Guild Wars 2

Rising Dusk.2408:

phys.7689:

Actually you are wrong. The previous fractal setup had no guaranteed best answer except for picking swamp

If it’s true that I’m wrong, then why was Fractal level 39 never done, but everyone always does 40 instead?

Because they instabilities are designed like the new system instead of the old system.

They perfectly illustrate why the new system will have zero diversity just like people doing instabilities.

Except now every facet of it will be like that

Rising Dusk.2408:

dutchiez.7502:

So instead of farming Swamp forever, we will farm Cliffside forever?

If all you care about is rewards, there will always be one option that is more lucrative than all others from a time cost/reward perspective.

Actually you are wrong. The previous fractal setup had no guaranteed best answer except for picking swamp

Heres what happens from what the devs describe.

You join swamp runs to level reward dificulty

The daily you do the same 3 easiest fractals each day.

Basically fractals is just gonna be smaller dungeons with no benefit in doing multiple paths.

Fail

And as people said this basically means its nit easy to add new fractals.

The overal design is poor in other ways too

Swamp speedruns to gain levels. People spaming the easiest best rewarding fractal per teir.

Fractals as a game mode will now be mostly about repetitive farm.

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Jerus.4350:

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

I remember you asked for this, so i am not surprised. But if its as it seems, wont you just end up doing 3 swamp runs per day?

Lvl 19 lvl 49 and lvl 90?

Probably not. Ask yourself this. People who run fractals, why do they do it? Most people I play with do it for the fun, we’ll run multiple 50’s back to back. So no, we’d probably run whichever we thought was fun. For the lower level one we’d probably do whatever is fastest though true, just get the daily and move on to the more fun ones.

Sorry man
Rewards and effeciency dominates the way any game is played by most of the players.
A well designed game maximizes fun and incentivizes the most interesting ways of playing the game.

A small select group of fractal players will create their own sub meta thats more entertaining. The vast majority will not.

Most people will play the most effecient ways, and if that becomes boring they will say tbe game sucks and they are actually correct in saying that.

Therodin.2970:

phys.7689:

Therodin.2970:

You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.

Getting to 50 now means doing swamp 50 times. For the first 20 it will be even easier than before.

They have not said how many pristines it costs to buy them and you can only get three pristines a day, if it costs 50 pristines then at the bare minimum it is going to take you 17 days of constantly doing three a day to get one fractal weapon of your choice

And they decreased the amount of daily rewards abd decreased the difficulty of dailies. So you will do easier things over a longer period of days. That sounds like a formula for grind and boredom

Therodin.2970:

You can not buy the fractal skins until you are at personal reward 50, if you are that far and do not have the fractal skins you want then you deserve to get them. I think the prestige is still there.

Getting to 50 now means doing swamp 50 times. For the first 20 it will be even easier than before.

They basically also hidden restructured your progress. Smart way of doing it, but basically it takes 1/4 the effort with like 1/10 the difficulty to get to 50 now. Basically 100 new fractals = 25 old fractals.

They also are making like the first 20 easier.

Jerus.4350:

phys.7689:

Fractal run is one fractal and selectable. This makes no sense to me. Sounds like people will just do the easiest fractals over and over.
Get 1-100 doing swamp fractal?

Some people complained about it but the random nature of fractals was integral to its longevity.

Btw 50 fractal levels is the equivalent of 12 old fractals. My feeling until they explain some things is they just killed fractals as entertainment and furthered them as future easy grinds.

This will probably make speed clear people happy, but it destroys fractals as an actual gameplay experience.

That’s one of the things that excited me the most. I have to imagine they understand the issue you bring up. But, how will the instabilities interact? Will they make Swamp harder? Will different loot drops change in a meaningful way depending on level and instability?

Plenty of room for details that could solve that issue… but I’ll no longer be getting the worst combos when it’s 2am and I just want to do a fractal and go to bed \o/

I’m a bit confused ont he reward levels. Sounds like you get a better reward outside the daily per run, but you’re only going to have 3 daily chests for skins/ascended drops? With the 51-100 being all one lumped together where you get the new skins? Pretty huge gap there isn’kitten

Either way, agian details matter and we don’t know them, enough to get me excited though.

People will select the fractal scales with the easiest instabilities and swamp and repeat them 40 something times, with gear and sigils tailor made for them.

Jerus.4350:

Done, buying HoT This was enough for me to drop $50. Sounds fun/cool.

I remember you asked for this, so i am not surprised. But if its as it seems, wont you just end up doing 3 swamp runs per day?

Lvl 19 lvl 49 and lvl 90?

Fractal run is one fractal and selectable. This makes no sense to me. Sounds like people will just do the easiest fractals over and over.
Get 1-100 doing swamp fractal?

Some people complained about it but the random nature of fractals was integral to its longevity.

Btw 50 fractal levels is the equivalent of 12 old fractals. My feeling until they explain some things is they just killed fractals as entertainment and furthered them as future easy grinds.

This will probably make speed clear people happy, but it destroys fractals as an actual gameplay experience.

Ayrilana.1396:

Roxer.4609:

kleedrac.9624:

While I do understand why A.net is actively trying to capture new players, giving existing players a character slot as a “loyalty bonus” seems near insulting. Even if they just gave us $10 worth of gems it’d be far far better. Just my two copper of course.

Well, keep in mind that it took a full scale player riot picked up be the media to make ANet give away 1 character slot with the expansion.

Now, sending gems to everyone updating to HoT might affect gems-to-gold market too much, but …

what would be nice is if ANet give all the current players a special currency we could exchange for some of the things new players receive with a brand new gw2 package. I’m not asking for the full value of 5 char slots, bank slot and material slot, but at least something equivalent to 40-80% of that.

For example, when an existing account upgrades to HoT, the player receives Loyalty Tokens (LT) that can be spent to get

• 2-4 new character slots, or
• 3-6 bag slot expansions, or
• 3-5 bank expansions, or
• 2-4 material storage expanders, or
• an exclusive mini of Colin Johanson or Gaile Gray, or
• a combination of the above, then spend the remaining LT to buy
• transmutation charges, or
• spirit charges, or
• some other useful stuff to make sure LTs aren’t wasted

This way the players would be in control of what they get, and I’m sure, 95% of the players will be totally extatic about the deal, praise ANet on their generosity, and HoT pre-purchase will go way up right away.

The idea is that if ANet wants to be fair to what they sell with HoT to new players as well as old ones, they’d have to make it

• totally fair: give veteran players an equivalent of $40 in virtual goods
• understandable to get more profit: give a $30 equivalent
• totally greedy: give a $20 equivalent
• insulting: $10 equivalent
• cause a riot: give nothing, a $0 equivalent

What really happened is ANet started with giving $0 extra value for upgrade, got a riot on their hands, then made a community address and promised to give everyone who pre-purchased HoT a char slot. Apparently, the most vocal players on the forums were Ok with that deal. Some players are still unhappy, but at least there is not that many active rebels here

No. That there is entitlement. It’s disappointing that it’s now expected that companies have to provide free bonuses with any of their products otherwise they’re labeled as greedy or out of touch.

Nothing is free if you have to pay to get it. People who make products ALWAYS have had to offer consumers some value to make a sale.

Simple fact is enough people really felt the package they were offering wasnt worth 50 dollars, that anet thought it would be to their advantage to sweeten the deal.

Dont get mad at consumers for deciding what they feel something is worth, or get disappointed by a company changing a stance because its in their own best interest.

Raif.9507:

phys.7689:

Raif.9507:

Jordo.5913:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

You forgot 3 options:

• I do not have a preference
• They -=ALL=- suck
  and
• Who cares? I won’t know until I can actually PLAY THEM?

I prefer #3 on my list….

You have to be hyped about at least one of them so far, unless you strictly play one class in the base game.

Biased survey is biased. You need to include the “I have no preference” or “None”. I play quite a few classes (and main elementalist) and so far none of them are preffered. They are all “meh” to me.

And no, you don’t have to be hyped about any of them so far.

Thats not biased thats a non vote.
If the point is to find our which is most prefered, prefering neither is irrelevant to the question

It is relevant to the vote because it is a preference. Not including a none option means that people who did not prefer one, will now choose one swaying the actual poll giving more votes to something that did not should not have gotten it in the first place.

For example – a person prefers none or they are all equal to them in their mind. THere is no choice for said person to vote in the poll, therefore they will either randomly pick one (not a true vote) or abstain from voting (loss of collection) or “just pick one” because they have no choice. All of this leads to a biased vote that is not accurate.

If the point of the poll is to be which is a cool profession, then yea none should be an option, but the point is literally which do you prefer.

If i want to find out if more people prefer blue or red neither is not useful information.

Someone voting necro isnt saying necro is awesome they are just saying out of what ive seen necro is best.

Raif.9507:

Jordo.5913:

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

You forgot 3 options:

• I do not have a preference
• They -=ALL=- suck
  and
• Who cares? I won’t know until I can actually PLAY THEM?

I prefer #3 on my list….

You have to be hyped about at least one of them so far, unless you strictly play one class in the base game.

Biased survey is biased. You need to include the “I have no preference” or “None”. I play quite a few classes (and main elementalist) and so far none of them are preffered. They are all “meh” to me.

And no, you don’t have to be hyped about any of them so far.

Thats not biased thats a non vote.
If the point is to find our which is most prefered, prefering neither is irrelevant to the question

FrizzFreston.5290:

phys.7689:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

dietzero.3514:

As expected, Robert’s ones are stomping all over Karl’s horrible ones.

aren’t all of the specialisations created by everyone in that dedicated team?

I’m a bit surprised that Tempest ist last, even behind Dragonhunter…

They are primarily designed by one dude i believe

But not in a vaccuum. It would be weird if they don’t talk about their ideas internally with eachother.

Yeah many hands touch it, but i think they generally offer suggestions and feedback that the main guy figures what to do with.

I hope the other designs are better. Feels like they are struggling with some of these specs. They look like they had a totally dif tempest a Few weeks ago. Likewise thief seems like it may have changed.

Theoretically these later designs are supposed to be better, but i get the feeling they are just a different direction, with less time to refine the ideas/gameplay. Tempest feels like just the beginning of an idea that needs a lot of refinement

Jordo.5913:

Lurker.3609:

Jordo.5913:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Chronomancer is lightyears ahead of everyone else.

I see what you did there :P

I don’t, since light year is a unit of length, not time.

Sorry, it took so long to get back to you, just got off work.

A light year is a unit of distance based on how fast light travels in one year. This particular unit of length is very, very dependent on time.

Now I hope you can see what you did there haha

Anyways, I am surprised by the votes so far. The same aura of “meh” surrounding Tempest, kind of surrounded the Reaper was well. I wonder if the negativity of the name “Dragonhunter” hurt the spec quite a bit.

Granted there are only 197 votes as of me writing this, which is a very small sample size, but it makes you wonder.

Reaper is more interesting, different and also appeals to some non necros. Some are disatisfied, but its not the ehh and meh that you feel from dragonhunter and tempest.

Tempest is really off to me. The synergy seems weak, as well as the playstyle not seeming to mesh with itself.

DresdenAllblack.1249:

A sub fee is the dinosaur of gaming. There is nothing to be gained from adding $15 a month except a smaller gaming population.

Not saying this game should get a subscription, but the reason its a dinosaur is because the current models gets them more money for less effort.

Depending on bow you play, that model may be to your advantage, but it isnt automatically a better service.

Think about it this way.
Unlimited talk and text is a subscription
Pay per minute/base minutes is gem shop

Who is the better depends on your own usage style.

Lauranda.1342:

I am a 99% WvWer myself. Let me start out by saying, I am getting burnt out with the same old thing. I want some change, but stupid events like the golem rush are NOT what I am talking about. And I also don’t want EotM 2, which I’m scared it is going to be (after watching some streams from the test weekend).

The only reason I am still playing at this point is because I am going for gold rank (actually just got there a few days ago). And I still get some enjoyment out of skirmishing (I’m a solo/havok roamer who defends the home bl). And ofc, I have some good friends.

Basically, in my mind, the goods and bads balance. SO, I looked at what else would affect me in the expansion. As far as I can tell, just elite specs. Looking over the info we have, I decided that I didn’t want to mess with that, BUT it seems like you would be at a disadvantage vs. enemy players who are elite. So, it’s either get the xpac or quit. At this point, I reevaluated the previous goods and bads, with the elite specs added, and decided, I don’t want to learn new stuff (map and specs, etc)…and have to pay $50 for it. That combined with my boredom has made me decide to not buy the xpac and quit sometimes before release.

I have lots of solo games that have been piling up that need playing, anyway.

Yeah as has been said, you are self conflicted.

You are burnt out and bored but you dont want to learn new things.

This isnt to say the new map doesnt have issues, or the wvw system itself need some work,

But you encapsulate the tricky part of design. They must balance your desire for evolution and excitement against your desire not to have things change.

Heres the truth, they cant fix wvw without big change. And they cant make it more exciting if it has to be the same.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Thanks, Vayne. Yeah, it was not my intent to discuss what the price should be, as the other thread does. My thought was to outline the process I went through to determine if I might buy HoT. It certainly helped me to type it out to see what criteria I might use, and if a single other player finds insight into what matters for her/him, I’ll consider it time well spent.

Obviously this is going to be subjective, but where i think your analysis misses, is not all moments have the same value. A really good moment can make a 60 dollar purchase worthwhile. Or many many small moments.

Point is truth is say my first time exploring orr, was worth many times more than all the hours i spent on a champ train. The time i spent working out a hax rapid attacking cat melee ranger rush down (back when that was unlnown and unnerfed) was more valuable than the 6th time i did honor if the waves.

So really id say for whether people should spend 50 bucks, comes down to whether the game will give them valuable moments. Thats why people dont feel bad paying for 1 player games.

Now, whether you keep playing is a different question. One can feel something was worth it and only play it a few hours.

Kidel.2057:

Let me guess, it was something like “swap weapon when you swap legend”, right?
Or change weaponskills according to current legend (that is basically the same thing with less gear involved)? Like attunements.
Or changing a couple of effects/conditions on skills based on attunement… ops legend.

All horrible choices. Legendswap has to be done every 10 seconds, I may want to keep my melee/ranged skills longer. Those 2 swaps have very different reasons to be done.

You just hit on another bad design element, too heavy a need to swap legends every 10 seconds.

If you dont swap you sacrfice huge energy every 10 secs.
And due to design swapping really dilutes your play.
Most malltx util is tied to condi
Most ventari is about healing

Having to swap to contrasting purposes for every legend basically means 10 seconds of not having what you need.

Also utilities are generally used according to need, not on rotation, so swapping off cool down will lock them out when you need em.

Problematic design reinforcing problematic design.

Harper.4173:

Most players want to be challenged – sure – I can agree with you but not always. In fact I’m going to assume it’s a minority of times. People who use this game to destress and wind down prefer a more relaxed and chilled attitude where they don’t have to perform all the time.

They want the illusion of having done something hard but actually what they’ve done is easy. That’s what fuels their empowerment fantasy that they’re this kitten character that does this and that and beats stuff with his shiny swords and whatnot.

I can’t wait to see how the “hardcore” content is going to be handled.

People want to be entertained. Its pretty hard to make something really really easy entertaining.

That said if the difficulty feels impossible many wont be entertained. This isnt to say they must suceed, but they have to feel like success is attainable.

There are many tricky elements in achieving this. I dont think this game gets it right that often.

Kidel.2057:

Let’s hear your suggestion then

Its in my post history, but it doesnt matter any more.
The die is cast, they chose this one because at this stage they d rather go for a solution thats simple and tested.

Definately understandable on a deadline, but in the long term, ehh

Eleazyair.5716:

Xenon.4537:

Genesis.8572:

Xenon.4537:

Good job guys. You complained and begged for an unimaginative solution, and you got it. Now the class is doomed to be boring as all hell. There were plenty of way better ideas than duct-taping default weapon swap to the class.

Sometimes the best and most practical fixes to problems are not the most imaginative ones nor should they be.

That is just depressing. If this is how humans think, I’m ashamed to be one.

Educate yourself with Occam’s razor, you need to.

Occams razor isnt about the best design being the simplest.

Occams razor is about assuming that the predictions that assume less explanations are more usable than the ones that assume more.

Its also not a truism, merely a philosophy.

Its basically for making predictions, not designing solutions, and its also incorrect at times

http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/05/14/why-the-simplest-theory-is-alm/

To be honest, weapon swap is a pretty bad solution to revenant design.

But its a quick workable solution to revenant play.

I think its a short sighted solution to concept with a number of design flaws, and will in the end make the class more generic, however it is a solution that works better than what they previously had.

Short version:
Bad solution for the class, but better than nothing

Ayrilana.1396:

In my opinion, they’re better off scrapping the entire server system for WvW and do a type of 3-way faction thing. Something like a cross of ESO and Factions.

Really bad idea on many levels

MithranArkanere.8957:

I mentioned it before, but I think than rather than having weapon swap or completely different skills, I think the same skills should have variations based on the legend.

A skill may have a longer range under a certain legend, or have an additional effect like healing or conditions. But it’ll be essentially the same skill, and keep the same name and icon.

For example, right now staff #1(3) creates healing orbs. What if that was the effect under Ventari, and the other legends made those orbs do different things?

• Shiro: Explode on contact with enemies, dealing AoE damage and vulnerability. If traited for staff mastery, also gives might to allies.
• Mallyx: Explode after 3s, dealing random DPS and Control(chilled, blind, etc) conditions on both enemies and self. Also gives resistance to allies if traited.
• Jalis: Give protection to self or allies. Also gives stability to allies if traited.
• Ventari: Heal self or allies. Also give regeneration to allies if traited.

This is basically what i though would be best solution without changing too much, and would at the same time make the class way more interesting.

Basically most skills would have a
Some components that changes based on the legend.

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Sonickeyblade.8415:

Randulf.7614:

I suspect swords will come if shiro is indeed the 4th spec, which strong indications show

Remember, the beta isn’t the full Rev, so plenty to be added yet

That’s pretty fair. I know it’s a beta but I thought all the specs were released/revealed already for it.

We have not released all weapons and legends for the Revenant yet. Right now there is definitely a gap in the playstyles offered as we haven’t discussed the more pure DPS focused setup yet. soon tm.

Class looks too rigid. Even if shiro and glint are awesome, with how you designed the class that means the class is only going to have 3 or so good playstyles.

I think the traits need to be more playstyle focused, and the weapons need to be less specific.

Since you must equip 1 weapon, it cant define your role as much.
Your legend swap and traits need to be dominant force in what your role is. Your weapon should determine the mechanics of how you engage the enemies/group

So lets say dual swords may be about
Multi hit close range movement in battle.
On shiro it focuses on dmg
On mallyx it has a condi playstyle
On jalis its durable
Ventari its support.

This can be achieved with complimentary traits; on healing line broad use traits like, your critical hits heal, your interupts give aegis, using energy shoots a richochet healing projectile.

And the utilities should be defining, altering how you work with your weapons.
Like a jalis utility that increase your armor based on hitting enemies within a time frame. On one weapon it might work well via aoe, on another by setting up multihits, on another by long ranged line attacks, but multiple weapons work with utility differently but all become more tanky in jalis.

Also lighten up on either cool downs or the energy.

IndigoSundown.5419:

My disappointment was not loss of stats, but shifting more stats to gear. Why not provide a stat interface option with a limit of 300 in any one stat and a number of stat points consistent with the 30% buff to gear stats (i.e., less than the 1400 possible under old traits)?

Because the current fad in design is simplicity over functionality

Firelysm.4967:

Removing Trapper ranger play style by deleting trait “ground targeting throw-able traps” literally destroyed the game play of trapper ranger, because game got quicker, and other builds simply out damage them before you can do anything if you play trapper ranger. But you wonder why this happened? They have decided that we don’t need some traits, so they removed ground targeting in order to clear traits for more useful stuff!

While we keep traits that are seriously useless in the game and are taking only space:
*- “falling damage” what for it’s simply waste of an choice..
*- “Strider’s Defence” same here, what for? like does any1 randomly swing to get 25% chance to break projectile if you even have luck to time the projectile, and then u still face 25% RNG.. if u break the projectile LOL.. can we just rework or remove this one ?

Making optional throw-able traps is a must to deliver diversity to the game, can we remove one of above and get us trapper ground targeting back?

Removing of this trait really destroyed play style, because you can simply only use it defensively. And if you are by any chance needing to defend yourself, you have nothing to do so, because they will simply “dodge walk” your traps and avoid damage and cripple to locate you if you are playing trapper. And if you chase your traps are 100% time useless because you can’t do anything with them.

Why would you remove this awesome mechanics, and break the only ranger fun play style that is not Longbow? Anet please bring it back! We don’t need this two traits above, and please consider bringing throw-able traps back as optional!

they had to delete traits and certain playstyles for the new specialization system. They want less playstyles, and possibilities per class.

Walhalla.5473:

I remember the Beta Weekends and Stress Tests for GW2 Vanilla. At the beginning there were a few People who refused to participate because their Progress wouldn’t be safed to the Game itself. This side grew more and more until the Maps were really empty in the Stress Tests with so few participating that the Stress Test would not help to stabilize the Servers on Release.

First. Even with Test Servers there would still be big Bugs going into the Live Server because the Live Servers have many more Players and a different environment.
Second: Test Servers are rarely used for their intended purpose ( finding bugs ). Most of the People going to the Test Servers just want to play some content earlier than others
Third. There are many People unwilling to participate because it is “wasted time” that could be spend otherwise ( like farming Gold or other Stuff )

test servers dont need tons of people to participate to be effective, unless its stress test related. most of the problems the op are talking about arent stress related. just regular bugs, and balancing.

DonQuack.9025:

test server depends on 2 things

community finding bugs.
people fixing said bugs.

I already know who would be the ones finding the bugs and it isnt the vast majority of the players.

Fixing bugs. lol.

most players dont find bugs, but you dont need most players to find them as long as a dedicated % does. (with gw2 population, even a small % is probably enough)

The real problem is probably fixing bugs and reacting to feedback. Its possible that finding more bugs wont help if they dont have the infrastructure to fix bugs rapidly.

it may actually be pretty useful for design level changes though. Because once those go live they stay there for a long, long time.

Coldtart.4785:

Levelling serves no purpose other than to waste players’ time. Bring on the tomes.

and what do you do when you are 80?

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

(or in your perceived view: 1 of 1 is 100%).

I’m curious to know how does math work in the alternate reality you live in, for 1 of 1 to not be 100%.

And really, again you are talking without doing research. If you knew what you were talking about, you would have linked the post you claim to exist from 2014, as well as the other updates you claim ArenaNet has used to tell people about their (broken) promises. Right now, all you have is a loveable pile of small cats.

Read the rest of my post and you’ll have your answer or I can just tell you again. It has nothing to do with the math but the fact you chose to use one instance and then state that Anet was 100% unable to to fulfill 100% of their promises on that one instance. In other words, the statement of yours was meaningless.

Here’s one link from a quick search. It wasn’t the one I was specifically referring to but it works.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news/first#post3780700

im sorry but that once again proves his point.
Anet changed their plans on precursors,
and they told us it was because they wanted to make it part of a new horizontal progression system
that we could expect in a future feature pack.

which essentially means they told us precursors would be coming in a future feature pack along with a new horizontal progression system (masteries) which has now become part of an expansion.

You have shown us once again any long term plans announced by anet can change, and specifically, something that was once supposed to be part of the current price of admission can be shifted to the next expansion (new price of admission)

as it relates to this thread this basically proves that even if they said we can expect some features of HoT to grow with this expansion, it can end up being pushed back to the next expansion.

thing is anet has changed plans like this a number of times, sometimes by implication, sometimes explicitly.

really, the truth is, anet changes their minds, the only things with high likelyhood of coming to pass are things that are extremely short term. Even when they do deliver, it has often drastically changed from its original intent or purpose. Im not saying they should stop saying anything, but the reality is talk of further specializations, more guild halls, more pvp maps, thats the exact type of stuff that usually gets pushed back or changed so radically it bears little resemblence. And many things been pushed back long enough that they are now content for the next expansion. So dont buy this expansion expecting them to add anything but living story, they might add more stuff, but then again they might not.

Please read the posts again. Seriously.

i read the posts, what exactly is it you expect me see that i didnt notice before.

I’m not arguing about plans changing as I had already established that they do. In fact, I didn’t even need to because it’s well known that plans do change and not just in this game.

There’s only been a relatively few instances where Anet had stated something and not followed through with. A lot of them were in that blog post from July 2013. What Test is trying to do is argue that since they were unable to follow through with the items that he handpicked then that means you cannot trust them at all with what they state.

they have changed plans many more times than that blog post.
1)new weapons in a free update, said during beta when people talked about if they might add axes in an expansion.
2)mini games
3)new dynamic events constantly inserted that change with the world
4)ascended
5)adding more guild puzzles/challenges/rushes
6)fractal leaderboards
7)fractal weapon boxes
8)fractal level 51-60 coming soon
9)every dungeon revisted and made more fun

its not a small amount of things that fell to the wayside. And usually its the long term stuff that changes. Understandable in some ways, but still it means that you cant really assume that when they say hey we are going to add more guild halls, it means that it will be with this purchase. It means nothing they talk about possibly doing later may show up withing HoTs lifetime.

They can change their minds, and even changing minds aside, they never specifically said any of this stuff can be expected to be released within the lifetime of HoT.

Vayne.8563:

And I wonder how this might have been different if dozens upon dozens of people didn’t demand an expansion.

It might very well have been Anet’s plan to include precursor crafting for free. You make that announcement when no expansion is planned. That’s logical. And as soon as you change direction and you announce an expansion, it’s then logical to put that into an expansion being a major feature.

Do you know, can anyone really know, that when Anet wrote that blogpost it wasn’t supposed to be a free feature?

You can be as judgemental about it as you like but in reality, a good percentage of the fan base was very vocally calling for an expansion. Anet wasn’t going to, at that point, take all the stuff they had been working on and give it away free…because the way content was offered was restructured, free stuff is now going to be part of paid stuff. I’m pretty sure most people would have done the same if it was their business.

first, it was not required for them to shift everything that may have been planned as a regular update to an expansion. That was a choice they made, not a requirement of making an expansion.

and its not about being judgemental, its just about seeing patterns, and acting based on those patterns. In this post i am not putting any value judgement on the idea that precursors became expansion material.

i am pointing out there is a historical precedent that the things that they say they intend to add, may get pushed back so long, that you may not see it until the next expansion.

the point is to make people who say, Yeah the expansion may be incomplete, but they will add all these things within the scope of your purchase of HoT, realize that based on the past history that is totally not the case.

Realistically, based on past evidence, you should only expect whatever is shipped with HoT, and that there will be some amount of living story episodes with your purchase. They most likely will add things, but no one has any idea what that may be, it very well may not be any of the features they have said they could expand on later. (within this purchase)

TheFamster.7806:

I mean sure we can have hard/difficult contents, but guess what. It gets old. Over time people will develop guides, new tactics will be made, new builds/skills/traits for encounters will be discovered, and at the end, it will be trivialized. Even consumables will be used to make the content easier, and then people will start posting videos/guides, trios, duos, solo, etc. And if the reward is underwhelming just like TA Aetherpath, then people won’t do it.

The problem lies in entitlement of GW2 community especially those on reddit. Any difficult content will be considered a form of elitism and reward based on skill will be seen as exclusion. Basically every single content has to be watered down to zerg level so that people who press 1 and people who actually take advantage of this majestic combat system get the same rewards.

WP is one of those players who fail to recognize that general population of GW2 does not want or like difficult contents, but want the same rewards. That is why everything is RNG, since luck has no factor in skills/contents. Anet has to do something to fix entitlement that flows deeply in general population of GW2 first before anything.

he is saying that the existence of these type of high end challenges can act as an inspiration for the average player to aim for, even if they never achieve it. i think it has some merit.

also since his plan is magic find and money, it really isnt exclusive rewards. Though personally i think it would need some other type of reward. Dont they already have rewards tied to specific content, like fractal weapons, and carapace armor and what not anyhow?

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

(or in your perceived view: 1 of 1 is 100%).

I’m curious to know how does math work in the alternate reality you live in, for 1 of 1 to not be 100%.

And really, again you are talking without doing research. If you knew what you were talking about, you would have linked the post you claim to exist from 2014, as well as the other updates you claim ArenaNet has used to tell people about their (broken) promises. Right now, all you have is a loveable pile of small cats.

Read the rest of my post and you’ll have your answer or I can just tell you again. It has nothing to do with the math but the fact you chose to use one instance and then state that Anet was 100% unable to to fulfill 100% of their promises on that one instance. In other words, the statement of yours was meaningless.

Here’s one link from a quick search. It wasn’t the one I was specifically referring to but it works.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news/first#post3780700

im sorry but that once again proves his point.
Anet changed their plans on precursors,
and they told us it was because they wanted to make it part of a new horizontal progression system
that we could expect in a future feature pack.

which essentially means they told us precursors would be coming in a future feature pack along with a new horizontal progression system (masteries) which has now become part of an expansion.

You have shown us once again any long term plans announced by anet can change, and specifically, something that was once supposed to be part of the current price of admission can be shifted to the next expansion (new price of admission)

as it relates to this thread this basically proves that even if they said we can expect some features of HoT to grow with this expansion, it can end up being pushed back to the next expansion.

thing is anet has changed plans like this a number of times, sometimes by implication, sometimes explicitly.

really, the truth is, anet changes their minds, the only things with high likelyhood of coming to pass are things that are extremely short term. Even when they do deliver, it has often drastically changed from its original intent or purpose. Im not saying they should stop saying anything, but the reality is talk of further specializations, more guild halls, more pvp maps, thats the exact type of stuff that usually gets pushed back or changed so radically it bears little resemblence. And many things been pushed back long enough that they are now content for the next expansion. So dont buy this expansion expecting them to add anything but living story, they might add more stuff, but then again they might not.

Please read the posts again. Seriously.

i read the posts, what exactly is it you expect me see that i didnt notice before.

Leo G.4501:

Beast Sos.1457:

CureForLiving.5360:

Beast Sos.1457:

I just got finished watching WP recent video on difficult content and I hope Anet doesnt agree with him. Dont get me wrong WP usually knows what hes talking about but this time I would have to argue that. Content shouldnt be made difficult because Anet took away mechanics from the players but should be difficult because the boss mechanics are hard to deal with. I hate the idea of artificial difficulty like high lvl fractals. Its not fun just tedious. Hopefully Anet isnt going in that direction for difficulty and are just making the bosses have more interesting/difficult mechanics to deal with.

What do you guys think? Would you want to be given a hadicap while fighting bosses so they are difficult or would you rather the boss have mechanics that make it difficult?

If you don’t like it that fine. Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems more you’re arguing for content to be designed from the ground up to be difficult and not for toggle-able / artificial challenges? Or do you have another suggestion?
Personally the idea of gambits do offer a simple means of adding challenge. The thing with difficult mechanics is that with sufficient practice they become rather easy. That is to say, if you do it enough times you learn the rotations, the telegraphs, where to stand, when to dodge etc. Granted this will always be an issue, but adding a gambit system gives a bit more mileage. Once your group has mastered the base mechanics being able to add additional challenges I’d think could only increase how much gameplay you get out of it.
So basically:

latinkuro.7304:

Both !

I would have to disagree that difficult content will always be easy after you figure out how to deal with the mechanics. A example of this would be Wildstar. If you do the vet dungeons with the appropriate gear (not to strong or weak) you can still die even after learning everything. The content only becomes easy mode if you out gear it or have a amazing group.

The thing about that is, yes content will be easy once you figure it out and if the content is truly difficult you will still run the risk of dying and defeat….BUT that last part is harder to do when you can rally so easily, mobs can be strafe-tanked, you can 100% reflect projectiles back at them, 100% nullify damage for periods of time, so on and so forth. I’m not saying the game is too easy, I’m saying it’s too forgiving, and it’s that way because of all the luxuries we’re allotted to make the game so.

If it required investment to get some and not all of those luxuries would be a different story…

% based nerfs to defensive skills are assinine, especially with down 10% hp and if anyone dies game over.

you cant make a game of skill, and then make your success or failure have a lot to do with random chance.

random based gameplay only works when players have to react to it. You cant react to your defensive abilities randomly failing to work.

if they need to have reflect be less effective, they need to have enemies that strafe and move based on reflect fields, or they start meleeing, or using targetless AOE.

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

(or in your perceived view: 1 of 1 is 100%).

I’m curious to know how does math work in the alternate reality you live in, for 1 of 1 to not be 100%.

And really, again you are talking without doing research. If you knew what you were talking about, you would have linked the post you claim to exist from 2014, as well as the other updates you claim ArenaNet has used to tell people about their (broken) promises. Right now, all you have is a loveable pile of small cats.

Read the rest of my post and you’ll have your answer or I can just tell you again. It has nothing to do with the math but the fact you chose to use one instance and then state that Anet was 100% unable to to fulfill 100% of their promises on that one instance. In other words, the statement of yours was meaningless.

Here’s one link from a quick search. It wasn’t the one I was specifically referring to but it works.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/crafting/gw2-precursor-recipe-scavanger-hunt-news/first#post3780700

im sorry but that once again proves his point.
Anet changed their plans on precursors,
and they told us it was because they wanted to make it part of a new horizontal progression system
that we could expect in a future feature pack.

which essentially means they told us precursors would be coming in a future feature pack along with a new horizontal progression system (masteries) which has now become part of an expansion.

You have shown us once again any long term plans announced by anet can change, and specifically, something that was once supposed to be part of the current price of admission can be shifted to the next expansion (new price of admission)

as it relates to this thread this basically proves that even if they said we can expect some features of HoT to grow with this expansion, it can end up being pushed back to the next expansion.

thing is anet has changed plans like this a number of times, sometimes by implication, sometimes explicitly.

really, the truth is, anet changes their minds, the only things with high likelyhood of coming to pass are things that are extremely short term. Even when they do deliver, it has often drastically changed from its original intent or purpose. Im not saying they should stop saying anything, but the reality is talk of further specializations, more guild halls, more pvp maps, thats the exact type of stuff that usually gets pushed back or changed so radically it bears little resemblence. And many things been pushed back long enough that they are now content for the next expansion. So dont buy this expansion expecting them to add anything but living story, they might add more stuff, but then again they might not.

While i dont agree with some of wp suggestions, they dont represent artificial difficulty. They essentially change the game structure. Mechanics you can use to defend when enemies attack 3 times as fast changes how you play. How you play without rally changes the game. How you play when one death is all you get changes the game.

Artificial difficulty is mostly like increasing hp pools.

Ayrilana.1396:

Test.8734:

Ayrilana.1396:

Funny because you did. You only brought up the archery mini-game in a single sentence.

So you completely failed to understand what I wrote. Wow. And you still think you can argue about it.

But I actually have to thank you. You have basically proved my point in this topic – by the examples you have, it’s clear that just because ArenaNet says they will add something to the game, it doesn’t mean they will actually do it. Ergo, all the talk about features they say they will add in the future… Is meaningless. All we can be sure in HoT is what we get at release, or at least the little it looks like HoT will have at release.

Nope. You phrased your post in such a way that you were implying that the blog post items were promised at launch. You also cherry picked the few items that they could not deliver as planned and treated that as confirmation of your argument that Anet can’t keep promises of future content.

I could easily use your same rationale and say that if you have ever been unable to keep your promises a few times then nobody can rely on you to keep them. Nobody is denying that plans change so your point isn’t being proved until you’re just trying to prove the obvious.

phys.7689:

What we get when HoT is released is everything we know we will get for sure. Everything else ArenaNet claims they will eventually add one day to the game… Is just a promise. And it wouldn’t be the first or the last time ArenaNet makes a promise they are not going to keep.

he is saying;
whats in hot is all we know for sure
other things are long term plans
anet has shown that long term plans change.

his overall point and logic is
only expect what is in hot, because everything that isnt in hot is only a possibility, not a guarantee or reality.

which was in response to people saying that we will get/should expect XYZ after release with our purchase.

I wasn’t referring to him pointing out the obvious that plans do change. What I was referring to was his assumption that because of the few times that they had to change their plans that this must mean that you cannot rely on anything they said that they are working on. He was picking the few times that they had to change plans and acting as it was evidence that you cannot trust them. If you are unable to keep 10% (arbitrary low percentage) of your promises then that means we cannot trust you.

Its more than 10% and its probably not malicious, but even if its 10% that basically makes you an unknown quanitity.
What it your boyfriend only cheats on you 10% of the times he has an opportunity
Or your baby sitter only leaves your kids unsupervised 10% of the time
Or you car doesnt start 10% of the time.
All of those things would be considered unreliable. And the thing with anet, they arent just late, sometimes they go very far from what they said or. Like ascended, our last living story was 6 months ago. There was a time they promised new dynamic events and chains constantly added and changed as the world changes. Anet can and will change anything, sometimes good sometimes bad, but extremely uncertain.

So yeah you cant really go by what anet says for long term plans, its just things they might do.
And even by what they did say, they never promised most of these things they could add to later were going to be included in this payment other than living story.

I think the silence and the mercurial nature of anet have made many decide they dont really trust them. Not in a you are a liar way, but in a you are very uncertain way. They say little, and much of what they do say doesnt turn out the way it seems or doesnt turn out at all.

ChoPd.3125:

So this game, I keep coming back to it and willing to play, but the thing is that there is alot to do but I have no idea where to start or how to even do half of it. Feels like I need to create a ‘’to do list’’ but is there anyone else that has had this problem? I eventually take breaks from the game because of this, i just feel lost and unmotivated as a result.

so yeah can anybody offer advice? I know that there is no preset way to play an MMO but any advice would be nice

For this mmo, i reccomend world completion and personal story as the main goal you first playthrough. Take your time on the open world to explore and appreciate side events.

The game could do with a few optional guiding plotlines but only has personal story for now.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For me personally, I don’t consider statements that include ‘As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.’ as promises.

But, of course, that’s just me.

Please don’t make the black knights read. That’s plain unfair.

I’m pretty sure that most people that have followed the game from the beginning, remember an entire blogpost dedicated to the iterative nature of the development cycle and how things change all the time, even finished systems that they thought they’d be happy with. It’s entirely possible, in my mind anyway, that Anet published that article to let everyone know that not all plans will pan out. That’s how I read the article anyway.

People wonder why Anet is reluctant to share information before it’s ready. That’s because there’s a loud percentage of this forum who sees every single word out of Anet’s virtual lips as a “promise”.

That’s the reason why Anet is gun shy and doesn’t want to say anything. Because a vocal minority will call them out on anything late, unfinished, scrapped, altered or missing. But that same vocal minority will often ignore the dozens of touches added to the game they didn’t know were coming at all.

the real deal?
most companies can talk about future plans, and meet or exceed those plans. The fact that anet cannot is not the consumers fault, its just how anet is. They have to figure out how to answer this question that most game developer have to deal with, based on own process.

id say silence is unsatisfactory, and not saying anything is not beneficial, so i dont know how they will solve it, but its an issue.

Most companies can do this? Are you sure? I’ve seen many long term plans by companies not come to fruition and I’ve seen fans call them out on it, but never like Anet fans.

AoC wasn’t even able to fix a bug with nvidia drives so that the game wouldn’t crash every minute or so. And Archeage told people in a prepurchase package that founders would get 10% off in the cash shop, which they were NEVER able to deliver even to this date. They changed the whole thing. Many people asked for refunds, and rightly so.

That one thing probably hurt Archeage more than any other thing that happened. They simply shouldn’t have said it.

Anet’s problem is that fans are so into the this game, anything they say is gospel. There’s no real leeway.

Down to the fact that Anet said directly that people who prepurchased would be invited to beta weekends, and people are saying they feel offended that Anet didn’t invite them to a stress test during the week.

i didnt say every company.
but notice how in your archeage example it has had a huge negative impact? Yeah thats whats expected.
Things happen, but blaming the consumer for believing people makes no sense.

regardless, every major company has to deal with having to tell people what the future holds, and being expected to have to do what they say. Different companies may come up with different answers.

right now, the experienced gw2 customer doesnt really believe anet will actually do something just because they say they will. Even staunch defenders of anet advise against taking public announcements as something to believe in.

i understand anet is the type of developer that likes to turn things on their head and is extremely mercurial. But this creates the problem of the fact that companies often need to tell customers or future customers what to expect, and yet anet changes plans often.
Anet need to figure out how to reconcile these things. Its not the customers fault for believing them, and its not the customers fault for wanting information about the future.

One end result of the overall situation is the current issue in this thread

lukejoe.1592:

VOLKON.1290:

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

VOLKON.1290:

Let me slow this down for you.

I pay $50.00 and get exactly what I expect for the money I’m spending.
New players pay $50.00 and also get the same expansion, and so they can actually access the expansion they also get access to the core as well. The core that I already have and have had since closed beta.

The core that you are paying for AGAIN with the expansion.

No, I’m not paying again for the core. I’m simply not getting the core again (for no cost) because I already have it.

But… let’s take a moment and assume your fallacy resembles reality just for gits and shiggles. How am I losing anything? I already have the core. I’m paying the set price, that I accept, for the expansion. The only perspective that matters in this is mine. I’m gaining the expansion and losing nothing. What others get or don’t get is irrelevant.

Oh my! I always love the words of the obviously young. I’m just popping in to see if there were any developments oh this yet and restate for ANET’s benefit that I have absolutely no intention of pre-ordering this game at that price tag nor of buying it at release without a free character slot included but….

Because there are still people acting smug and making this argument (while calling other people fallacious no doubt) I’ll go through yet again how pricing works in businesses.

When a company has an option of pricing two goods separately or together they will run projections of expected cash flows in both scenarios considering their expected volumes and customer bases. I can, as an MBA, guarantee you this was done at ANET (in fact on this thread I have 3 or 4 times before now). A decision was made between (for example) selling the expansion for $35 dollars while offering the base game for $20 and selling both together for $50. ANET expects that the majority of people people buying the expansion would buy only the expansion and chose a pricing model that will yield higher revenue by asking veteran players for and additional $15, which is kicked backed between new players who are receiving a five dollar discount on the base game and ANET which will just rake in a crap ton more money.

Of course these numbers were chosen by me and don’t reflect any real numbers ANET chose to analyze, but this is still an accurate picture of the process they followed and the decision they made. I guarantee it! This is how pricing is done!!!

basically anet realizes most of the people buying will be returning customers, so they charge them the premium price.
However i believe the miscalculation is how many people will accept this price point based on what the expansion is promoting

Randulf.7614:

10 euros for an expac would be wonderful for the community, but utterly unsustainable for their business to thrive, expand or invest from. I don’t believe £35 is too expensive personally, especially as I went into my local game store today and saw the new Batman game for £55. That is a game, which Im sure is great, but would have enormously less gameplay and repeat value for me, for 45% more money. Looking around, this was very much the norm for game prices.

Game are more expensive to make versus the cost of return these days, so prices have gone up. 3 years ago, £40-£45 was the average price and now it’s £50-£50 for little extra gain beyond graphical detail.

Expacs are the same – D3 RoS was £30 as was Starcrafts expac. FF14’s expac was£30 and that charges a sub on top, making it more expensive long term.

The price is always going to hit people differently based on their financial circumstances which is why gaming is classed as a luxury purchase. Also, it isn’t necs Anets fault. Shareholders at NCSOFT will likely have had some input or expectation of price which will have influenced things.

this isnt really true, gw2 makes a decent chunk of change even without box sales. If the game didnt have a strong gem shop you might be right, but the gem shop alone is incredibly profitable.

the cost of the game is not a worst case scenario, its the number they feel maximizes profits, Its the i think this is what people will pay price, not the this is what i need for this business to be doing well price.

i will add this is not abnormal, while companies can theoretically charge a price they find to be fair, most businesses will charge the price that generates the most profit.

essentially if you created a game, would you charge 30 dollars because that would be enough for the work you put in, and what you need to grow your business? or would you charge 1000 dollars if a bunch of people were willing to pay you that.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

you do realize that you guys are arguing his point?
his point is not anet lied to me
his point is anet’s long term plans are subject to change and not set in stone.
showing how they sometimes do long plans and sometimes dont, does not disprove what he is saying.

and i think hes right.

Except that’s not what he was arguing at all.

actually it is

What we get when HoT is released is everything we know we will get for sure. Everything else ArenaNet claims they will eventually add one day to the game… Is just a promise. And it wouldn’t be the first or the last time ArenaNet makes a promise they are not going to keep.

he is saying;
whats in hot is all we know for sure
other things are long term plans
anet has shown that long term plans change.

his overall point and logic is
only expect what is in hot, because everything that isnt in hot is only a possibility, not a guarantee or reality.

which was in response to people saying that we will get/should expect XYZ after release with our purchase.

Vayne.8563:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

For me personally, I don’t consider statements that include ‘As always, the content above is subject to change as we test and iterate on these systems.’ as promises.

But, of course, that’s just me.

Please don’t make the black knights read. That’s plain unfair.

I’m pretty sure that most people that have followed the game from the beginning, remember an entire blogpost dedicated to the iterative nature of the development cycle and how things change all the time, even finished systems that they thought they’d be happy with. It’s entirely possible, in my mind anyway, that Anet published that article to let everyone know that not all plans will pan out. That’s how I read the article anyway.

People wonder why Anet is reluctant to share information before it’s ready. That’s because there’s a loud percentage of this forum who sees every single word out of Anet’s virtual lips as a “promise”.

That’s the reason why Anet is gun shy and doesn’t want to say anything. Because a vocal minority will call them out on anything late, unfinished, scrapped, altered or missing. But that same vocal minority will often ignore the dozens of touches added to the game they didn’t know were coming at all.

the real deal?
most companies can talk about future plans, and meet or exceed those plans. The fact that anet cannot is not the consumers fault, its just how anet is. They have to figure out how to answer this question that most game developer have to deal with, based on own process.

id say silence is unsatisfactory, and not saying anything is not beneficial, so i dont know how they will solve it, but its an issue.

Ayrilana.1396:

you do realize that you guys are arguing his point?
his point is not anet lied to me
his point is anet’s long term plans are subject to change and not set in stone.
showing how they sometimes do long plans and sometimes dont, does not disprove what he is saying.

and i think hes right.

the only thing you should depend from anet is specifically announced, close to release things, and that they will do something.

even though they say that their current design enables them to do xyz easier, the turn around time on a lot of these further developments is sometimes 3 or more years, or not included with what you are entitled to within your current purchase.

like;
more elder dragons
more guild puzzles/challenges/treks/rush
more weapons per class (mentioned as possible free updates during beta)
more traits (we actually have less traits now)
more skills after the healing ones
precursor hunt
new legendaries
guild halls
minigames

not saying they should have delivered these things, but they mentioned them in the same vein as most of the things they are talking about doing later in HoT. More as, hey this is what we could do one day, rather than this is what you can expect to get eventually with this purchase.

so really one should expect:
whatever is in hot
and they will do updates after that with unknown contents/design/purpose.

if you dont like what they have announced with HoT/dont feel it is enough, dont buy it until they have something you do want/enough content, unless you believe that anet is the type of developer that knows what you want without having to talk to you about it.

more on the topic
Is HoT incomplete?
yes.

Many of the people defending this are evaluating it based on black and white, either there is no growth or their is growth.
Its not that simple. There are degrees, and considerations.

I dont think for many people, what they have planned for HoT will feel complete within itself.

of course we currently have limited info, but many of the features are clearly promoted as being works in progress.

regardless of how one feels about it, i suggest all people who buy hot, not expect any much to feel complete on launch.

this is not planned to be a meaty expansion (from what we ve heard)

the main point appears to be
1)marketing and promoting gw2 as a growing product with a lot new to see
2)getting money from people in a B2P strategy
3)internally, development wise, being able to justify, and push the company to develop higher scope projects.

its not really about delivering a complete experience

Ricky.4706:

Zero Day.2594:

So,

When GW2 was just released, was it incomplete? Is it incomplete now?

Are you sure that before the release of GW2 they managed to implement everything? Are you sure they didn’t hold some back?

When will it be complete? Can it ever be complete?

I like your style, has a nice touch of gray area!

Zero Day is “Completely” right – a complete work of art is subjective

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” – Leonardo da Vinci

another win for the grays! yay!

interestingly enough, leonardo was one of the least productive (art wise) masters of the renaissance period.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

I’m not so sure that Anet changed the system to eliminate key farming. I think they did it to eliminate the awkward story pauses that made people wait to have to do important things, as Danikat has already said.

Maybe the keyfarming thing was secondary, but I don’t believe it was the main reason. The entire story is set up in ten level intervals, and this way you play through the entire arc at one time.

if it wasnt to lower key farming, the system would have worked better starting at level 1 (or maybe 5) rather than level 10.

also what you call awkward story pauses, was completely optional. the old system adapted more to the player.

I used to wait until I was high enough level to do them all. The problem I had was, the rewards absolutely sucked doing it that way. In a sense, you used to be punished for waiting.

At any rate, it’s what Anet banked on and some people like it more than others.

they could have just made the gear rewards scale with level, its all non tradeable anyhow.

the problem is the last system adapted to the players, the new system makes players adapt (or quit) the system.