Guild Wars 2

Ayrilana.1396:

I went a head and worked out a spreadsheet showing the actual profit you would make directly from a skill point if you converted copper ore to iron ingots. I even made the assumption that you would get 99 iron ingots each promotion which is unlikely.

There are three types of profit going on here:

• Profit from the difference in the cost to make bronze ingot versus placing buy orders for them
• Profit from the difference in bronze ingot sell price versus its buy price
• Profit made directly from the promotion which uses up a skill point

Two of these you cannot use in calculating profit you get per skill point.

I have it that a single skill point nets you 4g18s75c if you have the prices in the top left corner of the linked spreadsheet and produced 99 iron ingots in each promotion. Not bad right? Just wait.

Of that amount a total of 4g5s is directly from the refinement of bronze ingots if you sold them as their selling price. Of that 4g5s, 92s50c is from the profit you made by making bronze ingots rather than place buy orders for them. The other part of that is 3g12s50c which is the difference in the sell price of bronze ingots versus their buy price.

So essentially you made 13s74c off a skill point. Pretty good, huh? Well at least you got your sweet profits quicker than you would have with bronze ingots. That’s what really counts, right? We’ll also completely ignored the fact that you won’t get anywhere near an average of 99 most likely so you’ll be taking a loss as that was the break even.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DpowRChlCJwJWL8SMOiOzT0W3Oip-GDSJDoFxKAoQxs/edit?usp=sharing

If I messed up somewhere, please share. The only mistake I saw after the fact was my formula for how I got 4.05 gold at the bottom left was that I linked the 5 to the output of 5 in the bronze ingot recipe when the output has no bearing on how many promotions you can do per skill point. It luckily still worked out the same.

turning something that doesnt have a big demand into something that has more demand is profit that you can only do through skill points.

the same as some cooking recipes can only be obtained through karma.

anyhow it boils down to prefered playstyle.
His style is to set up a manufacturing system whereby he buys supplies at lowest cost, and turns it into a faster moving product. Yours is apparently to make products in lower volume.

Honestly i think that discounting the earning of karma and map completion in the equation of is a legendary worth it is huge. Both cost tons of time, if you are trying to maximize profit, both times are fairly unfruitful compared to what else you could be doing to get money.

Elsdragon.5109:

@ phys

Not too sure about that (I think that was when they were still developing the game as in without a proper beta or such yet?) but when they did release the game as a working prototype, I am fairly certain they mentioned not wanting to release expansions in the traditional sense.

It’s true that games cannot thrive without additional content, but GW2 is not without additional content. If one could compare the current state it is in now to the state it was in at release, or maybe even just a year ago, they could see so much changes to it. Again maybe not in the typical sense, but just because they don’t add content like WoW or other MMO’s doesn’t mean it’s bad. Heck, the reason why GW is so good is because they don’t follow traditional MMO’s.

As for new classes, those are different games. In GW1, those new professions came from new lands (Cantha and Elona), and the game itself had a dual class system that made additional classes actually more interesting. That’s not the case for GW2 though. The assassin class has sort of been reworked into the Thief; the Monk and Paragon have been sort of combined to be the Guardian (I think?). As for the Dervish and Ritualist, those classes wouldn’t make sense in the expanded race selection. For example, the Charr who don’t believe in gods would never have Dervishes as they were holy warriors that evoked the powers of the human gods. And I don’t see the Asurans summoning up spirits in their culture, so Ritualists are also out. Coming up with new classes isn’t as easy as looking up what other RPG’s had; if they don’t appeal to the lore then it would be very harmful. Adding race specific classes on the other hand may seem like a good alternative, but it would also create separation between races like in WoW. I personally wouldn’t want that.

Expanding on each class would work, but they’d have to rework the skill tree and maybe even how one unlocks skills. So with a lot of potential also comes a lot of planning. It would be great to see more skills, but if they did it haphazardly, then I would have preferred if they didn’t or took more time.

my point wasnt really to bring back the gw1 classes, but to say that gw1 classes added a lot of the most favored classes to gw1. i personally prefered my assassin to any other class. If factions never came out, the class would not exist. there are many others who feel similarly about dervish and ritualist.

reworking the classes is not really a viable option, because some people love their classes, it wouldnt be fair to totally change them on a core level. Hence the advantage of new proffesions.

As far as them adding content in a non traditional way, i would be fine with that, but to be honest, i cant really say i feel much has changed in terms of content. Im not saying they did nothing, it just doesnt come across as revitalizing the game.

Vayne.8563:

Penarddun.6827:

Vayne.8563:

Penarddun.6827:

snip

I’m not sure how much of an impact this is going to have on my experience with gw2 in the long run, and there are a lot of other leveling issues that I think need to be addressed first, but it was something that I didn’t expect to be an issue yet is.

I think you’re missing the point though. The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were. They’ve always said that was the main thrust of the game.

By having the personal story there all the time,. what they did was give people the wrong message about the game. Because at some point personal story ends, and then there’s nothing.

They’re retraining people to play the game differently for a reason. I used to see people post all the time about how they felt that they weren’t high enough level for their personal story, and they felt they were doing something wrong by being underleveled. Having it there, as it was, affected those people, in addition to affecting people like me, who feel like it breaks immersion to have to stop doing important stuff to do not important stuff. Save the city…but help some farmers first, because you’re not good enough to save the city.

But again, the thing you’re talking about here is probably the very thing Anet is trying to prevent. That’s why the brought in the new content guide.

Didn’t see this reply until today.

You mentioned “The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were.” That seems like a strange comment since the PS had so much effort put into it. A different origin story for each character, merging into a tri-fold order choice and culminating in the ending story arc. That’s a lot of content. Backbone (I don’t agree with the use of this term, from what I remember of the original GW2 release notes, this game was all about the different types of content provided), or no, there are so many hours of fun from the PS, and that’s what I enjoyed most about the early game.

Also in response to another poster’s statement that the previous PS was too “hand-held.” I did not think of it as hand holding at all. I can explore and roam when I choose. Which I did, when I felt like it. It’s not telling me I can only do the personal story now, it’s giving me story driven content to mask the fact that I have to level to 80. It gave me something to focus on during the leveling process when I didn’t have all my traits yet. I felt like my character wasn’t complete until around level 60 or 70, since I was lacking my end game traits. So the PS helped me not get bored while gaining my final character specs. I didn’t feel like I could do events, dungeons, or WvW because I was handicapped by not having my final build. Had I had all my traits by level 50ish, I may have felt differently about the Personal Story’s impact on my gameplay. But that is a whole other topic.

There is plenty to do after the personal story. I considered the PS early game content. When I reached level 80, I started to do more map completion, really work on my achievements such as diving and jumping puzzles. I started investigating WvW, and doing dungeons with friends, and finally doing some world events (which I find the least fun, personally).

I know some disagree, and that is okay by me. I accept that different people enjoy different aspects of the game. I only posted my original post here to give my personal perspective about the lack of a PS objective while leveling, since this thread is asking for feedback about the NPE. I don’t really want to be “retrained.” That’s an off-putting phrase. I play games to have fun my way, not to be trained to enjoy it in a particular way.

I’m not going by my opinion. I’m going by what Anet said about dynamic events. Anet said they were the center of the game. Everything was supposed to be driven around events. The personal story was supposed to get you to places where events happened.

That’s why you couldn’t just do the personal story to level. The gaps were always supposed to be intentional. They had plans to add more events and take some out and change up the game, but it never eventuated.

so then, by what you are saying, the personal story was the backbone (the thing that gives the structure) and the events was the flesh.
now, the backbone is leveling or perhaps map completion.

I think they need some new thing to act as what the personal story was trying to achieve, as far as guiding or giving a context to the dynamic events/world. I think that is actually what the new players really needed.

Elsdragon.5109:

I must say your post sounds very selfish and close-minded. Those are simply your opinion that you somehow consider a fact. I am a former GW1 player and I will disagree with your points completely. Though I am a “veteran player” if you consider the time factor, I would still consider myself a casual player based on the play-style as well.

Your expectations are not for what the game is but rather for how long it can keep you entertained. They’ve said that there wouldn’t be boxed expansions for GW2 when they released it and yet you still had expectations that it would. That is what I call delusional, believing something will go your way despite being told it won’t.

You claimed that your passion for the game came in huge part to expansions in GW1 (which were campaigns as stand-alone games really, there was only one expansion and that was Eye of the North), but all that tells me is that your passion isn’t about how different or wonderful the game is but rather that it gave a lot of content to play with. If that’s all you’re after, you’re better off playing multiple games rather than expecting one game company to crank out tons of content to keep you pleased. The longevity of GW1 wasn’t due to the added campaigns I would argue, but rather its uniqueness and deviant from the standards of what an MMO was back then, but you either failed to see that or conveniently left it out of your statement.

As for how the LS is, that is also a matter of opinion. I have said it before, and I will say it again, it is a far better option design-wise to implement this sort of LS content rather than a boxed expansion to go with their model of a living world. If your idea of content is simply “new races, new classes, new weapons, new skills, new maps, new dungeons, new pvp modes” then you’re missing out on a lot I have to say. The races and classes they have now are fine; adding any more may be more harmful to the game than you would think. The new maps and dungeons bit, we got a new map that kept extending as the LS progressed, who knows they may just release a new dungeon as well.

actually, pretty sure they started off saying they would definately be expanding the game through expansions. Shortly after release, they decided they were unsure how they would deliver it. Then they later decided they would see how living story does at delivering content.

As for content, yeah its important, most games, even good games, cannot continue to thrive with their initial content. That is why there have been like 100 streetfighter games, and demon souls, dark souls, and dark souls II. MMOs generally deal with this concept by continuing to improve and expand the same game with new content. Keep in mind most people are willing to pay for this, So its not as if they want something for nothing.

new races/class/proffesions would not be any more harmful to the game than anything else. FFXI was like 10ish years ago, and they managed to add 11 jobs without destroying the game. Gw1 added 4 proffesions, whom as far as i can tell attracted many players, and are still some favorite classes for many people. Assassin, dervish, ritualist were highly popular classes, and people still ask for them today.

No, gw2 has not truely captured all playstyles.
Keep in mind each job is firmly attached to its proffesion mechanic.
mesmer will always be tied to illusions and shatters
ranger will always be tied to pets
theif is always going to be controled by initiative, steal and stealth abilities.

point is, they may have hit some broad archetypes, but they are all limited in their playstyle by their class mechanics.
a thief cant really be a monk/martial artist, because he is dependent on stealth for defense, his mechanic is based around stealing, not combos, and initiative is made to front load his damage rather than build it up.

A warrior cant be a death berserker type because his mechanic is about 1 special attack he builds up over time, and his theme is to be highly variable with weapons and generally to buff enemies

necro is tied to 4 skills on his life bar, which favor one playstyle.

point is, they have a lot of room to grow when it comes to proffesions.

Actually, its not the game for you is always a bad response. To any suggestion. i dont think the game should do what you want, Try this other game, etc is fine. But truth is, no one except a dev really knows if a suggestion is outside the scope of what they are willing to do.
At some point, a person asking for unified pve servers, would have got that response.
At some point someone asking for a focus on a personal story like system would have gotten that response.
Right now, some people give that response for people who want dungeons/endgame
People used to say this isnt the game for you to people who wanted more vertical progression

Point is, nobody knows whats really inbounds and what is out of bounds. This game has changed major systems, and altered the main course, and even some of the defining systems/directions more than once.

The other factor is the company profits nothing by people telling them to leave. Believe it or not, anet wants them as well. They may or may not be willing to compromise to keep them or not. But regardless if it may not be the game for some people, its always a bad idea to suggest that. And more often than not, its used because someone one just doesnt like a suggestion for whatever reason.

Vayne.8563:

Penarddun.6827:

I was working on my new Thief today, and I just did the first group of personal story quests (the ones that open at level 10). After I finished, I felt very lost and then I realized why. When I had been leveling my other characters, the next personal story step was in the top right of my map, like a goal to aim toward. I could try it at a lower level and if I died, go and gain a level and then try again. This took up a lot of my gaming time because I used the personal story as a framework for my entire leveling experience. Until this change I had no idea how much of an influence the personal story was for me as a leveling mechanic.

I understand the reasons for putting the PS in segments, it does make sense from a writer’s perspective so the player can see the entire mini plot all at once, without breaks. I think that is a good thing. But the change in how it is presented, and the complete lack of a PS after one segment is completed, has caused me to log off right afterwards because I don’t really have a goal at that point and “just leveling” isn’t really a goal for me.

I’m not sure how much of an impact this is going to have on my experience with gw2 in the long run, and there are a lot of other leveling issues that I think need to be addressed first, but it was something that I didn’t expect to be an issue yet is.

I think you’re missing the point though. The point is the personal story was never really supposed to be the backbone of the game. Events were. They’ve always said that was the main thrust of the game.

By having the personal story there all the time,. what they did was give people the wrong message about the game. Because at some point personal story ends, and then there’s nothing.

They’re retraining people to play the game differently for a reason. I used to see people post all the time about how they felt that they weren’t high enough level for their personal story, and they felt they were doing something wrong by being underleveled. Having it there, as it was, affected those people, in addition to affecting people like me, who feel like it breaks immersion to have to stop doing important stuff to do not important stuff. Save the city…but help some farmers first, because you’re not good enough to save the city.

But again, the thing you’re talking about here is probably the very thing Anet is trying to prevent. That’s why the brought in the new content guide.

actually the personal story was designed to guide you into the areas you were most likely to be around certain levels, and direct people to content.
That has changed now apparently, but it actually was designed to work with your level and your progress to guide you.

anzenketh.3759:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

As for the reward:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-make-the-world-more-interesting/first
This deals with the reward in normal PvE maps.

Dungeons should get a hardmode, where the story got cut out and the bosses get new and better mechanics which can react to skills or tactics being used. The reward for completing those dungeons should be more tokens, new skins and more fluff.
Furthermore, raids should be implemented. This is a topic on its own and I haven’t made up my mind how this could be implemented properly. But this is the direction I would go with this game.

There are problems with hardmode and dungeons specifically involving splitting the playerbase.

How would you encourage players to participate in non-hardmode dungeons so they are more accessible for newer players. Also this hard-mode should only aware achievements not new skins or other rewards. This is to not lock rewards to be un-obtainable for some players. If you can find a good way to not split the playerbase to exclude newer players I would love to hear your suggestion in the dungeon sub-forum!

The reason for the exclusion of hardmode is deliberate. In the later years normal mode parties for Guild Wars 1 was hard to come by. It was hard to find a party (even when starting your own) to play in normal mode.

Perhaps something that they can add is a hard-mode to a re-playable version of the personal story with the exclusion of the dungeons tied to the personal story. This will not necessarily split the playerbase as they are repeating content that is already there. In addition to that the content was designed to be done solo so you are not removing members from a party that a newer or less skilled player would otherwise encounter. I think this is what they were trying to do with the Living World Achievements.

the playerbase is already split into little 5 man groups. There will always be many people who cant/dont want to do hard things. The reward for hard mode should be more of something/better chance at it. This way you can choose between slow and steady, or Hardmode which is faster when done well(perhaps a small cosmetic upgrade to something). Guild wars 2 had hardmodes, and they had people doing both, i dont think having better rewards will force people out of normal mode, Only the people who want a challenge.

that said, i would not reccomend reworks over new content at this stage, they have had to little new content for too long already. They have to begin focusing on new content at this stage if they want to continue to prosper.

MikaHR.1978:

Tomas.5029:

MikaHR.1978:

Tomas.5029:

MikaHR.1978:

Tomas.5029:

The thing that players truly want is a challenge, simple as that. They want something that cannot be cleared by an average player in 3 hours.

Yea, like 0,5% of the players want that, so technically youre right, practically – no.

I think you got it twisted slightly, and did not read my post entirely.
I am not calling for hardcore difficulty content that indeed only 0.9% of the playerbase even gets to see (Oldschool Naxxramas from WoW could be the example).
I am making a suggestion to create content that rewards effort, and not simply attendance.
My suggestions are simple – if you’re a casual, and you don’t want anything changed, and you just want to log in, kill some stuff, get some loot, and just generally relax, you’d still have that.
However, those who want more, and those who like to be awarded for their skillful play, should be. Again, i’d like you to read my post.

Its direct answer to your post.

Pavillion was a big mistake on ANets part

Dry Top should be exception, not the rule, it goes under same hat as pavillion.

You agai and again metion these rewards (bribes), BUT content should first stand on its own, then and ONLY then it can be measured how many people want it. So no, no special rewards or anything such, if its extremely popular -> make more.

Otherwise youre just making a point most people that do this content are interested in the rewards anyway, they dont give a kitten if its challenging or not. So making “easy” content with nice rewards is actually way to go. Yeah, that 0,0001% that actually want challenging content because its challenging content get screwed, but thats how it is.

Well, the rewards (or “bribes” as you so elegantly put it) are an integral part of RPGs, whether you like it or not. New, shining loot that requires patience and dedication attracts players. If this wasn’t the case, no one would go for that Legendary or Ascended armor.

If we go by what you say, that players actually want more stuff for less effort (which i kind of doubt, after observing LA’s chat for a year), then ANET should at least make it more enjoyable to repeat it. Like i mentioned in my previous post, the last instance of the latest Living Story patch was really good in this regard, because it introduced Challenge Mode, which made the encounter feel more exciting and dangerous the second time you play it. Even the Mordrem mobs are a step in the right direction, because they hit hard, and you actually need to watch yourself when fighting them, especially when you wear Berserker’s/Assassin’s gear.

And thats where youre wrong again. Loot is defnitely not integral part of RPG. It certainly devolved to that in certain games.

To give you nice RL analogy: crapzillion people play soccer daily without expecting any reward at all. Soccer doesnt change, it has no new conent. And people STILL do it.

You might want to think about that and why you have to bribe people to play something. As i said, content needs to stand on its own legs first.

because within the soccer world, the only way to show achievement in soccer, or improve yourself in soccer is to play it. You do what you enjoy, and you get better at it, along with a fairly good challenging game design.

See soccer doesnt make you choose between doing hard things that will barely improve your soccer abilities/ or achievement within the soccer world and easy things that will vastly improve your skill/achievement.

This is reward design, and its a key aspect of game design. They must reward you for playing the game well. In other games its more direct, but in an RPG you have a game within a game within a game.

So not only do they need to consider the reward for certain actions within the minigame of combat.
They also have to consider the reward for combat itself.

It would be like if the fastest way to an NBA championship was to become a celebrity.
Or the best way to become a chess master was move 1000 pawns a day.

They need to consider what type of gameplay they most reward, because this changes the complexion of the game. People will always go where the rewards are most appealing, and even if they love something, they will probably abandon it if its unrewarding.

Vayne.8563:

Okay, I’m not saying if the game was harder, no one would play it. I never even implied it. My argument is more basic.

There are X number of dev hours, and y amount of stuff to do. Any company is going to put the focus first on the higher population and give something they can to the lower population when they can.

Guild Wars 2’s biggest mistake, in my opinion, was the temporary content from Season 1. It’s not just that it’s mostly PvE content and that it wouldn’t satisfy PvPers or hard core players. It’s that if all that stuff was in there, PvE’ers wouldn’t have less to do and maybe, just maybe, Anet would have the time now to put more effort into the hard core stuff…and the PvP. And maybe dungeons.

They don’t have the time, because even though some of that new content was a blast, it’s not here now. Throw SAB, the nightmare tower and the marionette back into the game, and you have more to do.

Same with the fractals. Putting the Aetherblade dungeon and the Molten Facility in the fractals isn’t the same as having the dungeons. People who don’t want their entertainment RNG might rather just do a dungeon. Those options aren’t there. Dungeon guys can say we’ve had almost no new dungeons, because where are they? It’s not that Anet didn’t take the the time to make them. Anet put them in the game and took them out.

So now you have dungeon guys, hard core guys, PvP guys and WvW guys who all want new stuff, but so do the PvE people, who I still believe are the biggest demographic. If that stuff had stayed in the game, Anet might not be where they are now. I consider it a mistake…again my opinion.

However, it’s not and Anet has to eat that mistake. Anet is trying to rectify it now by playing catch up and it’s going slow. It doesn’t help that everytime Anet makes the changes they feel are necessary, the entire forum goes wild and begins to protest and ask for changes, all of which take time and slow down the schedule. But you know, I don’t blame people for doing it either. It just don’t help get content out faster.

At the end of the day, there’s nothing at all wrong with hard core content being added, if there’s time to do it without jeopardizing the casual playerbase. But look at what happened with the NPE. A small percentage of the last update was for new players and all we see are threads saying Anet only cares about new players.

If Anet focused now on hard core content, the risk of people who are casual leaving the game is greater, and that’s the one thing Anet doesn’t want to do right now.

The focus of the last few updates has not been on new content, its been on QoL stuff and reworks. A lot of this QoL stuff created new QoL problems and need some reworks.

So, i wouldnt say only a fraction was for casuals, i would say you have some general things, and then some stuff for newbies.

The other thing is, you dont really need to appeal to casuals, casuals go where the game is good, They may not get as far as other people, but they are actually ok with that, because they are pretty casual. As long as you give them some joys, and things to do that they like, they will stick around.

Therefore the primary concern should be developing the best game you can deliver. Think about the most popular games, they usually are well designed, have a lot of depth, and they have/had tons of casual people playing them.
chess, basketball, football, snes games, heck people call candy crush casual, it has 1075 levels to beat, of increasing difficulty, many people cant beat them, still its popular.

Every developer needs to focus on making an actual good/fun game, instead of trying to figure out how to give people what you think they think is popular. Do you think a writer would be able to make an excellent book, if his primary concern was trying to hit all the bulletpoints for popular novels?

If you make good stuff, the casuals will love as much of it as they can. Lets be honest, i like a lot of things about the game, 1 screen in mario with the hammer bros was more thrilling than most of the later game content.

http://rigsamarole.wordpress.com/files/2009/04/hammer.gif

Vayne.8563:

Xae Isareth.1364:

phys.7689:

Xae Isareth.1364:

phys.7689:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Malkavian.4516:

Nick.6972:

Was watching Destiny Review and it reminded me of GW2 for some reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzopWRXK_r4
Grinding, no content, insane RNG.
Perhaps it’s time for the developers to focus on sandbox MMOs instead of theme park.

I haven’t played Destiny at all, but from what I can tell, to make a legendary you rely solely on luck where we could at least make our legendaries given the dedication plus a bit of luck. As for content, I got enough content in GW2 compared to what I have seen in Destiny although the content this game offers may not be to your liking.

Legendaries in Destiny are nothing quite like legendaries in GW2. They’re….more like legendaries in Diablo.

They aren’t that rare.

GW2’s problem isn’t exactly a lack of content. If you just got into the game, then there’s more than enough content. The twofold problem is that one: most of the content is very unrewarding and two: there’s very little growth in the amount of core content it has.

i would add to the problems, very little of the content has much depth for experienced players.

I tend to think GW2 just wasn’t made for the ‘experienced’ players. The developers are barely creating enough content to satisfy the large majority that is the casual players, I don’t think they’ll ever get around to creating content for the 5%.

As for how that’s possible with a studio their size. Who the heck knows.

i think its a misnomer to think as experience players as the 5%, mario, contra, sonic, were all mainstream games, all of them are probably a lot more difficult than 90% of guild wars.
experienced doesnt mean the 5%, it means people that have gone beyond simply winning by brute force in every encounter.
Also, the game should better be able to adapt to the skill level of the player. Im sure not everyone can handle something made for the 5%, but most of the content is currently being played at like the bottom 25%s level. Is shatterer a boss that you cannot fall asleep on?
is it even possible to fail most of these events with 60+ people pressing 1?

there is a lot of gradations in difficulty, we are far from the top 5%.

basically, i dont think it would be entertaining for long if they made 5 new world bosses on the level of shatterer fights.

kitten snes streetfighter sold 6.3 million, maybe people who play games are just not as skilled as they used to be.

The 5% of this game. At this point, everyone knows that if you’re looking for challenging content, GW2 isn’t the MMO for you.

Just look at Aetherpath. That’s hardly a 5% dungeon, yet I dread to PUG that place.

So what you’re saying is that dungeon is hard enough to require an organized group? I thought that was the type of content people were asking for.

Pugging that dungeon is much harder than running it with a guild group with say voice communication. Working as intended.

Essentially he is saying that gw2 population is generally way at the bottom % of gamers in being able deal with challenge.
Therefore anet makes the content that their population can handle, which he implies is extremely low.

I personally believe that gw2 players arent any less capable than other players, they like the systems and enjoy using them well, and knowing their class, its just extremely rare that game actually requires them to use these skills.
After a little while people adapt, and they tend to enjoy overcoming, or matching different challenges.

MikaHR.1978:

Nerelith.7360:

MikaHR.1978:

Keitaro Dragonheart.9047:

MikaHR.1978:

phys.7689:

snip

Of course its not good, it wasnt good in GW1 and its not good in GW2.

But hey, at least “community” (those few people that called themselves community at the time and whined about it the loudest) is happy, amiright?

If you want to delude yourself that trait system change has nothing to do with GW1 skill capture whines, well, good luck with that because its direct reaction to “feedback from community”

They did skill/trait/gear system at launch to serve specific purpose (as you can read in my sig)

Now 2 of those are untrue, and direct result of “community whines” aka “who was loudest on the forums at certain times”

Right. Only “GW1 whiners” are ruining the game. Because GW2 players (who’ve never played GW1) totally never whine!

“Waaah! Liadari is too hard! Nerf!”
“Waaah! Arah is too hard! Nerf!”
“Waaah! Ascalon Catacombs story mode is too hard! Nerf!”

Please, bunch of cry babies. Ruining content by getting it nerfed with all your tears. Ascalon Catacombs story mode for instance was hella fun; you actually had to think (le gasp) to complete it. Then people cried it was too hard, it got nerfed, and now you can just faceroll through it. GW2 players want everything easymode. You thought anything in this game was hard?

As a GW1 player, I challenge all of you to go play Elite missions without gimmicks. Domain of Anguish, Underworld, Fissure of Woe. None of you will last past the first wave of mobs before you start crying that it’s too hard and needs to be nerfed. And all of those missions had a Hard Mode too. The only thing in this game that could be considered challenging by comparison, would be Arah Explorer Mode and High Level Fractals.

GW2 carebears (not casuals/hardcore/whatever. Thought I’d clarify before people start screaming that not all GW2 players are alike.) are ruining the game as much as, if not more so than “GW1 whiners.”

Ahhh, but there are many groups of whiners, but what is similar to all of them:

they are extremely vocal
they are extremely small group

and yeah, GW1 whiners get a special medal for change to traits

Nerelith.7360:

Nick.6972:

Was watching Destiny Review and it reminded me of GW2 for some reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzopWRXK_r4
Grinding, no content, insane RNG.
Perhaps it’s time for the developers to focus on sandbox MMOs instead of theme park.

One word. Archeage.

If you adore P2W yeah, otherwise skip.

If you think Archeage is pay2win. I would Like to hear a definition of Pay2win, that will make Archeage pay2win, but that also excludes Gw2.

Any definition of pay2win loose enough to include Archeage, will also include Gw2, and almost every other MMO out there, that has a cash shop that sells anything beyond Cosmetics.. Things Like..Exp Boosters…. crafting xp boosters… etc etc..

So just curious, what is your definition of pay2win, that makes Archeage pay2win, but doesn’t make Gw2 pay2win?

P2W is self explanatory.

It doesnt take long even for someone who knows nothing about AA to figureit out (khm….labor points….khm….and thats just tip of the iceberg)

If you want to play AA you HAVE to pay. Constantly. Thats P2W. I have a sense “masses” will feel what P2W means very quickly and mass exodus will begin. Its wise of them not to bring in anymore servers, as they really wont need em, and you surely cant merge those servers (well at least not without kittening at least 1 servers population completely off)

that would mean sub based, which is essentially what arche age is, sub/cash shop hybrid.
and before you say thats dumb, keep in mind gw2 already using this model in china, and some version of it may come here eventually

Xae Isareth.1364:

phys.7689:

Xae Isareth.1364:

Malkavian.4516:

Nick.6972:

Was watching Destiny Review and it reminded me of GW2 for some reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzopWRXK_r4
Grinding, no content, insane RNG.
Perhaps it’s time for the developers to focus on sandbox MMOs instead of theme park.

I haven’t played Destiny at all, but from what I can tell, to make a legendary you rely solely on luck where we could at least make our legendaries given the dedication plus a bit of luck. As for content, I got enough content in GW2 compared to what I have seen in Destiny although the content this game offers may not be to your liking.

Legendaries in Destiny are nothing quite like legendaries in GW2. They’re….more like legendaries in Diablo.

They aren’t that rare.

GW2’s problem isn’t exactly a lack of content. If you just got into the game, then there’s more than enough content. The twofold problem is that one: most of the content is very unrewarding and two: there’s very little growth in the amount of core content it has.

i would add to the problems, very little of the content has much depth for experienced players.

I tend to think GW2 just wasn’t made for the ‘experienced’ players. The developers are barely creating enough content to satisfy the large majority that is the casual players, I don’t think they’ll ever get around to creating content for the 5%.

As for how that’s possible with a studio their size. Who the heck knows.

i think its a misnomer to think as experience players as the 5%, mario, contra, sonic, were all mainstream games, all of them are probably a lot more difficult than 90% of guild wars.
experienced doesnt mean the 5%, it means people that have gone beyond simply winning by brute force in every encounter.
Also, the game should better be able to adapt to the skill level of the player. Im sure not everyone can handle something made for the 5%, but most of the content is currently being played at like the bottom 25%s level. Is shatterer a boss that you cannot fall asleep on?
is it even possible to fail most of these events with 60+ people pressing 1?

there is a lot of gradations in difficulty, we are far from the top 5%.

basically, i dont think it would be entertaining for long if they made 5 new world bosses on the level of shatterer fights.

kitten snes streetfighter sold 6.3 million, maybe people who play games are just not as skilled as they used to be.

Xae Isareth.1364:

Malkavian.4516:

Nick.6972:

Was watching Destiny Review and it reminded me of GW2 for some reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzopWRXK_r4
Grinding, no content, insane RNG.
Perhaps it’s time for the developers to focus on sandbox MMOs instead of theme park.

I haven’t played Destiny at all, but from what I can tell, to make a legendary you rely solely on luck where we could at least make our legendaries given the dedication plus a bit of luck. As for content, I got enough content in GW2 compared to what I have seen in Destiny although the content this game offers may not be to your liking.

Legendaries in Destiny are nothing quite like legendaries in GW2. They’re….more like legendaries in Diablo.

They aren’t that rare.

GW2’s problem isn’t exactly a lack of content. If you just got into the game, then there’s more than enough content. The twofold problem is that one: most of the content is very unrewarding and two: there’s very little growth in the amount of core content it has.

i would add to the problems, very little of the content has much depth for experienced players.

Odokuro.5049:

If your there to help out your fellow guild member, and to spend time with them, then being rewarded for your “help” shouldn’t even be on your list of expectations, besides it’s their Personal Story not yours, and the reward should be knowing that you helped out someone in need.

why is it good design that helping people should be less rewarding than doing the exact same type of content in the open world? when i help a friend map complete dredgehaunt or level up, i get drops, but for personal story you should recieve nothing?
illogical.
helping people has no logical reason to give you less in one area than another

Ravion Hawk.4736:

Aside from being told that they removed loot from the PS to stop linen farming, it looks like they are trying to divide the community.

I can just see it in about 6 months. Players charging to help others with their PS just so they earn something for their time. It is bad enough that players sell the final dungeon and ANet won’t do anything about it. It is like they are encouraging it.

this is stupid, why is it all good for me to go to farm monsters in a level 40-50 zone, but doing the exact same thing inside a personal story instance is something to be patched? Time is spent killing mobs, why is the same time in a personal story instance worth less than the time outside?

my guess is its probably related to bots, but eliminating fun to beat bots is not a good answer to the problem. This extends to living story as well, why should we repeat content with less rewards than joining a random train? Why help players with these new special stories?

Vayne.8563:

Generally thinking I feel the PS rewards are much better, with one issue.

A lot of us in the guild help each other or keep each other company through our personal stories. We play MMOs to play together.

Now, if I’m helping someone on a story or several in a row, just to hang out, there’s zero reward at all. No drops no nothing.

There should be some reward, even a small one, for people helping people through personal stories that aren’t theirs.

yes, this was always a flaw, that has been magnified with the lack of drops. They say people dont do it much, but they made it impossible to repeat, hard to team up with people, (and they get credit)
and now they remove drops.

Malkavian.4516:

phys.7689:

Malkavian.4516:

One thing I do not understand about some people who demand this game have endgame is exactly what type of endgame do they want to have and why do they want it to begin with? People may go deaf when I say this but I always make my own endgame in practically any game I play. If I don’t like to do dungeons, I go PvP. If not, then WvW, if not, Legendary crafting.

endgame is something that requires you to use all of what you have/earned built in order to succeed. It generally seeks to let you push or test your limits.

For example, in basketball, you spend a lot of time learning basics, how to shoot, how to dribble, how to pass. Special combinations of this, increasing your accuracy and your speed, and then endgame is playing people of equal or greater difficulty.

programming, you learn a language, learn the rules, figure how to build something complex from a simple set of instructions, and then endgame is putting it all together, devising and figuring out how to build something greater from a simple instruction to the complex.

Art: you study anatomy, perspective, composition, color. Endgame is putting it all together into a peice of art.

Note, not everyone achieves the same levels, not everyone beats the game, but striving to achieve, putting everything you ve built to use. It enhances the experience, knowing there is something to aim for, some use for the skills you build up, some benefit for doing it smartly, or fast. Seeing it come together for a result. Many hobby rock climbers may never attempt to climb everest, but they are glad it exists.

What in this game even tries to come close to this? You may have played for 80 levels, and mastered 65 traits, and 40 skills, what in this game makes you use that to succeed? Even when you take it out of straight up skill, what part of the story is the sum total of everything you have done? Explorer? what in this game has used your knowledge and understanding of the map, in interesting ways to succeed at anything?

PVE wise, what in this game is made to make good use of your skills/abilities/knowlegde?

a good game scales well with its players throughout they various levels, allowing them to find their on comfortable zone for endgame.

Well in my case there is the Fractals and WvW for my endgame really.

yup, those, and a good spvp match is probably it i would say. So for pve you have 1 dungeon. a dungeon thats has the content of about 2 dungeons. Thats not a lot considering it has been out for almost 2 years.

I enjoy fractals, but that cant be it, not to mention there is still some design flaws, like they have too many gradations, you have to beat it like 30 times before you get up to the semi challenging missions.
2) they built content too far behind level gates, now if they add new instabilities or new mechanics, they will only be available to people who have cleared it 50 times.
3) the rewards, in general, not on par with much easier endeavors.

Malkavian.4516:

One thing I do not understand about some people who demand this game have endgame is exactly what type of endgame do they want to have and why do they want it to begin with? People may go deaf when I say this but I always make my own endgame in practically any game I play. If I don’t like to do dungeons, I go PvP. If not, then WvW, if not, Legendary crafting.

endgame is something that requires you to use all of what you have/earned built in order to succeed. It generally seeks to let you push or test your limits.

For example, in basketball, you spend a lot of time learning basics, how to shoot, how to dribble, how to pass. Special combinations of this, increasing your accuracy and your speed, and then endgame is playing people of equal or greater difficulty.

programming, you learn a language, learn the rules, figure how to build something complex from a simple set of instructions, and then endgame is putting it all together, devising and figuring out how to build something greater from a simple instruction to the complex.

Art: you study anatomy, perspective, composition, color. Endgame is putting it all together into a peice of art.

Note, not everyone achieves the same levels, not everyone beats the game, but striving to achieve, putting everything you ve built to use. It enhances the experience, knowing there is something to aim for, some use for the skills you build up, some benefit for doing it smartly, or fast. Seeing it come together for a result. Many hobby rock climbers may never attempt to climb everest, but they are glad it exists.

What in this game even tries to come close to this? You may have played for 80 levels, and mastered 65 traits, and 40 skills, what in this game makes you use that to succeed? Even when you take it out of straight up skill, what part of the story is the sum total of everything you have done? Explorer? what in this game has used your knowledge and understanding of the map, in interesting ways to succeed at anything?

PVE wise, what in this game is made to make good use of your skills/abilities/knowlegde?

a good game scales well with its players throughout they various levels, allowing them to find their on comfortable zone for endgame.

Vayne.8563:

@Scipio

My point is we know that a dev said only 10% of people playing Lotro ever raided or did PvP. We know that the PvP population of Guild Wars 1 was higher than that, but I do remember a dev talking about DOA and how few people ever completed it. I wish I dev would come here and confirm that, because at this late date I’ll never find the quote.

Over years in this industry, we’ve seen devs make hard content that most players never get through, but you think, for some reason, Guild Wars 1 was different.

The elite zones in later games were nowhere near as hard or as long as the ones in Prophecies. Anet spent less and less time on them as the game advanced.

you dont have to complete content for people to enjoy it. Most underworld runs were not for completion, it was super long, and 1 mistake could end it, thats why having mini objectives were good.
The same with DOA, you could do every path seperate, or only the path you wanted to.

also, how many people did raids in lotro, has little to do with how many people did elite instances in gw2.

there is a substantial difference in accessibility with content that requires 12 people, and content that requires 1 or 2 people.
yes i duo ed domain of anguish with my friend and his heroes,
yes i trio ed underworld without henches with trappers and 55 monks, and a weird necro cannot die build i made
point is, the big obstacle to people attempting raids, isnt the word raids or even the difficulty, its that it requires organizing with some generally large number of people.

now im not saying dungeons is the only form endgame can take, but i dont think that the principle you have, that instanced content serves no purpose is true.

Vayne.8563:

Scipio.3204:

Vayne.8563:

@scipio

Believe that if you like but it’s probably not true. So many people in GW 1 soloed, even before heroes were introduced. I guarantee you none of those people did UW. Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE. Those guys didn’t do it.

In almost every game I’ve known over years, we find from dev quotes that most people never completed the hardest content.

I wonder why anyone would think Guild Wars 1 was some kind of exception.

I never said I meant UW or even hard content. And I have to agree with the “Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE”. I mostly meant PvP , but it’s true for a lot of PvE parts as well. But on PvP : GW1 had the best PvP I ever played, Observer, Rating , tournaments, rewards , variety of game modes. In gw2 almost none of these returned, and the only mode we got is not even similar to the ones in 1.

I think I can say what we had was well functioning, popular and had levels from casual to hardcore. Now look at GW2 PvP: I can’t even spot a similarity.

Did you notice that as Guild Wars 1 got older and older, it shifted it’s focus away from PvP? Because I noticed that.

Many new PvE only skills. Less PvP support in each update. Again, Anet found which side their bread was buttered on.

But I believe they didn’t find it with the hard core “raiding” crowd. The UW, DOA guys. THey found it with the casual guys that just did more basic stuff.

That’s why they made Guild Wars 2 the way they did. In my opinion.

And you know, I have 50/50 in my HoM and I have my GWAMM title, but I almost never did end game instances nor did anyone in my guild or circle of friends.

It looks like a lot of peope do it, because they all crowd into Temple of Ages, but I believe it’s a small percentage of people who played the game.

Because many people don’t like to group, don’t like to speed run, don’t like to run specific builds, don’t like to be yelled at if they make a mistake, dont’ like to die over and over again to repeat content and pay a gold to get in.

Most people didn’t enjoy that…in my opinion.

But those that did, absolutely loved it.

Yeah i forgot no hench, but there were a few builds that could solo parts of it. many people duoed, i duoed and trioed wth a couple of my friends. Once heroes came out the door was open for low man runs.
a lot of people did it though, and you didnt need people yelling about your build/speedrun/etc, because it could be you alone, or you with a buddy. They opened it up to every body.

now, heres the other thing, you dont need to make all content for everyone, that is not really even your goal, as an MMO developer. Your goal is to make an online world, with many facets, and many ways to play. This is how you get such a large amount of people.

WoW contary to popular belief, is not just elite raids, ffxi is not just leveling jobs, Everything in the game shouldnt be designed that everyone has to do it. This is another flaw i feel gw2 has. They try to make people do everything. I want a legendary/ascended i have to craft. I want legendary i have to map complete. (i want to level, i have to map complete) i want traits i have to map complete. some traits require wvw now.
i think each mode should give items that make sense for that mode, and maybe something exclusive, but its bad to keep putting basic features, or things designed for everyone to have, around what should be opt in content.

imagine in gw1, if you could only get some runes from gvg, or by map completing the whole game.
Its ok if not everyone does something. I bet most people never map complete 100% does that mean they should stop making maps?

Vayne.8563:

@scipio

Believe that if you like but it’s probably not true. So many people in GW 1 soloed, even before heroes were introduced. I guarantee you none of those people did UW. Many people just PvPed and ignored PvE. Those guys didn’t do it.

In almost every game I’ve known over years, we find from dev quotes that most people never completed the hardest content.

I wonder why anyone would think Guild Wars 1 was some kind of exception.

we would be talking about pve people obviously, and you could defeat paths of underworld with henchmen, and some solo. Yes, many people who solo are not afraid of difficult content. It became easier and more feasible when heroes were added, but you do realize heroes were added less than 2 years after release?

so yeah many people soloed, and soloing didnt mean you couldnt attempt elite instances.
think about it, every single ecto in gw1 was obtained by someone playing an elite instance.
do you still think that was a rare occurence?

also note, end game, that is not solo exclusive

chemiclord.3978:

31-40

Ya know, I kinda like how the Personal Story is clumped together. I find I don’t have to think, “Who is [x] character again?” because it was several levels between visits.

I do like how the rewards have improved as well (many of the items allow you to choose what stats you want rather than pre-determined (and usually pretty poor). And of top of that, finishing this PS segment earned me an Order related weapon skin. Not too shabby.

I also conveniently earned another clump of skill points just in time to grab my elite skill just as they unlocked (Rampage as One, obviously). I guess it kinda worked out… but I’m skill not completely sold on this entire “get everything in clumps” strategy. I mean, I kinda get the logic behind it (I can see how players could kinda “forget” getting 1 trait point and 1 skill point when each step requires multiple points), but it’s still kinda meh.

Meanwhile, as far as trait hunting goes, I immediately found one absurd one that was fairly fundamental for the Ranger build (Vigorous Spirits), which required exploring all of Harathi Hinterlands to unlock.

Eff.

That.

I mean, I kinda get how it could work, as additional incentive for new players to do things they wouldn’t normally think of doing. But for someone who has already explored Harathi three times?

Eff.

That.

So I cheated, and had my other ranger (the level 80 with a bajillion skill points) buy the guides and drop them in my bank. Sorry. I guess it’s nice that you can do it that way… but it’s still pretty stupid that something that was perfectly fine to begin with is now something so poorly implemented.

Other traits weren’t particularly time consuming, and often were a surprise to stumble on, like earning one through kill Kol in Harathi. If more were like that (having to go off the more beaten path) rather than something merely time consuming (like zone exploration), it’d be more bearable.

I’ll admit to bias, I’m not a fan of “hunting” things for trivial reasons. I despised the elite skill capping of GW1. I came into this having already decided I was going to hate the trait capping of GW2. So take that in mind when I say I pretty much entirely loathe what Arena.net did to the trait system.

Revert it back to the way it was, please. I want all my traits without having to do stupid stuff to get them. Thank you.

So, I’m now at level 40, where the NPE was supposed to really come to an “end” initially, and my personal judgment of the matter is “eh.” It’s not nearly as terrible as the vocal forum presence wants to claim… but it’s not a particularly impressive improvement on what existed before.

Some things are better. Some things are more annoying. I guess if you had never played the game before, you wouldn’t be bothered, and would probably like it. For a veteran, I really think the best Arena.net can hope for is that you find it more different than worse.

For me, that’s how I’ve decided to view it.

Except for trait capping.

That can die in a fire.

the npe, is the entire package, they broke it up here, but in china it was released together.
New player is going from 1-80 the first time.
the trait system totally changes the balance of skillpoint, aka traits versus utilities. It dramatically increases the time to getting a max skill/trait/level charachter. Now, you use the same resource to obtain your traits, and your utilities, or you do tasks that most people take quite some time doing.

Vayne.8563:

If they were a clear majority, what’s the reason that Anet hasn’t made that or anything like it?

vayne, too much of your reasoning begins with the assumption anet will always do the best possible thing in any situation.
they are fallible, they make mistakes, and sometimes they dont precisely make a mistake, but choose a different method.

they did try to do underworld stuff, but they rushed it, simplified it, and didnt make it scale well with different size groups.

Im pretty sure many people attempted underworld(or similar dungeons), and played them many times, seeing as how the only ectoplasms in gw1 were from these instances, and there were many, many many ectoplasms used sold, stored throughout the life of gw1. And they didnt drop like candy.

Some times in the attempt to make a better version of something you fail. ANet is not perfect.
They tried to improve the formula, and they didnt really achieve that, in terms of longevity, and desire to do the mode.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

I was thinking about this.

Do you think the UW design was so good because of the quests/map textures and overall open-ended nature of the content?

Looking back and thinking about it, I think the reason why UW was so fun was that:

a. It was a challenge that you could LOSE.
b. There were penalties for dying.
c. Both a. and b. meant that team cooperation was paramount.
d. The rewards were rewarding if your party played well, you lost money if your party played poorly (due to the entrance fee and being kicked out for a full wipe.)

There is not a single dungeon in game that meets ANY of those criteria, EXCEPT maybe a few particular fractals or a few Arah paths.

Any composition can complete nearly any path. You can’t LOSE. Your team may rage quit if it’s terribad, but you can’t actually lose if you keep trying.

There are no penalties for dying. None.

Teams don’t NEED to plan. Sure the speedrunners will might stack, some pugs may decide which warrior is taking which banner, but overall it’s enter dungeon and YOLO mode everything. Bearbow rangers, flamethrower engis, staff guardians, full necro party? Who cares, the content is so easy that you hardly have to plan. Maybe put some walls down here and there for reflects… but really… there’s just no complexity.

Finally, the last point. Rewards. There seems to be two categories of rewards in this game. The guaranteed reward and the so-RNG-gated-that-you’ll-never-see-it-drop reward. Why not something in between? Why not content that is more rewarding the better your team performs?

this is definately part of it, but if it was all that, but one straightforward path, i think it would also have gotten old quicker than it did for most people.

IMO best instanced party system i ever played was actually in an ORPG, phantasy star online. that was back in the late 90s early 0s i think.

challenge mode

It was one per charachter but i made and deleted 100s of charachters. I never got bored, and i joined random parties from challenge mode enthusiasts.

its interesting because it used the same game mechanics that were alwayts there, but you couldnt outlevel content, and start over infinitely/get raised infinitely. Only in this situation did you truely see what the game mechanics were about.

anyhow, i think to be repeatable, yes, you need that risk, you need ways to measure how well you do, and you also need a bit of unpredictability. You definately need a worthwhile reward, but it doesnt have to be randomly generated, it just has to feel appropriately special.

Beldin.5498:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Beldin.5498:

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

If you’re complaining about this content, which is widely considered the end-game content for pretty much every other MMO out there, then what content do you expect to get when you’re asking for an endgame here?

Running Underworld 2920 times in 8 years .. that is fun endgame for the GW1 players i always have the feeling.

Repeating stuff is always boring .. as long as it is not Underworld.

This means nothing to me, because I don’t know what Underworld is, and I’m sure a lot of other users also don’t know. Be descriptive, man. :-|

No problem .. i also don’t know what Underworld is .. but reading the forums and
especially comments from all those GW1 fans then there were maybe 3 zones
called Underworld, The Deep and Ulgoz (or something like that) that were soooo
amazing that they played them endloss for 8 years .. and while everything else
gets boring after doing it 5 times, those zones were sooo amazing that they will
not be boring even if you continue playing them until 2250 at least

Underworld was one of the main dungeons in the game, but it was a dungeon designed like a small zone, with like 8 quests in it. It was relatively fairly difficult (compared to the standard content in the game)
you can think of it like dungeons are in this game, except larger, with more paths all at once.
People didnt always go in with the intent to play the whole zone, they would sometimes just do a couple areas.

Full party death kicked you out of the instance.
you could get tired of it, but it was fairly challenging to complete, and it would take many runs before you saw/did everything for most people. Different order events made the run a bit different depending who you played with.
it had good random drops from enemies, so people were happy to even play the parts of it they liked, as opposed to the whole thing.

game design wise, it was a pretty good game mode.

they also added new dungeons, so people who played it for 6-8 years actually wanted to play it for that time.

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

Bel Geode.8129:

Nerelith.7360:

Just an addendum to the above. There are many Players here on Gw2, that have been asking for some things, since the beginning of gw2, that for them… is what a “casual” MMO should Include.

Off the top of My head, I remember…

1. Player housing
2. combat pets
3. speed boost mounts
4. mounts acquired through gameplay
5. Open world PvP

Go through your chek list. AA has them. Now will all of those players leave for AA?

Maybe …maybe Not. But.. Anet would be foolish to gamble that they will not,.. and downright incompetent not to worry about it.

I played all of the AA beta tests. I kept coming back to Guild Wars 2 every night. Why?

Despite AA having all those things, the whole thing just did not “feel” the same to me.

Also… labor points. What kind of sadistic so and so comes up with that artificial restriction. If GW2 ever had something similar, I can honestly say i would be done.

The only thing on the list above that would make me smile for GW2 would be if player housing was implemented. The others I can gladly live without.

AA is Not for you. That is fine. Not every game has to be for every player. Not every game can please or satisfy every gamer.

To be honest, if AA becomes a Niche game with a dedicated following where the players that Play Know exactly what they are gonna get, have no delusions what the game is, and support it, I’ll be content.

See, this is how I feel about Guild Wars 2. Exactly how I feel.

I don’t care if this game has millions of players. Why? Because I don’t think millions of players share my play style.

I like the game as it is, so I’m happy to talk up Guild Wars 2. The one thing I won’t do, however, is talk up Guild Wars 2 on the Archeage forums.

And yet there are players that do Just that. Come to the Archeage forums. You will find that a LOT more players will talk up Gw2 over there, than players that talk up Archeage over here.

Funny how that works, but hey, I accept it’s part of " new MMO Launch" fever. Players that go there to play will post On the Archeage forums.." hey..Gw2 does THIS better." and Those of us that like Archeage will do it here,..although from what I have seen…a LOT more Politely.

This is what happens when a New MMO is launched… Everyone discusses it everywhere.

If you logged On WoW’s forums 9/10 chances are on page 1 you will fin a few threads labled." what do you think of Archeage?"

Sorry it bothers you, but..it’s part of our gamer culture.

I don’t think it’s right that people do that either. I don’t go into one person’s store and tell people about another store. I wouldn’t do it in real life, so I don’t do it online.

Everyone has to choose their own behavior. I choose not to do it. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. It just means I won’t.

i would, and i have. my goal is to help people get what they want. IF the store they are in doesnt have it, i will tell them where does. If the store is overcharging i will say you can get the samething somewhere else. If the store i am in wants to get that customer, they need to do more than have a store, they need to give the customer something he wants.
You want people shopping at your store because they dont know any better? or because you give them what they want, in a way they enjoy.

point is if people are talking about another store, in your store, its because the other store is offering something you are not, or offering it better than you. You are actually probably better off to know your enemy (store) rather than not know. The customer who comes into your store and tells you, you know this other store has XYZ is probably more helpful than not.

Unless, your goal is that people stay in your store through ignorance, and your goal is to give them an inferior service/product.

but regardless, I dont own the store im just a person, and i will help the guy not finding something in Home Depot by telling him where its being sold, and i will tell home depot, hey you may want to consider X, people are asking for it.

Zodiaci.3218:

…
It seems like you’ve replaced your memory of disappointment that the game is finite with the phrases “There is NO ENDGAME” . So yeah, all I ever asked is “Where did this originate?” It is not a thread of criticism/ideas to improve the endgame.

So what your saying, is you made a thread for the purpose of complaining about people complaining about endgame, and not to be about contructively discussing endgame. So people should stop construtively discussing ideas to improve the game.

yeah, this is funny to me, its also funny to me the red post has the same idea you do.

in my opinion, both you and anet should look at this thread and try to understand why people are saying what they are saying. The fact that you keep hearing people complain about endgame/new content is something both you and them need to really think about.

So far anets answer has been to try to add reward/progression systems using old content, that is not really what needs to happen. They need new content, they made a themepark game, the rides are old now.

Vayne.8563:

Nerelith.7360:

Vayne.8563:

You’re right. AA doesn’t mollycoddle you. It lets you sit in queues for 7 hours,

launch week, all of them have issues. Ever Gw2 had issues On launch. They are working on the situation correctly, they realize that the merely curious won’t stay and will be gone in a few weeks, so adding a Lot of servers is the wring way to go.

brings out packs that make the founders packs relatively obsolete,

This isn’t true. Founder’s pack included alpha server access, all closed beta access guarenteed, up to 3 months of patron status, and a BUNCH of credits you can spend anyway you wish.

The starter has Trion spending those credits for you. I’ll take Founders any day, and twice on sunday. Obsolete? Just a Bunch of whiners whining cause..whiners gotta whine.

tells you it’s a free game, but you pretty much have to subscribe to play it,

marketing. it’s a free2try unlimited duration… stripped down version of the full pay2play AA game. Complaining cause things are not available to free2play, that are granted to subscribers is Like complaining that .. some software has a Premium only for subscribers and a " Lite" for trial users.

and in 3 months, when the free players realize they can’t really play for free it’ll be owned by a few big guilds who control everything.

Pure speculation, so I won’t discuss this at all since it’s launch week

It’s a PvP game without a PvE server. I’m sure it’s going to be very successful.

It is a PvP game at it’s core, it cannot have a PvE server, Not every MMO has to have a PvE server. Any PvE player that comes to AA downloaded a game that may not be for them. Just like Gw2 is Not for players that want mounts.

Have you looked at the forums, they’re far worse than these forums at the worst and that’s on launch day. AA will do okay but it’ll be a niche game, for people who like a very specific experience. My guess is it’ll be pay to win before long.

Forum whiners. Nothing wrong with a Niche game, not every game has to appeal to everyone. And… whether it goes P2win,…Pure speculation..see above.

I really do hope Anet is working on an expansion because if it’s not, there’s going to be issues down the line.

I agree. But none has been announced.

Right now, however, Anet has little to worry about due to Archeage.

There was a time when Players that played EverQuest said the same thing about anew game called “World of Warcraft”

" SoE has little to worry about World of Warcraft, it’s EQ Lite… dumbed down, and stripped down."

Any developer that doesn’t " worry" about it’s competition, should not be running an MMO.

AA and Gw2 are competing for the same food supply. MMO players.

Know what we call a species that refuses to " worry" about a predator that eats the same thing it does?

Extinct.

It IS a different market. Anet knows which side their bread is buttered on. They don’t push the dungeon team. They push achievements and collections. Why? Because my crowd isn’t likely to EVER go to Archeage even if it was truly free…and it’s not. Labor points indeed. If the company is this greedy at launch, just imagine how much fun it’ll be when the launch crowd fades..and it will. It always does.

It’s a misnomer to say that MMO players are the same supply. Any more than people who like sports are all going to like baseball. There’s casual people, hard core people, people who want sand box, people who want theme park. Traditionally, theme park MMORPGs have had more players than sandbox. I believe that trend will continue.

This game had a lot of problems at launch…but at launch these forums didn’t look those those forums.

gw2 doesnt need to fear AA, in a way, GW2 needs to fear every mmo, because they are not maximizing, and improving the appeal of their game, hence, they will lose a lot of players to a lot of different games. AA wont kill it, but it will bleed it, WS wont kill it but it ll bleed, WoW expansion? bleed. Because once you play gw2 for awhile, you can just stop, it is not growing. it is not expanding, it is not getting deeper.

So no, AA wouldnt be a threat to a strong new gw2, they are really different markets with only slight overlap, but people who been playing this game for awhile are starving for substantial content, they are going to go where the food is.

And AA, has some big probs, but its not something you can get in too many places, if you like it, even somewhat, thats basically the game you will have to play, probably till black desert hits.

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I enjoyed GW1, and my main character an Elementalist was the only character I realy got a connection too… All my other character was cool and I made a story for them sure… But it is no different there for me in GW2 as all my characters are decendants to my old characters and I have made stories for them too and actually thanks to the open world and more advanced mechanics I have a better connection to my GW2 characters. As I play the game and do the Living story I evolve my characters own stories and I base my answers to their personality, it does not always work but it is something atleast.

In GW1 I more or less used the same skills and setup through all my time while playing the game… Why I had to change was becouse of introduction of new skills or fixes to old skills. I see no difference in GW1 and GW2 build making in posabilities, it is all the same but the only difference is there are more skills in GW1 than in GW2 but there are still more or less the same ammount of viable builds.

I picked up GW1 a few months ago as I was going to show my girlfriend the game I played it for about 10min and just couldn’t continue… I just couldn’t find the feel for it anymore, everything fealt so stale and it was so slow and more… I just couldn’t continue. I wan’t to becouse I want more in my HoM but as I don’t have the feel for it, it will just feel like work.

i agree going back is hard, but i will tell you 100% not true that gw2 has more viable builds than gw1

Javonovich.5280:

For me, my favorite part of GW1 was vanquishing because I could revisit all of the areas I went through with a new purpose. In GW2, I feel like there is a massive world out there with absolutely no reason for me to go. I also like the GW1 dungeons because they were challenging but soloable. I don’t usually like playing with other people in organized groups too much because I can’t do that casually. For example, on GW1, I could jump right into Frostmaw’s Burrows if I wanted without the headache of trying to organize a team.

Right now I’ve been doing a lot of SoloQ because my server isn’t the greatest at WvW, and to be honest, I don’t much like WvW because of food, perplexity runes, unstandardized gear, etc. So I stick with spvp where a little more skill is needed. Now if ANET allowed everyone to pvp in WvW with the free runes and gear like the pvp system in GW1, it would be a lot different for me. Then I would be able to gear up my toons solely for pve and not have to double grind to outfit them for WvW and also for dungeons and open world pve.

All in all GW2 is a great game, but the more I play it, the more I realize it isn’t for me. I know some people didn’t like it, but my favorite part of GW2 was exploring new areas, getting vistas, completing maps, and stumbling onto jumping puzzles. But now that I’ve gone through all of the open world, what once was a huge game is now rather limited for me. I wouldn’t mind going back to some of my favorite GW2 areas if I only had a real incentive to do it.

this touches on some of the big things i think gw2 is missing,

1)there is nothing you can do as solo or small team that is under your control. Essentially no small team play with an objective that isnt so easy you cant lose.
in gw1, it was all like that. You could do a mission, or vanquish, or attempt a dungeon. Here, the only thing similar to that is dungeons, which is a 5 man affair. There are a few dynamic event chains that give that feel, but they are few, and they may not be happening at any time.
Essentially, i cant hop on and just do some small objective, i think thats why people used to like personal story key runs to some extent.

2)there isnt much to do in the world once you have done it all. after you get to max level, basically the game is all about some sort of repetive grind for max gold if you arent pvping. Very little interesting repeatable content.

Zok.4956:

notorious bob.2061:

So I logged back into my GW1 account yesterday, just to have a potter about for old times sake.

I started playing GW1 after GW2 (bought GW1 on the steam sale a few weeks ago) und played GW1 for some hours to understand why people are saying it is so better than GW2.

Well, after a few hours I stopped playing GW1. For me the questing was so “old style classical MMO boring”, fights were rather static. GW2 was and is much more fun for me. GW1 isn’t working for me, but GW2 is.

GW2 is not a sequel to GW1. GW1 and GW2 are two total different games that share the Name “guild wars” and some of the lore. So it is then normal, that GW1 works for some people, but GW2 not (and vice versa).

Greetings.

its not an action MMO like this one, if you need action combat, you can never play GW1. Questing does often feel like a big step back, I dont think questing shouldnt exist, but i think it should be for things that need quests. The dynamic event system for random things in the world, is a far superior system imo.

That said, missions totally obliterates personal story, and elite missions better than our dungeons.

personally i am glad that gw2 is different, especially when it comes to combat, freedom of movement, fully 3d world, etc.

but to be honest i dont think gw2 has lived up to its own intial release yet. GW1 each campaign, was for me an improved experience. GW2, most of the content updates have not expanded or improved on the game that shipped.

the amount of skills traits jobs, zones etc was really good for release, not so good at the 2 year mark

Lishtenbird.2814:

Some people should really do their math for armour and weapons properly before talking about some hilarious 0.6% and naming threads “Ascended gear is trash”. Even Wiki can tell you the difference.

pretty sure they were talking about the weapon only, not sure what the number on that would be.

Olvendred.3027:

phys.7689:

Olvendred.3027:

I picked up GW1 a few months ago to have a go and do some HoM stuff. It can be quite fun, and I’m slowly working my way along. I’ve completed all the stories on normal mode, and they’re quite interesting (except Prophecies, which is boring as kitten).

That said, as someone who played GW1 after GW2, the skill unlock system from GW1 was one of the absolute worst features of the game. As a new player, I wanted to try all sorts of new things and experience the game and experiment with builds and all that stuff everyone talks about with GW1. I also wanted to challenge myself with some of the harder content. However, all this was gated behind a massive grind. Not only did I have to accumulate what was, to a new player, vast amounts of currency and skill points (ie. xp grind) to buy skills and Signets of Capture, but I had to go out in the world and tediously find and kill bosses (relying on a guide, of course. This couldn’t be done just through exploration) again and again to find the skills I needed, let alone a variety of skills to choose from. I couldn’t even take my full normal skill-bar to do so, since I had to put Signets of Capture on it. Nor could I unlock skills for any more than one extra profession (beyond my core profession) at a time, meaning that getting skills and elites for all my heroes took even more time, and even more repetition of the exact same content (and even more platinum).

PvP was, of course, absolutely out of the question. There was no possible way I could have competed meaningfully, so I had to ignore it.

So, OP, while you were able to potter around in GW1 for old times sake… the only reason you could do so was because you had invested so much time in the game in the first place. You got past the very, very long initial grind to be able to experience all the vaunted depth of playstyle, and to be able to succeed in any part of the world. For me, I found that GW2 is considerably less gated, restricted and grindy.

the only skills that needed to be captured were elites.
for each class there were 15-35 elites, and you didnt really need them all. In fact, i think only my assassin had all their elites.

getting every elite skill was considered a fairly long term goal, similar to say getting all classes to 80 in this game. ( you are basically playing every class if you need every elite)

you essentially got the elites you wanted to get, not so much every elite. The same with skills, except skills required virtually no work at all.

Generally, getting elites wasnt that bad, you get some hench/heroes, and you make a running build to run through zone. Probably the biggest deal was the platinum, but if you do it on multi charachters, and unlock it with elite scrolls, you can save a lil money.

You only need to capture elites, but you do need the money to buy most of the normal skills too. And sure, I only unlocked the elites I was told to by the builds I was using. But everyone talks about how GW1 has all this great complexity and depth with builds (the OP referenced playing how you want)… I couldn’t access that. Except for simply following guides, that aspect of the game was utterly opaque and inaccessible to me. And hell, simply getting access to a few hero team builds seemed long and grindy.

Save a little plat on multiple characters… maybe… assuming you want to do the exact same story (no choices. same cutscenes. same dialogue.) and unlock all the same zones all over again… and gear another character (not too expensive, but still money)… and somehow get a lot of tomes….

I’m not saying GW1 is a bad game. The initial rush of leveling and completing the stories for the first time was certainly very fun. But beyond that, getting access to all the things that people who played for 6 years talk about… that’s a very long term goal for me. I don’t mind playing, but I don’t feel much motivation to do so for more than a couple of hours a fortnight.

Mostly what I’m saying is that the perspective of a new player to GW1 can be a lot different from a veteran.

i will agree, that elites was a bit opaque, they actually have a fair amount of elite in zones you normally go through, though they dont tell you this ahead of time. So yeah, it basically was generally something you looked up, though i used to go around with a signet of capture myself, just in case i found something i wanted.

and no, it wasnt a perfect game, but it had some strengths, that i think one could use as inspiration. My perspective of GW1 was from a newbie though, i wasnt familiar with it until i started playing it.

I also agree prophecies was boring, many people say it was the best, i totally disagree.

Galen Grey.4709:

I never said it was perfect, to what you listed I would also add temple related ones are also bad since you have no way of knowing when an event is going to start and worst yet if you dont have enough backup to complete it (though with the megaserver this may no longer be an issue) It can be refined for sure, everything can but on the whole as an idea, I think it works. It gives direction, worthy reward and I dont feel really kitten until its reached.

ok, i see a disconnect here, you are thinking if they did skills the same way they did traits, increasing costs or doing a big quest.
I was saying, if they kept the skills costs essentially the same, and for new special skills they added the other option of hunting/quest as opposed to spending 25 skill points.

As far as not adding endgame, they already said that if they added new weapons, they would make it a post level 80 thing. So they had already concieved of the idea of something being different at higher levels.
notice they gave traits rarity colors? well they could essentially do the same thing and make it so that exotic rarity traits (or ascended) had a different means of aquisition.

regardless, whether you think it a good idea or not, the fact is, the system they came up with creates a noticeablely different experience than the system people were presenting. Therefore, people saying this is what the people were asking for is extremely inaccurate. They may have been inspired by what people were asking for, but they took it in a far different direction, and different implementation, which essentially is a big departure on the intent of peoples suggestions.

and imo, the temple ones arent really that bad, compared to map completion, the biggest problem is that with megaservers, now many of these never get to a fail state, and you can no longer track whats happening in the world, but imo this was a flaw created with the megaservers, which essentially severely limit the future of dynamic events. (shame because that is, imo one of the best aspects of the game, when done well)

Olvendred.3027:

I picked up GW1 a few months ago to have a go and do some HoM stuff. It can be quite fun, and I’m slowly working my way along. I’ve completed all the stories on normal mode, and they’re quite interesting (except Prophecies, which is boring as kitten).

That said, as someone who played GW1 after GW2, the skill unlock system from GW1 was one of the absolute worst features of the game. As a new player, I wanted to try all sorts of new things and experience the game and experiment with builds and all that stuff everyone talks about with GW1. I also wanted to challenge myself with some of the harder content. However, all this was gated behind a massive grind. Not only did I have to accumulate what was, to a new player, vast amounts of currency and skill points (ie. xp grind) to buy skills and Signets of Capture, but I had to go out in the world and tediously find and kill bosses (relying on a guide, of course. This couldn’t be done just through exploration) again and again to find the skills I needed, let alone a variety of skills to choose from. I couldn’t even take my full normal skill-bar to do so, since I had to put Signets of Capture on it. Nor could I unlock skills for any more than one extra profession (beyond my core profession) at a time, meaning that getting skills and elites for all my heroes took even more time, and even more repetition of the exact same content (and even more platinum).

PvP was, of course, absolutely out of the question. There was no possible way I could have competed meaningfully, so I had to ignore it.

So, OP, while you were able to potter around in GW1 for old times sake… the only reason you could do so was because you had invested so much time in the game in the first place. You got past the very, very long initial grind to be able to experience all the vaunted depth of playstyle, and to be able to succeed in any part of the world. For me, I found that GW2 is considerably less gated, restricted and grindy.

the only skills that needed to be captured were elites.
for each class there were 15-35 elites, and you didnt really need them all. In fact, i think only my assassin had all their elites.

getting every elite skill was considered a fairly long term goal, similar to say getting all classes to 80 in this game. ( you are basically playing every class if you need every elite)

you essentially got the elites you wanted to get, not so much every elite. The same with skills, except skills required virtually no work at all.

Generally, getting elites wasnt that bad, you get some hench/heroes, and you make a running build to run through zone. Probably the biggest deal was the platinum, but if you do it on multi charachters, and unlock it with elite scrolls, you can save a lil money.

Esplen.3940:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

The big value of Ascended, however, wasn’t really the stats, in my view – it was the ability to get Infusions and hit higher level Fractals through the Agony Resistance. There is no other way short of insane dodging skillz.

Other than the auto-hit by Agony sections of fights, yes. I got to around 24 before getting my first AR (pre-fractured).

Even the +5 stats aren’t that big of a deal, even if you’re a min-maxing.

i noticed a lot more unavoidable agony after fractured, so i would say agony resist is kind of necessary now.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

phys.7689:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Relentliss.2170:

I have to agree. My GW2 character does nothing special. There is nothing she does that a million other characters don’t do.

I could say the same thing about my GW1 character. Or my D&D characters, or my MTG deck . . .

if your mtg deck isnt unique, thats by choice, they have so many possibilities, its probably way greater than 10 billion

Oh it’s unique in its own way but a Blue/Black mill deck is usually . . . going to involve blue and black cards, and the goal of making you drop cards from your library out of play until you lose.

That’s like saying every ranger is the same, because they have two pets and a limited amount of weapons and skills available. There is the same narrow band of options, while still retaining a chance to have some individuality. But everyone still knows “Ranger” or “Blue/Black Mill” means a particular thing, even if they don’t know what exactly it is.

Also, I think the individuality of a character or a deck or whatever isn’t in the construction (writing, design, whatever) . . . it’s in the actor/player behind the face.

well, blue black mill can be pretty different in style, counter heavy? defense heavy? get hp back? mill based on drawing? self mill? counter elixir of life? exile it? big deck, small deck? its can be vastly different in playstyle. But i digress

Galen Grey.4709:

phys.7689:

but the people werent asking for a system that made old skills require new expensive costs, they were talking about additional skills they add, like the heal which costed 25 skill points.
They were like getting new skills for some obscene amount of points is lame, how about you create an alternate means for those that want to explore.

no one told them to do it retroactively for traits, no one said to dramatically increase the costs of obtaining traits or skills.

So saying this is what people asked for is inaccurate. It would have been substantially different, in fact it probably would have been highly loved, if they added 5 skills to each class, and you had an option of paying 25-30 skillpoints (what they were already selecting for new skills at the time) or doing something in the game world, preferably something that made sense with that skill being there.

they missed the intent, overshot the scope of the change, and poorly executed it. I dont think you can blame posters for that.

Even if people were asking exactly for what you’re saying its easy to conclude it would never have been implement just like that. For starters I am sure the last thing Anet want is to have 100 skills you get one way and 20 skills you get some other way. Whatever they changed had to be unified and based on what they did with the traits (tasks to do for an unlock. which it had to be kill a champion would just be too trivial which would make it meaningless) just wouldnt work with skills. If it takes you a week to unlock a trait (zone completion, temple runs etc..) its no big deal, traits provide a boost but you’re perfectly functional without them. Utility skills its another thing thing though 1 week without a skill you need is too limiting.

So no I wouldnt say “they missed the intent, overshot the scope of the change, and poorly executed it. I dont think you can blame posters for that.” They simply saw what game play people wanted (unlock skills) designed how to best do it in a way thats meaningful (killing a champion would be too trivial. having players kill a champion 50 times for a skill drop would be too grindy / boring) and then decided it made more sense if they applied it to traits then skills which well I completely agree. while I dont like the new leveling changes I love what they did with the traits. If they did the same with skills though I would hate it those arent as optional as traits to me and thus would be a problem if took a long time to be able to access the once you need.

ok
1) this was proposed as an endgame horizontal progression, it doesnt have to follow the same rules as early game things. Its pretty common to create a different extra system for many types of progression in MMOs.
Also, they already were adding skills for 25 skill points, this was a DIFFERENT option.

2) the tasks they chose for traits are sometimes as trivial as kill a champion, but i never suggested that would be the ideal methodology.

3)No newly created skill is needed(because you already have a plethora to choose from), but even if it was, how long do you think it takes the average player to amass 25 skill points from 0? probably a week or longer, why is it fine that it takes a week of work through skill points ALREADY for new high end skills?
Also though you percieve traits as lesser, that entirely depends on the trait. On my mesmer illusionary persona gets more use than any of my utility skills by far. Mantra trait, when gives me more mantra uses than adding the last mantra. (8 casts versus 9 casts) This is subjective, i would say that traits define your build more than utilities. My traits are actually what tend to make or break a build.
clone on dodge?
damage + hp on steal?
ini gain on steal?
critical hits cause vuln?
criticak hits steal hp?

yeah, traits can be a pretty big deal.

they actually said why they chose traits, because it costs less time to make a trait.

I see you said you love the trait revamp, even if i thought you were right and traits were the way to go, the execution of it, is imo completely messed up, on multiple levels. Map completion is a chore, EOTM/WVW unlocks dont jive well with pve players, and they selected things in WvW that are generally considered wastes of resources. The range for accessibility on the low end skills are too high. Skills are linked randomly to events regardless on how useful/type of skill it is. The UI for trait hunting, and descriptions are confusing and poor, And after the first time doing the same exact thing for every class will generally be dull and uninspired. Not to mention, many people now hit 80 and have virtually no skills, or the resources to obtain them.

not good imo

RiverSong.5067:

I thought i was getting more than a very expensive skin. Now i don’t have anything to do but reroll.

If only it was just the gold… I can get more gold. It’s the time i spent working on that gear. I’m about 900 empyreal fragments now, that’s quite a few dungeons. I hate GW2 dungeons…

Guess i won’t be doing them anymore. That and a number of things.

you get it fairly easy in eotm/wvw
you can also get it from open world treasure chests.

Vayne.8563:

I actually agree with this…and I like crafting.

I think too many things force players to craft who don’t like it.

yes, i really dont know what made them decide that crafting your own gear should be required for best in slot. They had already started down the path with legendaries.

I generally enjoy crafting, but it should never have been something required. Why should friends who absolutely hate crafting have to grind to level 500 to get best in slot.

MikaHR.1978:

phys.7689:

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

Hope they never ever listen to GW1 suggestions (khm…traits….khm)

you keep saying this, but im pretty sure its not accurate, can you point me to where people asked for existing traits to become unlocks? im pretty sure that never happened.

People asked for GW2 to add something like unlocking Elite skills in GW. I’m pretty sure they weren’t talking about redoing the traits, though. What they were really looking for was new skills, new Elites especially and new content to unlock them in. What we got instead was a trait revamp, which is very unlike GW Elite capture. ANet puts their own twists on player requests. I’m pretty sure a lot of people who wanted gear progression were unhappy with ANet’s version, and a lot who wanted raids were unhappy with instance taxiing to do Teq.

I think what Mika is saying is, “With ANet, be careful what you ask for, you may not recognize it when you get it.”

based on his past interactions, im pretty sure he is saying that literally people were asking for traits to be unlocked.
His argument wouldnt make sense otherwise, he basically uses it as justification that they shouldnt listen to players.

And what you said is correct, the discussion for unlocks was centered around how they chose to add new skills, which was generally, pay 25-50 skill points being a bad, and not engaging mechanic, and even if that was how they wanted to do it, also they should offer an alternate method, for new skills to be aquired. They also said it should/could have an unlock method in context with the skill.

but yes, it wasnt what people were asking for, and it really wasnt executed with the same spirit that it was intended.

Their decision to revamp traits is directly linked to GW1 whines about skill capture and how “awesome” it was.

Now other 95% of playerbase has to suffer the consequences.

So yeah, no more listening to GW1 whines….ever.

But thats not isolated case, no more listening to small groups like:

raiders
dungeon runners
vertical progression whiners (although lot of damage is already done with ascended)
trinity whiners (although some damage was already done)
hardcore whiners
farmer whiners
….
….
….
And that pretty much easily covers 90%+ whines on forums (not just this one)

but the people werent asking for a system that made old skills require new expensive costs, they were talking about additional skills they add, like the heal which costed 25 skill points.
They were like getting new skills for some obscene amount of points is lame, how about you create an alternate means for those that want to explore.

no one told them to do it retroactively for traits, no one said to dramatically increase the costs of obtaining traits or skills.

So saying this is what people asked for is inaccurate. It would have been substantially different, in fact it probably would have been highly loved, if they added 5 skills to each class, and you had an option of paying 25-30 skillpoints (what they were already selecting for new skills at the time) or doing something in the game world, preferably something that made sense with that skill being there.

they missed the intent, overshot the scope of the change, and poorly executed it. I dont think you can blame posters for that.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Relentliss.2170:

I have to agree. My GW2 character does nothing special. There is nothing she does that a million other characters don’t do.

I could say the same thing about my GW1 character. Or my D&D characters, or my MTG deck . . .

if your mtg deck isnt unique, thats by choice, they have so many possibilities, its probably way greater than 10 billion

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

So what about the veteran players that have been complaining since day one the the living story was too disjointed and we had to keep stopping to continue, or wait ten levels and have five stories of completely useless rewards.

You said living story here but in a later post clarified that you meant personal story. So I’m going to reply in regard to personal story and the pre-NPE stop and start aspect of it. Ready? Here goes.

As I have said again and again, anet could fill in the blanks in the personal story. There’s plenty of room for all sorts of missions involving people our characters meet along the way.

How about more charr warband missions, more asura krewe missions, more human friends and family missions? We meet these guys, do a couple of things with them, and then abandon them. Why?

This exemplifies one of my greatest pet peeves about GW2: wasted potential.

i was actually thinking they should do something like this myself, create side stories essentially.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

chemiclord.3978:

21-30

Completing this personal story chunk got me to level 21… and also earned me the skin for a T1 chestpiece. I’m sure there are some collectors who won’t like that little development.

Shortly having finished said personal story, the rules changed on me. Now I have all three utility skills. Okay… I guess that’s how it goes when you are doing something in the middle of a revision process.

It is during this period where I really start to see the improvements in the leveling system. With the utility traits unlocking more or less as normal, the tweak to gear dropping (as well as the occasional toy from leveling), has really helped prevent me from being underpowered for level relevant content without having to resort to crafting (which is an element I’ve never particularly liked in any MMO).

These levels also seem to be going by faster than I remember… though granted, I could just be fooling myself.

Really, there’s not much else to say on this particular clump, as by the time I got here, there was nothing particularly new to unlock, and as such there’s not much I can say about how it felt before.

But now I take a deep breath, for I have now unlocked the new trait mechanic. I already know I’m going to hate it. The question is how much? We shall see!

ahh, for me personally 22-30 was super boring and i just had to grind it out. I EOTMed, i did some hearts, hunted down dynamic events.
Its odd because i like personal story, up to this point (tends to go downhill for me when i join an order) but i really hate the no drops in personal story thing now, so i come away feeling like i am wasting my time slightly.

Did you do it after or before teh experience point 20-30 fix?

As for the personal story the rewards you get at the end are better, to me anyway, than the stuff you used to get during.

after.

i think perhaps it has to do with me generally really never liking map completion, and now thats pretty much the focus for 10 levels at a time.

See, I don’t map complete. Sometimes I even turn off all the map markers. I just run around and act as if my character is actually in the zone. See what they see, hear what they hear. I’m always always finding something I either haven’t seen or don’t remember seeing.

i kind of do that, i just dont end up leveling very fast, or I do most of the stuff i actually want to do in the zone before i am high level enough to leave it. Then im usually left with a bunch of stuff im trying to avoid left, or i have to go to a different zone in the same leveling range.

Sometimes i catch a lot of dynamic events and it works out, some times the dynamic events seem rather barren.

If I really think about it, I’m led around by gathering nodes, since I gather absolutely everything. Particularly once you get into the 20-30 area, softwood, iron are required items that I never get enough of.

I just follow my nodes (pun intended).

And you know whatever’s on the way, in the way. I pass through a heart, get a couple of hits on something move on. I’ll be back to finish the heart another time. It’s not that important.

But you’re right, I don’t level fast unless I’m focused on leveling fast. The point is, if you don’t really enjoy leveling, nothing is going to make it a whole lot better. If you enjoy leveling, leveling slower isn’t really that much of an issue.

It’s likely that EotM is always going to be better for you, no matter what you do. Or SPvP for level up tomes.

eotm is good for small bursts, but to be honest a low level is a complete leech, you melt instantaneously when battles happen, and barely get enough dmg to claim mobs.

Spvp is good for spvping, but for getting levels? its pretty bad, its more like if you want to spvp, you get some cool side stuff.

I still enjoy pve, somewhat. I mostly enjoy dynamic events, cool chains, and mini dungeons when people are doing them. I generally hate hearts(well any heart i cant get while doing something more entertaining, and ignore vistas/pois unless they are around and easy. I also dont gather consistently, its fairly random if i feel like it.

Ayrilana.1396:

Ohoni.6057:

They’re influencing demand, not creating it though.

That’s an entirely pointless distinction to make. It’s like saying that stabbing someone with a sword is “encouraging blood loss, not creating it.” Whatever the terminology, it is within their power to make certain items more or less desirable to the players, so they cannot claim that player demand is some entirely alien force that they can do nothing to account for.

No not really pointless but I can understand why you’d say it is because you cannot see the difference. It’s all part of the argument that this is a player-driven economy which you don’t seem to understand which is likely because you don’t know what a player-driven economy actually is.

Yea but the fact that they’re two separate things is what’s at issue or at least with the argument made that the economy isnt player driven but completely controlled by Anet. It’s being argued that they’re the same when they’re not.

It is a collaboration, will you at least agree to that much? The economy is a result of the combined actions of the players AND ANet. The relevant distinction here is that “the players” is an uncoordinated mass of hundreds of thousands of individuals, each seeking out their own best advantage, while ANet is a single unified entity.

If I, as A player, decide that I want to shift a given market in a certain direction, I have almost no power to do so. I can post a recklessly high sell order, and nobody will notice. I can post a recklessly low one, and lose a ton of money, but it’ll be snapped up and the economy will grind on. Individual players have almost negligible influence on the markets.

On the other hand, ANet can always add a new recipe that either makes something way easier to get, or way more useful to have. They can make something drop more often, or drop less often. ANet has WAY more tools to almost effortlessly shift market behaviors, so discussions about this being a “player driven” economy are entirely semantic in nature, it’s obviously ANet that holds the reigns. The GW2 economy is “player driven” in the same way that a dog race is “dog driven.” Yeah, the dogs will do their own thing, but the humans prepared the ring and set the mechanical rabbit loose, and the dogs gonna run.

I’ll agree with you that it’s a collaboration but that’s as far as we’re going to agree unfortunately.

phys.7689:

Ayrilana.1396:

@Ohoni:

I don’t feel like quoting so i’m numbering each of your topics as 1-4 but only adressing the first two.

1) I do not believe you understand what player demand actually is nor what Anet’s role would actually be.

2) Anet has stated that they want a player driven economy. Just because they have the ability, does not mean that they should. You are confusing the type of economy we have in this game versus what you believe to be an ideal economy for you.

your theory is shot to heck by the fact that anet has repeatedly stepped in and altered the economy multiple times based on what they decided was important.

Its really not a question of whether anet can/should alter the economy through design. They do that every few months at the very least. They can and will do it at will. They actually know very well that this is not a truely player driven economy, even JS has said, it is player driven to a degree.
It is probably not possible for a game developer to have a truely player driven economy, being as they design the game.

But lets say it was a player driven economy, its highly likely the supply on highly desired items would be more elastic.

How is it “shot to heck”? I’ve stated that they influence the economy. That’s exactly what they did. No different than what a government’s actions have on an economy.

They strive for a completely player driven economy just as they strive for it to be a free market. Nothing will ever be 100%. In the real world, we don’t even have that although it’s something we strive for. What people are asking is for Anet to step away from that and go in the complete opposite direction by regulating the market for various items.

but they do regulate the market for various items, they did it for almost all low level crafting materials, they did it for silk, they did it for halloween II, they did it when they gave out the mystic conduit, they did it when they added lions arch commendations, they did it when they lowered mystic forge rates, they did it when they increased rates they constantly do regulate the market.

You can debate whether this situation warrants it, or would be good design, but you cant really argue that its against anets design principles to regulate the market. Thats well within their normal behavior.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

chemiclord.3978:

21-30

Completing this personal story chunk got me to level 21… and also earned me the skin for a T1 chestpiece. I’m sure there are some collectors who won’t like that little development.

Shortly having finished said personal story, the rules changed on me. Now I have all three utility skills. Okay… I guess that’s how it goes when you are doing something in the middle of a revision process.

It is during this period where I really start to see the improvements in the leveling system. With the utility traits unlocking more or less as normal, the tweak to gear dropping (as well as the occasional toy from leveling), has really helped prevent me from being underpowered for level relevant content without having to resort to crafting (which is an element I’ve never particularly liked in any MMO).

These levels also seem to be going by faster than I remember… though granted, I could just be fooling myself.

Really, there’s not much else to say on this particular clump, as by the time I got here, there was nothing particularly new to unlock, and as such there’s not much I can say about how it felt before.

But now I take a deep breath, for I have now unlocked the new trait mechanic. I already know I’m going to hate it. The question is how much? We shall see!

ahh, for me personally 22-30 was super boring and i just had to grind it out. I EOTMed, i did some hearts, hunted down dynamic events.
Its odd because i like personal story, up to this point (tends to go downhill for me when i join an order) but i really hate the no drops in personal story thing now, so i come away feeling like i am wasting my time slightly.

Did you do it after or before teh experience point 20-30 fix?

As for the personal story the rewards you get at the end are better, to me anyway, than the stuff you used to get during.

after.

i think perhaps it has to do with me generally really never liking map completion, and now thats pretty much the focus for 10 levels at a time.

See, I don’t map complete. Sometimes I even turn off all the map markers. I just run around and act as if my character is actually in the zone. See what they see, hear what they hear. I’m always always finding something I either haven’t seen or don’t remember seeing.

i kind of do that, i just dont end up leveling very fast, or I do most of the stuff i actually want to do in the zone before i am high level enough to leave it. Then im usually left with a bunch of stuff im trying to avoid left, or i have to go to a different zone in the same leveling range.

Sometimes i catch a lot of dynamic events and it works out, some times the dynamic events seem rather barren.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

chemiclord.3978:

21-30

Completing this personal story chunk got me to level 21… and also earned me the skin for a T1 chestpiece. I’m sure there are some collectors who won’t like that little development.

Shortly having finished said personal story, the rules changed on me. Now I have all three utility skills. Okay… I guess that’s how it goes when you are doing something in the middle of a revision process.

It is during this period where I really start to see the improvements in the leveling system. With the utility traits unlocking more or less as normal, the tweak to gear dropping (as well as the occasional toy from leveling), has really helped prevent me from being underpowered for level relevant content without having to resort to crafting (which is an element I’ve never particularly liked in any MMO).

These levels also seem to be going by faster than I remember… though granted, I could just be fooling myself.

Really, there’s not much else to say on this particular clump, as by the time I got here, there was nothing particularly new to unlock, and as such there’s not much I can say about how it felt before.

But now I take a deep breath, for I have now unlocked the new trait mechanic. I already know I’m going to hate it. The question is how much? We shall see!

ahh, for me personally 22-30 was super boring and i just had to grind it out. I EOTMed, i did some hearts, hunted down dynamic events.
Its odd because i like personal story, up to this point (tends to go downhill for me when i join an order) but i really hate the no drops in personal story thing now, so i come away feeling like i am wasting my time slightly.

Did you do it after or before teh experience point 20-30 fix?

As for the personal story the rewards you get at the end are better, to me anyway, than the stuff you used to get during.

after.

i think perhaps it has to do with me generally really never liking map completion, and now thats pretty much the focus for 10 levels at a time.

Vayne.8563:

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

Hope they never ever listen to GW1 suggestions (khm…traits….khm)

you keep saying this, but im pretty sure its not accurate, can you point me to where people asked for existing traits to become unlocks? im pretty sure that never happened.

There was a thread, search function doesn’t work so good luck finding it, and in it the thread people were talking about how the old skill hunting stuff was great in Guild Wars 1 and we should bring it here. In that thread, many said it wouldn’t work for skills, there weren’t enough of them and you need them pretty early, but that it would work for traits.

It wasn’t a huge outcry in a bunch of threads, but skill hunting has come up a number of times and people said they liked it better than the way skills were in Guild Wars 2, just handed to you, and in every thread I can remember on the subject, it always shifted from skills to traits in the thread and always had at least some support.

Edit: It might have even been mentioned in the CDI thread on horizontal progression. I seem to remember that, but in that case, I can’t say for sure.

i remember the talk, i dont remember any one suggesting it for traits, if you can find these posts it will be good to read

chemiclord.3978:

21-30

Completing this personal story chunk got me to level 21… and also earned me the skin for a T1 chestpiece. I’m sure there are some collectors who won’t like that little development.

Shortly having finished said personal story, the rules changed on me. Now I have all three utility skills. Okay… I guess that’s how it goes when you are doing something in the middle of a revision process.

It is during this period where I really start to see the improvements in the leveling system. With the utility traits unlocking more or less as normal, the tweak to gear dropping (as well as the occasional toy from leveling), has really helped prevent me from being underpowered for level relevant content without having to resort to crafting (which is an element I’ve never particularly liked in any MMO).

These levels also seem to be going by faster than I remember… though granted, I could just be fooling myself.

Really, there’s not much else to say on this particular clump, as by the time I got here, there was nothing particularly new to unlock, and as such there’s not much I can say about how it felt before.

But now I take a deep breath, for I have now unlocked the new trait mechanic. I already know I’m going to hate it. The question is how much? We shall see!

ahh, for me personally 22-30 was super boring and i just had to grind it out. I EOTMed, i did some hearts, hunted down dynamic events.
Its odd because i like personal story, up to this point (tends to go downhill for me when i join an order) but i really hate the no drops in personal story thing now, so i come away feeling like i am wasting my time slightly.

IndigoSundown.5419:

phys.7689:

MikaHR.1978:

Hope they never ever listen to GW1 suggestions (khm…traits….khm)

you keep saying this, but im pretty sure its not accurate, can you point me to where people asked for existing traits to become unlocks? im pretty sure that never happened.

People asked for GW2 to add something like unlocking Elite skills in GW. I’m pretty sure they weren’t talking about redoing the traits, though. What they were really looking for was new skills, new Elites especially and new content to unlock them in. What we got instead was a trait revamp, which is very unlike GW Elite capture. ANet puts their own twists on player requests. I’m pretty sure a lot of people who wanted gear progression were unhappy with ANet’s version, and a lot who wanted raids were unhappy with instance taxiing to do Teq.

I think what Mika is saying is, “With ANet, be careful what you ask for, you may not recognize it when you get it.”

based on his past interactions, im pretty sure he is saying that literally people were asking for traits to be unlocked.
His argument wouldnt make sense otherwise, he basically uses it as justification that they shouldnt listen to players.

And what you said is correct, the discussion for unlocks was centered around how they chose to add new skills, which was generally, pay 25-50 skill points being a bad, and not engaging mechanic, and even if that was how they wanted to do it, also they should offer an alternate method, for new skills to be aquired. They also said it should/could have an unlock method in context with the skill.

but yes, it wasnt what people were asking for, and it really wasnt executed with the same spirit that it was intended.