Guild Wars 2

I see a lot of bank guilds claiming things in WvW if this happens. I’d be opposed. I like the idea, but I’m not sure the existing claiming rules are enough to protect against greedy claimers.

Just. Be. Patient. Don’t get greedy and start buying swords off the TP from sell orders. Place your buy orders (45 silver was my high mark) and wait. You will quickly bankrupt yourself if you don’t play it safe.

Also, expect it to use up all the gold you have now and then some.

Noted. My point was simply that players who routinely ignore incentives are now complaining about incentives. They should do as they’ve always done: ignore the incentives and Play How They Want.

Their argument boils down to “incentives force me to do it.” They make no distinction.

Oddly, incentives should also force them to run full Zerker speed clear paths to earn gold, but they manage to ignore those incentives just fine.

My guess is that 95% will move on and the rest will keep bringing it up whenever possible, change their signatures to some snarky comment about it, and be a general pain around here.

We’ve seen it before with Fractal reset and Megaserver. I imagine it’ll be similar.

Hello forum posters.

I am writing this to you with my dying breaths. Upon reading the advice in this thread, I determined I would like to skip my dailies. After all, it is the holidays and I am busy with family.

Little did I know, terror would befall me. When I recognized that I would miss out on a potential 10 achievement points, my chest cried out in pain. A heart attack, I think. I’m not really sure. I fully intend to head to the hospital, but I wanted to make sure I updated here first.

I will hopefully survive, but right now, I’m beginning to think maybe I just should have done like five minutes of WvW or ten minutes of PvP.

With regrets and soon to be dead,

Karaoke

Any T5 will do, Pristine Snowflakes are just a little cheaper right now, I think. 7c each may not be a lot for one, but if you’re buying 7500, it adds up.

Keep in mind this is a higher risk strategy and 200g probably isn’t enough to get your pre. If you’re willing to keep up the strategy over many months, throwing 2k or more rare swords into the Forge, though, on average it will pay off.

I got Zap for about 200g when accounting for money earned back by selling exotics. My advice: buy orders for rare swords under 45 silver, forge, sell exotics for at least 3.5-4g. The “expected” price of Zap using this methodology is about 600g.

A potentially workable strategy to consider: buy a bank tab worth of T5 snowflakes to craft Givers weapons. Right now these are really cheap. But don’t craft yet! Mithril and elder wood are inflated as people are trying to craft Givers weapons. Wait for those prices to come down, then buy the metal and wood you need.

Ohoni.6057:

Question for those that insist on trying to shut up anyone who has a problem with the current dailies. . .

why?

We’re tired of the same hyperbolic argument being spewed literally dozens of times by a few mass offenders.

Pointing fingers = infraction points, but we (and you) know who I’m talking about.

If you’re willing to play WvW and PvP in addition to PvE, the dailies are extra loot and 10 AP for practically zero effort. The anger over the new system is a pretty good sign that I should never read these forums again.

Heya Duke. I recently moved my small-to-medium sized (20ish regulars, 8-12 active/day) guild to NSP and I’ve been having a blast so far. I came along with a group of other friendly guilds from SoR (including FIRE RISE VEX and BOMB) and we’ve found the community very welcoming.

I’m still getting to know the WvW guilds on NSP, but I had the opportunity to run with RAID the other day and they were great.

If I can offer any advice or assistance, message me here or in-game. I’d be happy to give you an honest assessment of what the NSP move has been like. Sounds like you’re in a similar situation as we were.

Had you considered doing a WvW or PvP daily?

If not, perhaps you don’t deserve to earn your achievement points today.

Eh, I was never anything more than a bit player, I don’t deserve any sort of comparison. I thought my experiences as a guild leader who helped introduce a number of PvE-only players to WvW would come in handy, but… outside of the handful of guilds who’ve now moved over to NSP, there wasn’t much interest in hearing my perspective.

Oh, and Ecto.

Give WvW a set of exclusive rewards you can earn outside of the limited seasons. Improve rewards in general. Create a system to reward scouts – perhaps an item inside a tower/keep that, when you interact with it, broadcasts a message that the objective is under attack?

And then, depending on whether the attack succeeds/fails, you get bonus chests?

You’ll always have the problem of PvE players who avoid PvP encounters at nearly all costs, though.

Look, we all know the real problem: you used to be able to get your dailies without even looking at them. You’d just get them doing whatever.

Now you have to make an active attempt to do content in the right place/whatever.

People are sad they can’t just get them by playing whatever they want.

None of us will bridge the gap between players who want credit for their dailies and APs just for playing for 30 minutes and players who think APs should actually require some effort.

So what you’re saying is that ArenaNet should nerf the one easily-accessible obvious counter to a Grenadier build that does good damage, good condi stacking, and can do it from 1500 range?

No, I think the game works exactly as it should.

IndigoSundown.5419:

While I could just buy a trait, that should not be the preferred option. So, I am exercising a choice that would never have occurred to me under the old trait system — I’m leaving the darned slot empty.

…but you do still have the option to buy it. So yeah, it’s an additional cost compared to before, but there’s a lot of things that are free now (retraiting, repairing, account-bound Ascended items) that weren’t before.

Think about the cost for the 7 traits you need for a build. Now think about the savings from sharing a single Ascended weapon between two toons.

TAKEN IN AGGREGATE AND IN CONTEXT the system is still incredibly more friendly for players with lots of toons.

- Refer to “Edge of the Mists” as a PvP gamemode

I definitely saw some great first steps before I left. Increased Teamspeak use, focusing on smaller units rather than a single map tag, etc.

But so long as statements like this:

Trying to convince a mostly casual community to change their builds just for the sake of one specific game mode is once again, like trying to convince a stick of deodorant to belch your dog’s sense of humor. It really doesn’t make sense to try.

…are the accepted norm within the community, the ceiling for SoR is very low.

If you mostly play PvE and expect to come into WvW without changing your build, you will be in trouble. This is the FIRST lesson I teach my guild members when we come into WvW. And immediately after, I offer to help them get WvW gear (usually by running AC paths for Soldiers gear).

Casual doesn’t mean ignorant. You can play casually a few hours a week and still take time to update your traits and switch out a few pieces of equipment. And asking nicely shouldn’t be like doing whatever you’re saying with the deodorant. (Sorry, that’s a metaphor with which I’m unfamiliar.)

Anyway, as Eko said, I should really just accept the break-up and move on.

Hi Eko. For what it’s worth, I always thought you were part of the solution, not part of the problem. And as a small correction, I didn’t leave the server months ago, I left about two weeks ago.

And I’d just like to +1 what Silvannas said. Most of us who left did it to save our guilds and our communities, not out of malice or anger. It does hurt to see us called “not true SoR” etc. from people we respect and admire.

But hey, that’s fair. We left. It’s okay for you to be unhappy with us. In the end, though, if you want to know why SoR died, you have to ask the guilds that left why they left. We’re telling you. As you mentioned, I’ve done it DOZENS of times. It’s up to you whether you care to do anything with that information or not.

Foghladha.2506:

What we have left is the TRUE nature of SOR. Good, Honest, Caring people who join together night after night regardless of the guild tag above their head and work together to crawl out of this hole we were dumped in. Now anywhere we go from here is on Us. The REAL SOR.

“Good, honest, caring?” Absolutely. I love my friends from SoR.

“Join together night after night… and work together to crawl out of this hole?” Not even close.

There were a ton of people, myself included, who wanted to help build SoR back up. My chosen strategy was to be more effective with the people we had. Not “run more hours.” Not “only WvW guilds invited.” None of that.

It was more about focusing on server strategy, server class composition, and individual knowledge and ability. In return, I spent most of my time arguing about how many Rangers are acceptable. (Which I still think is 10% or less.)

My impression of SoR, or at least those that didn’t leave in the latest migration, is that it’s full of awesome people… until you suggest that they change something they’re doing to help the server succeed. Then it’s full of angry people.

That’s definitely an environment that certain people are looking for, but for those of us willing to re-gear, to level a new class, to learn how to do something new or different, SoR let us down. And I’m saying that as somebody who founded his guild on SoR on August 25th, 2012. I was there for the ups and the downs. I was there for the first server meeting on, what was it, the Monday after launch? In Shaemoor? On Raidcall?

Anyway, I continue to wish all my friends on SoR the best. I think, if you can find a way to be more open, more adaptive, more strategic, you can begin to truly make progress and find your way again. You’ve got the brains and the heart, that’s for sure. <3

This sounds familiar. I remember one player in particular who bragged about AFK-earning achievements back in the LA events. You’ll see him around a lot, he’s one of those players who lists his AP leaderboard standing in his signature.

Sadly, unless it gets REALLY bad, ArenaNet won’t devote the resources necessary to fix it. And by REALLY bad, I mean “maps fall apart regularly because there are too many afk farmers.”

Eirdyne.9843:

I think we’ve reached the end of where this game can go.
- Anet disregards its player base as if it were the company mission statement.
- We have A+ Plus cooperate manipulation of the player by using Carrots on a Stick… Blow up LA, then do this whole story with the Zephyrites to say it will be fixed. Blow up the Zephyrites with expectation that is coming back. Give us Super Adventure Box. Take away Super Adventure Box, but say it will be coming back. Give us a perfectly working LS and trait system, then break the first and make the other outlandishly expensive (where it was not before). Cripple new characters. Do absolutely no new content for years in terms of dungeons . Where a new world boss is added copy and paste the same static timer based content under the veil of it being ‘dynamic’ and an ‘event’. …blah blah blah blah. It is coming to the point where we enjoy the game because it still responds the same way it used to when we press WASD and buttons 1 through 8 are still functioning. Nothing else is going on. They just employed this new person from Disney to the team, but Disney is the one that employed J. J. Abrams. Abrams butchered Star Trek and is now heading out to give rending what’s left of Star Wars apart. I wouldn’t want anything connected with Disney without a hazmat suit. Anet’s plan seems to be to push the plane into a steam spiraling nose dive gradually while informing everyone everything’s just fine because it’s gradual.

I’m just going to back out of this thread slowly now.

Best music choice ever.

Tobias, I’d take that as an option if Daily Achievement A was only available once. When you complete it, now you get to choose from B-Z.

Otherwise, it’ll just be “time for my daily Goemm’s Lab, who’s porting?”

People are complaining because this is the internet and apparently that’s what people do on the internet.

There’s no argument to be found here other than “I want it the way it used to be/the way it never was/the way I want it.”

I’d love to hear an argument why you should receive “Achievement Points” and complete your “Daily Achievements” simply for logging on and doing Tequatl. (And let’s be honest, half of the time you’d get the full set doing Teq. Even on bad days, it was like 3/5.)

I think the dailies should be HARDER or MORE TIME CONSUMING. You want something for logging in? Fine, here’s your login rewards. You want a daily 10 achievement points? Do something for real.

You don’t pick 3/12. You do this one thing. For example:

Jan 1: Capture an enemy keep in WvW
Jan 2: Complete an Arah exporable path
Jan 3: Win three PvP matches in a row
Jan 4: Complete a level 34 Fractal

etc.

I’m in another guild that’s larger and does a ton of map-spam recruiting. I ran a histogram for them. They have just over 400 players. Same basic story: overwhelmingly representation in the 70-90% range.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a high quit rate, of course. But it does seem like the players we think of as “active” all have pretty high APs.

I’d love to see one of these for a guild that kicks players for inactivity. A TTS guild would be a really interesting indicator.

Draknar inspired me. This should be fun. I went and took my guild’s leaderboard info, put it into Excel, and ran a histogram. I should note that we have a bit over 200 members. We do not remove members for inactivity. Many of our members are from our Allies program, members who do not represent us except for certain activities. They are included in these numbers, of course.

We have probably 20-30 active/day, 40-50 active regularly. I’d say 100+ roster spots haven’t logged in since 2013. Half of that probably quit within the first 4-6 months of the game. This also includes a substantial number of new players and second accounts.

Practically every single currently active player who hasn’t just bought the game in the past 6 months is represented within the 90% and 80% brackets.

Again, I don’t want to say that APs represent skill, time investment, or anything else, I just think the numbers are interesting. I’d LOVE to see this data for other guilds.

Why are you trying to ruin ArenaNet’s ability to Design How They Want? #designhowiwant ;-)

…and I would perhaps be able to take you seriously if you posted suggestions like that without using hyperbolic, inflammatory phrases like “Play How I Want is Gone” or “Freedom is Gone.”

Thaddeus.4891:

How GW2 does? I don’t know. We will need to compare it to other game to really know. But you can’t just assume that the game don’t keep its player base because about 50% of their player only play through the story and dungeon only once. That’s what most ppl do in most of their games.

I do agree with you: I don’t know how GW2 is doing as far as player retention. AP is a pretty poor estimate, it’s just the only way I can think of to estimate it.

But I disagree with the part I quoted: I do not think we need to compare GW2 to other games. I think we need to look at the game’s revenue and whether it’s sustainable. Last I saw, the game was bringing in something along the lines of $80-90MM/year. That’s pretty good! But it’s also dropping. And yes, you’d expect it to drop. But still:

If the game has declining population, declining revenue, and no (announced) way to bring players back into the fold, that means declining levels of content and ambition, more obvious cash-grabs, etc.

MMOs, in general, don’t see rising populations over time. But it feels like, with the number of sales we’ve seen especially, ArenaNet is making a strong push to add more players. This is happening because ArenaNet has concluded that the game NEEDS MORE PLAYERS.

I’m not necessarily trying to make a point here, I’m just trying to remind everybody: the NPE, the new dailies, the log on rewards, the Living Story… the entire point of these things is to encourage players to keep the game installed and to jump in from time to time.

My hope is that this is a bridge to new content in the future and not just the recognition that you can’t sell cosmetic items to players who have uninstalled your game.

munkiman.3068:

3/4 total, fairly specific, daily tasks is a step back, no matter how you look at it.

Sure. But they are making a blatantly obvious attempt to get players who only do PvE to participate in the other game modes. Look at the “PvP 101” segment on Points of Interest for an additional example.

You can feel however you like about that, but in the end, it’s 3/12, not 3/4. It’s only by player choice that it becomes 3/4.

And that is “playing how you want.” You can get your dailies only in PvE. Or only in WvW. Or only in PvP. It may not be EASY, but it’s POSSIBLE. (And reasonably possible, it seems.)

munkiman.3068:

If they actually sat down in these design meetings and came up with new and interesting ways to get players to play certain content instead of trying to funnel players around through the daily reward program, they would actually see much better results and far less complaints. These band-aids are getting tiresome.

Now this I agree with completely. The problem is that changing the dailies to try to encourage these other game modes is a relatively easy change. And let’s be real: PvE is doing okay (at least comparatively). The goal is to encourage WvW and PvP.

There’s two huge problems, though. 1) How do you fix them? 2) How long will that take?

I haven’t heard a whole lot of solutions to #1 that don’t make #2 unmanageable.

The real problem is that this is a distraction from the reality. Here’s what your real problem is:

Player retention in this game is bad. I don’t know how bad, but given that having 3500 Achievement Points puts you in the top 10% should give you an idea. 90% of accounts on this game have less than 3500 AP.

80% have less than 1800 AP.

Do you know what the 50/50 split is? It’s somewhere around 800 AP.

If half of the accounts in the game don’t even have 800 AP, that’s a pretty good sign that player retention is not great. For a game that needs people logging in to buy gem store stuff in order to continue to earn revenue, that’s a disaster in waiting.

Now, you need the revenue, so this means you have a couple options: try to bring your old players back (expansion) or try to create new players (sales and retention).

The problem? If you haven’t been retaining players who bought the game in the first two years, there’s no reason to expect you’ll retain the new customers without changes. So: the New Player Experience. If all these players are quitting before they’ve even seen all the content… why? What about the game isn’t appealing to players? That’s what they attempted to fix with the NPE and, to an extent, Megaserver.

My hope is that they’re finished with the “appeal to new players” portion of the strategy and will now move on to “appeal to veteran players” and “bring back lapsed players.” That would mean more content that is traditionally called “end-game” (but I hate that term.)

Anyway, arguing about stupid PHIW kitten just distracts from that core problem: the game isn’t retaining players and changes were needed for it to be financially viable in the long-term.

I don’t really have much interest in arguing with you, Listingbird. I have no hope of changing your mind and I honestly don’t give a rat’s kitten what you think.

That said, I believe that it is a bad idea to take developer statements so far out of context. It means that, over time, we’ll get less and less communication. In addition, the communication we do get will have to be so heavily vetted, it will become bland and useless. We’ve already seen it. You’re making it worse.

You may deny it and stick to the formal reading (because it easier to argue on)

If the “formal reading” – the actual meaning, not the one you made up – is “easier to argue on,” I assume that means I’m right.

By reading the comments as stated, my point stands.

By reading the comments based on years worth of forum-poster reimaginings, your point stands.

I’m happy with that assessment.

Lishtenbird.2814:

timmyf.1490:

I wish Colin would just show up and clarify that “play how you want” is indeed referring to getting top-stat gear, NOT skins, NOT legendaries, NOT low-population world bosses, NOT optimal builds, NOT traits, NOT anything other than “you can get max-stat gear in WvW… you can get max-stat gear in open-world PvE… you can get max-stat gear in dungeons…”

When one can’t argue on the problem itself, he argues on the words someone used to describe it…

timmyf.1490:

I think I’m going to start a thread:

List of Threads Lishtenbird Has Started To Complain About the Same Things

I’ll be sure to reserve at least 5-6 posts at the beginning for future links.

…or about that someone who talked about the problem.

I see what you did there.

As a side note, everybody is perfectly welcome to dislike the changes ArenaNet has made and the direction they are taking. I count myself among you! I think we need more 5-man instanced challenging content in this game…

…but you don’t get to pretend that a blog post from Colin in January 2013 somehow justifies every minor quibble you have with the game.

It’s not a betrayal. It’s just changes you don’t like. Get a grip.

Draknar.5748:

Lishtenbird.2814:

I want to play Tequatl and Fractals 50 and CoE speedruns to get AP to get the most powerful rewards of Hellfire and Vambrace skins and the upcoming Pinnacle weapon skins.

Can I? No. I have to grind Queensdale events and harvest plants in Caledon. Yay?..

And I want to be able to sit in Lion’s Arch chatting with friends and have Eternity mailed to me from the heavens. I guess neither of us get to play how we want, huh….

It’s actually not necessary to be hyperbolic or to curb-stomp a straw man to make the point.

Hellfire skins are SKINS. They are not the “most powerful rewards.” AP are not necessary for the “most powerful rewards.”

Maybe English is not Lishten’s first language. “Most powerful,” in this context, cannot mean “best.” If Colin had meant “best,” he would have written “best.”

Colin specifically said “most powerful” because GW2 is a game designed so that you don’t have to do the treadmill of other games:

Run dungeons to get gear for raid 1. Run raid 1 for gear so you can run raid 2. Run raid 2 so you can get gear for raid 3.

That is, very accurately and specifically, what he meant. You’re welcome to pervert it to mean that “you can run world bosses with just 3-5 people” if you like, but that doesn’t mean anybody else will take you seriously.

I think I’m going to start a thread:

List of Threads Lishtenbird Has Started To Complain About the Same Things

I’ll be sure to reserve at least 5-6 posts at the beginning for future links.

I wish Colin would just show up and clarify that “play how you want” is indeed referring to getting top-stat gear, NOT skins, NOT legendaries, NOT low-population world bosses, NOT optimal builds, NOT traits, NOT anything other than “you can get max-stat gear in WvW… you can get max-stat gear in open-world PvE… you can get max-stat gear in dungeons…”

I can imagine if your playstyle is “map completion and world bosses,” Tequatl would seem very interesting, yes. Compared to something like Fractals, though, Teq is a little dull.

And my axe!

It was nice to get to run with you guys again last night! <3

Or maybe it’s because they use a third-party payment processor that doesn’t accept bitcoins.

Look, they only make money off you if you keep the game installed and log in. That raises the likelihood of you buying crap off the gemstore.

Soooo. Login rewards. Good for them. Good for us. Easy to laugh at… but effective. Sadly.

Would you prefer a sale on Black Lion Chest Keys?

I’m a pretty casual PvPer, just hit rank 40, and got matched against Ostrich Eggs and Caed tonight in Unranked. I was so excited, I spent all my time yammering to my guild and forgeting to switch my weapons over from the Courtyard cluster-kitten I had just participated in.

One of my worst performances in a PvP match ever.

I had an evening of pretty lopsided matches playing with my guild. We have widely varying levels of experience, so we might be an interesting case to look at, Justin.

JDjitsu.7895:

They’re gone. hated to see MEGA leave, but they can’t be blamed for that.

Aww <3. We feel like we were put in a rough spot. The people we spent most of our WvW time with all left… and to the same server! Most of our SoR friends who didn’t head to NSP are people we PvE with… and we can do that from wherever.

I feel like I have pretty strong relationships with a lot of guilds from SoR, both guilds that left and guilds that remain. I hope we can keep doing stuff together, though I understand if people are hurt by our actions.

Plus, I’ll have my alt account on SoR, so you’ll still see me occasionally. :-)

Lethalvriend.1723:

panic.

OH MY KITTEN PAAAANIC!!!!

;-)

DeWolfe.2174:

Scrap WvW and make up Alliances for players to join weekly. This way it’s more fluid, dynamic, organic, and populations are easily managed.

This idea makes me curl up on the floor in a little ball and cry.

Well this thread veered wildly out of control rather quickly.

I would not expect any new dungeons in the same form we’ve seen in the next year or two.

There’s a lot of really bad advice in this thread. Guilds are not for everyone. Finding the right guild can be challenging. There’s some tips we left in a sticky in the Looking for Guild forum, but basically:

1) Think about your goals. Do you want to find similar-minded players? That’s pretty common. Do you want to improve/learn/grow/do content you don’t currently do? You may need to find a guild a little bit more serious than you are as a player.

2) Be picky. There are hundreds of guilds. Guilds only exist and survive because they have players in them. YOU ARE THE FUEL OF A GUILD. No guild is doing you a favor by letting you in. Make sure a potential guild courts you and explains how they can help you, not the other way around.

3) Understand the impact of guild size. Small guilds and large guilds are fundamentally different things. I’m guild leader for a small guild, for example, and my members have my phone number, email address, etc in case they need me. It’s not unusual for me to have extended conversations with members 1-on-1 about their goals, issues, stuff going on in their life. But because of that, we have very little tolerance for people who don’t “fit in.” If you don’t get along with us, you’re not welcome.

4) Be very mindful of a guild’s recruitment methods. Are you trying to join a guild that spams mapchat and invites everybody who shows interest? What kind of players do you think are in that guild? (Hint: the kind who join a guild based on a few lines of advertising in chat.) That may or may not be the kind of guild you want to be in. If a guild isn’t selective, you have no guarantee that you’ll find the type of players you want. If they are selective, are they using the right criteria for selection? Are they filtering out players you wish to avoid and letting in the players you’d like to play with?

Hopefully that helps. I’ll try to watch this thread, but if anybody wants more advice or has follow-up questions, I’d be happy to help. Feel free to PM me or /w in-game.

Malediktus.9250:

lordkrall.7241:

Malediktus.9250:

That is because people like me always vote for the least popular map possible to see all the frustration if the map gets selected.

I sure hope you will not be one of those that complain when stuff you dislike doesn’t get changed then, seeing as you quite clearly helps with the metric that shows that people want to play it.

Anets fault if they trust metrics instead of making player surveys.

Metrics and survey both have important roles. Hopefully trolls like you are a minority of the playerbase.

There’s lots of good people on SoR. Sadly, there’s not enough people who care left to pick it up from 24th.

Fog’s a good guy and I have a lot of respect for what he’s been able to do with GSCH, but seeing our server called “non-competitive” and “beer league” by my teammates was pretty much the last straw.

Still, all the best to my soon-to-be-former-servermates.