(edited by nightwulf.1986)
They’ve given us a new exchange that is likely to leave customers with leftover gems after a purchase. Folks with leftovers have an incentive to buy more gems and make more purchases. Which leave them with more leftovers…
This isn’t rocket science. Cash for gems already works this way.
Rather than being upfront about it, we’re told this is to help new players. New players with 75 gold?
Swindling is taking money from someone through lies or trickery. Okay, a bit harsh for what’s happening here, but not too far off.
Were they ever upfront about it when people questioned them on the minimum cash to gem purchase? I don’t think any company that I can think of has explicitly told their consumers that profit is the reason for that sort of system. It’s how companies, on the whole, operate. I’d really like to see any company explain in plain language “We want to encourage you to spend more so we will try to always position you to have leftover currency to spend that encourages you to buy more currency to meet a target price.”
Well the new business model seems to be focused on maximizing gem sales over new content. If players start leaving then that will be harmful over the long run.
The thing is, there are a ton of companies who don’t offer an in-game currency to cash shop currency option. And of those companies, only a few make it the more attractive option to obtain said currency. Anet was in the position where the gold to gem conversion rates and implementation were probably the most attractive option for obtaining gems. This change makes it significantly more unattractive and that was probably one of their goals. I’m guessing they anticipated this furor and are waiting to see how far it goes. I think your last statement should read, if a significant number of players start leaving then that would be harmful over the long run. Players leaving over issues is nothing new. It’s all about the numbers.
GW2Spidey is broken … look here :
https://www.gw2tp.com/gemsSpidey may a little borked, potentially, but the massive increase in cost does not tally with previous event increase in gem price. We are talking here about about a 5-8 gold price increase for 100 gems between yesterday and today. There has never, to my knowledge, been any event that has had that sort of gem price increase, and it comes right when they change they layout?
I think ArenaNet has manually changed the average price when they released the patch, potentially to encourage people to buy more gems with rl money, trusting that the change in UI and the lack of detailed graph information would inhibit many players from noticing.
I have seen these jumps before and while sometimes they could be explained by a patch (new rewards people where interested in) what never could be explained was why it then not really dropped back down again.
If I look at my personal gold income that has been stable ever since one gold got yout about 50 gems. Not it was something like 6 (well before this patch).
So I do expect Anet to increase that average once in a while. Of course I can’t be sure.
What makes the Gold to Gem conversion rate go down is when people convert Gems to Gold. That’s the seesaw those rates operate on. If there’s no real reason for people to do that, the Gold to Gem rate remains relatively stable or increases. There are people converting Gems to Gold but not nearly at the same rate as those converting Gold to Gems. You could argue that the minimum 800 Gem purchase had something to do with that. That also made converting Gold to Gems much more attractive when you think about it. Also, Anet hasn’t released a ton of Gold sinks in game that compelled people are willing to buy large amounts of gold for. In conclusion, there are reasons for the Gold to Gem price remaining stable or not dropping a whole lot.
Can anyone spell out what sort of projected losses Anet can expect from moving the minimum gold to gem transactions to something lower? What sort of losses were they taking already? How do we as consumers know what the losses and gains are for suggestions to lower the minimum gold to gem transactions? Do we feel that knowing or not knowing this particular question is relevant to the discussion? I’m all for suggestions on making the system we have better but I think if we want to be let in on all of the decision making for financial matters (as some players seem to be suggesting), I feel we should be somewhat informed on the science of financial forecasting. Like I said earlier, if we aren’t, then we are just asking companies to eat losses for our own gain, which can be a good or bad thing depending.
So, people want to be told outright that Anet just wants to make more money and they feel this is one of the best ways to do that? In what manner will that sound…reasonable? Especially, when that is probably (as Gaile mentioned) not the only reason? Idunno. I don’t think any of us want to hear that and in the end, anything we suggest otherwise will most likely help us and hurt their bottom line compared to this change. Sometimes companies have to eat that loss to satisfy customer need, sometimes they don’t. It definitely sounds a lot like they are trying to match cash shop monetization standards of other games with this purchase scheme. I think their logic was, if it works there, it will work here. It’s a pretty safe bet if those other companies haven’t tanked immediately from consumer backlash. Although, as chemic said, Anet did hint at being different in this regard. Thinking back, they set stated limits on the types of items acquired in the cash shop…but not how. Clever girl.
Edit: Example: Sony Online Entertainment using a similar system with station cash. And I’m sure you can find examples of other companies still in operation using the same method recently adopted by Anet. Not a justification from me. Just…trying to offer more perspective at the consumer climate in which Anet operates.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Just buy a precursor from the tp, the precursors for the rarest Legendaries in game are available at under 100 (one hundred) gold.
You’re a smart person Wanze but you know that’s just misleading. If someone doesn’t understand the value in buying a precursor on the TP, presenting it to them in this manner is only serving to confuse those poor souls even further. And OP, you might want to either read or participate in this discussion, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/bltc/RNG-as-a-concept-Discuss/first
That other thread will probably be more productive than this one. Or rather, you’ll get more out of the other one.
tl;dr
Nothing’s changing soon, we’ve been trying for 2 years and have been unable to balance our own game. Sorry! But please don’t think we don’t care, because we really do, you just can’t tell if you judge us on our work or announced changes!
I’m pretty sure that if we looked at the history of damage over time skills in mmos, you’d find it to be a bit more sordid than what you are suggesting with this critique. Seriously, has every single mmo come up with a damage over time system that works great with no complaints and GW2 is the only one to get this wrong? That is the impression I’m getting from a lot of the complaints here. Maybe my perspective is a bit off. I’m totally open to the analysis of a working condition/damage over time system that people are particularly fond of. And please, when discussing functionality, identify both the pros and cons of said system. Remember, no system is perfect.
I’m sure 90% of the people would be for the most part happy if we got a new race and a new class added, more weapons and I’m not talking about skins, more dungeons, more than 1 new map per year, more world bosses and events, more DEs, I can go on and on. The amount of this delivered is little or nothing. People have asked for all sorts of things for WvW and we got 2 things that no one asked for. The removal of quagan island for some stupid spvp crap that nobody does and a new map that has actually nothing to do with WvW and is all about zerg farming events. Yes I know EotM gets a lot of play but that’s because how lucrative the rewards are compared to everything else in the game. If they buffed the rewards in the other WvW maps to match EotM there would be a huge decline in EotM. Maybe if they actually worked on stuff that was asked for by anyone then they could start pleasing people.
There are tons of great ideas in these forums that players have asked for. Sure some are bad ideas but if the decision makers actually played the game a lot of those horribly bad ideas would be obvious.
Your previous argument was that most of the content/“stuff” coming out was crap and people complained about it. Everything else you said about not delivering new content is a different argument entirely. My point was that with so many different types of players, there will be criticism across a wide spectrum but probably not for the reasons you are citing. We (as in you, me and others) definitely don’t show this unanimous dislike of everything that has been coming out. There have been a lot of suggestions on how they can improve what has been delivered and evidence that they are acting on it (permanent living story content anyone?). I mean, any implementation of content can be better. I’m pretty sure that anything you or I can come up with can be improved on as well.
Finally, what you see as not delivering what people ask for, to me, usually appears to be some sort of compromise. It stands to reason that not everything asked for can be implemented as requested. Concessions have to be made in some cases. I’m not so sure the best idea is to let players decide what those concessions are by popular vote either. Forum suggestions, particularly on contentious issues, are often played out as power struggles between different interest groups who are only really looking out for themselves. Some people handle not getting what they want better than others. And yeah, they’ll let people know when they don’t get it.
I used to believe that Anet’s lack of transparency was a bad thing, but looking at how quick people are to fly to reddit when something happens that they dont like, in addition to all of the ridiculous suggestions we get and foot-stamping tantrums over the non-inclusion of features that Anet specifically said they’d be steering clear from, I’m actually glad they don’t talk about anything.
It keeps the forums more sane than they would be.
Maybe if 90% of the stuff coming out these days wasn’t crap then maybe people wouldn’t be complaining and talking so much crap. People just want a good product. If they don’t get it, then they will let people know.
Perhaps if 90% of the people on the forums all wanted the same thing, Anet wouldn’t have to bend over backwards to please everyone. People just want what they want. If they don’t get it, they will let people know.
#Alt perspective.
Lmfao… fun doesn’t matter? People play the game to have fun. Reducing build viability, lowering the skill cap, and removing playstyles, and SUSTAIN (something that we were supposed to have BUFFED) is the opposite of fun. It ain’t good for your game. Unintended or not, and going back on your word…. you better get your kitten together or you will lose your customers, quite simply and realistically. And…. if it was “unintentional”… couldn’t they MAKE it intentional? That would solve a lot more problems instead of making more.
And just as an fyi, Deathshroud stomping used to be considered as an “unintended functionality” or as an “exploit”. And look at it now.
If you are circumventing mechanics using “skill” and having fun doing it, it’s bound to get fixed. And you’re probably going to stop having fun. Still, I see what you are getting at, you wrapped up a few different complaints/goals into the idea of how balance should be approached. But balance isn’t necessarily an act of equivalent exchange. It necessitates destructive revision of playstyles while still allowing for construction of others. As such, Anet can decide what is intended and unintended, remove and add as they see fit.
Shroud stomping is still in because Anet agreed that it had some gameplay merit and agreed that it wouldn’t negatively affect balance when given a legit method of use. As some others have speculated, it really seems like Unholy Sanctuary is a similar case with Deathshroud cooldown management. In cases like the functionality of fiery rush, no alternatives to maintain that situational damage were given despite the cries of some players who said the nerf was unnecessary in their opinions. It’s situational. Look at death shroud fall damage/lethal hits, again a feature that was removed from some gameplay areas that they felt affected balance but gave players a legitimate controlled route for.
As for increasing build variety, they still need to work on that. I have no arguments there. And I agree that Unholy Sanctuary needs to be better, as people really wouldn’t be complaining about the change if they felt US left them with a playstyle they felt was viable. I don’t think it needs a Signet of Vampirism level rework but tweaking the values on the second wind portion of it would be nice.
dace — I wouldn’t want you to think that this has been a static thing, that there’s been no movement on this. There’s been assessment, analysis, and discussion. The devs have considered changes and some they’ve outright rejected where others are still in the running and need assessing in relation to the bigger picture that I mentioned earlier. If there aren’t details to provide overtly — and right now there are not — there is activity happening covertly. So I would say that progress has been made.
In other words, there’s no movement on this.
Talking about doing something isn’t the same as doing something. Lobbing a few shots in the general direction of a target isn’t the same as hitting a target. A skritt’s pet rock could have spent just as long working on it, and come up with the same results we’re seeing today.
Or, as someone once put it: “Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry?”
Question! How do they fix something without talking about it? Question 2! Do you want them to impose on themselves an arbitrary deadline for completion, a meaningful deadline, or just a deadline? And what is the difference between the three?
Edit: Ok, it doesn’t sound like you “actually” think they aren’t doing anything just that you think they’ve taken too long. I don’t really think either of us knows what limitations there are on getting this sort of project done, as knowing that would certainly inform our opinions on what is a reasonable time frame.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
I talked to a couple of the devs just now, and they told me this is a subject they’re still reviewing and considering how best to address. It’s part of a larger discussion, as you can imagine, and changes would necessarily involve a few elements, not just condition caps alone.
While there aren’t details on changes or a timeframe in which they would be done, you can be sure that this is being reviewed by the devs and considered as part of the big picture and potential adjustments in the future.
Is there a reason why objects and such aren’t affected by conditions? How did the devs not see these issues arise, did they not play GW2 during development ? lol every other MMO I played has your own condition limit and doesn’t care who else has condition on a target.
First off, Guild Wars 2 isn’t the only mmo to have to wrap their head around this issue, you’ve said as much. But what you seem to be forgetting is that other mmos have also had to limit condition/damage over time skills for their own reasons. Wow had similar issues, I should know, I played an affliction Warlock for a long time. People complained there for many years before they changed which dots got refreshed, overwritten, and how many were alotted. There were reasons for the limitations, and when the opportunity presented itself, they were able to change it. It’s no different here. Don’t pretend that there aren’t limitations or considerations in designing condition damage. It ain’t easy.
Edit: Comparing how condition/dot damage works in one mmo to GW2 is also not necessarily apples to apples. The details man, the details.
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Would much rather be a Tengu than a dumb Skritt any day.
Flappy bird man no take shiny! Flappy bird man……which end of pointy stick go in you to get your shinies?
An unintended function that was there for 2 years and actually allowed for some high skill cap gameplay and interesting builds/playstyles? They never said it was “unintended” and even if it was… come on… 2 years?
snip…
I don’t get people who use this argument. It’s not only you, I’ve seen a lot of other people make this argument too. It doesn’t really matter if something was fun or offered what you feel is high skill cap gameplay. If it wasn’t intended, all that other stuff is irrelevant. How long did players get to enjoy fiery rush in its former state before Anet changed it? Is it that surprising that they would leave something that they think needs to be fixed alone for two years? They even commented openly on pet AI and the challenges that are involved with fixing them and that issue is still there 2 years into the game. If it was unintended, fun don’t mattuh. RIP sleep jumping.
For what it’s worth, I’ve seen one dev jokingly say, when a two handed axe was requested, that they wanted to save something for the future. I’ve gotten the impression that they do want to add new weapons but don’t have anything to show/say about it at the moment. No clue about their stance on new races but I have to imagine that since they basically did away with the personal story, new races would probably be part of some sort of new infrastructure for telling a racial story. And as for classes, no clue on that either. With the lack of roles and considering how they conceptually merged so many of the old GW1 classes into what we have now, it would be interesting to see what they feel isn’t already done by the existing classes. So, pretty much all we can do is speculate on races and classes, but I’ve seen on more than one post that they are interested in adding new weapons in the future.
Edit: What race would I want to see? Hmmm, I love the Skritt more than I love the Tengu. Actually, I’m not fond of Tengu at all. Lemme be a dumb Skritt who can’t hold a sword right unless he’s in a party with other Skritt. Then we destroy everything.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Not very many balance changes overall. I do like the Engi shield skill change though.
If they did one like this every two weeks, now that would be good.
I’m pretty sure it was mentioned that these aren’t all of the changes. Just a head’s up. It’s just a preview.
~snip for brevity~
The point of the matter is this:
The devs may indeed be listening. They may be sending emails, and talking over player suggestions/input in department meetings.
But the Grand Canyon stands in between what the players asked for and what the devs give them.
We’ve heard this same line over and over and over and over again. Saying that “the devs are listening” has become a joke here and, at the very least, all over Guru.
Why?
Because what the devs produce as a result of their “listening” looks nothing like what the players asked for. And it usually contains stuff the players have specifically said “Don’t give us!” And it is always sold to the player base with the line, “We think it works best this way.”
All in all it’s created one single thought in my mind, my guildies’ minds, and several of my fellow Gurus’ minds: The devs don’t play their own game.
So what’s it got to do with transparency?
The player community cannot be more clear on many, many of its requests. Something is being lost once the door to ANet’s offices slams shut behind those requests. Transparency would, at the very least, allow the player base to see how their beautiful input gets mangled into Frankenstein’s monster.
And maybe, just maybe, we’d start to understand why ANet wants us to play with Frankenstein.
On the community voice thing, I still don’t see how so many people can say that the Guild Wars 2 community speaks with one voice. At least, that is what it seems like you are implying with the community being clear statement. We aren’t very clear from what I’ve seen. Not that individuals are bad at expressing their ideas but when looking at the community as a whole, there are many topics that the player base is split on. The nature of combat (passive stats versus active combat), travel (mounts or no mounts), cosmetics (outfits good or bad?), story (living story vs expansion), and the list goes on. Usually, there’s not even a dichotomy of thought on these subjects but a gradient of opinions. And what may seem like Anet acting in their own interest may simply be a compromise of the desire of another player whose opinions are not shared by you. There may be some subjects where a consensus is reached on the forums but even that doesn’t represent the sum total of opinions on the subjects broached here. I’m merely urging that we keep in mind that we don’t speak everyone and Anet has an uphill battle trying to please one group while not upsetting others.
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snip…So the question in my mind, is if they don’t want to communicate openly with us, why keep the forums up at all? Is it so that they can keep tabs on people’s complaints? Is it because they know that this way a great many of the complaints will be focused on a forum that they are in charge of, versus other forums they are not, like Reddit, or Guildwars2guru, or whatever? Is it because they actually care about us underneath it all, and are waiting for the right time and/or inspiration to begin moving in some type of direction? The new CDI on guild halls is an amazing thread. It is a very exciting read, of course if you are assuming by reading it that they create guild halls, which they are quick to point out has not been promised by any means. After all… it’s just a conversation. A conversation with people’s hopes and dreams for this game pinned to it, without a single guarantee from ANET that any of it will happen. Because…. I mean….. what if it fails? What if they can’t? What if it’s not possible? They seem to be a company driven by fear. That’s the reason for their lack of transparency, their lack of communication, their lack of direction. That is their driving force.
Fear.
I guess time will tell.
If something suggested is possible, people get might get what they want, a compromise of what they want and what Anet wants, or not get it at all because (insert reason here). If it’s not possible, nothing was promised and the expectations set by Anet were met. Consumers often don’t care about the why they didn’t get what they wanted, only that they didn’t. Some people care, but that’s not going to stop others from hopping on the angry train regardless of the explanation. I don’t think that Fear is the sole motivator in their decision to temper expectations, although it does inform one on where to tread lightly. I still think it’s being realistic. I mean….just look at the Manifesto. They used the language of idealism and it still haunts them.
If young children can play and learn minecraft without one single instruction within the game, itself, how is guild wars just as hard to learn?
Are you implying that all young children play minecraft effectively without instruction? That is highly unlikely. You will be hard pressed to find a situation where all demographics learn and succeed at the same rate. Games are designed to teach players what to do in various ways but they are all conscious decisions. Whether it is through trial and error, tutorials, gating, etc. there are some people who will excel at learning in some ways and not others. Guild Wars 2 players are no different. If you don’t accept that as reality, then yeah, calling Anet silly for thinking it takes more brain power to learn Guild Wars 2 than a child needs to play minecraft makes total sense.
I also couldn’t possibly have any less interest in WoW and that date means nothing to me.
BUT ..aside from that, the general point holds true: Anet does not have an unlimited amount of time before more people (like me) find a better alternative and just stop caring about this. They really do need to start bringing their A-game again and give us reasons to still care and invest our time/money.
Speaking again for people (like myself), I feel kind of guilty for spending so much of this year “shopping around” for other games to replace this with. I would not say I’ve succeeded fully (though Archeage has pulled me away quite a lot and will for the foreseeable future. I see EQN as a bigger threat down the road).
If Anet could be bothered to give us more meaningful things to do, more ways to feel invested Tyria, I’d have little reason to even care what the competition has to offer. But if that competition delivers content and activities that Anet refuses to (or still hasn’t after years) ..one kind of has to take notice of that.
Be it WoW, AA, EQN, or anything else ..the “job” of the company is to give customers what they want, and to do it effectively enough as to render competitors moot. Competitors meeting the demands of your customers, while you fail to do so, ..is good for the competitors. Your own business not so much.
A lot of customers are pretty fickle anyway and there’s not much to be done about that, but when you even have long-time loyal customers losing faith and looking elsewhere, I think it’s worth re-evaluating what you’re doing.
Question, do you think it’s unacceptable from Anet’s position for players such as yourself to take a leave of absence and come back later if and when there is content that appeals to you? What do you think Anet finds as an acceptable loss in this case? There is no subscription, there is no power curve you can fall behind in, and at the moment the story is permanent for you to pick up where you left off and replay unlike season 1. Even in GW1 Anet was public about letting you drop away from the game for awhile until there was new content available that you wanted. So, is saying I will stop playing supposed to effect some sort of change with this payment model? Keep in mind, there will be other people playing the game while others are taking a break.
Also, “the “job” of the company is to give customers what they want, and to do it effectively enough as to render competitors moot." Really? You have to think about that statement in terms of who your customers are. While there is some bleedover in demographics between other mmo players and GW2 players, there are many places where those demographic interests do not intersect. Heck, if you were to look at a Venn Diagram of interests within the GW2 playerbase you would probably find a lot of conflicting interests within its various demographics. I just really felt the need to remind everyone that you probably shouldn’t use blanket statements like “give them what they want” and expect it to make sense.
I think this post may be a valuable read: Mike O’Brien on Communication.
Gaile, please read the following knowing that I have nothing but love and admiration for you:
I didn’t find Mike O’Brien’s post a valuable read in the slightest. In fact, It is quite telling that a thread titled “Communicating With You” was started by a man who has exactly two posts to his entire post history (TWO! Including the above linked post.).
Mr. O’Brien started that thread with a “this is our policy and it is not open for discussion” chip on his shoulder, and then never returned to the thread again. Not once. Those are hardly the actions of a person who takes communicating with customers seriously.
In regards to transparency, it has already been said, but I will add my voice to chorus:
The problem is not that you may miss a deadline and upset people.
The problem is that no one ever communicates when situations change.
This is all about managing customer expectations. It really isn’t rocket science, and it isn’t all that difficult either…unless you have a gag-order policy like ANet.I have to admit, ANet’s communication policy is a serious obstacle to me developing any sense of customer loyalty or brand appreciation. It reveals a level of disdain and mistrust of it’s own customers. It doesn’t feel good.
And I truly, honestly, don’t believe it is good for the long-term health of the game.
My 2 cents.
I have seen conversations on the forums where people got upset over Anet missing a deadline. I have seen Anet communicate on why things have changed or been delayed (ex. precursor hunt/crafting) and people still got upset. Not the first time and won’t be the last time. What I don’t understand is why various groups of people feel that they “know” the ideal solution for communication issues like this. It’s my opinion, and certainly there is growing evidence to support, that there really is no ideal. There have been conflicting ideals presented by the playerbase on what is acceptable communication in threads like this one that line up almost identically to what Gaile presented earlier. If anything, Mike took a stand on how they choose to communicate (CDIs, when it’s ready, etc.) and made it clear why. He communicated and people still got upset. The reality is though, that some people were satisfied with that answer, some people weren’t, and others continue to ask for more. That being said, there is always room for improvement in almost anything that Anet does and I’m sure they love to hear suggestions on how they can improve as Gaile has pretty much said. I personally just wish that we, and I include myself in this, could remember that there are pros and cons to (almost) every suggestion.
Dont set up your expectations too high, the only thing we will get is the Living (dead) Story 2. Some new overpriced and useless shopitems and more full costumes instead of armor skins. We wont see any significant releases for at least the next 2 years.
Your name is quite un-ironic. Just saying.
I hope I’m not misrepresenting her but Gaile was commenting in another thread about the different types of players that they are working with when releasing information about future content. She pointed out that while some customers are satisfied with the content release outline they’ve provided thus far (really a gradient of reactions), there are players, like the OP, who throw out ultimatums if they don’t get the information they expect on their terms. She made a good point that is consistently ignored in conversations like these. You can’t please everybody, no matter what you say. So you pick and choose what you say and when. Anet chooses where to draw the lines with release info and some expressions of disappointment, as the OP has eloquently put forth, might be considered acceptable all things considered.
I usually try to avoid mentioning other games on this forum, out of respect, but because it’s integral to the example I’m going to talk about, I’m making an exception.
Once upon a time, I played the game Rift. I played it for a very long time. And although there were moments when the communication from Trion felt minimal, there was a driving force that made me love their communication style on the whole.
They had (and still have, as far as I know) a guy who was basically the one making a lot of the calls concerning the direction of the game and he was a straight shooter to the point that he actually joked once openly on the forums about how he attached pictures of cute animals to emails sent to his coworkers, so that they would be less likely to take offense to his blunt feedback.
Because he mostly knew about the direction of the game at any given moment and was so blunt about things, he would just say things sometimes, like, “We have no plans for X at this time.”
He wasn’t giving anything away most of the time. In fact, looking back on it, I don’t think he shared much more about real plans than you guys do. Probably about the same amount of information.
But because he was so blunt and honest about things that weren’t being worked on, or that the Rift team had no plans for, I feel it helped manage expectations in a lot of cases.
I’m certainly not expecting you to try to copy another company, but I do believe there are ways to sort of “give info” without actually sharing what all is in the works. One way is what my example talks about; essentially, giving information through negation, such that people can go, “Oh, they have no plans for X right now. [Or, oh, this isn’t something that they feel is in line with their goals for the game.] I feel like I know better where they stand on that issue.”
Just something to think about.
On the subject of telling people what’s not being worked on: Super Adventure Box. There goes the hope of telling people that something isn’t being worked on in an exploding cloud of pixellated glory.
Then I’ll just buy some with real cash. Much more preferable than cheesing mechanics and grinding until my eyes bleed.
And this unfortunately is why we don’t get any real content. Why spend time, development, and money on engaging difficult content if all your revenue comes from people sitting in LA buying endless gemstore items and gold while not actually playing the game?
Gamers have ruined the era of video games, and it is sad.
I just wanted to chime in on this. I was reading an old news article on Guild Wars 1 from before it launched that was reflecting on its payment model and how game companies and mmos were experimenting with payment systems. The most interesting statement in that article was how a Square Enix corporate head said he was watching how players in mmos traded digital goods to each other for real money and took that to mean that they found value in those digital goods. So, this idea that digital currency, items, armor, etc. being sold for real world monetary value isn’t a new phenomenon. That article was from 2004 and certainly RMT is a bit older than that. It’s just moved from the black market to being legit. There will always be people who seek the path of least resistance to making money. Right now RMT is the least resistance-y of them all on the consumer side. It’s a reality you can’t ignore in mmo game development.
As to why they should do anything else if they can create a perpetual digital walmart? Well, unless Anet’s goal was to create a shopping mall, and it’s pretty clear it wasn’t, they want to tell stories and let people have fun too. That’s what they’re working at I believe. Everyone here clearly just has different ideas about what’s fun (to raid or not to raid?) and wonders why everyone else just won’t agree that their idea of fun is wrong.
Oh, and on the subject of endgame I would recommend this opinion piece on the impact of the evolution of this “endgame” concept in mmos. http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/03/14/working-as-intended-endgame-is-the-worst-thing-that-ever-happen/
I found it when reading a bit about the trouble Wildstar has run into recently with attempting to court the end game raiding population. It certainly adds a bit of perspective to what Guild Wars has been trying to do since Guild Wars 1 and how Guild Wars 2 fits into the content delivery scheme in today’s market. It’s a fairly short article but still insightful. Take from it what you will.
I think this article is relevant to the discussion http://www.mmogames.com/gamearticles/the-tyrian-chronicle-does-guild-wars-2-need-an-expansion/
I’m not sure if it has been posted before but the author talks a bit about the pros and cons of expansion vs living story. The author ultimately settles on asking for an expansion release and I can understand that. I’m pretty sure the author could have dug deeper into the pros and cons of the options but they do a pretty good job of expressing the more well knows issues. I’m curious as to why no one has thought to address the issues with releasing an expansion in this discussion so far? I mean, every approach has considerations that are both positive and negative for different groups of players. The posts in this thread have done a pretty good job identifying how the living story is negatively perceived by some players thus far. One issue in particular that the author did bring up was how expansions, traditionally, split the player base by dividing those who wanted to pay for the expansion and those who didn’t. This was also true in GW1. It may seem inconsequential but it does have a real impact on those who appreciate the method of subsidization that Anet has adopted so far.
From what I’ve read in this discussion thus far, some people feel that the Living Story is lackluster in its delivery but not necessarily in its potential. For instance, the opinion in this thread on the potential positive impact of a DLC story seems pretty grim. 2 things on that. I’m not sure why we are using the term DLC in the context of MMOs when that is by and large the entirety of how content is delivered these days. The other thing is that DLC absolutely has the ability to create compelling stories and deliver fundamental content changes but whether or not that fails to deliver, I feel, is not inherently a fault of the delivery system which appears to be the underlying logic of the topic. People could be asking for Anet to continue with the Living Story and improve on what they choose to deliver in these releases but instead are asking to go with a system that necessitates asignificantly longer downtime in between releases. Or maybe there is an option 3 where we mix this concept of living world and an expansion system? My question is this, is a traditional expansion release a system without flaws? Who does it affect? Why is accepting those flaws more acceptable than attempting to improve on the concept of the living story? And if you truly believe that it has no flaws, why? I think these are essential questions that are probably questions Anet devs have asked themselves and may still be asking themselves in the wake of the living story criticism.
Does anyone remember the couple of “mini” arenas down on the beach in Lion’s Arch? They were in the shape of the arenanet logo and always had two minis opposite each other inside the arena. It seemed like they were going to do battle but never did. It was the weirdest thing. I always figured those were a placeholder in the same way the shooting gallery in divinity’s reach seems like a placeholder. Sadly, the arenas were mostly buried when the BreachMaker blew. They are still slightly visible although the minis are gone, so their intended purpose is less clear now.
“on acknowledging problems”
Acknowledging a problem, and fixing a problem are two very different things in my book. Anet has acknowledged a lot of problems, including conditions and defiant. But until they actually change the way these things work, how much they acknowledge does not make much of a difference to the problem at hand.“on conditions”
It wasn’t a very convincing explanation though. I think they just didn’t do their game design very well. The game currently leans much too far towards DPS, and away from conditions on multiple levels. Not just the condition cap is holding it back, but also the countless immunities to conditions in PVE, and the fact that large world bosses are considered objects, and can thus not be affected by conditions. That’s just bad design, and it’s also inconsistent design.…snip…
“on NPE changes”
My confidence in their testing methods has been as low as possible since release. Ever since all those bugged achievements that they’ve implemented several times (why implement something that is clearly broken?), or changes to the game that completely broke crucial game mechanics (like all the bandits in the game spamming their special attacks infinitely), or the recent bug they introduced to the necro-trait Flesh of the Master, that kills all minions.
I don’t know how any of this passes testing, and makes it into the game. But back to the tutorials, there was nothing wrong with the low level stuff in the game. It was perfectly explained. They didn’t need to remove certain heart quests, or remove harvesting nodes. What a load of nonsense, it was fine. So why change it?
…snip…
On that first point I made about acknowledging problems, I agree that identifying an issue and fixing them are different. Remember though, the first step to addressing a problem is recognizing that you have a problem. I guess what I wanted to get at is that because they have identified these as potential or actual problems, it is not unlikely that they are thinking about how to address them. I don’t know for sure what they are doing but it’s always been my understanding that there are good and bad reasons for keeping silent on internal developments. They’ve made it clear that they have their own priorities and don’t talk about anything until there’s something to say. You can either read their silence as though nothing is happening or they aren’t in a position to discuss any progress yet. Given that the devs have been attempting to improve the game based on feedback, real or not, it is likely that they are working on these things but nothing is ready yet. There are many possibilities as to what they are actually doing, but I remain confident that they just don’t have an answer to these issues yet and will comment further on them when they have something of substance to offer.
On condition damage design issues, I believe you are right in that there was more to designing how conditions interact with the world than just the financial limitations on how condition damage was calculated. Although, I don’t think they were being questioned about those other limitations when they commented on the cap in particular. Other games have attempted to limit the way certain attacks effect bosses. Generally, in mmos and RPGs it’s to help make players feel more powerful in normal encounters and give the boss an edge over you(which can be viewed as a challenge or not). I mean there’s more to these design choices I can imagine but I can’t really comment further on their reasons. I remember WOW had similar problems for a number of years with DOT skills overwriting each other. The devs took a while to come up with a compromise for that one too.
I should mention that your statement on conditions not affecting world bosses because they are objects sounds like you are mixing different actual issues. I believe it goes like this: Conditions don’t affects objects. Objects cannot be crit. World Bosses are objects and are affected by damaging conditions but cannot be crit. I don’t know why it’s like this but there could be a number of reasons. I think part of it just comes down to controlling how quickly those fights go.
What I hope you take away from my comments is that, history has shown us that development on MMOs is often a long process and we won’t always see a fix to some big problems right away or even soon. Some mmos survive for many years with glaring issues and others don’t. I don’t know for sure that things like the condition cap will be fixed but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a positive change in the future. Not everyone has to be as positive as I am, but I’m still having fun and I’ll stick around to see where things are going.
Did Anet intend for defensive stat points to be a sort of “training wheels” that are later shed for offensive stats when players get “better”? Did Anet intend for players to stack offensive stats and have access to the best defensive skills? Will condition damage remain hamstrung in group PVE content as it is for the entire duration of GW2’s life? In other words, is the way the current meta settled intended? Will it change and should it change?
I personally think Anet is tackling most of these questions right now, but as is typical, they are taking a while.
It doesn’t look to me like they are tackling these big questions at all. Have they done anything at all since release, to improve conditions? Or to improve the role of the armor stats? Or to change the DPS-focus of the game? Or to fix Defiant?
The only hint I currently see, is that they want to fix the ai, since they are hiring an ai specialist. And about time too. But yeah, they sure ARE taking their time. If they take their usual time to fix glaring fundamental issues with the game, it could take another 4 years before we see big fixes to these problems.
Another issue that I can’t fathom, is how the recent september patch basically added extra training wheels and tutorials to the start of the game (which was fine, and didn’t need fixing), while neglecting to include a tutorial for the real stumpers in the game:
- Combo fields, never explained
- The Mystic Forge, our constant journey to the wiki page
- Crafting, also a constant wiki-fest or Dulfy visit
- Agony gear, again with the crafting, but never explained
I guess the only indication I was using was that they had acknowledged most of these issues at some point. They gave a statement in the forums on why conditions are calculated the way they are and why it’s in its current state. On the subject of the dps-meta, Ferocity was stated by devs to be just the first step in a series of changes moving toward something that is more than just allowing “killing things faster”. Obviously, with their stance on how quickly balance is done they said they wanted to see how the changes would shake out before making any other changes. Given how long it’s taken devs in other mmos with far more money and manpower to address similar issues (many years in some cases), I can only assume that these things will change in some shape or form but it won’t be in the near future.
As for the NPE changes, I agree that things like combo fields and agony gear should have a better in-game explanation. However, Anet has said they didn’t pull this stuff out of thin air and was the result of testing with players on what they were most frustrated with in their experience as new players. Again, the confidence in their methods boils down to whether or not someone believes that Anet would out and out lie or simply distrusts their methods at face value. Can’t say much on that subject.
Holy kittening kitten man why is it so difficult for some people to just accept there is probably going to be that one build per class that is probably the best for that game mode.
I’ll answer that! It’s because some view having a single build that is “the best” as an affront to the intended design of GW2. Despite the fact that I feel the OP has been bouncing around and not so successfully tackling a wide range of tough subjects, there is a point to balancing out pinnacle builds. If, and that is a big if, the devs wanted to give players multiple ways to not just be successful at PVE but to be effective, then tackling the best build and working on improving lesser builds is not a crazy proposition. There is a logic to that, but it only makes sense if how I’m interpreting the design goals of GW2 is close to accurate. The intended design goals of GW2 combat is where people seem to disagree. Did Anet intend for defensive stat points to be a sort of “training wheels” that are later shed for offensive stats when players get “better”? Did Anet intend for players to stack offensive stats and have access to the best defensive skills? Will condition damage remain hamstrung in group PVE content as it is for the entire duration of GW2’s life? In other words, is the way the current meta settled intended? Will it change and should it change? I personally think Anet is tackling most of these questions right now, but as is typical, they are taking a while.
I’ve read through several threads that all have given great ideas on how to fix the perceived/imagined/real issues with combat in PVE/PVP. I’ve reached the conclusion that to achieve a comprehensive solution, there are multiple aspects of combat/builds/AI that have to be altered. Anyone looking for a fix to AI, builds, armor stats alone is probably fooling themselves or at the very least not viewing combat as a series of inter-dependencies.
8 years ago, Anet provided more content to a lobby game. So noted.
I’m not sure what you’re calling a “lobby game”. The original Guild Wars was a fully-fleshed MMO. Granted it had three separate storylines that didn’t really intermingle (although they tried to force this somewhat with the advent of heroes in Nighfall).
I really hate to defend Vayne here but he is correct. Guild Wars, by A-Net’s own description, is not a MMORPG but a CoRPG. In order to really be called an MMO you need the Massive part and the biggest party you could have in GW was 12 for DoA. GW limited your party size in every aspect of the game and also you had to leave an instance and come back to it in order to respawn enimies
Dungeons and Dragons Online is considered an MMO and it is identical on the surface. They are both instanced games with parties rather than open-worlds. They both have/had huge populations were you could have tons of people in your friends list and chat with. Both have the same limitation of not being able to enjoy content with large groups but that doesn’t make them not MMOs. I don’t care what the developers want to call it. Marvel Heroes 2015 is considered an MMO also, its just an ARPGMMO. All you need to be classified as an MMO is a massive amount of people in the game at the same time but they don’t have to all be in the same instance at the same time.
Honestly, I’m pretty sure whatever the first M in MMO meant probably changed over time. I mean what really is the difference between Phantasy Star Online, Diablo 3, and Diablo 2 in terms of their classification as an MMO or not? I still think that we are getting away from the point of this question. I believe that the answer is not as important as why it is a question. People are looking to GW1 as a guideline for open world game design and believe that the same principles and techniques can be applied to GW2. People have actually suggested bringing back vanquishing and hard mode to maps. There’s…just….so…much…to think about here that I feel people choose to ignore. Or at the very least, don’t consider the technical implications of their ideas.
For those who wish to understand more about how the design of GW1, as a lobby game, influenced content design and monetization, please refer to http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130683/social_game_not_social_life_.php
It’s a very old but interesting article between Jeff Strain and Gamasutra about some of the design philosophies of GW1. Some key points I wanted to point out:
On pve design:
JS: We channel communities into common areas, so there’s always people to play with. We also talk a lot about mission flow, in that it’s a lot better to have four 30-minute missions, rather than one 2-hour one, as you want people constantly cycling back to the public areas to have a chance to hook up with someone else.
On the subject of grind in modern mmos:
JS: You’ll often hear us say that Guild Wars is a game without the grind. However, if you want to spend 100 hours trying to get a specific upgrade for an item, like a dragon-tooth hilt and a wyvern skill scabbard for your sword, that’s fine. You have a specific goal in mind, and you want that item. What’s not fine is “at level 20 I can access this dungeon, and at level 30 I can access that dungeon and there’s a 1000 hours between them”.
Honestly, a lot of the same core philosophies that are espoused in the article exist in GW2. Especially, when talking about grind. What has changed is that GW2 is no longer a lobby game and the economics behind moving away from the model shifted the lines of what is an acceptable pve experience, how it is monetized, and even timetables for content design. Even if you don’t like what GW2 is now, I think if you read the article you will find enough similarities to realize that the core message of GW has remained the same even though it is definitely a different game in many respects.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
I’m sure many of us have seen how dynamic events play out all across the game. In many cases, when an event fails, you lose access to a vendor, new mobs spawn, you don’t get a chance to defend the succeeded state of the event, or you die. Actually, a lot of people will die. I remember in the early days with the Modinir Ulgoth event, there were trolls running around in map chat berating people for attacking the Elemental hands and were trying to get people to fail the event. One time, everyone complied and we watched the countdown reach zero…..Boom. The elemental hands exploded and everyone in the area died. No candy at the end of that rainbow. I can’t remember what happens when Maw fails but I’ve been there for that too. Most dynamic events that I’ve seen fail work out so that the event chain cycles back to some point in the chain if not the beginning.
In order to really be called an MMO you need the Massive part
waves at you from Spamadan district 99
In all honesty, I can see where you’re coming from. It never felt disconnected to me, though. Party size was kind of annoying at various points in the game, but it never really served to distract from the immersive elements of gameplay that GW2 seems to lack more often than I’d like. The two ends of the spectrum are hardcapped party sizes like in the original and the 80-man zergfests that world bosses have become. They need to balance it somehow. Right now, GW2 has both extremes but doesn’t really apply them meaningfully or attempt to incorporate them into a single, universal party system that can span both dungeons and large-scale open world content.
Mini-rant: Dungeons also need to be more relevant to the story, akin to the missions in the original, IMO. The paths should be a choice that determines how your presence affects the outcome of an important conflict, rather than “you can choose one of three NPC guilds that determine what transmog set you can farm and what NPCs show up in your personal story”. I’m getting away from myself here…story mode was a big letdown, but meh. It shouldn’t have been a purely solo gameplay element, and I’ll leave it at that.
GW1 never felt disjointed or disconnected because of the instancing and party system. It was immersive enough that those elements didn’t degrade the experience. GW2 seems disjointed and disconnected because instances are either idiotically simple story missions or ridiculously boring content that’s been there since release (or soon after in the case of fractals) and hasn’t evolved in any way since then. Dynamic events are sometimes interesting, and progressive events are a nice touch, but they’re not challenging in any way unless you’re the only person in the zone (which is never the case, they’re always zergfests).
I don’t think anyone is really knocking GW1 for its instanced design. I think they were just trying to point out that the party limitations in GW1 were a design choice that had different considerations than say designing an event that allows for 150 people to participate. What others were trying to say that GW1, being a CORPG with instances, meant that designing content for it was largely less complex because of the limited ways in which players were allowed to interact with the content. This is not to excuse GW2 for whatever shortcomings it has in content design but to put into perspective that GW1 content was not equal in scope to GW2.
I mentioned earlier that I agree that GW1 had a stronger sense of narrative with how it in essence barred you from progressing without experiencing the story. You had to work to avoid the narrative there. GW2 attempted to move away from that structure for a number of reasons. There were limitations to that game structure so they opted to move towards an open world and to allow freedom. And as we all know, freedom can mean a lot of things and it also can mean the freedom to miss out on important things which is what we have now with regard to narrative.
I am really not sure what you are trying to say here. Back when P2P was the standard (sort of) GW did not go with the P2P but with B2P. Not that F2P is the standard GW2 should not be able to go with B2P but with a more F2P model just like the rest?
I wanted to try and offer supporting evidence of the why Guild Wars 1 was as successful as it was using a B2P model in comparison to the P2P options of its era. F2P options were received differently at the time by the MMO audience at large and held a different market share than it does now. I think I hear you saying that GW2 would have made more money today if they went with an identical payment model to when GW1 launched. I just don’t know. I think GW2 using the GW1 B2P model wouldn’t be the same game we’re looking at right now and at that point, any number of things could influence it’s success or failure as a result.
Having said that, I think we’re moving further away from the subject of the thread with this particular argument. I’m pretty sure everyone just wants to know two things. Will Anet fulfill its goal to deliver expansion level content through the living story and if not, when will it deliver expansion level content? The answer only time will tell. They keep referring to big projects in the background but have never confirmed or denied whether or not anything they’ve released thus far is one of those big projects.
“It was a CORPG that positioned itself in the MMO market at a specific time when there weren’t many F2P games.” First of all, back then there where many F2P games. But then again I don’t see how that is relevant as GW1 was B2P not F2P.
Yes it was not P2P but let me tell you something about that ‘time’. GW2 was released after WoW. Since WoW there have been no mmo’s that where successful with P2P. WoW was the last one to be really successful with it. There are some new mmo’s that use it but we still have to see if they will get successful.
But to come back on your “there weren’t many F2P games”. You of course prefer to the idea that GW1 was pretty unique with there B2P model. And thats true, but that hasn’t changed a bit. They would still be pretty unique with the B2P model today. However they act as if they are unique but with the current model thats more F2P then B2P they are not unique. So no, in that way times did not change to much.
“How many other MMOs can we look to today that use that model successfully?” Just as many other MMO’s as where successfull with that model back when GW1 was released. Now of course if you think it would not work we can simply look at the numbers.
Here are some numbers: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NcSoft-earnings-1Q-14/page/3#post4029793
And here a small comparison to GW1 https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/NcSoft-earnings-1Q-14/page/3#post4029793If that is anything to go on GW2 with a B2P model would have earned more money by now! So yes with the information we have we can say the B2P model would work great also today.
“operating costs for GW2 far exceed that of GW1” So does the number of players. It’s just a game on a bigger scale. So irrelevant.
“companies are simply greedier than they were 10 years ago and don’t have the guts to run with that model.” Well maybe and likely and I think this is the only think that has truth to it in your story, but thats not a good argument to not ask for something that is better.
You see, if people don’t buy cash-shop crap but are willing to buy the game an real expansions (not talking about DLC crap) then companies will get afraid of other models and come to like the B2P model.
“All I can say is if you can pitch that to any MMO company as a business model today and get that to work, you might just have the next big thing on your hands.”
I guess that is what I am sort of doing here.
I think you should read this http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/14/business/fi-game14
All of the interviews and articles around the time Guild Wars 1 launched paint a very clear picture that the norm and expectation for MMOs was a subscription model. The landscape and expectations for payment models was changing just as GW1 was launching. I still feel that my assessment of Anet’s business strategy is accurate in that it was one that involved good timing to make the most of their B2P model. In interviews and reviews of the Guild Wars 1 launch, it was being compared to any and all offerings for MMOGs on the market because of its unique payment model and method of content delivery.
Player expectations have changed, Business expectations have changed, the market has changed, everything is different. You can see in the article from 2004 that I linked that companies were already poised to get in on the microtransaction model because, eerily enough, of the player generated RMT of items and goods in MMOs. Indeed, Anet was not ignored by the industry at large as "Many in the industry will be watching “Guild Wars,” which is the first title from Strain’s Seattle-based ArenaNet." And after all was said and done, the current payment model used by Guild Wars 2 is the result of history.
I never played GW1. Maybe thats my problem because I still love this game. I would rather play this game than anything else out there and I have tried just about all of them including QueueAge. I simply refuse to play a game that is sub par visually to this one. I WvW and have only run 1 dungeon in my time here. Have leveled many 80s.
I think new content will eventually come to this game. Dont think creating a 2667 post about it is going to speed the process up any. I figure most of you people complaining play the game differently from me but feel the same way I do about it or the passionate pleas for new content would not be here.
I would continue to urge patience on the matter. Nothing as good as this game will simply fall away. Find new ways to play the game. Create new characters. Play some PvP or WvW in the meantime. Maybe even indulge in some RP.
The alternative is to go somewhere else and come back later which Im sure a few will do. But you will hate it. The other stuff out there looks way worse than this game. You will hate your characters clunky look and animations. I know I did which was something I did not expect. I have gotten so spoiled by the sheer beauty of this game that I simply cannot play another game not up to these standards.
I hope you will all stay but understand it if you go. To each their own I suppose. I do think that should you venture out to do something different that you will be more disappointed by what you find than you are here with the state of this game. But thats ok…. you can come back lol.
Peace.
People will continue to complain until Anet announces their plans for new content and even beyond that. This entire thread was started because there is an underlying assumption that Anet will leave the rest of Tyria unexplored or untouched. They think that it will be the year 2020 before we meet Palawa Joko again. Although to be fair, it was 7 years before WOW players got to tussle with Arthas in Wrath of the Lich King, so there is some precedent for stories to come out much later than a game releases. The reality is, no one really knows what Anet’s timetables are for the near future outside of the living story and it’s killing them. People deal with this stress and disappointment in different ways. This thread is one of them.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Haven’t we already established that GW1 was the only game on the mmo market running with the B2P model with no subscription and a small cash shop? It was a CORPG that positioned itself in the MMO market at a specific time when there weren’t many F2P games. One of the earliest interviews with one of the Anet heads talked about this being a very peculiar marketing strategy at the time to not charge a subscription if that tells you anything about the era. The argument for GW2 to run with that model seems to be because it worked then, it can work now. I really don’t see that as true. How many other MMOs can we look to today that use that model successfully? There really aren’t any. The arguments for this will likely be either it’s because it’s no longer tenable given the payment model landscape in the MMO market, operating costs for GW2 far exceed that of GW1 or all companies are simply greedier than they were 10 years ago and don’t have the guts to run with that model. You can choose what you want to believe but there is probably a little truth in all of these things and more than people want to consider to inform their understanding of MMOs as a business.
Devata, I should point out that I’ve seen how passionately you argue your position in support of the GW1 payment model and your ideal MMO business. I admire your idealism. All I can say is if you can pitch that to any MMO company as a business model today and get that to work, you might just have the next big thing on your hands.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
Guild Wars 2 has two less professions now than Guild Wars 1 did it it’s whole life. That’s 20% less professions for those counting.
Guild Wars 2 has five times the races Guild Wars 1 has ever had. That’s 500% more races.
Guild Wars 2 has more variety in this manner than Guild Wars 1…and did so from launch.
Holy crap I want to smack you for even trying to make this seem legit lmao.
Everything you just said you should be ashamed of XD
GW1 is by far the most adaptable game when compared to GW2. You can’t compete with every class being able to combine with another class AND their weapons. If your idea was to say races actually matter then you flopped. Race skills are a joke and have no merit to them at all.
I think he was just trying to say that GW2 has more playable races. If that’s the case, it’s relevant because it’s true. Racial skills are intentionally weak if you can remember the logic behind that. As for GW1 being the most “adaptable”? The secondary class system had balance challenges, strengths and weaknesses. For some players the complexity was a boon, for others it was off putting. Today, the reactions are largely the same for GW2 combat. There are difficulties balancing the class skills, some like the simplicity of the GW2 combat system and others find it off putting. GW2 combat is simply different than GW1 combat with different challenges. You are welcome to compare them as has been done in many threads.
The fact remains that the amount and type of content available now is different than what was available in GW1. I still don’t find comparing them relevant. What we know is that GW1 was not extremely experimental in terms of combat mechanics and content delivery. GW2 is all of those things. Development times for content is different and the development process internally appears to be very different. It’s clear to anyone who has been paying attention that Anet has gone back to the drawing board on content delivery and that has slowed delivery of new content down. GW1 wasn’t delivering the type of content found in GW2 at all. So, what are we really comparing?
I think what some people may equate with superior writing in Guild Wars 1 was a degree of focus on one particular narrative. This has been touched on earlier but it is worth repeating. Anet took on a daunting task with GW2, I think, that hasn’t faired too well with GW1 vets. They shifted from an “on-rails” storyline focusing on the human race in GW1 to a larger narrative featuring 5 different cultures in a game that gives you the freedom to experience the narrative at your own pace or even to avoid critical narratives completely.
Supplementing a linear narrative with Dynamic events in the open world does add sufficient color and context to the struggles of the different races. I thought that some of the Heart tasks like Asura testing the intelligence of the Skritt were very thought provoking. But even with the personal story added to that, the races felt too homogenized in terms of storytelling beyond a certain point. As others have said before, the racial storylines might have benefited from being longer or tying into the fight with the Dragons in a more organic way. This perspective may actually differ greatly for someone who hasn’t played the first game, but for me it was a stark contrast to GW1 which was a very different storytelling experience.
I suppose I am still asking myself if the story truly benefits from having multiple perspectives? I’m not quite sure that’s true yet. The Scarlet narrative was the beginning of moving us towards this ideal by weaving the Sylvari into the larger narrative in an organic way but it was handled in a truly awkward manner. GW2 is an experiment in many respects in terms of content delivery which includes storytelling. They’ve doubled back on how the story is going to be delivered from here on out. I can only hope they improve.
They could tell us whether or not they’re working on an expansion.
Yh exactly any info ! Like we are working on build templates stay tuned we will release it in maybe 2 months and it is enough . It is still better then waiting 6 months for new cmd colors o_0 such a great upgrade .
On build templates, I really wish the search feature worked, Evan Lesh (gameplay programmer) said they absolutely want to do them but there are considerations. You can refer to https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Suggestion-Favorite-builds-button/first. Now, that thread was started several months ago, no one knows when or if it will be finished. Also bringing this up because it shows communication between devs and and the community, only not everything about development is made public and not everything they work on is worth announcing in its current state.
Edit: to add to that, it sounds like Anet keeps going back to the drawing board with their iterative development process. I can only imagine how many times they start from scratch on some projects.
(edited by nightwulf.1986)
I’m curious about what sort of standard we can use for how minion AI should act. Not attacking structures and reliable aggro mechanics seem to me like problems with obvious answers that just haven’t been found yet. What truly puzzles me is what to do about pathing. GW2 combat allows players a decent amount of freedom of motion and npc enemies/pets don’t have that same freedom. In a lot of other mmos that I’ve played, the way players and npcs navigate terrain is almost 1 to 1 in terms of critical limitations. But right now, the difference in mobility advantages that players have versus npcs/mobs is tremendous especially when using dodge and movement speed buffs for offensive positioning. I can’t really imagine a fix for this outside of using a different ruleset for how successful attacks are registered for npcs to compensate for player mobility. It may just be my inexperience with designing combat systems, but it seems like a real quagmire to me, especially since other mmos, that I’ve played, haven’t had similar issues.
Ai is not a strong point of tho games programming and will likely never be. I would love to see pet based professions and specs doing well, but at two years past release with no noticable changes, don’t count on anything.
Even with AI being as dumb as a box of rocks, they still could add a dismiss button, some sort of auto summon feature, and correct the inherent weakness of all pets across tyria no matter the class. It’s no secret that pets are terrible in this game, it’s like it’s 2004 and this is one of the earliest mmo’s when it comes to how pets are done in this title.
I think you are being a bit harsh on the devs if only because GW2 is, from what I’ve taken in, very different mechanically than other mmos. There isn’t a whole lot to consider when referencing past mmos for guidance. While I agree that necro pets and AI in general in GW2 is suffering from some significant issues, the challenges the devs face in designing how pets attack in GW2 aren’t quite the same as other mmos. Currently, the big issues as I understand them are that pets die to aoe very quickly, can’t dodge, can’t track a moving target intelligently, and can’t reliably hit a moving target in melee. For those first two issues, I remember it took wow devs years to add “avoidance” for pets. Literally, added in 2009 when the game was around since 2001. Clearly something was keeping them from adding this feature despite similar complaints about pet survival rates. I’m not sure if other games have done something similar or what their rationale was. No doubt, the devs here are pondering the pros and cons of doing something similar as this complaint has come up several times since launch particularly with Rangers. Keep in mind the ramifications are different here because of how combat is designed in GW2, especially for PVP.
As far as position tracking and attacking, pets appear to suffer in these areas largely because of their behaviors and scripting being tied to general mob AI and the disparity between the freedom of movement allowed by players as compared to mobs. I can’t really go into a lot of detail about the difference between how a successful attack is calculated in GW2 versus a traditional tab targeting mmo. There was a thread some time ago where someone talked about how it’s done in better detail than I can. But what I can tell you is that it certainly doesn’t appear simple even for an experienced programmer to create an elegant way for pets to track and hit a moving character reliably in GW2. The same reason your pets can’t hit a moving target is the same reason you can kite a melee mob without getting hit so effortlessly. There could be some “cheating” perhaps to accomplish a fix but even the devs have said that it would be a lot of work to separate the pet AI from the mob AI.
With that said, I’ve always understood, even in GW1, that necro pets are thematically different from Ranger pets and are intended to be under limited control. So things like stowing and recalling from a target, even their intended life span, may not be treated the same as other pets. The fight for better pet AI is a noble one but I fear the solution, if there is one, is still a ways off.
Again, I apologise for the rant, but that was/is the result of a feeling that’s been crepping in me more and more as this changes have been added to the game.
A lot of changes makes me feel like I’m being thrown around, and I don’t have a choice anymore. Maybe I liked being on a specific server or location because it was fun to be with people you recognized even if you were not part of their guild or whatever.
Now we’re just being thrown around, by the megaserver and even if you and your friends are having a good time in a map, you’ll be thrown into another map because we’re not filling it to the soft cap.
The lack of choice is what hurts. Not the fact of being with people in itself, but the fact that the system as it is, leaves me and many others with no possibility of doing something in peace.
We have to be with other 50 random strangers or it’s not fun says Anet.
And I can’t help but to disagree with that mentality.
I wasn’t calling you out on the rant. That’s my fault if I came off that way. If I’m hearing you right, you miss the sense of community and server identity that was pre-mega server. I can understand that and agree that was a pretty big tradeoff, pyschologically, to ask of an audience who is used to how player communities are structured in previous mmos. For me, it was an opportunity to stop and put into perspective why player communities are organized the way they are. In retrospect, I walked away from the megaserver debacle understanding that the pre-megaserver community structure was another invisible wall of game design and technical limitations. It dawned on me that the community that we all knew and appreciated, in reality, may not have been the ideal way to structure a player base for an mmo if the technology was there. I think this is an involved subject and won’t go into it much more but will say that it’s telling that Anet took steps to at least try to ensure that we could still play with people in our friends list and frequent acquaintances.
Well, the megaserver may have indeed solved many gripes of players. Even if almost all events in the game can be soloed or finished in a group of 5, in the most extreme cases.
But the map caps have been set wrong. On Cursed Shore we have to literally strive to hit a trash mob once! We scuttle from spawn to spawn, fighting each other for loot! These population levels basically destroyed what was so great about the GW2 loot system!
You see, that is another example of perspective. Why is this fight for loot about population limits and not also about mob health values/lifespan or how kill credit is determined? I’ve seen people try to tackle this issue you are referring to from a number of directions including making healing and support count towards rewards, scaling mobs better, etc. I’m not saying what you are identifying is not a problem. I think that if there is a solution, changing map caps probably isn’t an ideal solution. There are tradeoffs to that as well.
I hope they remove this? Just because, you know. Maybe people were doing stuff on that server? Maybe they were just RPing with friends.
Or maybe because the very idea is stupid. The megaservers are already in place, we will be automaticaly place with other players no matter what, even guild or friends list barely matter. We’ll just all go to the kiddy pool. You know, roll over kitten as a massive zerg, hitting people with 1.
BECAUSE THAT’S FUN! Good god, will you just stop? STOP. Stop forcefully mixing players when they don’t want. Stop thinking your way is the only way to enjoy a mmo, stop turning this game in massive, zerg fest, 20 fps.
First the megaservers, the change to the loot, the change to the PS, the changes to the lvl 1-15 zones. And now this?
How more pointless can this game become?I’m sorry for yet another angry rant, but as Matt Visual said “Maybe some one at Anet should stop making suggestions. And take a long vacations.”
I think that last statement should be changed to suggest that Anet stop taking suggestions from players. Well, not really, but there’s a point to that. Most if not all of the changes made that you complained about were made because other players complained about those systems in their former states or made suggestions to that effect. You always have to keep in perspective when it comes to MMOs, there isn’t a correct way to fix a problem. Sure, there are some terrible ways but I have yet to see a viable solution to a problem that is without compromise. What would you suggest that would satisfy people who didn’t like empty maps, not being able to do group events, or being a lone wolf? I can almost promise you that whatever you come up with, there is going to be a Bizarro Synesh out there who doesn’t like what you come up with and will rage.
People have already made some intelligent assessments as to why the low population maps are closed in favor of the higher population ones. Everything else that I think you and others take issue with as far as player population goes seems to have to do with Anet removing kill claiming as it was used in previous mmos. Possibly also to do with removing the trinity. Those issues Anet will likely continue to address as the Guild Wars progresses. So stick around.
I think the OP has made himself clear. He would have been happier knowing that he could complete the collections if they were all account bound trophies or karma items. I can see the merit in that. The goal being that people’s experience in collection being somewhat uniform and equal. However, some people are sitting on millions of karma while others are not. And people would still complain about collections being trivially easy or monotonously long no matter where the lines are drawn.
However, I want to talk about something the OP brought up. Real Money Trading. I think the train of thought that people follow with economic complaints in this vein is uninformed. That train of thought is that if you can’t generate enough gold in game to meet your goals then you are forced to participate in RMT. This sort of logic has been the fallback position of players across MMOs for years. When developers or players set the price of a desired item to a point beyond what some players think is reasonable, the conversation usually devolves into “You are forcing players/me to buy currency from RMT sites!” That…just can’t be the case. Issues stemming from RMT in terms of customer support, in game economies and even in game communities are nightmarish. If you look at the history of RMT and how it affects MMOs and even local economies in other countries, you would probably have a better understanding of why Anet took the direction they did with paying for gold with cash. If Anet didn’t participate in legit RMT, and many MMOs still don’t, desperate players would still be flocking to/preyed on by gold sites for the most desired items. For players that can’t control themselves, and there will always be those who can’t, Anet has given them an out. It wasn’t an altruistic motive I can assure you, there is money to be made there, but the pros and cons are complex enough that I think everyone needs to move beyond using the “they do x to drive gem to gold sales” argument as the basis for a rational understanding of game design.
I think not having a purely account bound collection system gives more options for profit for those who wish to participate in the player driven economy. I think having a purely account bound collection system, while a valid option, would necessitate the use of RNG which some people will complain about anyway. Either way, I feel that it’s pretty clear that completing all of the collections is intended to be a long term goal. Players will never agree on just how long that should be or how to gate it. It’s really hard to silence criticism because no system is perfect. For almost any suggestion you can think of, there will be a flaw or downside.
So, if I’m hearing you right, you are a completionist who wants every last collection filled? Including the black lion ones? And you want to buy everything instead of playing the game to get it? I guess you are setting yourself up for disappointment then. Cause that does cost a lot of money. You already know that there are ways to offset the cost by doing events/world bosses/dungeons/etc. If you are trying to say that you want all of the collections to be account bound items only (or close to it), just say it instead of beating around the bush. Unless, again, I am mistaken.
You seem to be pretty vague about which collections you are referring to. Some collections, like the Kloutaphile one, or the basic crafting ones, are pretty easy to complete and require minimal time/money investment. Others are easier depending on what sort of resources you already have stocked. Are you upset because items that you want are being sold by players who know you want them (hence the high price)? Or are you upset because you didn’t capitalize on these markets first? Regarding insider info, there were previews released publicly about collections. There were also speculators who took shots in the dark about what might be more valuable with collections. Sucks for late comers or those who didn’t keep their ear to the ground but that’s what happens in the GW2 economy. With that said, which collections are you referring to? I agree that some seem like they have a steep investment that doesn’t quite pay off, but you should probably refer to specific ones instead of being vaguely upset about something.