand. It’s a contradiction. If you defeat the dredge and flame legion, that invasion is no longer there and it makes no sense to still have its dungeons around. Either evolution or persistence. You cannot have both.

I choose evolution. It means, I cannot repeat old content and it will be forever lost and only in my memory or in the history books. That’s the price to pay for an evolving world.

So, you favour removing mobs from the game too relative to their progression in the LW?

Dredge and Flame paired up…were defeated…surely they should be limited in numbers or completely removed as a means of the defeat being a part of the “evolution”. Or restrict the zones which they patrol at the very least.

It always feels like it’s just these fast turnover events, with no ties with anything. Where we’re not “compelled” to help/defeat these random new characters that pop up unknown to most of us who are not knee-deep in lore. Involving races in tyria that seem to have amnesia as soon as the LW timeframe ends, like nothing ever happened? Why isn’t queensdale on super high alert!? why are the dredge not being under close watch by norn, and the flame legion being chased around their zone by other warbands?,

And then here us champions come…sword in hand. Ready to fight the good fight and….

….get achievements…because that’s going to save tyria…how?

I just find I’m at a loss at why I should care. I’m rarely, if ever shown why. Sure you guys say I should care about this…but you shouldn’t be telling me…you should be showing me.

Edited title to better suit what I really meant
Simply put:

Considering that the game is continually getting cheaper/multiple sales, etc. Shouldn’t the Gem rates adapt to this?

Currently if you’re wanting to buy 5 more char slots…it’s cheaper to do so by means of buying a new copy of the game, rather than spend significantly more for more slots.
Sure, the devs are making things more alt-friendly, but it’s few and far between – and i’m not sure the convenience factor of ‘everything on one account’ will hold much when the prices gap will continually increase.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I should mention…i like making new chars….and I’m not a hardcore player, or one that has gold pouring out of every hole in my body to pay for the costs of gem conversion, however, i do have RL money, but not enough to make it worth anything in game

etienne.1039:

Please stop the champ trains. I want to kill whenever whatever.

That’s assuming you can even kill some of these champs on your own.

Scarily enough, there are “Story mode, LVL80 ONLY!”

That….that blows my mind.

And devs wonder why people rarely use racial hubs.

Khisanth.2948:

nethykins.7986:

IIRC one traits (i know my mesmer has something in the traitlines) states reduced cooldown time on staffs AND poles (or polearms).

That is staff and trident.

Well colour me pink. You’re right.

IIRC one traits (i know my mesmer has something in the traitlines) states reduced cooldown time on staffs AND poles (or polearms).

PVE:
1. Condi cap – Why you guys said working on a solution for making condi’s more powerful, (ie: stack increase) was expensive, then just throwing a new condi in anyway?
2. (in relation to Q1) The dps/dps/dps meta…This I guess can be summed up as “balance”.
3. Lack of dungeon revamps.

Try using Sandboxie

My only comment is…that you’ll probably still get blues from mobs.

This is currently all theory, yes?

Vayne.8563:

…People aren’t game designers. They know what they think they want, without considering the ramifications of what they’re asking for.

And Game Designers aren’t psychics that think they know the ramifications of what they’re adding without that player feedback. The one thing they should know is that if you give players something, they will not always complete it to the timeframe you expect (see: rush to push in ascended) or in the fashion you expect (see: dungeon exploits)

….And now we have champion trains and Scarlet invasions and people running around in mindless circles farming the same champions. Doesn’t sound to me like the game I bought.

The thing is, the game you brought, probably wasn’t the same game that was marketed to you either. Even what was marketed to you/sold to you, and what the game is now is not the same. There’s a general disconnect. (And I’m not talking about “promises” here either…just plain, “We will do this, and try and make this. We’re not just another MMO” then logging in, and finding it’s not like that)
This is what confuses me about your post.
You dislike where the game has gone, but don’t think feedback is helpful….but you’d surely have to give feedback to get it to be “the game you bought”, but that wouldn’t be helpful….

Bit of a catch 22 there.

Anet isn’t obligated to do everything fans want (assuming fans can even agree). And fan feedback isn’t necessarily going to be the way to go.

I don’t think anyone’s saying that. We’re asking for this communication that they so happily pride themselves on. The more we see it, the more we feel that our comments and legitimate issues (yes! there actually are legitimate bits of feedback like the illusive 3rd health on necro’s downed state, or Ranger’s pets not moving at the patched “33% faster speed”) are taken seriously.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

nethykins.7986:

2996kittenris Whiteside.6102:

nethykins.7986:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

But what constitutes as “Immersion”?

…you guys had said you didn’t want to do things like fight with town clothes because it “broke immersion”, but, like…can we say that the LFG tool breaks immersion? Not too sure we can if you were keen to add it

Good point. So for me immersion breaking would be a pop up appearing after an event completes or following beating a dungeon. But you raise an interesting point with LFG. Perhaps (and i am just brainstorming here) it could be a tab that you can open up to give feedback.

I will think about it some more. Keep the ideas coming.

Chris

Pssst!!! You might want to tell some of the devs to stop breaking immersion. Every time we get a daily chest, kill a dragon/major boss once a day, finish a dungeon….

Also! before i forget. Thanks…for just being here…now…doing this. Really. It helps a ton.

No worries thanks for being so collaborative with the discussion.By the way i have to disagree though. I personally feel that a poll is less immersive then the bouncy chest. Mainly because the chest is still in the theme of the game world and more connected to the gamestate. Where as the Poll is more abstract in terms of goal and gamestate.

This said we are having a discussion and i am just giving my opinion.

Chris

I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.
(Specifically, I’m Talking more about this)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

nethykins.7986:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

But what constitutes as “Immersion”?

…you guys had said you didn’t want to do things like fight with town clothes because it “broke immersion”, but, like…can we say that the LFG tool breaks immersion? Not too sure we can if you were keen to add it

Good point. So for me immersion breaking would be a pop up appearing after an event completes or following beating a dungeon. But you raise an interesting point with LFG. Perhaps (and i am just brainstorming here) it could be a tab that you can open up to give feedback.

I will think about it some more. Keep the ideas coming.

Chris

Pssst!!! You might want to tell some of the devs to stop breaking immersion. Every time we get a daily chest, kill a dragon/major boss once a day, finish a dungeon….

Also! before i forget. Thanks…for just being here…now…doing this. Really. It helps a ton.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

minbariguy.7504:

I want to echo the people who have recently been requesting in-game polls. Since currently there has been no real acknowledgement or response to player dissatisfaction with the pace of Living Story releases, I have chosen to simply not log in at all to avoid being counted as a “satisfied customer” in your concurrency metrics.

An in-game poll where I would have the chance to have my opinions actually be counted would be something worth logging in for.

I think this is an idea worth discussion for sure. But i have a question:

Would in game polls affect the immersion for the player?

Chris

But what constitutes as “Immersion”?

…you guys had said you didn’t want to do things like fight with town clothes because it “broke immersion”, but, like…can we say that the LFG tool breaks immersion? Not too sure we can if you were keen to add it

in relation to the “what do you want to see” threads…I’m hoping that you will actually have most threads that highlight key aspects of the game that need some fixing, instead of just having a spam-fest of ideas.

For example, Instead of :
“what do you want to see in WvW?” how about “What method would you use to curb buffs”

Or instead of

“what do you want to do about PvE?” how about asking “What is most pressing. Condi stacks? Lack of gear variety? or Enemy skills vs player skills?”

Not saying everything should be relegated to significant areas, but it’d help to at least get somewhere.

On a side note, – As I’d said previously, I’d be nice if we could get the players from in-game participating too, and not just the forums.

darkace.8925:

Parisalchuk.9230:

Yet petitions and polls arent allowed – so how exactly do you expect any feedback if not for forum discussion?

I’ll say it again, the primary feedback with which ArenaNet concerns itself is daily log-ins and cash shop revenue.

Faceless metric feedback ftw!

On a serious note:
I’d really like to see a dev chime in on this thread, sooner rather than later. Probably the most relevant thread to reply to or comment on, and we’ve not heard anything. CC guys and community managers may as well chime in too since they could be considered as part of the “problem” of lack of communication between devs and players.

Come on guys…this is your one moment to get involved. Don’t leave it until this thread gets to page 32, where I fear, you’ll give a one sentence reply.

Jordo.5913:

you guys have got to communicate back!

this is the worst game forum for having devs interacting with the players…..i think the best is marvel heroes albeit a different game but i think they have 3 informed people posting daily around 25-30 times each

but seriously, it is a two way street…..we give you feedback and we don’t know if your hearing it because you don’t make a simple post saying if you’ve heard it or not…so we get countless threads about the same kitten problem to make sure you hear it

i know you devs are busy making content for the game to hit your every 2 week deadline…but with the gem shop raking in tons of dough(apparently) hire 2-3 people who sit in on meetings and their only job is to reply on the forums

Again, I’ll reiterate..They have those people…but they’re closer to being forum moderators and twitter/facebook posters (actual jobs in our current day and age) than communicating with the community and relay information back and forth.

I’ll just…leave this here:

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

nethykins.7986:

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

-snip-

I couldn’t agree more. In fact I suggested the exact same thing over a year ago, and it was largely ignored.

I know a few will take issue with the “mandatory” part, and I am torn. On one hand, it makes sense to “persuade” players to give feedback, but on the other I’m not sure if that would result in the best feedback if someone is forced to do it before they can play.

I think the best solution is to include a survey on the character select screen that allows users the option to fill it out.

I have to say, I can not take credit for what I posted, because, even without searching the forums, out of the thousands of players that play, and those that frequent the forum, I’m quite sure this would have popped up more than once over the lifetime of the game.

The mandatory part is what I see as a kind of safety net for ANet. Players can’t say that people were never given the opportunity to fill in the form, or that they accidentally closed it and couldn’t get it back, or that anyone was able to opt out and thus leaving their opinion as unaccounted. As well as the whole ethos of “no player’s opinion is unaccounted for, or unworthy of reading”. It’s definitely a positive way of looking at things, even if the mandatory thing is a little heavy handed.

The problem I have with things like having it in the player select screen, if it’s hidden away, is that No-one will see it.
Case in point: ANet seemed to kick up a fuss about new/revamped DE’s not getting any feedback, though this happened while they were giving a large fanfare to the LS. Because no-one even knew these were improved, revamped or changed, no-one knew where to look or what feedback to give, and that in turn got some dev talking about this being how we don’t give feedback on stuff actually changed in game.

If it’s not mandatory, it’d need to have to be in bight lights, highly visible, and visible to even the newest player what it is, and what the questionnaire means in the long run.

DanH.5879:

i think what the community needs are some “representatives”
and those to talk with the anet devs

maybe this will improve the communication ?

Those representatives exist. They’re called Community managers/Community Coordinators etc.

If they’re not actively keeping in contact with the community – and I mean outside of the silly Facebook and twitter statuses that are very one sided (they post, we read) – then they’re not fulfilling their role completely. They’re no longer being the line of communication between player and devs, and instead being a mouthpiece/megaphone for GW2 advertisement where ‘Retweets’ and ‘Follows’ are their main goal.

If Chris finds the forums quite contradictory/not helpful for a lot of elements in relation to feedback, perhaps a post those very forums was a bit of a backwards move?

Perhaps this could have been better focused as a blog post, stating that, due to the result of not getting enough “constructive feedback” from forums, and it being a select number of players that visit the forums, that they’ll put an in-game survey up.

I think you’d get a lot better/refined results from the playerbase as a whole (and not just forum posters) if you put a questionnaire up In Game(I can not emphasise those words more), with the questions that you specifically want feedback on, or you find are the hot-topics currently being discussed. One questionnaire per account, that would pop up once for everyone, and is mandatory before continuing to play.

There you go. Two birds. One stone….well more like multiple birds, and one stone
– It’s the wider response of players instead of just a select number in the forums.
– You get to pinpoint the topics of discussion that hold the most weight instead of trawling through feedback that isn’t helpful and pinpoint the area with the most disapproval.
– You completely avoid the unhelpful criticism, for hard data about what’s good/bad. (and if you give people a small text box to comment issues when they disagree then you funnel ideas into that. It keeps it cleaner)

Also, how can you be reading all our feedback if mods can change what we say, whenever and to whatever?

Kuzzi.2198:

@Chris Whiteside

As an active player and forum reader/contributor since Beta, I have definitely noticed the many improvements to the game that originated from the community and ended up being implemented. I respect Anet for seriously taking player suggestions and shaping their game in the direction that the community wants to see it go.

However, I think the turn-around time from when suggestions are made to when they are released (if they are released) is something that needs serious improvement. A couple examples that come to mind are Edit Guild Message of the Day and Targeting without a party. Both are great quality of life improvements and I’m very glad that they are now part of the game, but I’m disappointed that it took over a year for them to be implemented even though they were constantly being suggested since day 1.

There are still many similar things for which the community has asked over and over, but have not even received an official response. Two which are in my opinion most important and most frequently suggested are Guild Features and TP Search Options. I feel that after one year, Anet has no excuse for not at the very least addressing these issues. Is that something we can ask for right now?

As for continual improvements, I think a good way to get a feel for what the community really wants is to monitor Reddit, as quality of life game improvement suggestions usually surface to the front page every couple days. Seeing a greater percentage of them come to life would really solidify this Dev-Community bond that you are describing.

While they’re at it, it’d be awesome if those people who contributed got a little shout out (not everyone, but ya know…highlighting the MAIN reddit post that caused the shift or gave the most valuable feedback) and saying “This -Link- was asked of us XX months ago. We kept an eye on it and thought we’d share our progress”

The problem with ANet is that, the secrecy for things that we are really eager to see, is not working in their favour. They’re attempting to create suspense.

You can’t be excited for something you know nothing about.

Sungak Alkandenes.1369:

The Lost Witch.7601:

So, would it be possible to make an extra tumbs up (a star?) for the Arenanet team? To let us know what kind of feedback has been read and appreciated?

I know that responding to all the threads that come up on these forums everyday is too much to ask, but a star or other sign of approval could really make a big difference. Not only could it inspire people to write better feedback, it also gives us an incentive to write more of the good stuff if we know that our previous posts have been appreciated.

There is, occasionally, a red line under the ‘thumbs up’ symbol. It would not surprise me if that’s a notification that an ArenaNet employee hit the +1. If not, it should be.

They could just be plain, fair and simple and make an official “get satisfaction” page..where they can look at legitimate suggestions and let us know which ones will work or not. If they really read them…it’d take them all of 1 second to say “Yup, that could possibly work”..or ..“Not a chance in hell!”

I think there’s even a button on the site to let you do that.

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.

- Living story – was this really added for benifit to players or to keep server numbers up?
Colin had mentioned, the reason you’re doing this crazy 2 week cycle is because you saw player numbers drop off after about 2 weeks….not necessarily because of player feedback, not because people wanted more storytelling (because after the personal story being less about the player and more about Trahearne, it was baffling you decided to go the story route)

Up till now as well, it seems that metrics seem to trump player feedback, but that’s a pretty long argument. All I can say is…I’ve barely seen anyone say that they wanted a DR implementation.

tbh, they’re going to have to really up the stakes on what they put in an expansion to get people to buy it.

Knowing that what they consider “an expansion’s worth of content” are events, a new gear tier and the LS, they’ve got a lot to improve on.

Playing devils advocate here but, lets try:
“If you’re gonna kitten that much about the forums….stop reading them?”

If players voicing their opinions on the game bugs you, then stop reading and go play the game. You’ll probably have less to worry about if you did.

If players are constantly bringing up issues that have not yet been resolved or even hinted upon fixing, surely they can call the devs out on it? And I can imagine, after months, nothing will change, then someone else will bring it up. Hence the “constant complaining”

Sure there are a lot of people bringing up points that hold no weight…but that’s not worthy of discrediting all of them because a bunch of some unconstructive negative posts get upped. Besides, a lot of die-hard GW2 fans are quick to discredit legitimate feedback, with “entitled” being the main source of the response.

Vayne.8563:

Arkham Creed.7358:

Vayne.8563:

Percentage of players who play charr and engineers combined. My guess is less than 25%.

Percentage of players who use hair. 100%

I’m not thinking that Anet’s priorities are wrong, in spite of the fact I would welcome fixes to charr and engineers also.

Actually according to Arena Net’s only released numbers at the end of “year one” it is 23%, not accounting for possible overlap. Engineers are listed as 10%, with charr only being 13%. Hence why Arena Net has all but admitted that they feel comfortable completely ignoring us. Or at least that they can get away with deprioritizing us in favor of “wider reaching issues.” This of course creates an endless cycle of crap.

*Players don’t play certain characters because of the problems.
*Arena Net puts less time into fixing those problems because of how few people play those characters.
*So fewer players play those characters.
*So Arena Net puts less time into fixing those problems.
*So fewer people play those characters.

And so on and so forth…sooner or later the charr/engineer population will drop to zero; it is the only logical outcome. And the sad thing is Arena Net won’t even care.

I think you overestimate how many people aren’t charr for that reason. And I have and love my charr and don’t really notice the problems.

The percentage of people who think about or notice this stuff is pretty small….from personal experience.

AFAIK, the only issues with races are:
A) An aesthetic thing
B) Racial skill

People will always side with what there’s more of. I think you underestimate human psychology.

For example: If for every 1 coin I put on the left. I’ll put 100 on the right. Do you really think anyone thinks that 5 coins on the left is more appealing than 500 on the right?

Really?

Surely If you have to be coerced into playing a game you never liked in the beginning, you already answered your question?

If you find the first 2 weeks worth boring, not fun, and nothing like GW1, then a whole 80 levels of the same thing is most likely your nightmare.

There are few skills that are interrupts that aren’t knockbacks. Perhaps they’re trying to interrupt a champion attack (after all the stacks of defiant have died), and the only one they have available at that time is, or at all is….

…A knockback skill…

I’d like to see more interrupt skills that don’t require a KB solution.

Meili Ying.3820:

Search function is not working

So after looting Devona’s Leggings, it got me to thinking…

All the armor pieces that are named after GW1 heroes should resemble the armor that these heroes wore (except for maybe Brutus, Yakkington, Zhed, etc). Being a generic skin doesn’t really add to the heroism factor much. Sure, it may be difficult to design them for all races, but we have Heritage armor, so its clear that bringing back some old GW1 skins/art concepts is a possibility.

I think this can be placed in the same category as “Better charr armour”. Not enough attention is being put on it from the dev side because the assumption is that not enough (statistical) attention has been coming from the player’s side.

I unfortunately couldn’t be at the expo, and I would have probably gone into this talk, but ultimately every Q+A answer was pretty much followed by “It’s something that we’re talking about” and about this enormous metaphorical table that every suggestion seems to hinge upon.

It’s a shame that when you finally get to ask them legitimate questions about your experience/friends experiences/guildies experiences in game, you’re met with such ambiguity. Maybe after the strange Q+A answer of “No Charr armours are made because no-one plays Charr”, they’ve just decided to play it super safe under the radar for any future interviews and Q+A’s.

Firm…… But fair.

@vayne
A whole lot is subjective. A whole lot may be casual language but casual language often caters to subjective phrases.
Here – this may help you get it… I hope:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_subjective_symptoms

While you say it doesn’t mean most of, it implies it. If it’s not your intention to imply a majority, then the comment becomes pointless.

I thought it was quite clear that gehenna referred to himself/herself when commenting on the content. I could not see dismissal, only preference. Gehenna even says it works for some and not for others. Not sure where that dismissal part is coming from.

@Vayne:

I don’t think the op states that the game is bad. Hell, he/she even states “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing” when talking about dailies. It’s more about the excessive application on time-gates as a shallow method for longevity.

I understand you play for fun, and not for loot, but the majority are playing for loot — Yes, the majority. This game has loot. A ton of it. And they’re continually adding more. If the majority was in favour of no loot, just ‘fun times’, this would be a completely different game-- and that’s where the “it’s not for you” comment, i feel, is a little out of place.

You’re both playing the same game, just in different ways. Isn’t that what GW2 was supposed to be about? Playing the way you want? I don’t think anyone really can say “this game isn’t for you”…because that person isn’t aligned to your way of gaming. Only the individual person can decide that with themselves, and they often do by simply not playing any more. But, surely Anet should be trying to tell people “Hey, you like loot? come over here, we’ve got lots, and it’s not restricted or a chore to get them”. It only makes those loot-addicts happy, while this doesn’t matter to those who play for fun…that’s just an added perk.

Galtrix.7369:

Thanks for coming to my defense. I appreciate it. I was going to go into more detail, but I was in a hurry and only had time to post a crude message that I could only give the basics about.

I just felt compelled to tell someone (who obviously didn’t look at any data and did not want to) you can’t really say “He said 3m, so it’s fact” if there’s no data available to confirm that. Otherwise it’s amounting to as much use for fact-checking as hear-say.

I had a little time on my hands today. When I heard the news, it sounded odd, so I actually went through the earnings call briefly for Q4, when they’d first announced they’d got 3m sales. Yet, I couldn’t find that information in there (sales for GW2 was lumped up and only accounted to 130k so I’m figuring that was perhaps more likely gemstore stuff??? i dunno) and all other sources lead back to Colin’s quote. I checked the company that even did the data collection, but you can’t see any data unless you pay $3500, and all other sources like VGcharts are also unreliable…so ya know…some people just don’t want to question stuff

Jrunyon.3012:

nethykins.7986:

Before you begin to lose your temper on someone in a forum, check if you can find official numbers besides Collin’s 3m statement. Check if you can find any data that shows sales of GW2 outside of microtransactions. Check if you can even access the data from the source and you’ll find it’s hidden behind a ~$3.5k paywall

I’m not losing my temper, I’m just worried about his health.

Meh, I have no use for that data. As long as I can log in and play with my friends/random people then I am happy. What do I care if it’s making more money from microtransactions then box sales or that 3m people play the game. I don’t, I’ll leave that to the shareholders.

The fact is, whether you believe it or not, data has been released to us. We are not entitled to that kind of data as normal players but they have saw fit to give it to us.

Of course, by all means, have fun. No-ones stopping you. (I do mean that sincerely) Just, people like myself would like to know the facts that lie behind all these figures that are repeatedly announced by ANet, but never shown. I can’t help it. I’m curious.

Not too sure much data relevant to sales numbers has been released. If i say x and y happened, does that mean it’s data? It’s just making a comment with no real fact to back that up. I welcome all data, and I’d be happy to be shut up if some comes through proving me wrong. We may not be entitled to it, but then why even bother giving us a number at all?

Jrunyon.3012:

Galtrix.7369:

But Anet refuses to give us the numbers repeatedly. Why is that? Think hard. Why would they refuse to give us the number of players playing atm? Are they embarrassed? That’s what my theory is. The number of people on my server took a fall off a cliff a few weeks ago and the only people I see play on patch days for 5 minutes and then the log off.

You are absolutely ridiculous Galtrix. Seriously, why are you here? Just tell me, are you like 10 years old or something? Why do you come here and kitten and moan that you don’t like this game all the time. Just stop.

You are so blinded by negativity that you come up with these false statements to try and make yourself believe that this game is dying when in truth it really isn’t. It simply isn’t. I see more people on now than I did months ago.

Stop coming here and surrounding yourself with negativity. It’s really not healthy. And that goes for Nuka Cola as well.

Technically, his point is correct. In PR terms anyway.

You don’t disclose anything that will make your product seem inferior or not a big hit (considering there was a ton of hype for GW2…and there still kinda is). Often, when you hear of great successes, you get an elaborate number, often those numbers are backed up over a period of time, through earnings calls, through analytical data-gathering and collection companies.

Before you begin to lose your temper on someone in a forum, check if you can find official numbers besides Collin’s 3m statement. Check if you can find any data that shows sales of GW2 outside of microtransactions. Check if you can even access the data from the source and you’ll find it’s hidden behind a ~$3.5k paywall

lordkrall.7241:

Actually I don’t think ANY MMO gives actual numbers of players. So I suppose every single MMO every released is embarrassed then?

And funnily enough they HAVE given numbers. Just a few weeks back they stated a number of 2,5 million active accounts each week.

While I agree that sometimes you don’t get numbers from all MMO’s. But hey, if you flaunt it, you better be able to prove it…right?

And again, a member of ANet coming out and saying x numbers are active could be a number pulled from the air of PR. I could say my youtube account has x number of hits per day…but if my stats are hidden/private on my youtube page, you’d be a little skeptical, wouldn’t you?

It’s a technical limitation for more stacks….

….So they made a new condi instead.
I still don’t get that.

Honestly, the only race that serve as a real accomplishment of modeling are the Sylvari. Second being Charr then Asura, but those two races can be easily seen as “limited” in variation.

Norn are just scaled up humans.
Charr are cool, but many are often similar looking.
Asura are cool, but they too are often very similar looking.

The Sylvari are good, but overall everyone is too pretty. Try and make an ugly character, it’s very, very hard. Modeling should cover a wide scope of looks.

Vayne.8563:

nethykins.7986:

Vayne.8563:

Vetrie.7804:

Here is my opinion.

If there is temporary content every 2 weeks, how much endgame will this game have?
If you can play every countent for few days/weeks and than its over that means you only get +1 endgame thing to do every 2 weeks. And if you miss like 3 living stories. AGAIN you have only 1 living story you can do, instead of having all 4 and endgame content is much higher now… I am afraid that Anet wants players to spend real money to get things.

I startted playing again few days ago and getting bored fast. No new content at all. I missed 2 living stories, cant do them now. Really whats the point of doing temorary content and than delete it.

Overall game was awesome in leveling stage. But I think this game has worst endgame than MMO can have.

So please Anet, if you really care about players ( like you always say ) make some major changes to endgame.

And I think this game has the best end game a game can have, which is none to speak of.

What is this burning need for an end game that so many people seem to have. What was the end game of Skyrim? Dragon Age? There wasn’t one.

RPGs don’t really need end games. It’s what MMOs have sold us so far.

End games are very much MMOs but not very much RPGs.

You could have at least used some relevant examples. Stating 2 SINGLE PLAYER rpgs against an mmorpg does not work.

The endgame for singleplayer games usually do not exist for many reasons. One is, those two examples have mod support. The end game is pretty much modding your game and replaying a whole new experience. Not just re rolling a new class or race.

If you really want to compare those 2, you’ve got less flexibility in an endgame with gw2.
we all know mmos are a different beast and can not use the exact same methods as a single player game.

I can compare them. I think you might be very surprised how many single player RPG people like the idea of MMOs but hate MMOs, specifically because of the traditional end game.

And yeah, I’m not a program designer. I’m a writer. I can give you a hell of a story but I couldn’t necessarily say how to make a game better. But I can say what I like and what I’ve been waiting for.

It’s not quite this. But this is closer than anything else out there.

You’re free to compare whatever you want, just make them relative to each other. Mainly because we rarely ever compare singleplayer games against mmos. Just because it has ‘rpg’ in there. Like i said, they’re two different beasts.

The whole idea behind endgame is retention, is it not?
Mainly for the benefit of devs to keep numbers consistently up but it gives players a reason to consistently play.

Surely is people ask for better endgame they just want a rewarding reason to log in after hitting 80. The assumption people make is that real, meaningful, endgame content will just cause the game to spontaneously combust.