Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

lordkrall.7241:

I keep seeing people mention that we were promised precursor crafting and new legendaries for free.
I never recall such a statement.
The only thing they ever said was that it was planned for 2013 (which was later, before the end of 2013, postponed). As far as I am aware they did never in any way or form claim that it would be a free addition.

you are lawyering and loopholing

the intention was clear. At that time they had not charged for any update, even living story.
It was meant to be a regular update at no cost. Dont pretend here. And it should logically be one. The issue it was created to solve, is a flaw in the core system, not the expansion area.

Have they ever stated that all updates would be free for all time and not subject to change? No. Players just made the assumption that all updates would be for free. The system they had back at the end of 2013 (we had an unintended preview) isn’t the same as what we saw in the blogpost. It looks like they changed it when they decided to implement collections and the upcoming mastery system. It’s pretty evident that Mawdrey and Luminescent armor were tests.

Expansions are part of MMO’s and many single player games. It’s common knowledge (or I thought it was until now) that players will have to buy them in order to experience the new content and features. Only a very small minority will not and would prefer to get everything for free.

It’s also debatable that the current method was a flaw in the system. Have they ever stated that it was or are you making another assumption? Just because they decided to add another method of acquisition does not mean the current system was flawed. They were just enhancing the process of getting precursors by giving players another option.

you are just lawyering, look im not trying to win a legal case, or provide an incontrovertible logical proof.

You know, i know, and anet knows.
Precursor crafting was created because as early as 2 months after the game came out, it became apparent that many players were unsatisfied with precursor aquisition. There was a long thread, devs commented there

then they talked about having a solution ready by the end of the year, price was never mentioned or implied.

dont pretend that this was always the plan, or was intended. It is clear that this was at one time supposed to be part of a regular update. Its also extremely clear it was developed because the normal aquisition was not loved.

If you want to make an argument in their favor, say plans change, they need things to make the expansion attractive, or whatever, but its really quite a stretch to say that this was always supposed to be a paid service, or that it wasnt put in place because of player dissatisfaction with the old system.

DonQuack.9025:

Crap happens bro. I joined in a kick todayfor a cs watcher in story mode cm.
Was funny. 200ap lvl43 was chaining story modes to level up so can start explorable and this guy kept watching the cs’s. Literally the whole dungeon was full of rage. Pls skip. Skp. omg For reals? Is he serious?

Makes me wonder if he had chat up, spoke english, or just oblivious.

Now if they had noticed what I did they probably would have kicked him earlier but they kicked at end. The CM story ending cutscene is literally longer than kuch kuch hota hai.

What was he doing? Was ranger with bow. But never actually targeted anything the whole dungeon. just happily fired into the ground.

so its an experience farming thing eh?
sucks, implication is they cant give anything good for content they want people to be able to experience normally.

not sure why he would be chainingh story mode for experience though. dont dungeons gived fixed percentages of your TNL? couldnt he just have done the explorables of a lower level dungeon?

lordkrall.7241:

I keep seeing people mention that we were promised precursor crafting and new legendaries for free.
I never recall such a statement.
The only thing they ever said was that it was planned for 2013 (which was later, before the end of 2013, postponed). As far as I am aware they did never in any way or form claim that it would be a free addition.

you are lawyering and loopholing

the intention was clear. At that time they had not charged for any update, even living story.
It was meant to be a regular update at no cost. Dont pretend here. And it should logically be one. The issue it was created to solve, is a flaw in the core system, not the expansion area.

Rauderi.8706:

GhostBro.9253:

In no game have I ever experienced such a childish lashing out, I am disappointed. I have no doubt this post will be passed and ignored, as it is literally me complaining to find relief from such an inane act.

FFXIV’s local crowd is just as bad, actually. They ruined my end-game dungeon experience pretty swiftly by charging ahead for speed runs.

Sorry that had to happen with you. The advice above about making “story run/cutscenes” LFGs should get you through the dungeons without those problems.

at least in FFXIV, they ll just leave you behind, not kick you. Also, at least you can watch the cutscenes in your inn at your convienience.

Anyhow, the culture here is way too kick focused. Last time a thread like this popped up they villified the person who got kicked, kind of like some people are doing here.

Malkavian.4516:

phys.7689:

Malkavian.4516:

I have to say, getting precursors in a manner that is related to said precursor is very neat. To get the Moot, you must be immersed in norn culture which involves hunting beasts, drinking, singing and boasting.

Makes me wonder how the Hunter will work out. From it’s design alone, you can say that you’d have to be immersed in charr culture to an extent.

they said hunter would be based on hunting down beasts

I thought that was for the Moot.

oops you might be right, they were probably talking about the great hunt, not the precursor the hunter

Malkavian.4516:

I have to say, getting precursors in a manner that is related to said precursor is very neat. To get the Moot, you must be immersed in norn culture which involves hunting beasts, drinking, singing and boasting.

Makes me wonder how the Hunter will work out. From it’s design alone, you can say that you’d have to be immersed in charr culture to an extent.

they said hunter would be based on hunting down beasts

Aye.8392:

Precursors that drop should be tradeable. Precursors that are crafted should not be tradeable. But, if you get a lucky drop, one of those one time in a gaming career things, and it isn’t a part of a legendary that you want to build then you should be able to sell it. I can’t imagine having something along the lines of The Lover drop for me and being forced to either keep it or build The Dreamer — which is a weapon I personally find offensive.

If the precursors are obtained without using the crafting system we should be able to sell them. And the people who really want them should be allowed to buy them.

No complaints from me about Legendaries being account bound though — there is a lot of work that goes into them and that is not going to happen randomly.

ok looks like a lot of confusion here.

For current precursors:
you get a pre-precursor as you start the quest thats non tradeable
you upgrade it to a pre cursor, which is tradeable.
you can only do this quest once per legendary

for new precursors
both the legendary, and the precursor will be untradeable.

i dont think you will be able to mystic forge the new precursors, they will probably be drop, or collection only.

Subutex.2416:

So crafted precursors and legendaries won’t be tradeable. But what about looted precursors? I wonder if the new precursors will also loot and if those are tradeable (should be).

nah crafted precursors will be tradeable, but you can only do each quest once (account? or charachter)
the NEW precursors wont be tradeable though

the details in the reddit are pretty interesting, It is a bit odd, the chinese service appears to give info more freely.

anyhow, looks like each precursor has some unique quest elements. Might be cool.
Non tradeable for new legendaries, welcome to flossy items

experienced means whatever it means to the guy who opened it, aka its subjective, so some people will expect a lot, some people will expect a little

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

phys.7689:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

based on them giving us drytop and silverwastes for free (in what seems like was a “test” for features in the xpac) i think it’s safe to assume we’re going to get a lot more than just this map split into 3 sections. (i’d say a LOT larger than just this map)

Maybe i’m just an optimist though

I say to this, dont get your hopes up. Until they say or show something that suggests more, i wouldnt expect much more. May only get this one map, with 3 levels. I mean, all they have really talked about is the 3 level map.

perhaps, but i’d rather be optimistic and looking forward to it now and go “oh darn, i guess it wasn’t ‘that’ great” rather than be mopey and depressing like half the people on the forums right now complaining about the lack of stuff in the xpac before we even get much information on it.

and personally, i’m not a big pve-er anyways. even if they give us 1 new map, 1 new pvp gamemode, 1 new wvw map, specializations, and masteries, i would be more than okay spending $40 on it (not saying that’s going to be the price. just a rough estimate)

interesting perspective, many people would rather have measured expectations and be pleasantly surprised. Hmmmm interesting, so thats how an optimist looks at things. I tend to try to look at the most likely predictions based on what we currently know and observe, not being optimistic, or pessimistic.

a number of comments made by devs, and spokes persons put together, lead me to believe it will not be that large though.
im placing my bets on 3 maps 1 of which will probably be smaller, or non combat type.

maddoctor.2738:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

phys.7689:

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

based on them giving us drytop and silverwastes for free (in what seems like was a “test” for features in the xpac) i think it’s safe to assume we’re going to get a lot more than just this map split into 3 sections. (i’d say a LOT larger than just this map)

Maybe i’m just an optimist though

I say to this, dont get your hopes up. Until they say or show something that suggests more, i wouldnt expect much more. May only get this one map, with 3 levels. I mean, all they have really talked about is the 3 level map.

“Multiple open world jungle maps made up of three distinct “biomes”
The core, the floor of the jungle itself
The roots of the jungle, that run deep beneath the jungle
The canopy, way up above, where the Pact fleet is scattered across the top of the jungle"

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2:_Heart_of_Thorns#cite_note-ZAM-2

That’s maps, plural. So it’s not just this map, with each map having 3 layers plus the ability to glide through them so that the spaces in between the layers have use also.

Since they say mapS, I’d say the bare minimum is 6 zones. 2 areas with 3 parts on different levels. Of course there can be more, in multiples of 3 most probably.

i dont think you should count the biomes as being equal or “zones”. Most likely some will have a lot of area that you cannot access. Think of like, divinities reach, or the sylvari town. But moreso.

eh time will tell regardless

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I don’t realy get some of you.

How can you claim that you have to grind to get to level up your Maserie? Well it is like how you have to “grind” to get to level 80 in this game as people say. Well ofcourse you grind if you go to EoTM and Farm with the zerg over and over again. But if you explore the world, play the story, do the events that you pass and enjoy the game for the fun parts you eventually hit level 80.

Now I havent tried HoT ofcourse so I dunno how hard it is to level Masteries, but I am pretty sure that if I just play the game and enjoy it’s content I will have most masteries max leveled. I am pretty sure that I won’t get a new mastery and then I go grind same mobs over and over again just to level up the mastery, I will brobably do fun stuff and level up the masteries while doing it. Just as I have when I leveled over 10 characters to level 80 without leveling tomes and grinding.

As LanfearShadowflame.3189 said, you gain XP for more or less everything in this game… I don’t see why some people have to grind.

I am not gonna say it is good or bad until I have tried it but it does not sound like grinding to me.

the thing is masteries are basically content locks here. People who played the beta basically had to grind exp points if they wanted to do the stuff that was available to them.

If they do balance it so that the exp required feels natural within exploring the areas, then it will be fine, but within the area they made available, you had no way to experience some of the content without grinding.
As for the game handing out xp, like i said, thats in pact tyria. Hot tyria? who knows. In the demo though, people had to grind.

Im pretty sure they plan to make you want to seek experience. Not sure how i feel about that. On one hand experience mattering gives potential for making content rewarding, On the other hand, it seems really odd to start grinding dynamic events to learn lore.

I guess it will boil down to how much exp you will need, and also how many different ways you can get exp. For example will they have lore related content? tons of experience points unlocked for exploration with a hang glider? (more than before)

ITheNormalPerson.9275:

based on them giving us drytop and silverwastes for free (in what seems like was a “test” for features in the xpac) i think it’s safe to assume we’re going to get a lot more than just this map split into 3 sections. (i’d say a LOT larger than just this map)

Maybe i’m just an optimist though

I say to this, dont get your hopes up. Until they say or show something that suggests more, i wouldnt expect much more. May only get this one map, with 3 levels. I mean, all they have really talked about is the 3 level map.

Loex.5104:

here the latest Image of the Map btw

[img]http://i.imgur.com/Jykcaxf.jpg[/img]

http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/308s40/datamining_updated_verdant_brink_map_with/

looks like the Ops prediction is accurate then

Sarie.1630:

By “Grind XP”, do you mean “Stockpile writs of experience between now and HoT release”?

Presumably Tomes of Knowledge would work too.

Notwithstanding the above. It is supposed to be a progression system. I don’t know why people are surprised that it takes a bit of a time investment to progress. I’m certain there will be more than enough events to farm up XP from, once you’re into the game you probably wont even notice. Gaining a level feels quite trivial after L80, it’s nice that it’ll mean something.

not sure tomes of knowledge will still function for mastery experience, after all, you are not exactly gaining levels. As far as being a progression system, yeah i get it, but its a question of balance. Will it be designed such that you have whatever experience is needed to progress just by doing whatever is around as you explore, or will it be balanced so you have to actually farm the exp.

Its essentially the difference in an RPG where exp is balanced to occur naturally, versus an rpg where you are supposed to go out and train before you progress. Which path they will choose is unknown at this point.

It is clear that many of these will end up being straight progress gates. So what type of set up it has will definately have an effect on player enjoyment.

Bandit.8279:

Are we really having a QQ fest over xp in GW2? XP is the easiest and quickest currency you can acquire! I have thousands of Skill Points/scrolls unused. I could level up a character to level 80 in just a few days not using any tomes/writs. XP is every where in this game. Guild bonuses, food/maintenance oils, boosters galore and bonus xp from straying off the beaten path are just a few easy ways to boost one’s xp gain.

Putting xp and grind in the same sentence is so laughable with GW2. Just play the game and the xp will come. The demo was a very small area with a limited amount of xp gain. XP in gw2 should never be complained about. Just too easy to come by!

keep in mind, mastery progression only happens in the proper zone. So, whatever you are used to for exp, may not be the case in HoT. You only have a few zones, so you wont get a large amount of exp from exploration. You may not have map completion rewards. You have no hearts. No dungeons, (dungeons are all in pact tyria)
So while exp probably wont be too hard to get, you will basically only get it from events. Since exploration is blocked by mastery progress, you will probably have, at least at the start a fairly limited choice of what events are available.

Essentially, you will be leveling up to progress. How one feels about that? well that will depend on the person/excution

TurtleofPower.5641:

I’m starting to think Nexon has an influence in all this.

They probably were demanding an expansion to the point Anet just said “Oh shut up, here we’ll put the Living Story out as one.”

nah, their living story business model was bleeding profits fairly consistently. They needed to revitalize things and shake them up. Which is fine

But the issue is, will they be able to put enough content in, so that it feels like its big enough to warrant being called an expansion. So far it seems smallish, and not varied enough, if the price tag is 40+ If its 10-20, then i guess its fine.

Regardless in the future i hope new expansions tread area that feels more new, different and interesting. go to elona, or cantha, or some new continent. Dramatically different locales, and cultures, better designed encounters/bosses would also be good

Blaeys.3102:

I think you have a valid discussion here, but you’re burying it in hyperbole, supposition and name calling.

If HOT were released and it was roughly equivalent to a living story season, is that something we should be expected to pay for when the modus operandi to date has been to provide that level of content for free?

I don’t think there is anything to worry about for two reasons – 1. HOT should be considerably more content than we saw with either of the two living story seasons and 2. The living story should continue to expand the world post HOT (whether it should be expanding it now as we wait for the expansion is another topic addressed in MANY other threads).

Specifically to the first point, let’s look at what we received in season two:

• 38 living story chapters
• Dry top and Silverwastes
• Minor gameplay changes through the September Feature Pack

I dont see the expansion being anywhere near that small. I fully expect the story they are adding with the expansion to be significantly longer than 38 episodes, in addition to multiple new (multi level) maps, wvw additions and the pvp growth. The fractal mastery line makes me thing big things are coming there as well. Add to that continued living story post HOT and we should have a lot to look forward to.

I also believe much of this expansion is about setting the groundwork for easier addition of content through living story. Things like specializations and masteries just scream flexible design and fast addition.

TL;DR – I don’t think there is anything to worry about. The expansion should be considerably more content than we’ve seen with either living story chapter.

it will probably be about equal to a season, or half a season, which honestly seems a bit small.

Of course the price is unknown, so maybe if its not too high, then it will seem fine. Most people will buy it regardless of price, but will they have a good feeling after? thats important for an MMO.

Kieran Axeblade.1756:

It’s incredible how many people forget that this was a test of the servers and not the expansion. All the feedback regarding skills, stacks of conditions, and lack of content, etc, are mostly pointless. That was not the point for this test.
I will admit that it was pretty boring being confined to that small area and being so limited in what we could do with skills and masteries and whatnot but I made the most of it. I stayed in for the entire two hours both times. During my time, I didn’t experience any significant latency issues, graphic anomalies, or server disconnects. I had one crash, which I sent in a bug report for, that kicked me back to the desktop.
Having said all that….I think the revenant will be a fun class to play. I like the new skills, the animations, and I also like the interaction from the NPCs being more dynamic. I cannot wait to try out the additions for the other classes when HoT releases. The new expansion should definitely breathe new life into the game.

keep in mind this is the part of the expansion that is supposed draw people in, Wow them, and make them realize how much Hot has to offer.
You dont make a boring demo if you can avoid it. You can assume that everything else is going to be so much better later on, but what are you basing that on? Im not saying they needed more content, but the content they showed wasnt much better/deeper than anything else we have seen.

I think you also got a good look at, for right now, the direction they are going with revenant, it may change, but if it does, it will be in part based on feedback here. If you think this areas content wasnt engaging, say why, let them know, they are still developing it, your feedback may be useful. If its not, they will ignore it. Dont assume there is going to be so much different, and then end up dissapointed when things arent too different later, afterall if you never told them you didnt like XYZ they will assume you did.

Randulf.7614:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

I think all of you are missing the point I’m trying to make.

I of course understand this is an unfinished product, because nobody would pay a dime for what we beta tested earlier.

What I am getting at is….. this “expansion” they are working on is a sorry excuse even for a living story episode.

It is a living story episode that Anet is overinflating to make it look like an expansion.

Look at Dry Top

Look at Silverwastes

Look at Southsun Cove

and look at this.

It is literally no different… save they are adding a new profession.

So why is Anet putting it behind a pay wall?

Because it is an expansion. Its not a tiny little living story episode. Its not a bit of story dressed up. Its a huge piece of content with tons of new features, a few new maps, a borderland and…well the list gors on.

The difference between dry top and this is so huge it is incomparable. If anything it
will count for a season or more of story rather than one episode. Where on earth did you get it would just one single episode from anyway?

We got a demo, specifically tweaked and reduced for a stress test. A little introduction and thats it. To base judgement on an entire expansion on this….is just bizarre.

Am i concerned? No, not in the the slightest tiny little bit

based on what they have revealed so far, i think the expansion will end up feeling like a living story half season, with some actual features bundled in.
Its not really enough for a traditional expansion in my eyes, but if the price is lower, i guess it will be fine.
I would love to be wrong though, and have the expansion feel like something new and exciting, deep, and interesting. But from what they have said, and showed, i think a more realistic expectation is that it will be
3 zones
1 new profression
new specialization mechanic

about a half season of story.

yes the mastery system feels like a good idea combined with a less than good idea. Keep in mind later masteries will probably require more exp to level, and you get a very odd system where you
do something interesting
grind
do something interesting
grind

Also, the masteries themselves feel pretty uninspired. The combat one was basically agony resistance again. (reduce condition damage from mordrem)

too many of the solutions to design problems revolve around just playing with some numbers.

i mean i do see the value in making experience points worthwhile, but it doesnt connect well with the content/mechanics its attached to.
grind exp to get better at talking to beast tribe? illogical? grind exp to learn to fly better?

Well its going to come down to execution, but it seems very artificial at this point.

Mirta.5029:

maddoctor.2738:

You still need AR to survive. If your AR is too low, no matter how good heal skills you have or how good a player you are, you will die instantly. There is NO way to dodge the agony if you have very low AR at higher levels, you are just dead with 1 tick and there is no time to use any kind of heal.

Only heal good enough to prevent the wipe, is using 3 Guardians with the Tome Heal and time it perfectly

all agony is healable and dodgeable (except for the one enforced by instabilities and entering the last boss), that’s how people got to level 80 when they were clearly not meant to in the first place.

they patched a lot of those, and then people were only able to get high by hanging with people who were already 80, and doing odd fractals which didnt have bosses. Things changed.

Garambola.2461:

The point was not to entertain you. It was to test how the content behaves under pressure.

uhh, even short demos are supposed to be entertaining.
this was essentially the content they were promoting at conventions/trade shows.

the wyvern, in still pictures, might be cool, in action though it doesnt really feel any more interesting than an abomination champion. In fact i would say an abomination champion is more entertaining.

Andred.1087:

phys.7689:

Andred.1087:

X T D.6458:

Con’s
…
-utility skills come in a set of 3 tied to legendary, limits build variety

And build variety in other professions is any better? Last I checked you pretty much have 2 or 3 good options for utility loadout on just about any class. With Revenant at least you don’t even have to think about it.

not true at all.

My Guardian would like a word with you. What’s that Guardian? Your only options are shouts or meditations? Interesting.

guardian is only one class.

Andred.1087:

X T D.6458:

Con’s
…
-utility skills come in a set of 3 tied to legendary, limits build variety

And build variety in other professions is any better? Last I checked you pretty much have 2 or 3 good options for utility loadout on just about any class. With Revenant at least you don’t even have to think about it.

not true at all.

yea, i only watched it, but didnt look too exciting. The wyvern fight was boring, players just walked around at ranged it.
The masteries look bland, and require you to grind exp to progress.
Revenant didnt seem very deep, the class mechanic didnt seem to make up for lack of weapon swap.

Its an early build, but nothing seems groundbreaking or extremely interesting that we have seen

Mirta.5029:

my main is elementalist and was the first one that I finished the full story on and had absolutely no problems. I had more problems on my necro and my ranger, but even then with my necro my first death was in Orr, while my ranger’s biggest problem is that she is beserker with sword/ horn set up and I just keep on jumping off places without meaning to.

If you’re having a lot of difficulty, perhaps postpone doing it till you’re level 80? I mean then you’ll have gear that has 3 stats (I recommend taking defensive on at least 1 out of those 3 stats) and you will probably have more of an idea what you’re doing by then

things have changed drastically from when the game was new, powerwise your elementalist at 40, is about equal to a level 66 elementalist now.

They generally nerfed the numbers to compensate, but at some levels, without top end gear, and not knowing the instance, it can be fairly tough.

a level 40 elementalist these days MIGHT have one adept trait, and most likely none of the usefull ones. Before at level 40, you had access to the master teir of traits, and you had 30 points (equivalent of 6) trait points.

Galen Grey.4709:

• 1) Didnt have much to do….

• 2) okey this could be true, ..
• 3)
  which is a problem in Gw2 because by design its trying to avoid funneling people..

• 4)
  But who’s fault is that? naturally 20 man against a champion is going to easier / quicker ..

• 5)
  but its not! thats like saying society is design in such a way that breaking the law is most rewarding…
• 6)
  Then why is this an issue? I like many others ..

• 7)
  none of that is a thing though. whatever they do they will get something for it. …

• 8)
  thats a mistake simply because whats most compelling for you might not be most compelling for me. What Anet do though they let you play whatever you feel is more compelling and get rewarded for it.

phys.7689:

and no, i never had a nice skin i would use drop

not one? really? I dont farm or anything of the sort and I had Arc, Cobalt, Knowledge is power , jormag’s needle, 3 dragon weapon tickets and my personal favorite (sarcastic) the game trying to kill me with a hearth attack I did get Khrysaor, the Golden Sword drop on me (shares the same skin with dawn ad the right stats I equiped it and I am like.. omg did I just equip dawn by mistake?)

phys.7689:

tequatl has one, and worm, are there any others?

They do part of some events like halloween we had quite a few.

phys.7689:

All of my drops were destroyed,
its not that satisfying for a lot of people.

Its not that I dont understand your point, I did have zuzu the cat of darkness drop on me (and I wanted it) but I still value mini liadri more because it was FAR more challenging to get that one. Its more satisfying for sure, I just its a worthy trade off simple because I dont have to grind content I dont enjoy, if rewards were tied to content that would be a very distinct possibility though.

1)Completing every map didnt take that long, i probably did it shortly after hitting 80, it may have taken me a couple extra hours. and by that point i had done most of the things to do. The things i hadnt done werent really implied by the game design.

3) you dont have to funell people, you should have compelling design built into each one of your mini designs/encounters. If they want to design a game that has an open world focus, they should reward the best designed open world things. They did this pretty poorly. Aside from a champion chest, which generally contained junk, most bosses barely rewarded more than a basic one shot dynamic event. Mini dungeons had fairly poor rewards, even though they were generally better designed than dynamic events.
basically you should reward many different types of play, and things, but you should put the rewards into the best designed stuff.
4) its the fault of the design, If they really want open world to be their focus, they need to come up with ways of either not letting people go 20 versus 1, or making it not really more easy/profitable to go 20 versus 1. Definately not easy, but its really what they need to figure out how to do.
5) a society that is designed where people breaking the law win most of the time is flawed. But the key here is they are not breaking the law, they are playing the game in the ways the law says. Its like if the law said that if you could beat someone up, you can take whatever they have legally, Now you are creating a society where people are rewarded for beating people up.
6) because there is the third option between content or reward. play less, or quit. Someone who wants both reward, and to be happy is not served in the situation.
Some one who only cares about reward is happy
Some one who only cares about content could be happy

but people who want both in varying degrees? they are unhappy, and there are a lot of people like that.

7) One solution to make the rewards better fit the content and have those rewards that fit the content be obtained primarily(most effeciently, even if there are other methods) by playing said content Things that would amuse jumping puzzle people in jumping puzzles, things that amuse battlers in battle, open worlders in the open world, etc.

8) as i said before, they dont have to reward just one thing, they just have to reward the best designs of various things.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata

did you really say “income is irrelevant”. not once but twice?

Do you think NCsoft will care more about getting 100% sale numbers more then they care about the actual money? I find that pretty hard to believe.

but anyhow lets assume thats true somehow its still to early to draw your own conclusion. Because you’re not factoring in HoT sales.

Lets add stuff up. Numbers in KRW

income starting from mid 2012 -> 164m+123m+85m+206m* = 579M

Now you might be asking where did that 206m come from. it assume hot comes out at the end of q2 and that it sells as much as the original game like expansion did for gw1 it also adds 1/2 the cash shop sales of 2014.. ie 42m+164 = 206m
if we take that 579M and average it for the 3 years we get 193m which is more then 100% income you mentioned.

This doesnt even factor in that now that people know there is going to be expansion and that living story is just the stuff we get in between not the whole story, more people might actually join the game or come back increasing the year to year gemshop income.

Thats not even counting the chinese revenue either.

if we compare that to gw1, in the first 3 years it generated 117m making gw2 on average 5x more money.

even if gw2 costed 5x more to make which i doubt in the long run it will always be more profitable. income isnt irellevant its like everything.

see it like this… which would you rather have product A that cost 10 to develop and makes 50 every year
or product B that cost 50 to make but makes 250 , 150,80 then 300,150,80 and so on and so forth? ?

would you really care you’re getting 60% and 40% the 2nd and 3rd year when over all you’re making so much more?

its pointless for you to add your HoT predictions to the equation, because Devata has always claimed that expansions is a better model. If hot is big, it will only further show that perhaps expansions was always the way to go, and a cash shop focus is not really the best plan.

also, i doubt hot will sell as well as the initial sales, because i feel they waited too long and lost too many players before releasing the expansion. Also, HoT seems like it will be fairly small by expansion standards, it may not have enough to make people think they should come back.
time will tell though

If they started with an expansion model it would mean there would be no Living World, no gem store, and no income between the expansion and the main game (like in the case of GW1) how can you be so sure that the total income over the same period of time would’ve been the same, more or less?

Unless HoT really reaches the original sales (although I’d love it if it does, I somehow doubt it) it would still be irrelevant. They already have lots of releases on the gem store, unless they stop upgrading the gem store completely before the next expansion you’d never see the difference.

to be clear, i am not sure, no one can be sure of anything that didnt happen

however, IF it did perform like gw1 did, then it would have been more profitable.

And is that likely? well if the game is appealing then yes. People bought madden every year, and call of duty every year, and gw1 campains every 6 months to a year.

regardless, we should probably focus more clearly on the grind discussion

Galen Grey.4709:

@Devata

did you really say “income is irrelevant”. not once but twice?

Do you think NCsoft will care more about getting 100% sale numbers more then they care about the actual money? I find that pretty hard to believe.

but anyhow lets assume thats true somehow its still to early to draw your own conclusion. Because you’re not factoring in HoT sales.

Lets add stuff up. Numbers in KRW

income starting from mid 2012 -> 164m+123m+85m+206m* = 579M

Now you might be asking where did that 206m come from. it assume hot comes out at the end of q2 and that it sells as much as the original game like expansion did for gw1 it also adds 1/2 the cash shop sales of 2014.. ie 42m+164 = 206m
if we take that 579M and average it for the 3 years we get 193m which is more then 100% income you mentioned.

This doesnt even factor in that now that people know there is going to be expansion and that living story is just the stuff we get in between not the whole story, more people might actually join the game or come back increasing the year to year gemshop income.

Thats not even counting the chinese revenue either.

if we compare that to gw1, in the first 3 years it generated 117m making gw2 on average 5x more money.

even if gw2 costed 5x more to make which i doubt in the long run it will always be more profitable. income isnt irellevant its like everything.

see it like this… which would you rather have product A that cost 10 to develop and makes 50 every year
or product B that cost 50 to make but makes 250 , 150,80 then 300,150,80 and so on and so forth? ?

would you really care you’re getting 60% and 40% the 2nd and 3rd year when over all you’re making so much more?

its pointless for you to add your HoT predictions to the equation, because Devata has always claimed that expansions is a better model. If hot is big, it will only further show that perhaps expansions was always the way to go, and a cash shop focus is not really the best plan.

also, i doubt hot will sell as well as the initial sales, because i feel they waited too long and lost too many players before releasing the expansion. Also, HoT seems like it will be fairly small by expansion standards, it may not have enough to make people think they should come back.
time will tell though

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

Galen Grey.4709:

I fail to see the correlation between money and interest you’re making. There are just so many variables you’re ignoring really.

1. do all the players that are ready to buy an expansion also always pay for stuff in the cash shop? of course not. So there is no relationship between box sales and cash shop sales which in turn means the spike for the gw1 campaigns sale dont indicate any more / less interess when compared to gw2 gemshop sales.

2. Is no sale indicative of no play? b2p is a subset of free to play which means you can play the game without spending anything (outside of buying the box of course) ergo when we compare Q2 2013 with Q4 2014 on gw2 we can clearly see a drop but can we say for sure its because people stopped playing? could it be because say people are now richer in game and using in game money more then gems for example? or could it be Q2 2013 had more stuff people desired then Q4 2014?

3. box sales to gem ratio… we dont know how much of it is box sales and how much is gem shop… if its 1:10 in favor of gems that tells one story, if its 10:1 in favor of boxes that tells a completely different story.

4. Box price to average gem shop transaction. Campaign sales show a nice spike but boxes cost might be a lot more then average cash shop transaction. what I mean is if a box sale is say $60 while the average player spends $10 on the cash shop a $600k box sale spike may seem to represent more players then $200k cash shop sales when in truth cash shop sales may actually be twice as many people.

5. box sales fall but dont really go down to 0. looking at the graph for gw1 it may seem that every new campaign release generated more interest than the last but because they were so close to each other it may simply be sales of the previous campaign made the current release look more successful than it really was. Its impossible to say if each subsequent one was more successful or that each subsequent one was less successful.

Also your premise is based on the notion that it is possible for Anet to come up with an expansion per year. Creating content for gw2 isnt the same as creating content for gw1. takes way more work to do stuff for gw2 without a doubt perhaps they just cant do it any faster then every 2 years. how would that change things?

Money made does represent interest, though its not easy to say how.
The overall point is that gw1 retained or expanded on its initial interest/earnings while under the initial business model, even when they dropped off in the 3rd year, its still a minor drop off compared to gw2

this is not to say they are capable of duplicating this for gw2. But the point is, gw1 and other games are able to retain interest/earnings with other business models.

Now that gw2 has a new business model, they may be able to better compete.

But after the initial sale point drop, GW2 barely dropped in income from then on. The decrease is very minor, the graph is nearly a flat line.

you are looking point to point, but missing the big picture even ignoring the first 2 quarters, it went from 126 to 88, thats a drop of 31% whereas gw1 goes from startng increases by 23% in the second year, and the third year only drops by 5% (even though they officially pulled support from eye of the north)

just because the line is smoothly going down, doesnt mean its average is better overall.
gw1 maintained, gw2 declined. even not considering initial sales.

Mirta.5029:

phys.7689:

yeah, as someone said, things have changed a bit. Agony will straight kill you now, and bosses throw agony on little attacks now as well. You are basically supposed to have agony.

Also, the upper teens are pretty rough with players that dont know the fights too well. Not impossible, but i have had level 16 runs that took longer, and had more drama than level 38 runs.

6% agony will only get you to 60% health on the last boss fight. All other agony is avoidable. Hence when last boss agony wasn’t forced people climbed all the way to level 80. I don’t see lacking 5 or even 10 as a big deal, because you can survive it.

you wont get 6% agony though, you will get 12% agony. which puts you to be downed, your ability to recover after the intro is low, because they dont stand around and do a cutscene any more.
people reviving you will likely take damage, and most likely you will be killed even while they try to res you, keep in mind at this point there are two enemies with large AOE and projectiles. getting downed with no AR is basically death.

Is it impossible? not at all, is it likely, or easy? not really. Like i said, they could have carried him, but people tend to get offended when they start off fights with fully dead people, especially once they lose more than 2 times.

I wouldnt kick him, but many other players would.

I had a fractal that when essentially the same way at level 30
after like 2 tries they kicked the guy who insta died with 25 agony resist (18%) is full death
then they kicked the guy who probably had 30, who took 12% damage, and went down at start, and died when things got rough.

I didnt vote to kick them but at that time it only took 2 people

Also, though the other agony is avoidable, it isnt easily avoided. And reviving people in this fight is fairly difficult, which makes people less tolerant of death.

Galen Grey.4709:

I fail to see the correlation between money and interest you’re making. There are just so many variables you’re ignoring really.

1. do all the players that are ready to buy an expansion also always pay for stuff in the cash shop? of course not. So there is no relationship between box sales and cash shop sales which in turn means the spike for the gw1 campaigns sale dont indicate any more / less interess when compared to gw2 gemshop sales.

2. Is no sale indicative of no play? b2p is a subset of free to play which means you can play the game without spending anything (outside of buying the box of course) ergo when we compare Q2 2013 with Q4 2014 on gw2 we can clearly see a drop but can we say for sure its because people stopped playing? could it be because say people are now richer in game and using in game money more then gems for example? or could it be Q2 2013 had more stuff people desired then Q4 2014?

3. box sales to gem ratio… we dont know how much of it is box sales and how much is gem shop… if its 1:10 in favor of gems that tells one story, if its 10:1 in favor of boxes that tells a completely different story.

4. Box price to average gem shop transaction. Campaign sales show a nice spike but boxes cost might be a lot more then average cash shop transaction. what I mean is if a box sale is say $60 while the average player spends $10 on the cash shop a $600k box sale spike may seem to represent more players then $200k cash shop sales when in truth cash shop sales may actually be twice as many people.

5. box sales fall but dont really go down to 0. looking at the graph for gw1 it may seem that every new campaign release generated more interest than the last but because they were so close to each other it may simply be sales of the previous campaign made the current release look more successful than it really was. Its impossible to say if each subsequent one was more successful or that each subsequent one was less successful.

Also your premise is based on the notion that it is possible for Anet to come up with an expansion per year. Creating content for gw2 isnt the same as creating content for gw1. takes way more work to do stuff for gw2 without a doubt perhaps they just cant do it any faster then every 2 years. how would that change things?

Money made does represent interest, though its not easy to say how.
The overall point is that gw1 retained or expanded on its initial interest/earnings while under the initial business model, even when they dropped off in the 3rd year, its still a minor drop off compared to gw2

this is not to say they are capable of duplicating this for gw2. But the point is, gw1 and other games are able to retain interest/earnings with other business models.

Now that gw2 has a new business model, they may be able to better compete.

basic game design, isnt good game design. Its what you do when you are average. Call of duty has progression, but they expect people to be playing way beyond unlocking everything. Dark souls lets you level, and hunt items, but people play it over and over again. Tetris doesnt say you must play 300 hours to unlock the hardest level.

yeah, its a simple way to solve your game design problem, to simply make people have to do something for 100 hours in order to reach your goal, but doing it that simply is a very low level technique, and generally leads to player disatisfaction.

for example, rpgs found out that they could extend game time by having you have more random encounters, however, games that went too far with this, and didnt design in enough content, enough progress, and enough rewards, or enough gameplay were less appreciated, and sold less.

yes, you calculate, and predict how many hours people are going to play, but you cant do simple i want people to do this 100 times before they get a reward, does the content warrant 100 repetitions?

I would say fractals, SAB and probably marionette had the best designed reward systems.
SAB rewarded you fairly well for running through the level, and knowing all the tricks, getting better at it made you make money faster, and it was full of little hidden tricks and compellng moments.
fractals is very varied, and earning up to 10 gave you a chance at getting bis rings, getting higher gave you more attempts (this starts to break down later on, but the inital levels/ascended ring aquisition was pretty good)
Marrionette, had a good balance of zerg, and personal fight, difficult enough that if your map played well, you could win, but yall had to pay attention you had chances at drops for new recipes, and fairly good chance at ectos, from the hidden room chests. You got more the better your map played.

Galen Grey.4709:

counter points.

endgame, when i say it, doesnt refer to raids specifically, it refers to what you do when you reach max level. GW2, on ship, didnt have that much to do. later on the added living story for this purpose, and it did improve things, at that point ascended was already a factor.

I didnt say people only care about content, im saying what they really want is content, the reason they put their best gear in raids, is because that is the best designed content they have (by raids i mean instances) open world content in most games is generally not that good, and mostly about being/going to new places (which is fine but it doesnt last)
Essentially you put the best rewards into the thing that you have designed best, that ensures the players are playing the best parts of your game.

the game rewards the least compelling parts. Champion fights might be compelling, when you two-5 man them, but its not very compelling when you 20 man them. But its most rewarding to 20 man them.
Is there an easy answer? maybe not. but it doesnt change the fact that the least compelling gameplay is the most rewarding. Their solution is to make things of value require a lot of everything to balance everyone earning easily. Problem is, this basically means trying to obtain most rewards is going to feel grindy.
too easy, not compelling, and needing a lot of something.

I do think people value content more than rewards, but they also desire rewards. thats why your reward system has to work WITH your content systems to reinforce each other.
people will be disatisfied if the do something but get nothing, or less for it
people will be dissatisfied if they get something, but in order to get it, they have to be bored.

Thats why you put your best rewards in your most compelling gameplay.

to be clear, compelling isnt only about difficulty, although that is one method of making things compelling. Intially, newness works very well at making things compelling, but it has a short shelf life. Making things the right type of unpredictable can also increase compellingness, making something extremely pleasurable is another means.

Its not easy to do in any case, but thats the aim.

regardless the rewards themselves are also very poor carrots. instead of chasing the carrots, you chase pennies to buy 20 dollar carrots.
you probably wont be too excited to get a penny, knowing you have to get 1999 more.

and no, i never had a nice skin i would use drop, (though wardrobe has made getting skins, even if you arent going to use them any time soon, better than it was)
dont think mini’s drop, oh tequatl has one, and worm, are there any others? (not that i care much about minis)
dyes, i never got one of the high brow dyes, that was actually cool through normal play, anyhow for me, dyes are more about selection than any dye in particular, most of them i bought or, created dyes to get.
basically, almost everything i recieved that i personally valued, i traded tokens, gold, crafted, or mystic forged to get. All of my drops were destroyed, npced, or repackaged, crafted in order to get something i actually wanted.
its not that satisfying for a lot of people.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I havent done Fractals that much but I have done quite a few so I have learned some ways to do most fractals. I have been doing Fractals with my old guild with someone leading us and now recently I have been doing Fractals with my own guild where I have been leading us. One day we was short on one player so a Guild member had a friend who had fractal level 47 or something who we let join us. So we played on Fractal level 17-ish and what was so fun was that this player (Who is realy good, kind and helpfull) played the fractal as if it was fractal level 47, he wanted us to stack in a corner becouse if we didn’t mobs would kill us and the fun part was by doing this it all took longer time. It was a slow but sure method.

The point with what I said is that some players learn how to play a Fractal the best way and the most easy way and also they think that is the only way. maby it is the only way at Fractal 40-50 but at 10-19 it is not that hard. In our Guild not everyone has AR yet but we let them join for 10-19 runs anyway becouse they are easy. When we first tried fractal 10 there was only one player who had AR and we managed without much trouble to get to just this boss OP is talking about but they did to much attacks with agony so it was impossible for us to manage a perfect run :P

Anyway in OP’s scenario… If his team would have just scrapped this stupid tactic to stack and reflect they could have done it without OP alive even. It was Fractal level 10-19 not 20 or higher (Not even at 20 it is that hard).

ar requirement scales per level, taking 12% per tick on the molten duo means, you almost die every time you start the fight, unavoidable agony. it means getting downed= death (because you can no longer dodge aoe, and take 12%hp extra damage with every hit.

Its not impossible, but its pretty unlikely unless you are experienced, and even then its difficult. Since he basically died fast, he was not good enough to play against that level of agony.
just putting 1 agony infusion, which costs 175 fractal relics would reduce the damage by half, (instead of almost dying at the beginning, he wouldnt even go down) 10, would have made the agony portion 1%, and negligable.

like i said, AR isnt a skill check anymore, its basically a gate. sadly, its most gatelike only when you reach the last fractal. (if its not jade maw, which gives you plenty of time to recover from guaranteed agony)

correcction of forum bug, (forum software tech is decades old now, why does this forum have this bug when older softwares have no problem with it)

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

However, the question is, could they do it? Who can say if they could make a new games worth of content in a year, or if they could maintain the same level of player interest that games like gw1, call of duty, or john madden were able to do.

But GW2 DOES maintain the same level of player interest, the graph is stable, it’s the GW1 graph that shows the complete opposite with high fluctuations.

it doesnt maintain its initial earnings/players. It has consisdently loss player interest/earnings.

you are looking at the graph wrong. look at the total earnings per year, compared to the total earnings per year.

when you look at it that way you will see that for the first 2-3 years, gw1 basically increased or maintained earnings, whereas GW2 consistenly goes down.

The earnings of GW1 during 2005 dropped after release, which is natural for every game, then increased in 2006 because of the two expansions. What about 2007 that had the release of EotN? It plunged downwards. The GW2 graph is flatter across the board, sure it has a decline in it, and probably that’s why they are releasing an expansion now.

But the real question is if a different system would’ve worked in GW2. I don’t think so, people who advocate the expansion system believe that an expansion every year would spike the sales of the game when it was released (like what happened in GW1) however, if there was an expansion every year, then we wouldn’t have a stable income in-between the expansions.

You can’t expect for the game graph to be as it is now, but with an added expansion spike, that’s unreasonable as someone must work on that expansion. So with an expansion every year, the graph would be full of spikes and times of nothingness in-between, you can’t be certain that it would result in better income overall.

In gw1, it worked to maintain interest
in gw2, it didnt.

thats probably part of why they decided to go back to expansions, their current system was seeing a consistent drop off with no returning surges. Eventually they would have continued to dwindle to nothing with the old system.

However, they are kind of late, imo, also this expansion doesnt seem that heavy on content.(conjecture based on release news) I doubt they will be able to get back to/exceed initial earnings levels. However, they are still quite profitable, and hot should definately give them a large boost in earnings.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

However, the question is, could they do it? Who can say if they could make a new games worth of content in a year, or if they could maintain the same level of player interest that games like gw1, call of duty, or john madden were able to do.

But GW2 DOES maintain the same level of player interest, the graph is stable, it’s the GW1 graph that shows the complete opposite with high fluctuations.

it doesnt maintain its initial earnings/players. It has consisdently loss player interest/earnings.

you are looking at the graph wrong. look at the total earnings per year, compared to the total earnings per year.

when you look at it that way you will see that for the first 2-3 years, gw1 basically increased or maintained earnings, whereas GW2 consistenly goes down.

first year of release, 43k million kwan
2nd year of release 53k million kwan
3rd year of release 41k million kwan
fairly consistent, even considering halfway through 3rd year they took resources away from eye of the north, and put them towards gw2, and officially told people gw1 was ending.

now look at gw2
year one 160k million kwan (only 2 quarters)
year two 126 million kwan (4 quarters)
year three 84 million kwan (4 quarters)

did they make a lot more? hell yeah, are they maintaining earnings/interest in the game as well as gw1 did? not really.

if the same business plan worked as well as it did for gw1, based on gw2 initial sales, the numbers should have looked like this
year one 160
year two 192
year three 152

it doesnt really matter how much sales fluctuated throughout the year with gw1, its business plan was based on selling boxes, so of course when there will be drop offs, gw2 is nowhere near as consistent as gw1 is in interest/earnings when you look at it by year.

Galen Grey.4709:

edited for space?

gw2 did not provide enough depth of play to keep people interested when they reached 80. people talking about endgame are not just talking about leveling up. They are basically saying, what do you have for me to do in this game, that is entertaining, when i hit 80?
there really wasnt much, and they didnt design encounters that were very engaging. They were very much focused on a grind based endgame. They just did it poorly. Legendaries were too much of commitment, with too few stops along the way. The other special skins, were not even really known of existing, and required about 1/4th the grind of legendaries, which is still immense.

people talk about raid progression, and dont really realize, the raids themselves are more important than the rewards. The Instances are teired content that people can play through. You take out the Instances, and WoWs progression plan would quickly become stale and boring. WoW uses the rewards to make people play the best designed portions of their game, raids, dungeons, instanced content.

Gw2 rewards the least compelling parts of the game, or makes you play things with so many people that it becomes uncompelling.

Most people didnt stop playing GW1 when they hit 20, do you know why? because there was still a lot to do. There was still challenges to overcome. Still things to find. The truth is, its not the rewards that drive MMOs, its the content. gw2 reward system generally works against the content. Very few satisfying rewards, they focus on giving you a lot of stuff, rather than giving you quality stuff. Very few people ever got a very satisfying drop playing gw2, even though they may have earned a lot of wealth over time.

Now, this doesnt mean you make getting everything easy, but you dont design things as simply as we want people to play this game for 200 hours before they get X item. Thats not compelling, it doesnt keep you engaged. Its basically log in rewards.

your goal isnt to give people something for playing 200 hours, your goal is to make them want to play for 200 hours. Reward can be a part of that, but you have to design it so that it reinforces compelling play.

maddoctor.2738:

phys.7689:

that shows that guildwars1 was able to build or maintain its earnings throughout its life(keep in mind gw was primarily box sales), whereas Gw2 has been downhill since release.

How do you come to that conclusion? The GW2 graph is a very stable one, aside from the huge spike and decline at release. And even at its worst point it’s still higher than GW1 ever did.

basically, gw1 was able to maintain its intial playerbase, and even expand on it, whereas the first 2.5 years of gw2 show a fairly consistent decrease.

But after Nightfall was released it never really expanded the playerbase, EotN had less appeal than Nightfall.

Now, you are right, gw2 has earned more than gw1 by far, but if you are talking about maintaining/increasing earnings(and probably playerbase) GW2 was failing.
now, with the expansion coming out, that may change, but that remains to be seen. I personally believe they waited too long, and wont have enough in this expansion to go back to initial sales numbers, or beat it, like they did with gw1, but they will probably do pretty well.

The Campaigns of GW1 were new games, not expansions, that’s why an expansion (Nightfall) outperformed the original game. That can’t be done in an expansion as easily

gw1 was primarily box sales, the measure of its success is how many people want to invest in the next iteration. When eye of the north was released, they were already talking about gw2, (my box had a beta invite sign up in it, lol)

so essentially they maintained or expanded the interest in the product over time.
until the point that they anounced they were working on gw2, which was close to the release of eye in the north. Many people didnt buy Eye, because they felt GW2 existence meant gw1 would be a dying game. In fact the announced eye of the north as the last guild wars expansion

Expansions are often sold as stand alone collections for major companies. FFXI for example, basically released versions that included all the previous core/expansions in one game. This does allow the game to sell as well, (if you combine the expansion only sales and the collection sales)
GW2 is fairly unique in keeping the stand alones seperate forever, but thats probably because they were designed to be self contained, and had a buy to play model.

anyhow, devata is correct, that IF guild wars 2 was able to duplicate the continued interest and desire that gw1 had, and released a game every year, they would have made more money than they made with the current model.

However, the question is, could they do it? Who can say if they could make a new games worth of content in a year, or if they could maintain the same level of player interest that games like gw1, call of duty, or john madden were able to do.

but if they could? yeah it adds up to more money than they made with this plan.

maddoctor.2738:

Devata.6589:

Well if you take the WoW example. Sure they go up and down, but over the 10 years total they did manage to keep up a big player-base.

GW1 was also able to keep a steady player-base over it’s life-spawn GW2 on the other hand has seem a drop ever since release (in income at least).

About people talking about a doomsday for 3 years. Personally I always looked at it for the long-term (2-5 / 3 years) because GW2 simply had a good core so has a good momentum. With HoT coming in this period I would add another half year to that (3,5 year), but not in the dooms-day scenario that it would be completely dead after that (IF they would not fix some of these core problems like the grind) but that it simply would become some second rank MMO while at the moment I think it is still a first rank MMO. However also now it’s not as popular as it could have been imho.

While I must also say Anet is very good at preventing a real drop in players to happen. Not so much with the LS but with the right solution just in time. For example when people got tired pretty soon after release Fractals was a good way to solve that. Then the temporary content of the LS was a real thread to the game and also that got solved imo just in time to prevent to many people getting burned out by that. Then now somewhere between the 2,5 and 3 years they come with the expansion. So who knows what they come with 5 / 6 months after release, maybe something that solves this grind or at least puts enough other things in the game to keep people busy with that moving away from the cosmetics as their focus point.

So GW1 had a steady player-base while GW2 is always declining? Got any data to back that up? Because the actual data we do have tells a different story:

This is a graph of GW1 sales:
[img]http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9427/images/GW2-Feb23-1.jpg[/img]

and this is a graph of GW2 sales:
[img]http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9427/images/GW2-Feb23-2.jpg[/img]

As you can very clearly see from the graphs, the worst point in GW2 history (Q4 2014) had more income than the BEST point in GW1 history (Q4 2006)

Yes GW2 has a problem with sales. GW2 has a very steady income, with the big spike at release and another possible spike when HoT is released, but otherwise the game is very stable when it comes to income.

Maybe when you are talking about a steady decline in income you were watching the GW1 data and not the GW2 data? Because the data suggest otherwise. I’d love to see where you get your info, besides “that’s what I think” which is where you are basing everything. Well what you think and reality are different.

According to you, a game that at it’s lowest point outperforms GW1 is going to “die” some day soon? I don’t think that makes any kind of sense. I guess GW1 was always a second-rank MMO to you, if at it’s best couldn’t perform better than how GW2 is performing now….

that shows that guildwars1 was able to build or maintain its earnings throughout its life(keep in mind gw was primarily box sales), whereas Gw2 has been downhill since release.
GW1 decline basically occurs when they decide to put most resources to gw2, which makes sense.

basically, gw1 was able to maintain its intial playerbase, and even expand on it, whereas the first 2.5 years of gw2 show a fairly consistent decrease.

Now, you are right, gw2 has earned more than gw1 by far, but if you are talking about maintaining/increasing earnings(and probably playerbase) GW2 was failing.

now, with the expansion coming out, that may change, but that remains to be seen. I personally believe they waited too long, and wont have enough in this expansion to go back to initial sales numbers, or beat it, like they did with gw1, but they will probably do pretty well.

lordkrall.7241:

SoulSin.5682:

this game already has translations for different languages, wouldn’t kill to have an extra one for russians.

And then another for Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Hindi, Japanese, Swahili and so on. If they start adding one language they should also be adding the rest as well, and that means they would basically have to hire 150 new people just to handle translating and such.

developers should create a language API, that makes it easier for players to create their own Language mods.
Well, if they are going to try to basically make 3 different versions serve the entire globe.

Mirta.5029:

Unforgiven Azrael.6203:

While he may be exagerating on how long it take to get the AR, it really does not take that long to get at least a decent amount of it. Trinkets arent that hard to come by, Guild Missions, Laurels, and from the FotM, slot +5s in all those and you are good till at least 20, and that will take you maybe a month, depending on how often you run Guild Missions and if you have saved up laurels

while that is true, you don’t need it for levels 10-20. People used to earn their rings in 10-20, that’s why I don’t see why it’s so wrong for a person to enter 10-20 without AR today when it wasn’t when fractals just released.

To be honest, being a long time fractal runner it makes me laugh when I see LFGs in scales anywhere between 1 to 20 that ask for experienced players, or yell at new players for even making very small mistakes. These are low level fractals. 20+ is normally where people know what they’re doing, 30+ is when they start to get serious about it. 10+? Waaay too early to try and emulate any kind of hardcore behavior if you ask me.

yeah, as someone said, things have changed a bit. Agony will straight kill you now, and bosses throw agony on little attacks now as well. You are basically supposed to have agony.

Also, the upper teens are pretty rough with players that dont know the fights too well. Not impossible, but i have had level 16 runs that took longer, and had more drama than level 38 runs.

ArchieD.6972:

I main a Warrior. I have a certain attachment to him as he was my first character, but I also have 8 other lvl 80s. Now, I also like to support players and love seeing the shields and green numbers when I play my Guardian, especially when I see players on the brink of death and I’m able to save them.

So that’s why today, it’s gonna be hard for me to say goodbye to the Guardian, at least for now. Fractals can take upwards of an hour, hour and a half, which makes getting the Relic rewards at the end pretty important to someone who works more than a full time job and is trying to finish up his degree. Now I know my fights, and I may not have agony resistance, but I know how to survive it and/or avoid it in the 10-19 tier. Me being traited for support, I’m often the only one that stays at full health an entire fight.

But when a group decides it’s best to stack on the last boss of the fractal and eat his stomps while expecting me to throw a Reflecting Wall when we first enter to protect us from the fire from the other boss, there’s not much I can do to survive as I’m not able to heal myself at that critical moment. The first attempt, before they asked me to do that, went okay. We lost most of the party early so I died so we could restart the fight. We wiped a few more times because of various reasons like someone running in early, but long story short, I was kicked because I kept dying while trying to support them instead of helping myself.

So, give thanks to a group of players with a crappy attitude for losing a support player. Guess it’s back to my Warrior where all I care about is swinging my sword.

you need agony resistance for the molten duo, there is just no two ways about it. They definately could have carried you(with afew attempts), however they were probably mad that you didnt have any agony resistance.
agony resistance of a low level isnt expensive.
you can get it for 175 fractal relics, and you can infuse rings.
you can trade rings if you have some on a different charachter because ascended is no longer soulbound
you can infuse a ring with
Upgrade a regular ascended ring in the Mystic Forge using:
1 Shard of Crystallized Mists Essence.png Shard of Crystallized Mists Essence
3 Glob of Coagulated Mists Essence.png Globs of Coagulated Mists Essence
5 Vial of Condensed Mists Essence.png Vials of Condensed Mists Essence

and you can buy a +5 agony slot for like 3 or 4 gold. You can make one yourself with 16 agony +1s you get for doing fractals.

agony is kind of annoying the way its implemented, but its not supposed to be a skill thing anymore. Its just a straight up gate. You basically are supposed to have enough, or just dont even attempt fractals.

Mirta.5029:

wow these people in this thread.

1. Nothing wrong with support. Especially as low as level 10-19 fractals. I run level 49 with a hybrid necro. Other builds besides the “meta” exist.
2. No agony resist in levels 10-19 are not that bad. When fractals were new, you were expected to earn your rings running 10-19.

and now – don’t sack your main just because of a bad pug. Those would happen even if you did run a zerker warrior

thats when fractals were new, some of the bosses now have more unavoidable agony

Cyninja.2954:

Arkinos.7245:

Cyninja.2954:

Devata.6589:

Obtena.7952:

Ashen.2907:

Obtena.7952:

I didn’t say you did, but it is why anything that is a grind is not Anet’s fault.

I did not speak of fault. I merely pointed out that by ANets own definition there is grind involved in the acquisition of ascended gear.

Now that you mention fault:

Anet defined grind as boring repetition. Anet knew that some people would find crafting to be boring and repetitive. Anet chose to implement something that they knew fit their own definition of grind. Fault might be a poor choice of words because it implies something wrong, but responsibility fits.

Now, if your Devata, you want direct rewards. That would address the crafting with something that is most definitely identified as grindy … locking specific rewards behind repeated content.

Lol, not when implemented correctly. In WoW crafting was one of my main things I did (next to hunting down items). The reason is that the mats you needed never where a big grind. Go to some place and farm it for a few min and you got it. Not comparable with how it works in GW2.

The work usually was getting the recipe or simply leveling up, but with the craft I liked (engineering) also that was not a grind because ever level there was another new fun / cosmetic item you could make. Meaning you always where working towards your next goal (some item). So no, there is no need for crafting to be a boring grind.

You are to much trapped in the way things work in GW2 it seems.

Your and my experience of WoW grind must have been a very different one. Take off the rose tinted glasses. The grind in WoW was just as bad if not worse crafting wise. Go some where and you had you materials after a couple of minutes? More like fly (ride for the vanilla players) for multiple hours hunting shared material nodes to craft useless items just to increase your crafting skill.

There is also one of the biggest differences. WoW crafting was primarily a tool to get to max crafting level for the next expansion to craft those 1-2 items that became obsolete 2 months into the expansion. In GW2 crafting actually provides items required in the ingame economy, big difference balance wise.

The difference is that Blizzard never aimed to make a grind free mmo.
Anet does claim that.

Now while its obviously crap that only works because of their very convenient definition of grind, there are still a lot of people buying that crap.

I never said Blizzard aimed to accomplish such a feat. I was answering the comparison that crafting in WoW was supposedly “fun”. At the same time pointing out that even when comparing both crating mechanics, one of them provides near no usefull items at endgame, the other one does.

Second you might want to reread the part about powercreep and not having to grind to keep up with it, which is essentially what anet promised and has delivered on. Every game has grind, maybe you’ll want to educate yourself about how many forms of grind there actually are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_%28video_gaming%29 . Even repeatedly replaying a shooter stage, fighting game, etc. can be considered grinding due to trying to hones ones skills.

honing ones skills has zero to do with grinding.

DeathPanel.8362:

The break bar is essentially a rip off of Final Fantasy 13’s break bar. Once you hit the mob with enough attacks in a short period of time it will “break” and sustain additional damage or be vulnerable to additional conditions.

difference is, in 13, the break bar was broken by skills whose main purpose was to stagger. These skills were designed and balanced around doing something else. And, as far as their current design, they will never be able to do what they were designed for.
Predetermined effect now.

the main advantage to the defiance system is that it will make different CC potency count. But, aside from that it basically makes all CC into the same CC.

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

In the basketball example, winning a game is a satisfying short term goal, shooting till you hit 30 shots a day and going home, is less satisfying. (for many people)

Actually, in basketball, that’s called practice, and it can involve a lot more than 30 makes in one session.

Kal Spiro.9745:

IndigoSundown.5419:

- snip -

As such the actual purest meaning of the word is the only one that should be considered as a promise.

If the word is evolving to mean repeating actions, then playing a game is grinding, period. If you do the same thing twice you’re grinding. That’s a load. That is also what most arguments claiming grind break down to. Anyone who actually puts any thought into it should realize that most of these arguments, and especially the original argument that brought this thread into being, are meaningless.

What was described is what a grind is. I’ll go farther as to saying a real a true grind requires the acquisition of the items the content it gated behind to be based on RNG. Do content for a chance to get an item. Repeat content until item is acquired. Move on to next content for chance at different item.

Fwiw, I never thought ANet broke a promise. I never expected there would not be rewards in this game that would involve large amounts of repetition. I played the original GW, and there was plenty of that there. I just didn’t think that BiS gear would be one of them. In retrospect, I should have seen the between-the-lines text when they chose to put virtually every character stat on gear, and to use trinity-style stats in a non-trinity game.

I don’t think the word is evolving to the point where performing the same action is equal to grind. After all, at the simplest level, we are all pressing keys or mouse buttons. Rather, the word is evolving to mean repeating the same content (be it SW, a dungeon, or world bosses) past the point of boredom (and still being far from one’s goal). This is a function of the societal tendency for instant gratification.

As to your last paragraph, that represents one iteration of the term’s evolution. The first usage I can remember in online games was having to kill hundreds of mobs to level up, so you could kill thousands more to level up again, rinse and repeat. The term “grinder game” was not originally about gear acquisition.

It’s fine that words evolve. It’s a pity when forum threads turn into arguments about what a word means, when it’s perfectly clear (sometimes) what the person means by grind. The OP means having to farm large amounts of gold rather than farm specific mobs/dungeons/etc. for rewards he desires. It’s not my personal idea of grind, but it’s what the thread is about.

practice isnt the playing the game. Its practicing individual skills.

Do you think basketball would be popular if the game was designed such that you go, make 20 shots and go home? after doing this for 200 days you win the playoffs?