Guild Wars 2

well the author or ten ton probably changed their mind.

But, the thing is, anet is always busy, working hard, but so much of their work is wasted. They need better management of resources and direction. They have to multi task better.
Heart of thornes is consuming their everything, look at FFXIV, they released a major patch with new story, a whole new game mode woven through out the world, a huge casino with a ton of minigames, like 2 months before releasing their expansion. with s

Meanwhile heart of thornes will release like 9-10 months after thier last content release.
and this is what is always happening. They are always too busy on some project to do anything else. And Even when these projects hit, they feel rushed, buggy, and often in the wrong direction.

Ohoni, you need to realize the main point/fun of the game is not appearance customization.
All your premises are based on the idea that the game is designed primarily for people to get whatever appearance they want.

appearances were ALWAYS designed to be based on unique content.

Karma armor requires you to do the heart to unlock the merchant
dungeon armor requires you to do the dungeon
racial armor is limited to whatever race you choose.
personal story has unique items
seasonal events give specific gears

what you are asking for is a radical change that will make the game inferior in design and gameplay. The game was designed, from its inception, as using looks to encourage people to play longer/better/different.

your design already exists, and you see its problems in both karma and gold implementations.

there is no good way to do what it is you want to do, and make a well designed game/reward system

eisberg.2379:

Chairman Wang.5930:

eisberg.2379:

Chairman Wang.5930:

Mirta.5029:

so let me get this straight:

- you can’t compare it to WoW expansions, because WoW is P2P
- you can’t compare it to GW1 because those were standalone games.
- you can compare it to EOTN because that was an add on (?)
- you can’t compare it to Rift, because “nobody cares about Rift or plays it”

while at the same time saying “what game kept the same population for 3 years, population slump is normal!”

(snipped due to post size)
I just want to highlight this again:
Anet have a gem store and a stream of revenue. Its probably not Riot Games level of profitability but the added content to the game is it is comes from that. HoT should be judged on its own, not based on some notion that we the player “owes” Anet for patching the game or making it sub free. If GW2 is your passion and you want it, by all means go for it. Anet still has me on good will they built up from GW1 but we should all be able to take a step back and look at it for what it is.

You cannot compare GW1’s games and the 1 expansion to GW2 because those games were not even MMOs to begin with, they were never even marketed as an MMO. GW1 was more like the Diablo series but with a graphical lobby, and nobody ever considers Diablo series as an MMO.

Also it is far from lacking in content, it is jammed packed with content, perhaps if you actually played the beta you might know this. Plus more content is going to be added to HoT over time.

I played the beta… Its not “jammed” pack with content. While you try to call others out, try actually reading what I wrote. Also the potential for future content is worth less than content on hand. You can assign value to it but if we compare that to what we currently know, its not as valuable. That does not excuse HoT since these types of game naturally adds content over time.

GW1 is an MMO. Anet choose to try to differentiate its features but its an MMO. Its massively online multiplayer. Steam has it listed as an MMO (I think this is the only third party retailer left?) and CORPG redirects to MMORPG on Wikipedia. Give me actual objective proof that GW1 was not an MMO rather than your own interpretations and I’ll believe you.

Edit: Actually you’re just plain wrong, see the official GW1 wiki http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Guild_Wars

It defines it to be a CORPG which we always have shown to be an MMORPG. GW compares itself to other MMOs, it won MMO game of the year (yes “ironically” since its not a pure “mmo” but it shows that it is still in that category") Diablo was never considered an MMO but GW1 sure as hell was. Either by popular consent or definition shenanigans.

Future content added to HoT after release is very much valuable, it is part of the reason to buying HoT as well.

Not going to dig deep into searches looking for what the developers themselves saying that GW1 was not an MMO, Guild Wars 2 takes up the vast majority of the search results. But yes the developers themselves stated it was not an MMO.

MMOs are played in a persistent worlds, and GW1 definitely did not have persistent worlds. The towns/outposts were just a new fancy way of doing lobbies. GW1 had far more in common with Diablo series than it did with MMOs. Using your definition of MMOs, you might as well as call any game that has a lobby system as an MMO.

sorry bro, gw2 no longer has persistent worlds, megaserver destroys and creates worlds as needed. Its not different than joining a dungeon instance with more people.

oh yeah, and future content cannot be quanitified or given a value, since no one knows what it is, or how much there will be. Whether future content makes it worth buying will be decided once that content comes out.

Its like if i sell you a graphic novel for 50 dollars, and tell you you are entitled to all the comics after that, that i make until the next graphic novel, but i dont tell you how many comics i plan to make or the size of those comics.
Its pretty hard for you to assign a value to that.

they have commited to nothing other than releasing the 3 parts of the raid.

Ohoni, the false premise you have, is that armor is only about customizing your look. Some armors are more about what they represent than how a player wants his/her avatar to look.

which isnt to say people shouldnt be able to get them, but rather they should be able to wear them, when they can represent what the armor is supposed to represent.

basically sometimes the game has to come before the personal appearance.

There is no logical reason, a videogame company needs to require sms/phone verification.
I dont know much about the winauth system, but the phone thing is simply too invasive. It really doesnt matter if they will sell the information or not, they have no reason to have it. Most people would be just as annoyed if anet required people to tell them thier salaries, or what underwear they are wearing.

Also, companies get hacked, or have security lapses, or kitten off employees and get data compromised. If they do not have your data, its less likely for you to have problems. Giving out personal data should always be optional.

And to be honest, the whole extra code thing is annoying. even when i have authenticator things, i tend to not use them, because they are more annoying than they are useful.

Anyhow, probably shouldnt effect me because im an old account, but i sincerely hope they never try to push this open me.

deSade.9437:

Problem is, unless this damage applies a -100% healing debuff, ds still sucks as a way of mitigating damage. It’s around 13k full, isn’kitten That’s not a lot.
I mean, does anyone seriously think they’re gonna introduce such high, unavoidable damage (and you supposedly can’t heal, else people would just blast water fields and necro’d be ever more useless) it ticks for say 20-25k so necros can survive it, making them useful?
That’s quiiiite the stretch.
Necro becoming a “thing”? That’s even more of a stretch… They can, sure, but it doesn’t look like they want to fix things? I mean, it’s been 3 years…

P.S. This isn’t a necro thread (pun unintended), but there’s one thing that’s eating at me… they built the reaper around this concept of being sloooow but hard to escape from, correct? Chill, chill, more chill and some hard ccs, coupled with melee-oriented skills. Ok. Then… why does an ele apply more chill with 0 effort, ranged? Why did they give every elite spec but dh – even other reapers – this massive condi reduction? From 33% to 66% chill duration reduction, on top of food + runes.
What the hell?

they said they got to rebalance reaper due to large chill nerfs

SkiTz.4590:

Straight from the blogpost that posted a few hours ago

" First, you can earn unique rewards once per week from raids, but you can play a raid as many times as you want to help your friends earn rewards or to refine your strategies. The encounters within Raids will contain tons of exclusive new items you’ll never be able to find anywhere else in the game, from miniatures, to weapon skins, to awesome titles. You can then proudly display these out in the open world to show off your skill and accomplishments. Own a Guild Hall? Awesome! You can loot a trophy from some of our bosses and use them as decorations to show off the challenge you’ve conquered. "

Well Ohoni, looks like your dream of non exclusive rewards are shattered

I’m interested in seeing if these rewards are actually end of raid chest RNG (like teq hoard) or will they be dropping in the raids from the mobs/bosses …. thoughts?
I just hope its not like frac skins RNG right now….

one week lock outs on loot?
bad idea.

people wont help much unless the non unique rewards are crazy.
gonna be hard to get groups going with one per week rewards.

basically needs raiding guilds, specific log on days, and all the drama that comes with that.

EcoRI.9273:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3jdjtv/designing_challenging_content/cuoh8b6

“When bosses don’t die in 5 seconds, survivability and sustainability actually becomes a thing.”

Oh look dungeon requires no skills says a dev.(At least thats how I interpret that statement.)

actually that statement sounds like they are going to have unavoidable damage now. the onl;y defenses necro have is mitigation and healing. So if necros survivability makes them good, dmg must be unavoidabble

this is why they are making fractals more dungeon like, id say both fractas and dungeons died. And the new fractals is child of the two.

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

SkiTz.4590:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Coulter.2315:

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

I get how the mastery system would be beneficial… Especially one based upon progressing within the raid. My issue is Gliding and mushroom mastery can only be earned via HoT. Therefore excluding all core players from being able to progress past certain points within raids.

Core players will literally be unable to walk into the Raid – the door is in the expansion lands… Masteries aren’t their first hurdle xD

Then that creates an even MORE fundamental issue… I know just in my guild alone several people who won’t be getting HoT. Will there ever be Raids getting added to Core?

Are you serious?

The fundamental issue is your reading comphrension….

RAIDS are HoT only…. i’m sorry but you gotta buy the xpac if you want raids dude… its not free and it doesn’t have to be free. If you don’t like it, too bad.

You think raids are something that is easy to do for anet? doesn’t have a big cost of resources or anything? It’s a tall task for anet, so its coming in the xpac. I don’t see this as an issue.

Either get the xpac or you are not going to have the content… simple as that.. No point in whining.

ummmm perhaps you can’t read… I have HoT… I’m only playing devil’s advocate for those who choose not to get it. It makes it appear development, at least any substantial ones, have been abandoned for core players.

well you make a fine point, but yeah thats what it boils down to, core is done. they expect everyone who wants to do new stuff to buy the latest expansion.
They only leave in wvw and pvp because it will cripple either mode

the hardest part of doing raids is going to be finding 9 other people who want to tackle it consistently, who dont blow up in each others faces.

Thats my main problem with “raids”

Astralporing.1957:

phys.7689:

Astralporing.1957:

FrizzFreston.5290:

You just add unfounded numerical weight to it and add that the goal is intentionally designed unreachable, which is just nonsense. But yeah.

Think it through. We’re talking about a content that is to challenge the best players. A content that a majority can complete will simply not be challenging enough. Which has been stated many times, by the way, by the raiders themselves. In this very thread. So, it is a content which majority of players is supposed to not be able to complete. Doesn’t it follow, then, that any exclusive reward locked behind such content is a reward intentionally placed behind the reach of a majority of players? If it’s not so, please, point to me where i have erred and why.
(mind you, the desire to place those rewards beyond the reach of majority of players has also been stated many times in this very threads by raid proposers, so i really cannot think where i could have erred)

its not meant to be beyond the reach of the best players, its meant to be difficult.

…sigh, stop misquoting me. I didn’t say beyond the reach of the best players. I said difficult to the best players. But what is difficult to the best player, is beyond reach to an average one. If it’s not, then it has failed its intended purpose.

Besides, look at this very thread. The desire for raids to be a content only “the bestest” will be able to beat (which always seems to include the poster) is repeated many times here. Do you really thing that this desire will be able to be satisfied with an instance that a majority of players can finish? Honestly?

FrizzFreston.5290:

And any challenge is intentionally unreachable. I doubt anyone who set the bar at a certain height means for everyone to be able to cross it.

…so, what are you arguing with me about? This bar is meant to be set well above the 50% mark, and there are exclusive rewards placed behind it. This means that those rewards will be unreachable by design to people below that bar. Do you disagree? Because you seem to be arguing against me, and yet you keep repeating the very things i say.

you guys simplified understanding of peoples abilities. and analysis of who is in what category, leads to these false ideas.
first of all, who is being targeted for these raids? the top .05%? the top 5% the top 10%?

second how does those targeted translate in terms of the average players abilities?

what type of skill set is being challenged here? is it reflex? preparation? execution? creativity?

I played FFXI back in the day, supposedly one of the most difficult MMOs. Everybody who played long enough gained enough skills to do whatever their goal was.
fighting a regular enemy in FFXI required as much skill, coordination, planning, as the hardest current dungeon bosses in gw2. Millions of players learned how to do this on a regular basis. Those same people who at one time may have struggled with fighting a pikachu level enemy, later on could be found in the hardest raids/boss fights in the game.

you drastically underestimate the average, and even below average humans ability to adapt to stimulus. Right now there is such a drastic difference in skill, not because of natural ability, but because of incentive.
And also remember this is GROUP content, there is always going to be different divisions of who does what based on the individual strengths and weaknesses of the people.

based on how you guys act, mario brothers would be impossible to beat ( and yet millions of kids did it at age 5+)

this is more an issue of not liking a content type, than an issue of human potential. You would make a better argument letting go the whole impossible for people, and focusing on the idea that people dislike content.

Ohoni.6057:

Think it through. We’re talking about a content that is to challenge the best players. A content that a majority can complete will simply not be challenging enough. Which has been stated many times, by the way, by the raiders themselves. In this very thread. So, it is a content which majority of players is supposed to not be able to complete. Doesn’t it follow, then, that any exclusive reward locked behind such content is a reward intentionally placed behind the reach of a majority of players? If it’s not so, please, point to me where i have erred and why.
(mind you, the desire to place those rewards beyond the reach of majority of players has also been stated many times in this very threads by raid proposers, so i really cannot think where i could have erred)

Yeah, basically the raiders create an impossible logic loop.

The Content should be so difficult that only the best can achieve it.
->
The Best Rewards should only flow from this content.
->
If people want the Rewards, then all they have to do is “git gud” and beat the Content, anyone can do it.
->
The Content should be so difficult that only the best can achieve it.

If you poke them on one of those points, they retreat to the previous one as a defense, but taken all together it cannot hold as a functional model.

There is no content i have seen in any mmo that was so hard as to be impossible when people do it the way it was meant to be done.

What is achievable for some players is not always achievable by all. Furthermore, what is theoretically possible for someone is not necessarily something that they would enjoy pursuing. Do not project your own experiences onto other players. Just accept, as completely incontrovertible fact, the following points:

1. If the content is designed in a way to be remotely challenging to the very best players, then it will be immensely challenging to the median players.
2. If the content is remotely challenging to the very best players, then it will be completely impossible for the sub-median players, unless methods exist to essentially carry them through it, so the best case scenario is that they will merely be a burden on all other players.
3. While each player has the potential for growth as a player, each player also has functional limits on their potential. Not every player can become the very best player, regardless of how much time and effort they spend in that pursuit, and for some it comes much easier than others.
4. Just because some players enjoy the experience of failing against difficult content until they eventually surpass it, many others do not.

Given these absolute facts, I think that the step forward is that it’s perfectly reasonable to provide the challenging content that some players clearly want, but also it’s important to accept that this content is not, and should not be for ALL players in the game, and those players for whom this content does not provide a positive gaming experience, they should be free to opt out of it, with as little negative consequence as possible (ie they don’t miss out on getting the cool rewards). There is no benefit to excluding rewards from people who are genuinely trying to enjoy the game to the best of their ability.

your premises are false.

I have actually played raids in multiple games, they are not impossible no matter how you slice it.
There are some people who have disabilities who will not possess the basic abilities needed to succeed, but that is always going to be the case, no matter what content you create.

Now some people may not have the desire. Thats fine, but its not any different than people who dont have the desire to simple things.
Some things should be earnable by any means, and somethings should require you to actually do specific things.
the type of reward system you want is improbable to balance. It has never in the history of the world been done without large flaws. You basically want to create a monetary system that has no biases, imbalances, degenerative results. People have been trying to build that economy irl for as long as we have had civilizations. Its not going to happen.

Do you have an algorithim for skilled play? an algorithm for effort per user? algorithm for how mass behavior will effect the production of an item? An algorithim for how this changes over time?

socialistic captilalism is the current method most used, and the TP essentially tried that already, it doesnt perform well for prestige items, while keeping gaming goals/rewards doing their jobs.

Devata.6589:

dane.4638:

Im not going to continue to argue the logic behind paying the same price just for expansion as others pay for the whole game. This only makes people who obviously support this decision attempt to insult my intelligence which I am not interested in. As Gale said, I will just not buy HoT which probably means my time here is pretty much expired. I had no idea I was buying a time gated game when I bought GW2 but I have been wrong before.

I understand now after reading the arguments that buying this game entitles you to about 3 years of fun according to some people (Including Anet) That is fine, but I cant afford to upgrade me and my familys accounts at this price and dont agree that I should have to. Im sure that many in my guild will pay though as we were founded during beta and have spent a lot of time and effort building to this point. If they do, they will probably be playing HoT content which leaves me with no guild to play with so I guess my days are over. I will miss this game however so I will say good job on making 2 great games that have filled my free time for 10 years Anet!

With all due respect, but this game has been initial sold as being B2P, then you should have expected this.. in fact you should have expected the first €50,- expansion as soon as a year after release (also see GW1), and the next one a year later and now it would have been the 3th. However they went the cash-shop way meaning they did try you to convince buying in-game items instead of expansions.

It is not really time-gated but to already have the latest stuff you will need to always buy the latest expansion.. what I personally find better than having fun items being moved to a cash-shop.

I have no problems with paying money, but I want to pay for a good product, not pay less, or nothing for a product and then have a lesser product for it because they try to earn the money in other ways. As long as they now start behaving as a B2P game all is fine.

actually its definately time gated, im not saying thats good or bad, but the model is definately set up in a different manner than buy 2 play.

buy 2 play involves a separation of concerns that gw2 will not have. Gw1 was buy to play. Prophecies was seperate from factions seperate from nightfall, even eye of the north was fairly self contained.

Gw2 new model is a time gating more than buy 2 play.
What is going on depends on time.
old game = free to play
new game = exclusive access to new stuff
wait long enough, new games cycles to old game.

What you are buying now is exclusive access to things until the next expansion.

also there isnt that separation.
fractals are effected by buying the new content
precursor quest is based on the old content, but its locked to the new game. Core masteries are based on old content, but locked in new game.

the business model is basically a free to play with timed exclusivities.
Not that thats a horrible thing, but it has its own ups and downs.
The biggest unknowns now, is how they will develop/release content under this new plan, how long between purchases, and how much content with expansion.
Right now, it seems like content for new expansion is low (to me)
time between content is unknown.

I think they themselves arent sure yet exactly how this will effect their development strategies and execution.

anet is a bit ADD, they love to try new things, on the flip side, they dont usually move forward/refine a lot because they constantly change direction. I would be surprised if this whole model they set up ends up changing before the next “expansion” (air quotes because they will probably change their plan) hits.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Azumi.9572:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

What I want to know is, where were all these posts claiming I was ripped off/cheated/conned/etc when the game went for sale at $10 seven months or so ago? Why weren’t you at least 83% as outraged that someone new paid $10 and you paid $60 back then?

Because they still had to pay for the game and the exp. pack.

People like myself who have been here since Day 1 supporting ArenaNet had to put down 60$+ for the core game and now another 60$+ for HoT (I paid 100$) while people just playing today pay 60$ and get all the same content I get for less than half the price.

I personally don’t care, but I’m guessing that’s the argument.

“Why are they equal to us when we’ve been here longer and paid more money?”

The new people paid $10 for the core then $50 for the expansion while vets paid $60 and $50. So why didn’t the vets rage against them getting it for $50 cheaper? Unless that made them angry, their argument makes no sense.

Two possibilities.

• The word “free” triggers a reaction. While the difference between $0 outrage and $10 outrage seems like it ought to be small, the idea that someone else got a freebie and one didn’t could trigger rage.
• It’s not about outrage, it’s about using the point as a strategy to try to wangle a lower price for something they want. Throw blame at the developer, generate some agreement from others, and hope that there will be enough impact to lower the price before release. Not going to happen, but hope springs eternal.

I’d guess the latter is more prevalent than the former, tbh. The value of core for someone who has been around a long time is probably lower than $10 now. I’m certainly not inclined to start a new free account.

free is actually known to be a huge difference in understanding. And it actually translates to a huge difference in reality. This is why they didnt make the game cost 5 dollars. Essentially the difference between =0 and >0 is huge.

Not surprising it would cause big differences in opinions, in both directions.

as to the second point, I recently realized that people have forgotten the nature of business. Trade, on both sides is about trading value for value. Prices are never really absolute, Anet makes infinitely more from a discounted sale, than a non sale. Expressing the fact that you dont like a current deal, is definately people saying lower the price, or add more to the product.

But those people are actually giving you more information on the viability of your pricing. They are telling you, for this price/product i dont feel its enticing enough. Even if they do buy it, they are basically letting you know it was a grudging price, that tells you something about how they will feel about the future development/company.

Astralporing.1957:

FrizzFreston.5290:

You just add unfounded numerical weight to it and add that the goal is intentionally designed unreachable, which is just nonsense. But yeah.

Think it through. We’re talking about a content that is to challenge the best players. A content that a majority can complete will simply not be challenging enough. Which has been stated many times, by the way, by the raiders themselves. In this very thread. So, it is a content which majority of players is supposed to not be able to complete. Doesn’t it follow, then, that any exclusive reward locked behind such content is a reward intentionally placed behind the reach of a majority of players? If it’s not so, please, point to me where i have erred and why.
(mind you, the desire to place those rewards beyond the reach of majority of players has also been stated many times in this very threads by raid proposers, so i really cannot think where i could have erred)

its not meant to be beyond the reach of the best players, its meant to be difficult. I think people will be able to beat it whatever it is. There is no content i have seen in any mmo that was so hard as to be impossible when people do it the way it was meant to be done. The bikitteniment is figuring out the gimmick for those types of battles. The ones that arent being blocked by lack of knowledge, are usually just a matter of practice, execution, and paying attention.

truth is, i honestly doubt it will be that hard for the best of the best players. They allready have all the game skills down pat.

Ohoni.6057:

As you appear to know everything definitively, please explain to me what kind of reward structure motivates people to play in an MMO, using the undisputed most popular MMO of all time World of Warcraft as your supporting case. Thanks.

As I’ve said before, WoW is a black swan and cannot be reasonably used as a comparison against any other gaming product. Any feature that works great in Wow has been tried and failed spectacularly in at least 2-3 MMOs by this point. Every MMO that tried to chase after WoW’s shadow just ended up crushed underfoot, and it’s only the ones that have broken out and done something different that have maintained any traction.

Instead I’ll just make a non-comparative answer to your question, a reward structure that motivates people to play is one that makes them feel that their time has been justified and that they are working at a steady pace towards a goal that they want. One way to screw that up is to have difficult content that does not give out as much reward as effortless content, ie Fractals vs. SW farming. That is certainly bad. The way to screw it up in the other direction is to lock unique rewards behind content that only a small number of players actually want to do, forcing everyone else to either run content that they do not enjoy, or abandon that reward entirely, a choice which benefits no one.

nope working at a steady pace towards your goals is not actually the highest motivating rewards system

also, exclusive rewards actually doesnt mess up your paradigm of working at a steady pace towards your goals being the best answer.
As long as you have goals that players wish to work towards for most playstyles, they will still excel under your paradigm.

This is probably why they built the mastery system/elite spec hero points.
It is the most compelling goal for an open world player. More compelling than cosmetics by far. Even more compelling than maximum stats. Play open world to get more access to the open world, and more convenience and strength in the open world.

based on what you said, i dont think many, if any of the player types you are talking about will be quitting for exclusives. They will be busy pursuing their goals of unlocking specializations and masteries on multiple charachters at a steady pace, for the most dominant and powerful charachter growth/progression the game offers at 80+

heres the what you can figure out once you put all the evidence together.

gw2 could charge whatever they wanted for heart of thornes, from free up until 50 dolars. Their current business model is focused on the gem shop for revenue. The primary purpose of expansions in this model is to re spark interest, and present a growing theme park. Living story was not bringing the same return in interest as companies commonly see with expansions,
thus their revenue was slowly draining down (though it was pretty decent for the market) without the burst that expansions provide.

So what happened? well first you have to understand new players are more valuable in an f2p system, they have more things to spend money on, and they require less new development.

So, basically they decided to make the game more accessible for new players, and try to re monetize old players. They decided to give the f2p player more free game than competitors, but charge them more for the premium game.

they could have made the base game cost 10-20 dollars, and the expansion cost 40-30, but gem shop thrives on volume of players (this is why most cash shop games go f2p) and best way to monetize veterans is with content/experienced end game content)
so they chose to split the costs in a way that could theoretically give them the biggest bang for their buck.

charge experienced players a lot of money, they are hooked, and charge new players nothing, to get them access to the shop, and increase their chance of becoming an experienced player.

problems with this strategy?
the price point, and model may alienate experienced players
theoretical benefit?
they may shift towards more content creation per buck to entice experienced players.

experienced players arent really needed, even if every player stays f2p and never buys the newest release, as long as those releases generate interest(that player spike), and f2p continue to purchase from the gem shop at a decent rate, earnings willl be high

biggest problems with their execution? the price point was too high, and the content offered too light. Make no mistake though, they will still profit pretty well, its just they wont make as much money as they could have with either a lower price point, or more content.
Its possible though that this too is part of their plan, since updates will add to their content, and its likely prices will drop at times due to sales.

eisberg.2379:

Mirta.5029:

MiniEquine.6014:

What would be unfair is if you got HoT for less or nothing when a new player had to pay the same price, which is the exact opposite of what you stated.

no.. That would be how most MMOs work.

For example FFXIV. Two years ago it went for 30£. Today it’s 10£. The expansion pack costs 30£. There are bundles for a newly starting player, but they’re still 40£. So while the veteran payed 60£ total, a new player still had to pay 40£ for base game and expansion. And yes, the price will continue falling over time, but base game + expansions will never be the same price as the newest expansion.

HoT is seen as that kind of bundle, because it also includes base game. It’s also more expensive than expansions for a lot of other MMOs. So it’s only natural to perceive that if you’re buying JUST the expansion it should be cheaper. And it doesn’t feel really fair that you can’t discount the base game in it.

Other games you are thinking about also have a subscription model, either required or optional with great benefits/advantages. So it is not a fair comparison at all. They can afford to have a cheaper price for current customer vs new customers because they have a better revenue stream. If GW2 had an optional subscription model or a required subscription, I am sure they would sell the expansion for cheaper.

Incorrect, look at the financial releases, gw2 has a better revenue stream than most f2p, and all but the top MMOs . in fact they were ahead of ffxiv until ffxiv slowly surpassed them.
They only began to drop recently, primarily because their service was getting less and less compelling. Which would happen no matter what your business plan is.

People need to stop thinking f2p is doing you a favor, it is a different business plan, with different strengths and weaknesses, but it is not inferior revenue if you know what you are doing. You also are never getting it for nothing, you are giving up paying monthly in exchange for f2p game design.

like
inventory you have to buy
less cosmetic items in game
inferior/inconvienient game design
slower progress wo boosters.
out of game gamble boxes
rewards designed to support the economy/gem economy.
revenue earned split between cash shop design and game design.

gw2 has one of the most balanced f2p offerings imo, but its still an f2p design. You play ffxiv you get charachter hair changes for a fixed gold cost,
every armor/clothes is earnable in game
tons of inventory and an armory system for instant gear swaps/job changes out of combat
economy is designed to support reward design
revenue earned completely focused on game design.

is this worth 15 a month? thats subjective, but regardless thats the price you pay when you play f2p. F2p makes money by monetizing things that other people would rather spend a standard fee to have.

moral of the story; gem shop revenue is compared to subscription revenue, box cost compares to box cost

edit look at the top mmo games earning from 2014 (btw swtor made about 100 milion a year, and gw2 was probably also around 100 mil)
http://www.swtorstrategies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/2014_1022-top10mmo-final.jpg

the only subscription game in the top 10, is WoW. so no, f2p/b2p doesnt equal lower revenue streams.

MattyP.6954:

So much kitten…

You guys realized that, no matter how it was going to go, two classes were going to be last, right? Ranger makes sense because we already knew we were getting Druid, and Engineer makes sense because it’s consistently been the hardest for them to develop for (considering how complicated the gameplay can be).

Stop whining and just wait for the content to come out…

no this is incorrect, they could have released all the specs by now for testing if they were ready. If they ve been hiding these for promotion purposes only, well thats a dumb move. Every spec they released needed tweaks and feedback, even chronomancer.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

This again? You do realize that plans change over time within companies, right.

Ergo…

Ayrilana.1396:

The full set can be included. It’s something that will be released over time with HoT as a requirement in order to acquire them.

You do realize that plans change over time within companies, right. I also suppose that plans can change again and the full set won’t be released ever, so you saying that people should buy HoT because it will include a full legendary set is at best a mistake, at worst a sign of desperation.

Just because something has a potential to change, regardless of its likelihood, doesn’t mean that you can disregard it. The current plan is to release a few legendary weapons upon release and then the rest through the regular updates. There’s no indication for them to change from this.

I’m also not saying people should buy HoT because it will include the full set. Please read the posts again and not make up what I was saying.

they never said they would release a full set in HOTS lifespan. They only went ahead as far as 3 more, and did they even say when that would happen? Its possible the next 3 could be in another expansion.

They said subsequent updates, not expansion. They also plan to roll out new raids through their regular updates so new legendary weapons will likely be rolled out along with them.

they put a specific date on raids, saying within the first month or so. They did not put a date on legendary weapons, which doesnt suggest to me that one should EXPECT them to come with raids, or any time soon.

Its certainly possible, but nothing they said says you should expect any more than 3 more, and they have no timeline on those 3.

and they wouldnt say what is next expansion or not at this point, i doubt they know what the next expansion is supposed to have in it at this point.

The specific date was because the first few raids will not be available at launch unlike the first few legendary weapons. What part of releasing more over subsequent updates, or as the story progresseses, do you get that they will not release more?

release more does not mean release 15 new weapons.
aka a full set.
release more does not mean we will release more in a short time frame.
release more does not mean they will do it this expansion.

they said they would add fractal leaderboards in future updates one year ago
they said they would add precursor quests in future updates 2 years ago
they said they woud expand guild progression in future updates 2 years
they said they woud regularly add new skills and traits 2 years ago
they said SAB would return in future updates a year ago.

future updates means updates at some point in the future. It doesnt mean updates within this expansion, it doesnt mean soon, it means eventually probably. The discussion was about what anet said people are getting with THIS expansion, not what they might get one day down the line.

If they put a date on something, then thats different, but if they arent

If anet said hot of thornes will include a full set of legendary weapons to be released before the next expansion, then one should include it what they are getting for this expansion. They did not say that.

i would expect you, who has gone out of your way to only hold anet to the letter of what they say, not to be suggesting people place expectations on anet based on what they think they mean by a general vague statements.

Qazmodon.1823:

phys.7689:

Qazmodon.1823:

and no its not bad design to create an open world without direction – its open world – its an mmorpg not a single person linear game. its a different mindset – its a different kind of game – it doesnt hold your hand and tell you where to go you have to make….dunh dunh dunnnnnh DECISIONS either you like open world or you dont. sounds like the majority of posters on this thread need to go back to their console single player games where content is set out in a tidy neat fashion for them to mindlessly consume untill they reach the end and become real winners.

in open world you have to provide a lot of you’re own entertainment and goals – not everyone likes that. then they come whine and complain on the forums – ignore the whiners and complainers gw2 is pretty cool if you can provide even a small amount of imagination. I know its hard for the kitten kitten mindset of the main stream to grasp that.

a well designed open world game generally starts with a compelling narrative then sends you out into the open word with a general purpose and reasoning. They also generally have a main plotline to pursue at your leisure
Skyrim is a perfect example.

you start out with a compelling high drama story, then they tell you to go talk to this guy. You can go off and explore OR YOU CAN GO TALK TO THAT GUY.

open world doesnt mean your required to do everything in the map to progress, it means you can choose what to do, and when to do it. And it doesnt mean there is no guiding plotlines/quests.

what you are talking about is a bad execution of an open world game.

well after you finish the first story line thing you can DO THAT HEART QUEST AND TALK TO THAT GUY or you can go explore maybe TALK TO THAT HEART QUEST GUY or go explore then when you get to level 10 you get a mail and YOU CAN GO TALK TO THAT GUY there is plenty of guidance in the starting levels you sound like you’re complaining for the sake of complaining. picking the pepper out of fly dung

you cant continue the main plotline. Talking to a farmer about some bandits that have no interaction with anything of import is a side story, not a compelling narrative.
Look at skyrim as an example of a highly successful open world game. I could go and do the main plotline, or wander off. If they forced me to complete every content in the starting area before i could procceed to the main plotline guy, that would not be a good open world design. Because its really not that open.

Jerus.4350:

nexxe.7081:

Jerus.4350:

nexxe.7081:

Dahkeus.8243:

Good. There’s a reason I left WoW at Cataclysm.

Pug raids are miserable. They’re either an organizational disaster or they’re pitted against content that’s made easy enough for a pug clear.

The latter of those two options is the worst.

Here’s the moment I decided to quit raiding:

I was entering the Deatwing’s Lair raid with a Raid LFG. We breezed through every boss, downing them without a wipe. I defeated Deathwing by doing almost nothing but tab targetting and following the mob of pugs. When the great and legendary Deatwing died to this group…I realized that there was nothing to be proud of.

Deathwing suddenly felt like a pushover schmuck and there was nothing any challenging hard mode could do to fix his ruined reputation.

Please ArenaNet. Please, please, keep this content challenging and don’t ever build out a group finder. Don’t just cater to casual content and don’t just cater to hardcore content. Provide both and embrace a complex and diverse playerbase!

PUG raids work well in GW2. Teq and Wurm, and Vinewrath aren’t “disasters”.

They also aren’t very challenging.

I should’ve clarified. I meant it works well in organizing. As for “challenging”, it works well in WoW, since there’s different difficulty levels: LFR (easiest), Normal (regular guilds), and Mythic (for highly organized and progression guilds). GW2 is only catering to the latter, neglecting the former groups.

Mhm, and having diffrent tiers of difficult is good for this. But it takes more work and it’s not what GW2 has in mind. Not knowing exactly how much work either option takes but do you think your players who would use LFR would in general want a raid or another open world area or open world boss? What is that demographic’s playtime focused? So is it worth building that easy mode raid that you could complete with the LFR tool? Or is it better to spend those resources elsewhere where they would appreciate them more?

i dunno bout an LFR tool, but i will tell you its possible to complete high end, difficult raids in a LFG system. It depends primarily on the community, and how they choose to use the tool. In FFXIV it was possible to beat hard raids through party finder, i know because i did it.

It is however true the harder it was, the more lfg failure tended to occur.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

This again? You do realize that plans change over time within companies, right.

Ergo…

Ayrilana.1396:

The full set can be included. It’s something that will be released over time with HoT as a requirement in order to acquire them.

You do realize that plans change over time within companies, right. I also suppose that plans can change again and the full set won’t be released ever, so you saying that people should buy HoT because it will include a full legendary set is at best a mistake, at worst a sign of desperation.

Just because something has a potential to change, regardless of its likelihood, doesn’t mean that you can disregard it. The current plan is to release a few legendary weapons upon release and then the rest through the regular updates. There’s no indication for them to change from this.

I’m also not saying people should buy HoT because it will include the full set. Please read the posts again and not make up what I was saying.

they never said they would release a full set in HOTS lifespan. They only went ahead as far as 3 more, and did they even say when that would happen? Its possible the next 3 could be in another expansion.

They said subsequent updates, not expansion. They also plan to roll out new raids through their regular updates so new legendary weapons will likely be rolled out along with them.

they put a specific date on raids, saying within the first month or so. They did not put a date on legendary weapons, which doesnt suggest to me that one should EXPECT them to come with raids, or any time soon.

Its certainly possible, but nothing they said says you should expect any more than 3 more, and they have no timeline on those 3.

and they wouldnt say what is next expansion or not at this point, i doubt they know what the next expansion is supposed to have in it at this point.

Electro.4173:

Two things.

One, you don’t know how much they are yet. Datamined costs aren’t official, and even if that is the amount currently, there’s no saying it couldn’t be changed before launch.

Two, HoT itself will probably have a have a hefty amount of hero points available since elite specs are part of the expansion specifically. I doubt the devs want to provide everyone with these brand new elite specs as part of the expansion and then say “OK, now ignore all the HoT maps and go back and grind old maps for Hero Points so you can actually use those elite specs”.

most likely they will have between 24-48 skill points, possibly less since the maps revealed didnt seem to have many.
Yes they do expect you to go back to core, and apparently the large majority of maps. Anet wants these old levels to still be relevant although you have been playing them for 3 years.

…. they are way to obsessed with making people go back to old content…

IndigoSundown.5419:

One thing, if the number would take most of the Hero Points available via mapping challenges, ANet will have to add a ton of new challenges and/or new ways to get them for the second Elite Spec … if, and when …

yes they are basically introducing what is likey 190 skill points worth of grind for future specializations.
If we are lucky new areas will give more skill points per challenge

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

This again? You do realize that plans change over time within companies, right.

Ergo…

Ayrilana.1396:

The full set can be included. It’s something that will be released over time with HoT as a requirement in order to acquire them.

You do realize that plans change over time within companies, right. I also suppose that plans can change again and the full set won’t be released ever, so you saying that people should buy HoT because it will include a full legendary set is at best a mistake, at worst a sign of desperation.

Just because something has a potential to change, regardless of its likelihood, doesn’t mean that you can disregard it. The current plan is to release a few legendary weapons upon release and then the rest through the regular updates. There’s no indication for them to change from this.

I’m also not saying people should buy HoT because it will include the full set. Please read the posts again and not make up what I was saying.

they never said they would release a full set in HOTS lifespan. They only went ahead as far as 3 more, and did they even say when that would happen? Its possible the next 3 could be in another expansion.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

pvp and wvw are not part of Hot.
fractal system is also not hot.
3 new legendary weapons, not a new set of weapons
map bonus, i dont think is hot only change

The full set can be included. It’s something that will be released over time with HoT as a requirement in order to acquire them.

you are reading way too far into what they said, especially since you believe in giving anet as much leeway as possible with what they say.

They said they would release more after hot, they didnt say when they would release it.
they also never said there would be a full set before the next expansion.

likewise more guild halls and specializations might end up being in the next expansion. Don’t assume you will get content that anet never said you will get.

PopeUrban.2578:

phys.7689:

Endless Soul.5178:

I think it’s sad that patience seems to be a lost virtue these days.

if something doesnt make people more interested in the first few hours, thats basically a pretty big fail. Patience is for tasks, not entertainment.

I get it. I don’t play PvP in this game as I prefer a higher stakes style of PvP and find the sPvP arena style boring, and WvW fighting over things I have no investment or ownership in tedious. I prefer more old school UO or EVE style PvP, basically, I like knowing pvp means risking losing stuff. I’ll probably never really enjoy GW2’s PvP

Most of those games also have PvE that’s not particularly immersive or challenging, so I look elsewhere for my PvE.

GW2 PvE is highly story/lore centric. If its particular brand of charm doesn’t quite grab you in the first few hours, it’s pretty unlikely that it’ll hold your attention no matter how challenging future content is. Personally I’m happy they’re adding more challenging content while trying to keep the things I like about GW2 PvE (The exploration and ongoing story) but if you’re looking more for a sort of less twitchy and more tactical thing I doubt it’ll have staying power for you.

Different strokes for different folks is all. Nothin’ wrong with that.

you do realize you can no longer actually do the story line till around level 10, and the content designed for the first 10 levels is generally some of the least engaging content lore wise? It was designed as being side things to accompany the personal story which starts out being the main narrative, while the initial hearts/events are fluff. Later on you get more involved lore chain events and the story is more spaced out, but starter zones is like kill some wasps, water some cows kill random bandits.

it used to be, by the time you were level 9, you had basically done the whole first story arc. Now, all you ve done at level 9 is water cows, kill random bandits, help plug some walls etc.

Qazmodon.1823:

and no its not bad design to create an open world without direction – its open world – its an mmorpg not a single person linear game. its a different mindset – its a different kind of game – it doesnt hold your hand and tell you where to go you have to make….dunh dunh dunnnnnh DECISIONS either you like open world or you dont. sounds like the majority of posters on this thread need to go back to their console single player games where content is set out in a tidy neat fashion for them to mindlessly consume untill they reach the end and become real winners.

in open world you have to provide a lot of you’re own entertainment and goals – not everyone likes that. then they come whine and complain on the forums – ignore the whiners and complainers gw2 is pretty cool if you can provide even a small amount of imagination. I know its hard for the kitten kitten mindset of the main stream to grasp that.

a well designed open world game generally starts with a compelling narrative then sends you out into the open word with a general purpose and reasoning. They also generally have a main plotline to pursue at your leisure
Skyrim is a perfect example.

you start out with a compelling high drama story, then they tell you to go talk to this guy. You can go off and explore OR YOU CAN GO TALK TO THAT GUY.

open world doesnt mean your required to do everything in the map to progress, it means you can choose what to do, and when to do it. And it doesnt mean there is no guiding plotlines/quests.

what you are talking about is a bad execution of an open world game.

Thaddeus.4891:

phys.7689:

Thaddeus.4891:

You don’t even need to do map completion. Just run around and do more hero challenge, which are easy. A little work won’t kill you.

85 HP for the trait like seem ok, but 85 for the skills? That’s insane. Based on what our current skills cost us, it should cost between 20-40 not 85.

spec unlock basically requires an almost full map run of skill points.

If it need around 100 hero challenge it’s close to 3-4 hours. If it’s more closer to 200 it’s more around 7-8 hours. For me around 100 hero challenge is just fine, 200 seem a bit too high.

yes, 200 is a bit ridiculous, good to see anet numbers guys still go for the most grindy feeling numbers.

Endless Soul.5178:

I think it’s sad that patience seems to be a lost virtue these days.

if something doesnt make people more interested in the first few hours, thats basically a pretty big fail. Patience is for tasks, not entertainment.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Julischka Bean.7491:

I am fine with running about getting the Skillpoints, but, like others have said, I feel the number is too high.

Ohoni-I am curious about something. you said…

“In any case, it really isn’t all that onerous to run out and pick up every skillpoint in the world. Even if you mainly PvP or WvW it shouldn’t take more than a few hours, less if you do it in small groups. Getting all the heart quests is far more involved.”

How is it that you can suck up every skill point in the world in just a few hours? I can see it if your maps are all uncovered and all you have to do is waypoint everywhere…but what if the maps are yet to be explored?

What is your secret? I think a lot of us are going to want to know your method.

Lisa-Off to work.

I don’t know what he does, but on each new character I make I do a full 100% map completion. This takes ~40 hours of play time. I typically do 1 full map a day, and it takes me less than a month to finish. Kill everything you see when you are in range of a heart, always beeline to the WP’s and go in a consistent manner throughout the map. For wide maps I go top to bottom, then left to right. For tall maps I go left to right and top to bottom. This ensures no backtracking, and no spending 30 minutes looking for the one thing you missed. Also make sure to talk to every scout so that you don’t have any hidden hearts that you missed. I’ve done this with 3 characters so far and i’m working on a 4th right now.

a month is a long time for a traitline and 5-8 skills

Thaddeus.4891:

You don’t even need to do map completion. Just run around and do more hero challenge, which are easy. A little work won’t kill you.

85 HP for the trait like seem ok, but 85 for the skills? That’s insane. Based on what our current skills cost us, it should cost between 20-40 not 85.

spec unlock basically requires an almost full map run of skill points.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

phys.7689:

Hawkeye.4987:

Healix.5819:

The refund was for people who bought the core game within the few months prior to HoT’s announcement. Everyone that wants HoT will have to pay $50 regardless of if they’re a F2P or veteran core account.

If you have the game now, at the very least you might as well login every day to collect your login rewards for free gold. Why wait for HoT? HoT is all level 80 content. You might as well spend the next 2 months to become familiar with the game and play through the current story.

Yeah I guess you’re right. Its time to wreak havoc in the lands of tyria.

call customer support, they may have a plan useful to you. Tell them it seems odd they were still allowing the base game to be sold in stores when they were officially only selling hot as a package at that time.

There is nothing Anet can do about places like Amazon selling existing copies of the core game.

Nor are the obligated to do anything when someone buys one of those $20 copies from someone else. There’s no real rush to get HoT anyway unless you want the stuff that comes with it, like the one extra slot. If he doesn’t feel the need for that he can always wait and see if HoT goes on sale (probably won’t for quite a while but its an option)

they could let people upgrade the game at discount. They recieved however much they would have gotten for a 40 dollar game from amazon anyway, it wouldnt be crazy to let people upgrade for the difference in price.

Of course that would have implied the expansion was only an upgrade and shoud be cheaper, but essentialy they created these type of problems with thier business plan, and lack of preparation.

Qazmodon.1823:

all the people agreeing on how “easy” it is are moro…..mistaken. essentially you choose youre own difficulty in gw2.

you can easily adjust the difficulty by going into higher level maps and mobs you arent ready for quite yet

at level 9 and 10 you dont know enough about the game to make any substantial gripes about anything yet let alone the difficulty. take that level 9 to the next map and fight some level 15 mobs you’ll be button mashing and evading like crazy.

the game actually doesnt let you do this. It has level correction where enemies will agro you from farther away, hit for insnane HP, and most of your attacks miss with glancing blows. Its possible to beat stuff probably up to 10 levels, but it involves a lot of cheesy tactics, and degenerative gameplay.

Torolan.5816:

@Shel
Better written? I can agree with that if a heart quest would fit into the story instead of being like. And it is not Ignorance in the sense of too stupid it´s being ignorant in a sense that you know it and simply don´t want to do it to get X. I don´t know a better word for it and it may actually be a false friend translated from my language into english, but I hope you understand what i mean.
So instead of:
“Yeah, uhm, I am a bee farmer and have a spoon for you.”
It makes sense that a person like tihs lives in the starting map, but it could be like:
“Yeah, Player X, I knew your sister. She was a nice girl.”
to catch the players who want ot make the game for story reasons.

And as he started a while ago, why not give him tomes so that he could level by using tomes? We´re back at the equivalent of unwilling to do it now, or not?

@phys
It also made sense when this was not the case. But you are also right in a way, nobody could stop you when you wanted to make the story of lvl 30 with a lvl 8 char. But that would just have condemned you to a painful death or forced your relatives, friends etc to babysit you through it while you watch the cinematics. Because you neither have the euipment nor the skills to survive the story when you a) never leveled and b) never caught the basic mechanic even GW2 asks from the most rudimentary of casual gamers.

the story was designed to take you through areas that you would be leveling in, naturally running into events on the way, and hearts. Only if you go out of your way to ignore every thing, and know exactly where to go, could you get to level 30 personal story and only be level 8.
(actually its probabbly not possible due to exp gained from story)

regardless, its a really bad design to make people do something without giving them a compelling reason. Like i said, it might be different if the starter zone didnt come off as mostly random event filler.

i knew they were going to increase the required hero points to make up for giving out the base skills/traits from just leveling.

Now all players have to work harder for less skills, congratulations

Beldin.5498:

Wasn’t the refund not also only for people that bought directly from ANet ?
Can’t imagine they will refund people that bought from somewhere else and
then try to get the money back from the seller.

maybe they can have answer that doesnt involve a refund, like i dunno maybe an account upgrade for less money.

i personally thought they would make this an option for all games registered after they started selling hot as apackage.

Torolan.5816:

ShelBlackblood.7826:

phys.7689:

they kinda messed it up by putting the personal story in 10 level blocks, especially having the first story start at level 10. The personal story was kind of the thing that gives you a purpose and guides you through the game, (until you no longer care, at which point you know what you want to do in game and have your own goals)
They really dropped the ball on that in the NPE imo, it was one of the most detrimental changes.
They actually start the game with a straight up level grind, with no other obvious purpose. Who thought that was a good idea?

/signed
That’s the reason I never got my dad to like GW2. He’s not a MMO player but upfront when it comes to good stories (which imo is the case with the personal story). Meaning he would have played the story and then left the game. He started it on my second account a while a go and said “Where is the purpose? What am I even doing here?” – I couldn’t motivate him to grind to lvl 10 only to see a glimpse of the story and grind 10 levels more after that. Not to mention that the PS was also my motivation when I leveled my first three characters.

I wonder if the OP would still be playing the game if he actually knew that there will start a story eventually…

Please don´t take this a rant against you or you people, folks. I also have people in the family I scratch my head over their abilities and inabilitie to grasp concepts like this.

But when someone can´t understand the concept of leveling, he or she has no reason and motivation to play a game like this. I am not talking about the purpose of leveling, that is indeed debatable. But someone who is not able to grasp the concept that he needs to crunch some numbers if he wants to reach the story aspect of the game, should not play this at all.
I think that your relatives are all intelligent people, therefore I can´t understand what is so hard to grasp about a sentence like:
“Look dad, see that number over there? Until that number is a 10 or more, you can´t look the story. It gets higher if you do any of X.”
If you were able to get a drivers licence for example with such easy commands like “If this light turns green, your car can go”, you can also grab the above concept.
You don´t need a Ph.D in mathematics to understand this.

So we´re not talking about inability to play, we are talking about ignorance and impatience.

your theory might make sense, if the game hadnt started with no leveling walls for personal story.
But beyond that, this is about pacing. The game totally was not meant to be grinded to level 10 before proceeding. They didnt design the level 1-10 content in a compelling fashion that urges you forward, it literally feels like doing random crap for no reason at all. Every other MMO has quests to handle that purpose, the personal story was designed for this very purpose, and they screwed it up.

ktmmax.3214:

Yes it only requires you to be level 30, and obviously none of them have any idea what ‘p3 Meta guard’ or anything similar which results in all these new players with barely any experience and at level 30 trying to join every time you advertise. Fair enough to them; they want to try and experience dungeons and are excited for it, who wouldn’t be? but for us veterans it can be very frustrating having to repost your group every few seconds because new players are constantly trying to join as they have just unlocked their ‘dungeons feature’

not really fair to them because anet is setting up a situation they are likey to be rejected. The lfg has been problematic since its inception, but they never wanted to solve these issues because they werent too concerned with dungeons at all. If they want a less toxic raid culture, they are going to have to alter lfg systems.

Kordash.2197:

If i’m not mistaken, F2P players can not use the lfg.

Either way, having them to know how to read the LFG’s properly is good for everyone.

it has a level requirement. Probably around 30 if i remember correctly.

and the game actually tells you to start using dungeons and use the lfg around this level.
anet has this really bad habit of ignoring existing issues, then promoting some new activity that highlights their old flaws.

they now set up a situation where newbs gonna get a negative experience because they havent improved lfg in 2 years. And they really wanted these newbs, so much so they giving the base game out and overcharging for HoT.

they should really jack the ffxiv duty finder and party finder. You can set the jobs and levels you want i believe

Hawkeye.4987:

Healix.5819:

The refund was for people who bought the core game within the few months prior to HoT’s announcement. Everyone that wants HoT will have to pay $50 regardless of if they’re a F2P or veteran core account.

If you have the game now, at the very least you might as well login every day to collect your login rewards for free gold. Why wait for HoT? HoT is all level 80 content. You might as well spend the next 2 months to become familiar with the game and play through the current story.

Yeah I guess you’re right. Its time to wreak havoc in the lands of tyria.

call customer support, they may have a plan useful to you. Tell them it seems odd they were still allowing the base game to be sold in stores when they were officially only selling hot as a package at that time.

Majic.4801:

This a classic “contact customer support” issue, because something doesn’t add up here.

So I recommend contacting customer support.

customer support would be useful, they may help out, the officially they wouldnt have to. Its bad planning that this is stil possible though.

Mogget.2104:

4 maps, some containing 3 “biomes” – all containing many new events
New races of npcs and monsters
Repeatable adventures with leaderboards
Map bonus reward system
1 profession
9 specializations
New Personal Story
Living World releases including Living Story S3
2 new armor sets per weight (from the open world)
5 weapon sets
Legendary armor
New legendary weapon set
Legendary back pieces
60 new item skins, miniatures and more
7 mastery tracks with 39 tiers
1 raid with 3 wings
2 Guild Halls with 6 core buildings and over 175 decorations including a customizable PvP arena
New guild armor and weapon sets
New PvP gamemode with new map
Guild teams and leaderboards
PvP leagues
10 New PvP reward tracks
New WvW borderland
New fractal system, rewards and 50 more levels
Plenty of other smaller features and updates

List taken from https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3izcdj/a_condensed_list_of_hot_featuresreally_puts_into/

I’ll leave you to decide if that is worth spending $50 on. It sure was for me.

pvp and wvw are not part of Hot.
fractal system is also not hot.
3 new legendary weapons, not a new set of weapons
map bonus, i dont think is hot only change

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

point is he missed a narrow window, and ended up wasting 40 dollars purchasing gw2 core, when he should be getting hot for 50 bucks.
He didnt mention f2p.
This always struck me as odd. Anet is still allowing gw2 core to be sold, even though its essentially beating people in the head.

no he didnt, if we purchased on the 15th july from Anet site, what he bought is Heart of Thorns and was given the core game free of charge.

There is no refunds needed or anything or am i missing something?

he said he bought gw2 for 40 bucks, he probably didnt get it from the website. Anet is still allowing all their games to be sold without any sort of plan for people who didnt get it on site. Even now, people can buy gw2 core for 40 dollars and immediately get told to pay 50 more for an expansion.

Unless he bought hot without realizing, he basically got screwed.

Devata.6589:

Interesting read. With the NPE Anet did try to hold people because they noticed many did leave even before getting to 80, but in order to do that they made it even more easy. When you read this, the problem might have been that is was already too easy.

Personally I think a mix of traditional quest (with fun interesting rewards and a little lore around them you learn about in the quest) and events would also have been better instead of purely the events, and no PoI. Now leveling for a new player soon becomes running from PoI, to Waypoint, to hearth to hero thingy. If then the encounters that you have in-between are also easy and the rewards are functional but not very interesting then it’s not strange many people might get bored before getting to lvl 80.

I remember leveling my first character was a lot of fun with all the new players running around, but the alts weren’t that much fun so I do understand the problems he runs into. Let’s hope HoT will add the challenge many people are looking for.

they kinda messed it up by putting the personal story in 10 level blocks, especially having the first story start at level 10. The personal story was kind of the thing that gives you a purpose and guides you through the game, (until you no longer care, at which point you know what you want to do in game and have your own goals)
They really dropped the ball on that in the NPE imo, it was one of the most detrimental changes.
They actually start the game with a straight up level grind, with no other obvious purpose. Who thought that was a good idea?

PopeUrban.2578:

It’s a kind of “choose your own adventure” difficulty scheme. Early on it’s very easy, but by the time you get to the end of the main line, do dungeons, fractals, etc. you’re going to see the challenge creep up.

Don’t try to think about it like WoW, where leveling is the core experience. Think of leveling as the tutorial that’s more about exploration than challenge, and the instances and level 80 areas, instances, world bosses, etc. as the challenge.

haha this is a funny perspective. GW2 was actually supposed to the endgame begins at level 1. Your basically saying leve 80 is when the fun starts.

point is he missed a narrow window, and ended up wasting 40 dollars purchasing gw2 core, when he should be getting hot for 50 bucks.
He didnt mention f2p.
This always struck me as odd. Anet is still allowing gw2 core to be sold, even though its essentially beating people in the head.