Guild Wars 2

what do you like in your games

it would be interesting if you keep us updated on your experience once you start playing that new class

Ashen.2907:

Vayne.8563:

It’s easy to say that Raptr statistically means nothing, because it’s correct. But three independent trackers, each tracking their own players (and not each others) are more likely right than wrong.

I can’t imagine how anyone would think otherwise.

First I do want to clarify that I disagree with those who claim that the game is dead, will be dead in six months, etc.

Three sites which all share the same or similar bias(es) are not more likely right than wrong unless their bias(es) are shared by the majority, which has not been demonstrated to be the case here. If you choose to restrict your selection to sites, individuals, etc that all share the same or similar bias(es) you are going to get consensus in the results even if those results are not representative of the population being measured as a whole. If I were to poll only Liberals about a political topic I am very likely to get a liberal consensus even if they are not representative of the majority (note that this is not a liberal vs conservative commentary as I am using this only as an example).

you have yet to demonstrate why the fact that they track people who use some form of their software is a bias that makes the players more likely to fall on the same side of game play habits.

Lets say instead of polling liberal, i poll people who have cell phones, what makes you think people who have cell phones are more likely to fall on the same side of a political debate?

Ashen.2907:

phys.7689:

Crovax.7854:

Vayne.8563:

Crovax.7854:

Scryeless.1924:

Using these items as a method for measuring trends of any sort will only show you a small trend of a small population that use these items. It doesn’t represent a trend of any kind for the games they are playing.

Here is the difference. A: Anet, using actual numbers from server data, releasing a statement on trends of players. -is different from- B: The developers of these items, using numbers from their server data, release a statement on the trends of users of their software.

This is like a journalist writing a story about the overall health of the education system in Country XXX using the truancy data from one school instead of going to the Country’s School Truancy Data Collection point and using all of the numbers.

Shhh! Vayne doesn’t tolerate objections. You should know that after reading through his posting history :P

I guess personal attacks are all you can do when you have nothing left to say that’s actually on topic or accurate.

People have been telling you since page one that those numbers are not representative. You chose to ignore it. I told you that the game feels more empty and tried to make the point that even if what you are saying is right, for me and the people I play with the game feels mor empty. You tried to prove a subjective opinion wrong.

That alone shows what kind of person you are Not that anyone who frequents the forums doesn’t already know that.
Instead of attacking anyone who isn’t of your opinion, try a middle ground: You think that the number you give show a trend. Other people don’t. Accept that.

you guys dont get statistics, you dont actually need to take all statistics to find out what the truth is. If you look at a representive sample, you do generally find useful information.
The only one that specifically bothers me, is overwolf, and thats because they entered a partnership with anet, and because they decide activity based on having logged in while using an overwolf app (like teamspeak) within the last month.

Point is, he is right, you dont need to poll everyone at a pretty good idea whats going on. Perfect example is exit polls for elections, which usually give a pretty good idea whats going on (not always perfect but good enough) Quality control also tends to use representive samples.

lets say rapter tracked 10,000 people who randomly use their app, 2000 bought guild wars, later you see 500 people still playing it.
No it doesnt mean GW lost 75% of its population, but it does tell you there was a signifigant drop off. lets say it climbs back up to 2100, it tells you that GW is trending upward.

The only time the info gets messed up, is when for some reason the people they track no longer become a random sampling, lets say rapt bashes anet every day, or the rapt app starts causing gw to crash.

anyhow, i dont agree with everything vayne says, but studying the trends here is not wrong, and likely his statements regarding how comparitively successful is accurate. I would not be surprised if FF is only doing a little better (in pure logins) than gw2, or if archeage is fairly popular right now.

I do understand the concept of measuring statistics based on representative samples. That is why I dont put much weight on these sites. There is nothing presented to demonstrate that their sampling methodology generates a representative result.

Listening to them is not significantly, if any, more rasonable than going by members of my GW1 multi-guild alliance retention rate in GW2. One guild has perhaps a 5% retention rate here. That matches up to the retention rate in a second guild from the alliance. A third guild has a lower rate. Others in the alliance even lower. Now that I have examples from multiple sources should I take them as representative samples that demonstrate a less than 1% retention rate over all for GW2?

Of course not.

do you have a reason to believe their sample is biased? Guilds are obviously biased, people who play together whoms friends leave more likely to leave, friends stay more likely to stay. Also guilds tend to form around similar interests.

As far as i know these are just the people who use this software. For example, me on teamspeak, which turns out to be an overwolf app. I have very little in common with other TS users other than the fact i use voice com outside of the game.

Anyhow, im not suggesting its perfect. But it has means more than no data at all, and it is consistent with most known facts and observable trends.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

The nature of random distribution doesn’t work that way.
The system functions on those who are lucky, and average. The losers are not a part of supply.

You got lucky, I can tell you most people haven’t got a precursor in two years from a monster. There is no guarantee except the market.

That’s why precursors are tradeable instead of account bound. In practice, it’s not the best way to handle things, but that’s what they designed before the game launched and they’re stuck with it now.

There’s nothing special about my account. It has already been demonstrated by JS that Dusk sells at a rate of about one per hour, and nearly every sale within the 60-hour period he posted is a different seller and a different buyer. Every day, hundreds of accounts get lucky drops/forges and hundreds of accounts have accumulated enough gold to buy precursors from the lucky players. I believe mine sold in less than a day, probably a few hours.

By design, obtaining a Legendary weapon is a lengthy and expensive process. As a singular event that is critical to obtaining that Legendary (as opposed to an incremental requirement like 100% map completion or collecting stacks of materials), the precursor is also a lengthy and expensive process. Dedicated players are naturally going to seek the path of least resistance, and if it’s too easy to obtain the pieces they need, the game will be flooded with Legendaries and that is a situation the devs do not want.

So, in your search for a precursor, persistence, patience, and luck are rewarded. Crying “it’s not fair!” on the forums is not rewarded, nor should it be. Any additional routes to obtaining the precursor need to respect existing methods, if it is much harder then the devs work will be ignored, and if it is much easier then alters the game in ways they don’t want.

During the life of this thread, hundreds, if not thousands, of players have “gotten lucky” and obtained a precursor of some sort. Thousands more have saved up gold and exchanged their riches with some of those players to obtain the precursors they want. If an individual is not among them, he should examine the way he is playing and whether he is actually moving towards his goal, or if the Legendary really is his goal at all. Demanding the devs bend the game to his liking is simply not going to lead to a Legendary. Playing the game and working towards that goal will eventually lead to it.

Not really, playing the game may lead to it. Neither the forge nor the random drop is something that is guaranteed to happen. The only one you can work towards is buying it on the TP, which means you have to compete with other people who want the item, and how much money they earn.
Many playstyles are not competitive in terms of earning.

Regardless to all that, the point I was getting at, is that things get warped when the supply is low, and the demand is high with precursors. People are not saying, hey i dont want to farm that(do the work for it) they are saying i dont believe in luck/gambling. Aka, for many players there is only one choice. And that choice is to compete at earning gold.

Crovax.7854:

Vayne.8563:

Crovax.7854:

Scryeless.1924:

Using these items as a method for measuring trends of any sort will only show you a small trend of a small population that use these items. It doesn’t represent a trend of any kind for the games they are playing.

Here is the difference. A: Anet, using actual numbers from server data, releasing a statement on trends of players. -is different from- B: The developers of these items, using numbers from their server data, release a statement on the trends of users of their software.

This is like a journalist writing a story about the overall health of the education system in Country XXX using the truancy data from one school instead of going to the Country’s School Truancy Data Collection point and using all of the numbers.

Shhh! Vayne doesn’t tolerate objections. You should know that after reading through his posting history :P

I guess personal attacks are all you can do when you have nothing left to say that’s actually on topic or accurate.

People have been telling you since page one that those numbers are not representative. You chose to ignore it. I told you that the game feels more empty and tried to make the point that even if what you are saying is right, for me and the people I play with the game feels mor empty. You tried to prove a subjective opinion wrong.

That alone shows what kind of person you are Not that anyone who frequents the forums doesn’t already know that.
Instead of attacking anyone who isn’t of your opinion, try a middle ground: You think that the number you give show a trend. Other people don’t. Accept that.

you guys dont get statistics, you dont actually need to take all statistics to find out what the truth is. If you look at a representive sample, you do generally find useful information.
The only one that specifically bothers me, is overwolf, and thats because they entered a partnership with anet, and because they decide activity based on having logged in while using an overwolf app (like teamspeak) within the last month.

Point is, he is right, you dont need to poll everyone at a pretty good idea whats going on. Perfect example is exit polls for elections, which usually give a pretty good idea whats going on (not always perfect but good enough) Quality control also tends to use representive samples.

lets say rapter tracked 10,000 people who randomly use their app, 2000 bought guild wars, later you see 500 people still playing it.
No it doesnt mean GW lost 75% of its population, but it does tell you there was a signifigant drop off. lets say it climbs back up to 2100, it tells you that GW is trending upward.

The only time the info gets messed up, is when for some reason the people they track no longer become a random sampling, lets say rapt bashes anet every day, or the rapt app starts causing gw to crash.

anyhow, i dont agree with everything vayne says, but studying the trends here is not wrong, and likely his statements regarding how comparitively successful is accurate. I would not be surprised if FF is only doing a little better (in pure logins) than gw2, or if archeage is fairly popular right now.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

I think what Vayne is trying to say is… GW2 is still one of the most popular mmorpg on the market eventhough the game have been out for 2 years.

That being said just about every mmorpg is slowly leaking players. Very few can refill new players as fast as they lost.

this is not really true, most of the historical successful MMOs expanded before the contracted. WoW, FFXI, FFXIV RO EQ Lineage etc.
the bleeding usually comes later in the cycle after they have peaked.

many mmos do bleed players, but those are generally not the ones that are seen as successful,

Right but I think you need to look at it in several ways. Some of the game in your list is asian focus market(lineage), which is very different market. Or very old games when there are not much competition. Or have failed lunch which redo their whole games. Or can’t be criticized because they are the most profitable mmorpg for the past 10 years.

What I’m trying to say is if you just look at western games, post wow era, there isn’t any games which wasn’t leaking players. I honestly just look at it as players being too demanding, and game developers just can’t keep up.

to be perfectly honest, most of the MMOs in recent years have been sub par. They get numbers because people want the new thing, but they are not designed and maintained that well.

essentially i think they bleed players because they arent that good at what they are trying to do.

And you’re only making an assumption that that’s the reason why they bleed players. But that’s not necessarily a warranted assumption. Rift wasn’t really a badly designed MMO even though I didn’t like what it was pushing. What it pushed was more WoWness which was playing to a saturated market.

I think Guild Wars 2’s success (at least compared to most MMOs released) is that it didn’t try to copy the WoW formula and tried to create a different kind of experience, which the core game still is.

I think there are more people tired of WoW than currently play WoW. That doesn’t mean they’re going to automatically like Guild Wars 2 though.

i hated rift within the first 30 minutes. so i cant really comment on rift.

but what im saying is good games rise to the top.
For example, when street fighter 2 blew up the scene there was years of cheap fighters that followed, most couldnt compare, because they just werent that good.

there were tons of fake mario games, most sucked.
What im saying is a lot of these mmos that dont last, thats just the nature of games, few games are good enough to rise to the top.

tolunart.2095:

phys.7689:

the quote of the dev was talking about players paying a fair price because they think that it is worth it not to do it themselves. This only applies when there is not an extremely limited supply, and when players can obtain the item by other means.

There are three methods to obtaining a precursor: random drops, the Mystic Forge, and buying it from the TP. I’ve gotten one through a random drop, if you are patient any player can get one just by playing the game. If you want to focus on it as a goal you can throw the appropriate type/level rares/exotics into the MF until you get it, the prices on the TP reflect the typical cost of the MF fuel, but you can reduce the cost by playing the game and collecting materials or tokens.

It has been demonstrated that Dusk sells on the TP at a rate of about once an hour, with mostly unique buyers and sellers. This means that there is a supply of Dusks coming from somewhere, and for the most part it is not just one or a handful of players controlling the market. Hundreds of players every week produce their own Dusks (not all of them sold, many are probably kept for personal use) and across all precursors there are thousands of new items generated every week.

The devs have access to a vast amount of information about the game, and can easily determine how many precursors are created, sold on the TP, forged into Legendaries, accumulated by speculators for future use, salvaged by players who don’t realize what they represent, etc.

If there truly was a problem with the process, it would be pretty obvious when the number of people forging/selling/buying precursors drops off sharply as people give up on the process because it’s too hard or unreliable.

The nature of random distribution doesn’t work that way.
The system functions on those who are lucky, and average. The losers are not a part of supply.

You got lucky, I can tell you most people haven’t got a precursor in two years from a monster. There is no guarantee except the market.

DeathMetal.8264:

phys.7689:

DeathMetal.8264:

Just reposting this:

juno.1840:

-snip- “precursors are too expensive” aren’t doing it to troll — they genuinely believe there’s a problem. This topic is just junk.

can you share what the problem is? if it’s pricey, i don’t think that is a problem; it is simply supply and demand. the same can be said for ANY item that is highly sought after but very very few supplies. Say Mini Karka, they don’t even do anything.

Also, I’ll copy/paste one of the dev’s reply about certain price of items from this thread (I bolded some part for emphasis)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-the-maize-balm-rat-farm-an-exploit/first#post4510750

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.
As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

problem with that devs line of thinking when applied to this argument,

• is it considers the playerbase as one entity setting the price, when an item is extremely rare, it is a small subset of the playerbase setting the price.
• it also assumes you can farm the item, you cannot farm precursors, you can only kill massive amounts of things, or gamble.

Essentially, as is common, when things are taken to extremes, they create situations which are not consistent with how it works at normal levels.

the specific situation the dev was refering to was a high drop rate item, trick or treat bags, which anyone who wants it, can farm, and the quantity of the item and price puts it in range of mostly normal players. If some one buys a ToT bag, its not because there is no other viable choice, its because they want them now and fast and are willing to pay for it.
people have played for years, and gambled in the MF and failed, these people feel they have no choice but to pay whatever is asked if they want the item.

As has been said, due to the innate nature of random distribution, it seems to make random as an exclusive means of obtaining and item, a poor choice when the rate is low.

See my reply above, applies to your reply too. If you like everything to drop like rain, easily obtained, make everything so cheap or affordable to EVERYONE (and you can’t say, affordable just for you). And you can’t say apply this ONLY to precursor. If dev has control to make Precursor come easy, it just means EVERYTHING that used to be hard to come by has to come easy too coz then, we’ll see another player (not you) who wants what you/others have (but the drop is so hard he can’t get it).

I, for one and I see some too, would not like that kind of game. If you like that kind of game, Gw2 may not be for you.

i never mentioned dropping like rain, i was refering to how different it is when random is applied at a very low rate, versus a higher rate.

the quote of the dev was talking about players paying a fair price because they think that it is worth it not to do it themselves. This only applies when there is not an extremely limited supply, and when players can obtain the item by other means.

I personally would prefer a game where hard to come by was based primarily on difficulty, or completing tasks. But there is also the method where things come due to large amounts of work over time (not my prefered method)I recognize that for some people gambling is never a satisfactory method.

There are many methods for controlling supply other than pure random. In fact most games have a much lower random required, and more task/difficulty/time gated mechanics.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It looks like a statue to Abbadon. If it is, it means we’re going into the Crystal Desert, the one place on Tyria where such a statue might exist.

orr has abbadon stuff

Rebound.3409:

100 pb + 50 skillpoints for that skin?)……even if u sell it at 70g u still have no profit…on the contrary.

U guys at anet sure are funny sometimes … next time if u want to copy D3, please make proper skins :P

then dont make one to sell?

lordkrall.7241:

Zenith.6403:

I
Guild Wars 2 on the other hand does really poor job at selling useful things:

And yet Guild Wars 2 does make enough money in order for ArenaNet to avoid a rather massive layoff involving all other studios owned by NCSoft.

not all other studios, the report was on ncsoft west, which is essentially localisation, and carbine studios
the eastern divisions didnt report layoffs

laokoko.7403:

phys.7689:

laokoko.7403:

I think what Vayne is trying to say is… GW2 is still one of the most popular mmorpg on the market eventhough the game have been out for 2 years.

That being said just about every mmorpg is slowly leaking players. Very few can refill new players as fast as they lost.

this is not really true, most of the historical successful MMOs expanded before the contracted. WoW, FFXI, FFXIV RO EQ Lineage etc.
the bleeding usually comes later in the cycle after they have peaked.

many mmos do bleed players, but those are generally not the ones that are seen as successful,

Right but I think you need to look at it in several ways. Some of the game in your list is asian focus market(lineage), which is very different market. Or very old games when there are not much competition. Or have failed lunch which redo their whole games. Or can’t be criticized because they are the most profitable mmorpg for the past 10 years.

What I’m trying to say is if you just look at western games, post wow era, there isn’t any games which wasn’t leaking players. I honestly just look at it as players being too demanding, and game developers just can’t keep up.

to be perfectly honest, most of the MMOs in recent years have been sub par. They get numbers because people want the new thing, but they are not designed and maintained that well.

essentially i think they bleed players because they arent that good at what they are trying to do.

Beldin.5498:

Just out of interest i looked if there is a german forum for FFXIV .. and yes there is
really one .. however if i look at the number of post and date of last posts it looks
really like a wasteland :
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/forums/14-Deutsches-Forum

Makes me also wonder if these numbers here really come from the west, or if its
in the end also more just from asia.

its doing pretty well in NA i dont really now how EU goes, but my guess would be that it is primarily JP and NA

i said it before, but everyone is still ignoring that this list is from in game sales only.
Essentially this game is measuring the most succesful cash shops, not the most succesful games

Check out the full list below, and keep in mind that this only takes into account revenues from in-game spending on PC (so no subscription revenue for World of Warcraft or mobile spending for Hearthstone):

however, note that unless gw2 does expansions, it will essentially become a cash shop game, so perhaps this is more relevant to gw2 than it is to WoW

Pourekos.5032:

How are half of these games considered MMOs? Isn’t one of the pilars of MMOs an always online consistent world? How do card games and MOBAs have that? Or is any multiplayer game an MMO nowadays?

On GW2 in specific, they will have more income once they restore some of the goodwill they lost from some of their customers.

MMO just means many players can play together at once. Many can be a pretty small number, persistent world is a different thing.

MMORPG is a bit more specific. I would say some of the games stretch the even the loose definition though.

laokoko.7403:

I think what Vayne is trying to say is… GW2 is still one of the most popular mmorpg on the market eventhough the game have been out for 2 years.

That being said just about every mmorpg is slowly leaking players. Very few can refill new players as fast as they lost.

this is not really true, most of the historical successful MMOs expanded before the contracted. WoW, FFXI, FFXIV RO EQ Lineage etc.
the bleeding usually comes later in the cycle after they have peaked.

many mmos do bleed players, but those are generally not the ones that are seen as successful,

id like to point out this is only about in game spending, So essentially any game that makes its money primarily through in game transactions will have an advantage.
Doesnt include box sales, dlc sales, expansions, subscriptions etc.

the fact that WoW is on this list even with subscriptions is notable.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

dace.8019:

There’s plenty of conflicting indicators but none of them are wholly reliable. Overlays like those mentioned in the OP are worth factoring into a wider estimation but on their own they are one of the worst examples of popularity or population, or any other state of the game you’re trying to estimate.

Why? The popularity of those overlays per game is the data supplied and trying to crowbar that into a rough estimate of population trends in those games is a fallacy.

In terms of surveyed customer revenues, GW2 scores highly in those particular league tables (when compared to F2P games such as Planetside 2, DOTA 2, etc., in which GW2 brings in about as much as those) which indicates a healthy state of game and is more representative of the games population than any data supplied by overlay popularity per game.

Edit: An example http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/mmo-arpu/

It’s, as I’ve said many times, useful for detecting trends…and relative strengths. Nothing more. It’s unlikely a game is going to be massively popular on those three programs I listed (as well as google trends and reddit) and not be a popular/successful program.

The link you gave backs up what I’ve said.

The difference is these sites track progress monthly and over time you can actually see less popular games fall of those charts. In other words, but observations of those sites seem to be an indicator of trends over the long term.

actually based on most of your info, its most likely FFXIV is doing a lot better than it seems.
FFXIV includes ps3, which is not likely to hit many of the things you are tracking. They also have a large japanese population, who likely dont use, or use different programs.
Neither JP nor PS3 users are likely to be as active in reddit as well. Just to be clear for ffxiv, JP and ps3 users are part of the same service and can interact with each other, and get the same content at the same time.

anyhow gw2 isnt dead, but it is not flourishing, and it is not living up to the potential of its game sales numbers. Retention is not high. FFXIV is competing with it, and i think their game sales are like 1/3rd of what gw2 has. Archage has no box sales, but the retention at this early stage is competing, i think their high number during opening week was 2 million accounts? (which is generally less actual people in F2p games)

point is not that gw2 is murdered, its that it isnt growing, its slowly declining, which is actually not normal for successful mmos at this stage of development.
FFXIV is expanding its audience, WoW expanded their audience at this time, and gained about 600k users in preparation for the next expansion.

Is gw2 on the chopping block? hardly. Is gw2 thriving? nope

I don’t know if it’s not thriving or if it is. And that may well depend on your personal definition of thriving.

As for a game available on computer and console…well yes, there are more console gamers out there than computer gamers….at least that’s what developers keep telling us. It’s why they don’t care as much about the computer games if they have a console game out. We see it again and again.

So if a console/computer game sells more than just a computer game, that doesn’t prove anything. If a game is less popular on the computer, it’s less popular on the computer…no matter what the console portion is doing.

We all know having games is more formats yields more sales. But since we can’t know how GW 2 would have done if it was out on a console it’s sort of a moot point.

point isnt really whether its on consoles or not, point is that a large % of the population of FFXIV would not be using most of your methods for determining their overall success.
reddit
overwolf
xfire
raptr
are not common for console users, or japanese pc users.

the reason i say its not thriving, is because even though it has 3.something million sales they only have the continous population, or interest, or in ffxiv case, a fraction of it, Even though they started out with much higher levels.

A game that sells to 1 million players, retains 75% of them and adds 200 thousand new players a year, is doing better
than one that sells to 3 million players retains 25% of them and adds 200 thousand new players a year.
year one, 750k versus 750k but then 75% of the 200k new players stay, and 25% of the new stay for the second.

• note this is a hypothetical, to illustrate how initial sales can show a difference even if current numbers are similar.

so while it may look like the games are doing virtually the same, one is growing, and the other is contracting.

However, it is still awhile yet, before anyone would consider gw2 to be a loser, even if its contracting, its still competing, but gw2 has to look at reversing the contracting trend if it wants a healthy future

Vayne.8563:

dace.8019:

There’s plenty of conflicting indicators but none of them are wholly reliable. Overlays like those mentioned in the OP are worth factoring into a wider estimation but on their own they are one of the worst examples of popularity or population, or any other state of the game you’re trying to estimate.

Why? The popularity of those overlays per game is the data supplied and trying to crowbar that into a rough estimate of population trends in those games is a fallacy.

In terms of surveyed customer revenues, GW2 scores highly in those particular league tables (when compared to F2P games such as Planetside 2, DOTA 2, etc., in which GW2 brings in about as much as those) which indicates a healthy state of game and is more representative of the games population than any data supplied by overlay popularity per game.

Edit: An example http://www.superdataresearch.com/blog/mmo-arpu/

It’s, as I’ve said many times, useful for detecting trends…and relative strengths. Nothing more. It’s unlikely a game is going to be massively popular on those three programs I listed (as well as google trends and reddit) and not be a popular/successful program.

The link you gave backs up what I’ve said.

The difference is these sites track progress monthly and over time you can actually see less popular games fall of those charts. In other words, but observations of those sites seem to be an indicator of trends over the long term.

actually based on most of your info, its most likely FFXIV is doing a lot better than it seems.
FFXIV includes ps3, which is not likely to hit many of the things you are tracking. They also have a large japanese population, who likely dont use, or use different programs.
Neither JP nor PS3 users are likely to be as active in reddit as well. Just to be clear for ffxiv, JP and ps3 users are part of the same service and can interact with each other, and get the same content at the same time.

anyhow gw2 isnt dead, but it is not flourishing, and it is not living up to the potential of its game sales numbers. Retention is not high. FFXIV is competing with it, and i think their game sales are like 1/3rd of what gw2 has. Archage has no box sales, but the retention at this early stage is competing, i think their high number during opening week was 2 million accounts? (which is generally less actual people in F2p games)

point is not that gw2 is murdered, its that it isnt growing, its slowly declining, which is actually not normal for successful mmos at this stage of development.
FFXIV is expanding its audience, WoW expanded their audience at this time, and gained about 600k users in preparation for the next expansion.

Is gw2 on the chopping block? hardly. Is gw2 thriving? nope

DeathMetal.8264:

Just reposting this:

juno.1840:

-snip- “precursors are too expensive” aren’t doing it to troll — they genuinely believe there’s a problem. This topic is just junk.

can you share what the problem is? if it’s pricey, i don’t think that is a problem; it is simply supply and demand. the same can be said for ANY item that is highly sought after but very very few supplies. Say Mini Karka, they don’t even do anything.

Also, I’ll copy/paste one of the dev’s reply about certain price of items from this thread (I bolded some part for emphasis)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Is-the-maize-balm-rat-farm-an-exploit/first#post4510750

In a player driven economy, the demand of an item surpassing the supply generated by the playerbase will increase the value of it. While there are some items in these bags that are not based around cosmetics (the low drop rate of T6 mats), the price of these bags is directly relative to the cosmetic value that is being placed on them. While currently profitable, that profit is derrived directly from other players and their willingness to play a higher price. In essence, this is a transfer of wealth not wealth generation.
As far as this specific spawn of ambients is concerned, it’s definatly one of the faster ones to farm. As long as the playerbase is willing to pay for that item, and the demand remains higher than the supply, it will be profitable. This is not an exploit, it’s the playerbase saying “thank you for farming this, because we didn’t want to”.

problem with that devs line of thinking when applied to this argument,

• is it considers the playerbase as one entity setting the price, when an item is extremely rare, it is a small subset of the playerbase setting the price.
• it also assumes you can farm the item, you cannot farm precursors, you can only kill massive amounts of things, or gamble.

Essentially, as is common, when things are taken to extremes, they create situations which are not consistent with how it works at normal levels.

the specific situation the dev was refering to was a high drop rate item, trick or treat bags, which anyone who wants it, can farm, and the quantity of the item and price puts it in range of mostly normal players. If some one buys a ToT bag, its not because there is no other viable choice, its because they want them now and fast and are willing to pay for it.
people have played for years, and gambled in the MF and failed, these people feel they have no choice but to pay whatever is asked if they want the item.

As has been said, due to the innate nature of random distribution, it seems to make random as an exclusive means of obtaining and item, a poor choice when the rate is low.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

froacus.6892:

WHY ISNT JOHN SMITH WRITING FOR THE LIVING STORY TEAM?????

Because there’s a big difference between short connected vignettes like this, a short story, a novella, and a novel. Let alone between stand-alone fiction and a screenplay or a script for a video game.

It’s a very nice ending, and interesting to read through. But much like the short stories we were getting last season . . . would not translate well into a game.

hata.
Honestly i think if handled well by the game designers, it could have made for pretty fun content.

lordkrall.7241:

People seems to keep implying that they don’t actually ask anything before making changes but simply just do what they feel like.

They DO have alpha testers after all, so maybe the issue is more along the lines that those testers didn’t have a big of an issue with the change as the extremely overblown forums?

one thing i noticed in some videos when they were showing testers testing content. They dont care about drops.
Which makes sense, the charachters they use are created and deleted at will, none of their gear and items matter, and gear and items are constantly in flux before final release anyhow.

point is, alpha testers are bad at testing many things because they dont have the proper involvement with the charachter/account. Someone testing the system has no excess gems, hasnt paid for it, etc.

Ayrilana.1396:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t really consider new races or classes as content. If you commute 100 miles every day to work, would buying a car really add onto or change the experience? New skills could change up the current meta but in the end, people will go with what is optimal and it won’t be any different than now.

That’s why you build your game around the fact that people will go with whatever that’s optimal. You make a certain bit of the content favor a certain type of build, and another another type of build, then people will run different builds for different content.

Or you don’t even need to do that. Simply having different skills which feels different but end up basically doing the same thing isn’t bad, because it changes up the gameplay.

They should make better use of the existing classes first. How do you think condition damage players currently feel at the moment? I’m pretty sure they’d prefer a condition damage overhaul before we start seeing new classes. When it comes to classes, they should improve upon what we have now before adding new ones. Quality before quantity.

Edit: Realized that you were talking about skills and not classes but I’ll keep the post.

There are a lot of skills that players do not use. They can continue to evolve them so they become more appealing. Players just need to say what they want in a constructive way. Most of what I see are complaints saying “Fix this now” or “Add more of this”. That’s not going to go anywhere.

fixing current mechanics is nice and something they should do, but its even less of an effect than new skills/traits, because its the same skills and traits you used 10000 times, only now they work slightly better.

Its all subjective, you want to take your old charachters and do some new stuff. I want to take some new proffessions and do some new stuff. I think they should do both. After all, not everyone is going to try or like a new class no matter how different it is.

I would say they should create a new level 80 overarching plotline, add 2-3 new proffessions (preferably one martial artsist h2h) and some new zones. ALong with new game modes, game goals, etc. Look at Factions and Nightfall for some clues. None of the jobs truely capture the essence of my prefered playstyle, so im looking foward to more proffessions.

Ayrilana.1396:

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t really consider new races or classes as content. If you commute 100 miles every day to work, would buying a car really add onto or change the experience? New skills could change up the current meta but in the end, people will go with what is optimal and it won’t be any different than now.

Unless it makes a new meta. They might add a class that one shots Tequatl, or one that gets one shotted by trash mobs. We can’t judge content that probably hasn’t even been thought of.

All it does is change the meta just like we often get when they do their balancing updates. It doesn’t really add anything.

So if they removed every class in the game except for Necromancers, would you argue that the game has the same amount of content?

That’s not what I was saying. Right now, everything we have works well with what we have in the game. Adding new skills, race, and/or classes will not add anything. All it does is change the meta or slap on a new appearance.

I still have to disagree. There will always be a meta, that’s a given with MMOs, but a new class could be far beyond a “new appearance”.

The appearance term was one I was generically using. Of course it doesn’t apply directly with classes. It does with races though.

If you read my posts, I addressed what new classes would bring. All it would do is change the meta. It doesn’t add anything because you’d still be playing the same content. If you drive to work for 100 miles everyday in a minivan for 20 years, woukd driving it in a Mercedes really change the experience?

No, but driving a motorcycle would (a class, not a race). I’m not a big pusher for a new race, as I tend to only play humans and human-likes in fantasy games, a new class would be a big change though.

So let’s say that you have a flat, straight road that you drive down to work for 100 miles every day. There’s absolutely no scenery to look at. You’ve been doing this for 10 years. You’re telling me that hanging vehicles (from a van to a motorcycle) would change this from being less boring? You’re still experiencing the same driving content.

Let’s say that Anet released Tengu as a playable eace and nothing else. Would that really add anything to the game if you had already experienced all of the existing content? Would doing the personal story, dungeons, world boss zergs, etc be any different as a different race?

Let’s say Anet adds the Dervish class to the game tomorrow and only that. Would that really add anything to the game? You’re still experiencing the same content but with a different play-style. You’re telling me that running AC or CoF for the 1.000th time will be different as a new class?

Let’s say that Anet adds 100 new skills to the game tomorrow and only that. Would that really add anything new to the already existing content that you wouldn’t get from a major skill balance update? There will always be a meta and it would just change to use those existing skills.

an expansion is generally a combination of lots of new things, not one. But one of the most substantial changes they can make is new class, that can totally change what type of game interactions and playstyle you have, and actually make the game extremely different.

go play a fighting game with a new charachter, its generally a fairly different experience, and can make all your 1000s of fights versus other charachters new again.

Not so much. New races, classes, and skills are secondary content. They’re not something that could hold well on their own. New campaigns, on the other hand, would actually be substantial content. I’ve played this game since launch and have played 7/8 classes. Me playing all of that as an engineer isn’t really going to change my experience.

They may need to depart farther with playstyles. For me, i would say that elementalist, mesmer, engineer, thief, and ranger all give a very unique feeling to playing them. Necro Warrior and Guardian feel pretty middle of the road, and not that different.

A new campaign is a must, but for me a new class makes the actual gameplay feel different. Doing drytop on my mesmer, didnt really feel that different than doing other things, it was more about seeing what was new, than actually feeling different while doing it.

Olvendred.3027:

Astralporing.1957:

Yargesh.4965:

Gibson.4036:

mtpelion.4562:

If you’ve “quit” (i.e. no intention of returning), then guess what? Your opinions on the game direction are no longer relevant.

Isn’t the implication usually “I quit, but I hope some day the game changes enough to make me want to come back”?

In which case, the opinions are still relevant.

Not really

Why not? After all, people that really don’t intend to return, no matter what, are generally not posting. Those that still frequent forums, are people that still can be possibly brought back.

Or, more usually, trolls.

the majority of trolls are not people who stopped playing.

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

Morsus.5106:

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t really consider new races or classes as content. If you commute 100 miles every day to work, would buying a car really add onto or change the experience? New skills could change up the current meta but in the end, people will go with what is optimal and it won’t be any different than now.

Unless it makes a new meta. They might add a class that one shots Tequatl, or one that gets one shotted by trash mobs. We can’t judge content that probably hasn’t even been thought of.

All it does is change the meta just like we often get when they do their balancing updates. It doesn’t really add anything.

So if they removed every class in the game except for Necromancers, would you argue that the game has the same amount of content?

That’s not what I was saying. Right now, everything we have works well with what we have in the game. Adding new skills, race, and/or classes will not add anything. All it does is change the meta or slap on a new appearance.

I still have to disagree. There will always be a meta, that’s a given with MMOs, but a new class could be far beyond a “new appearance”.

The appearance term was one I was generically using. Of course it doesn’t apply directly with classes. It does with races though.

If you read my posts, I addressed what new classes would bring. All it would do is change the meta. It doesn’t add anything because you’d still be playing the same content. If you drive to work for 100 miles everyday in a minivan for 20 years, woukd driving it in a Mercedes really change the experience?

No, but driving a motorcycle would (a class, not a race). I’m not a big pusher for a new race, as I tend to only play humans and human-likes in fantasy games, a new class would be a big change though.

So let’s say that you have a flat, straight road that you drive down to work for 100 miles every day. There’s absolutely no scenery to look at. You’ve been doing this for 10 years. You’re telling me that hanging vehicles (from a van to a motorcycle) would change this from being less boring? You’re still experiencing the same driving content.

Let’s say that Anet released Tengu as a playable eace and nothing else. Would that really add anything to the game if you had already experienced all of the existing content? Would doing the personal story, dungeons, world boss zergs, etc be any different as a different race?

Let’s say Anet adds the Dervish class to the game tomorrow and only that. Would that really add anything to the game? You’re still experiencing the same content but with a different play-style. You’re telling me that running AC or CoF for the 1.000th time will be different as a new class?

Let’s say that Anet adds 100 new skills to the game tomorrow and only that. Would that really add anything new to the already existing content that you wouldn’t get from a major skill balance update? There will always be a meta and it would just change to use those existing skills.

an expansion is generally a combination of lots of new things, not one. But one of the most substantial changes they can make is new class, that can totally change what type of game interactions and playstyle you have, and actually make the game extremely different.

go play a fighting game with a new charachter, its generally a fairly different experience, and can make all your 1000s of fights versus other charachters new again.

Ayrilana.1396:

I don’t really consider new races or classes as content. If you commute 100 miles every day to work, would buying a car really add onto or change the experience? New skills could change up the current meta but in the end, people will go with what is optimal and it won’t be any different than now.

most people dont go for what is optimal, they go for what they like, then try to optimize it. Otherwise everyone would be playing the same 3 classes. If a new proffession is handled differently they would give you a totally different experience. Closer to getting a new job rather than getting a new car.

anybody consider the first part as one of the products of the recipes miyani sells? perhaps of the dark or of stealth?

lordkrall.7241:

Indeed, good to see that it will be changed based on feedback (did anyone actually think otherwise?)

Not so good to see that this will basically mean that people will start raging everytime they don’t like something, since it is shown to work twice in a row now.

it is fairly rare that the community vastly agrees with something, the fact that you can get 1000s of people mostly at peoples throats to agree to something wont happen very often, and when it does, you should probably at the very least listen.

would be better if they got some feedback first though

Karizee.8076:

Confirmed just last week that there is no Diminishing Returns in the game.

John Smith.4610:

Still catching up, but I wanted to stop to be clear. No to this. This doesn’t happen, it’s a cognitive bias. There’s virtually no DR active on any given day.

he said virtually, and unfortunately anet tends to view things as they are supposed to be, or as they are on a macro level. Many bugs, and special cases have cropped up. I didnt feel like debating it to derail the thread, but, i would say DR does exist, and can be experienced depending on your playstyle.

well in all truth its possible they bugged the exchange the first time, it appears to have started trending back down, pretty close to after that last patch.

its also possible it is still a natural result of increased gem buying, and the drop down is because people never really wanted that many gems to begin with.

well, we ll never know, they tend to be very secretive when it comes to gems/gold exchange

johnsonade.9547:

phys.7689:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

This is something that we had considered in the past, but opted against because it unfairly works against lapsed players who want to ask what’s changed since they last played and players like Pixelpumpkin who may, for personal reasons, be unable to log into the game, but still want to interact with the forums and stay up to date on the game.

It’s also worth pointing out that some people use claims of quitting the game as an attention-getting tactic, when in fact they are still quite active. Putting in this type of restriction would just push those people to claim they only log in to keep their forum privileges active.

the fact you considered it tells me your priorities arent really that great. People who bought the game and still feel the need to voice their concerns even in an annoying way, are probably giving feedback about what people who left the game are looking for. You just look at them as telling you things you dont want to hear. Anyhow doesnt

Well I’m okay with the fact they considered it because those worst case players keep a ball of toxicity building, flame and talk down to anyone they don’t agree with them, case and point posted above. Questioning a dev’s priorities on their own forum reeks of gamer privilege. Like literally screw your future gem purchases and your “supporting the game” if you can’t be constructive and not hurl abuse at the dev team and then hound them to produce more content on the same breath. There are literally tons of other things for retired players to do besides hassle people about a game they don’t play anymore. It’s getting pretty nasty on reddit and a couple gaming sites. Lots of abuse towards a certain staff member who may be in charge of gem store decisions along with the regular toxicity that’s been building up over time. Using the ban hammer is okay, but that requires vigilance and active moderation where having preventative measures in does stop some garbage before it starts. But as Mark mentioned, it’s a non-issue now.

you are more concerned with suppressing opinions you dont like than you are concerned with honest discourse. I agree that some people cross the line and go ballistic, but that really isnt the majority of negative opinions, and it isnt even the majority of people who claim they arent playing. A lot of the people who go ballistic actively play.

So what this all goes back to is trying to suppress negative viewpoints. Problem is negative viewpoints and positive ones, and everything in between paint a truer picture, and give more information. Nothing is really gained by suppressing non infraction able posters who spent money on the game. Their opinion is actually just as valuable as someone elses, though it speaks to a different viewpoint. (that of someone who left, but is generally still engaged enough to return)

But the biggest problem is that you and others place too much value on your preconcieved perceptions, and categories of posters, evaluate the posts merit based on the post itself, not based on how long its been since he played, or any other reason that is not really relevant to the content of the post.

chemiclord.3978:

phys.7689:

the fact you considered it tells me your priorities arent really that great.

How would it be all that terribly different than how sub games restrict forum presence to people still paying an active subscription?

Now you just sound like someone looking for reasons to pick a fight with Arena.net.

the difference is that anet isnt selling a subscription, they marketed and sold the game as a buy 2 play model, which means in general you are supposed to get access to the service for the price of buying the game.

the situation would be more analagous to people not being able to post in a subscription game who have not played in awhile. Also its clear from his sentences, that his express purpose in doing so is to suppress what he feels are malicious comments.
This means, its not about whether they play or havent played, its more about the content of the message, and them not playing is a means to an end of suppressing it. Also note, free 2 play games never utilize this strategy, and they didnt even pay the developers.

So yeah, its different and its bad. Not even saying subscription games doing it is a good thing, but it means the intent is less about people who payed for the game speaking their mind and communicating, and more about creating a certain environment, regardless if its accurate or not.

Now this is subjective, but i specifically find it sad that the only reason they didnt do it, is because it is not feasible to implement. Essentially, if they could edit out people who say things that are perfectly within the forum rules, but distasteful to the company they would.

Other people may see that is cool beans, but ehhh i think it defeats the purpose of a forum*
*a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

This is something that we had considered in the past, but opted against because it unfairly works against lapsed players who want to ask what’s changed since they last played and players like Pixelpumpkin who may, for personal reasons, be unable to log into the game, but still want to interact with the forums and stay up to date on the game.

It’s also worth pointing out that some people use claims of quitting the game as an attention-getting tactic, when in fact they are still quite active. Putting in this type of restriction would just push those people to claim they only log in to keep their forum privileges active.

the fact you considered it tells me your priorities arent really that great. People who bought the game and still feel the need to voice their concerns even in an annoying way, are probably giving feedback about what people who left the game are looking for. You just look at them as telling you things you dont want to hear. Anyhow doesnt

lordkrall.7241:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Of course people have had issue with that as well, i think this is just a sum reaction to all the unwanted changes and the purported reasoning behind them. I don’t think treating your player base like they are imbeciles helped them at all and the complete lack of real communication for a very long time just added to the vitriol. There’s an old saying, don’t kitten on my cupcake and call it frosting, and that’s exactly what happened yesterday with this change, so hence the reaction.

Oh? I can’t remember pages upon pages of raging about the fact that you can’t spend exactly what you want or get the exact amount of gems you want with real money. But I suppose I might have missed it.

its not optimal but irl its accepted that you can only make credit card purchases over a certain amount. However, i do think many people were unhappy with the system.

however there is no real reason to do that gold to gem, in fact there is a lot of reasons not to

chemiclord.3978:

Southern.8973:

As has been discussed on the forums many times, ANet actually makes up to twice as much money by allowing Gold->Gem conversions than they would if they only sold Gems for RL $.

When the price of Gems is relatively stable, that means that there as just as many gems going INTO the Exchange as there are coming OUT of the Exchange; hence, the stable price. The only way Gems get INTO the Exchange is someone specifically buys Gems (with RL Money) and sells those Gems for gold.

Another way you can think of it is like this – Every single gem that is used in the Gem Store was bought with RL $. Every single one. YOU may have used gold to buy them, but someone else had to use RL $ and put them into the Exchange in order for you to be able to buy them with Gold.

Without the Gem Exchange, they will have to rely solely on players who can afford to buy Gems JUST for Gem Store items. No more will they be able to buy Gems and sell them for InGame gold (Unless they make some arbitrary static exchange rate).

So if you really stop and think about it, when you buy Gems with InGame gold, you’re still generating a profit for ArenaNet because someone had to buy those Gems with RL $ and sell them for gold in the first place. If that option didn’t exist, then ANet would undoubtedly lose a lot of Gem Sales as I know a lot of people who specifically buy Gems JUST to trade them for gold (I have a Guildy who is buying enough Gems for 1,200g so he can buy a precursor right now. Seriously.) Those Gems will go into the Exchange, and someone else will be able to buy them FOR gold (at a total of a 28.5% transaction fee overall. It’s not a bad gold sink, either!).

You can tell yourself that, and it might even be true, but that’s NOT what a publisher sees.

They see people buying gems with gold > people buying gems with cash. And their immediate questions is, “How do I flip that equation?”

At it’s core, it shares the same flawed logic that game publishers have with “piracy = lost sales.” These people see someone NOT spending money, and assume that if the “free” option didn’t exist, they WOULD spend money.

i dunno if the monetization guys are missing this key understanding. The system was probably made to eliminate people using any functionality to get around the 400 block increments.
the flaw in the old system was people buying gold to gems were getting around the buying in blocks psychology. Now, people will HAVE to participate in the kitten i got excess gems loop regardless of gold or real life cash. All the people who used gold to make change will no longer have that option.

Essentially they are trying to increase gems sales through any source, and in the short term it will probably work.

The gold value spike, well that could work against them, high gold prices may lead players not to want to buy things, on the flip side, gem to gold being more attractive may cover those costs.

imo, lower gold to gem ratios would probably be more profitable overall, but thats just theory.

mtpelion.4562:

phys.7689:

which means there is generally a very strong separation of powers. If ncsoft was running the day to day or development it wouldnt be a subsidiary.

Subsidiaries do what they are told. The day to day operations are managed in-house, but their activities are directed by the parent company.

Additionally, anything to do with monetization is 100% NCSoft-driven.

Basically, NCSoft says “make and maintain this game”, and ArenaNet does so. If NCSoft then says “We need you to make more money off of gem conversions, set a minimum price”, ArenaNet does so.

ncsoft probably says, i better see your earnings go up this quarter, and arenanet has to figure and develop how its done. The fact that ncsoft wanted an expansion year one, and anet went a different path suggests they dont have iron control.

Koviko.3248:

They apparently have stats to prove that most users only purchase large amounts of gems at a time.

I say forget those stats.

This thread isn’t just people who buy gems with gold. It’s also people standing up for the people who buy gems with gold.

You don’t get to mistreat anyone, regardless of how they choose to play. We stand up for WvW even when we don’t play it ourselves. We start up for role-playing even when we don’t role play. We stand up for Fractal runners even if we find Fractals boring.

We want more players even more than you do. But we care about the current players. You only seem to care about the theoretical “new player.”

You call us standing up for each other “non-constructive.” I call you mistreated us “very destructive.”

Stop neglecting us.

the stats are irrelevant, its a smokescreen, just because most things cost more than 5 dollars doesnt mean 5 dollars is a useless denomination. sure most people spend more than 400, they spend 450 500 575 625 700 900 etc, the point is its totally irrelevant for denominations of money what the minimum expenditures is.

people need to make change. And change is still in existence because it is highly neccessary. I guarantee you a 1 dollar bill sees more use than a 50 dollar bill.

Roybe.5896:

SmilingBandit.8079:

Wetpaw.3487:

Revenue down, squeeze the community w/o adding anything substantial for us to support.
&
http://www.tentonhammer.com/editorial/guild-wars-2-gemgate

Keep up the good work NCsoft, I can see your making a great name for yourself with Wildstar and GW2.

This was all Arena Net (Americans). NC-Soft does no longer have a saying within GW2 as far as I know!

Just a reminder…Arenanet is a wholly owned subsidiary of NCSoft.

which means there is generally a very strong separation of powers. If ncsoft was running the day to day or development it wouldnt be a subsidiary.

Shen Slayer.3058:

I’m never going to buy gems again. And I urge everyone to do the same. This will get their attention.

a full boycott of gems would be noticeable, but it would require them to boycott both gold and cash as a means to get gems.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Fernling.1729:

lordkrall.7241:

Do people really think that abusing the company and more specifically their employees will help?

Haven’t you noticed, it’s the only way for them to acknowledge the playerbase’s concerns.
Well, apparently support tickets by new players saying the currency converter is confusing seems to grab their attention too.

And here is what I was afraid of with them continually responding to outcries the most and people feeling okay to throw tantrums rather than hold discussions. This sentiment, right here, that the only way to get an answer is to threaten, belittle, and in general make a scene.

Welp, I now know what I must do to get my asura-firing trebuchet.

sometimes civilized responses are the least effecient means of change. Understand, if you have a large amount of people throwing tantrums, its probably because there is a reason. Numerous non regular posters logged in here to complain. They dont usually throw tantrums, but they are now.

Sometimes someones behavior incites tantrums, when unreasonable things happen, people tend to become unreasonable in response

lordkrall.7241:

Vlad Morbius.1759:

Does the game dyeing due to poor decisions not cross peoples minds at all, or the lack of feedback to the concerns voiced?

The game is not close do dying. Nor will this change kill it. The vast majority of the players probably don’t even know/care about this change nor what is happening (or not happening) on the forums.

The thing is if people keep abusing the devs and the company they might simply decide that it is not worth posting at all or even have a forum for anything other than supports (as in Guild Wars 1). Which could quite easily mean that they would just close them down.

the game was losing profits, as evidenced by the Quarterly reports, they wanted to alter that report for this quarter. They will probably succeed. In the long run they are damaging the brand.

chemiclord.3978:

DarkMagister.7429:

Made myself a habit of purchasing gems for 10 gold each day. So that one day, when I want smth, I don’t think “that’s so expensive!”. Now I can’t do that.
Today I purchased gems for the thing I needed, got a leftover of 200, and really not planning to buy gems soon.

In, taking into consideration 1 day – ANet made a right decision: I purchased 400 gems, not 200 I needed. 200 Gems profit!

But in how many days from now that profit will turn to loss, adding every day?

Brilliant.

Here’s the thing though. And I think it’s the heart of the issue.

Arena.net DIDN’T get 200 gems profit from you. They got effectively NOTHING from you. And that’s THEIR problem here, see. Gold to gem conversions have been going up steadily without fail because more people have been converting to gems rather than buying them with IRL cash.

And don’t think that the executives don’t see that. This entire change is all about making the gold to gem conversion process as difficult and irritating as possible. Hell, if it wouldn’t amount to outright revolt, I bet you the gold to gem process would have been gone yesterday.

Because, ya know, as irritating as it is now, you STILL have more options than someone who buys gems with cold, hard cash. And Arena.net wants you doing THAT, because THAT is money.

Which is also why you probably aren’t going to see any significant change on this score. They really couldn’t care less that you keep your gold. They wrote you off as a drain to their cash model long ago. They’re now targeting the F2P crowd that is well used to this model, and have come to accept it. Because THAT crowd spends money. They spend a LOT of money. And probably far more than everyone complaining in this thread put together.

its a matter of perspective, they actually got their money from every gem created.
Basically the system allows them to monetize people with no money, by having them create a product to sell to people who dont want anything in the gemstore. (gold)

point is, they make money off these players desires for gems. What they probably realized is, the bottom line is, the more gems that are desired, the more money they make. The system of allowing people to select gem amounts is not as profitable as forcing them to have more gems than they need, or needing to overbuy. So they apply it ingame as well now.

point is, dont think they dont make money off people who buy gems with gold, its a profitable system.

fellyn.5083:

aerial.7021:

fellyn.5083:

aerial.7021:

74 Days – 860 hours logged

Was not confused by any of the interface options when I brought the game, but I sure as eggs am baffled at the radical changes that have been made since, I used to rely on the gem store to get upgrades and costumes and anything else I desired, also converting gems -> gold to help speed some in game things up crafting mainly.

After this even I will not touch it period, play yes because like EVERY poster in this thread loves the game.

I would like to ask a question; Why does Arenanet need NCSoft, what is it they do exactly?

They are a subsidiary of NCsoft and they act as publisher for Anet as well, if I’m not mistaken.

Where as a games like Aion or Lineage NCsoft is the developer and publisher.

Thanks for your reply, I am just wondering if it would better this outrage was focused at the right party that dreamed up this monstrosity, of course we’ll never really know where this idea came from, but I’m certainly not buying the ‘new player’ excuse, I would buy that NCSoft handed this down as a requirement, but just how much control do they have over Arenanet.

Personal opinion Arenanet don’t need NCSoft and should pack up their collective toys and do it themselves, they are quite a capable bunch.

I don’t know if it’s still true but at one point in time anet said that NCsoft does not influence what does or does not go into the game. They said that around the time the game was first out.

yeah people like to blame ncsoft for everything, but its unlikely that ncsoft is that hands on with the anet subsidiary.
i mean they may say something like, we didnt like your numbers last quarter, but i doubt they make policy overall

DarkMagister.7429:

Came to this game as a counterpart to those, squeezing money off players on every corner. Now this game coming the same direction. Maybe I’d better find another game with more reasonable devs? Or return to the game when things like this resulted in CEO’s “Excuse us” letters.

the reality is whatever monetization strategy is used will effect game development/priorities. The game is buy to play, but since that money is long gone, they concentrate on the gemstore, and people not returning the game fast.

Essentially as long as they dont sell new products, the bias will be towards an f2p like system the further out they get from initial sales.

Sleepwalker.1398:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey there,

Here are a few tidbits from the team:

• A lot of newer players had trouble with the interface. That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans who have been around the conversion block a time or two. But newer players will benefit from the updated system.
• The goal was to make the Gem Store more like other shopping experiences, and if you think about it, there is more of that feel to it now.
• You may be surprised to know this (I know I was) but very few people bought gems at smaller denominations than the first one offered in the new system. That’s not to say they never did, nor that there wouldn’t be the desire to do so. But overall, the current options were selected based on player purchases in the past.
• The team is going to listen to your feedback and, if and when it’s practical and desirable, they can look towards adjusting the new system to better meet your needs.

So please keep your thoughts coming on the new system. Feel free to make suggestions but please, keeping them constructive would be very much appreciated.

Ok so Arenanet pulls out another “new players complaining” out of the hat.
I say lets all start urging these so called new players to put in tickets that they all like legendary weapons and precursors not dropping, maybe Arenanet will listen to them and implement this in next patch to have 100% drop rate with less mat requirements to make them

On another note, i turned on pc this morning played for a bit then pops a message:

Arenanet: A new build will be available in 10 mins.
Player Chat goes: What have they broken now???

Then “sweet a nice dress”…..then wait few minutes and its like “wtf happened to this exchange window”…then it went all sour and i just logged off.

Simply put it, the reason why Arenanet never checks with players before implementing something is that they know these things will not be accepted by players, so they simply force it on us. They are not worried, cos you bought the game they got paid, anything after they get out of your wallet is bonus.

By simply ranting here does nothing, they just don’t give a kitten. Its just too much of a big ask for a dev to pull the finger out and go fix something thats broken….let me hint you something “Traits”, over 6months now. But they too busy fixing things for new players that aren’t broken but are just “too hard” for them.

it was never about new players, the amount of successful transactions must have totally eclipsed complaints.

the new player/help confused is a red herring, dont fall for it

well, money hustle aside, i dunno if they will keep these systems in play with such an overwelmingly negative response. Way i see it, either they fix this, or GW2 brand will suffer dramatically until something big changes

lordkrall.7241:

I keep seeing people shout about how this is milking people out of money and I really don’t see how that really makes any kind of sense.
The prices for gems are still exactly the same as they were back at release.

The fact remains that they don’t even have to have the gold to gem transfer in the first place. If they really wanted to milk the players they would remove it completely, which they quite clearly haven’t done.

the gem/gold exchange is a profitable system, it allows them to profit off players desire for gem items, with other peoples desire for gold.

at the end of the day all that matters is that people buy more gems, every gem is paid for (aside for promos)
buy having increments of 400 everywhere, people will buy more gems, and probably buy more items.

GoddessHrist.8472:

phys.7689:

they basically forced a lot of people to buy a ton more gems than they usually would to get the same items, which skews the gem exchange.

the algorithm of the gem exchange has to react to large influx of gold, with predictive values, so they wont take losses on the gold/gem exchange most likely, therefore you will see a large spike in value.
the only thing that can balance this is a large spike on the other side,

but since selling gems gives you better options to sell as much as you want, whereas buying gems is in huge increments, its unlikely that the system will track the real demand that well anymore

That alone can’t explain this spike. The immediate spike caused by the insanely popular Belinda’s Greatsword was about 12.6%. This spike was around 32.2%. Plus you need to factor in the loss of gem conversions from players who don’t have 75 or 150 gold to spend on gems. I can certainly understand some effect from the larger conversion quantities but this is simply unbelievable.

perhaps your right, but i think people who want to buy items for gold are essentially buying 20-30% more gems than they normally would due to having no other choice, so i could see some fairly large spikes, but ehh like i said you may be right