Guild Wars 2

No, I’m not.

minbariguy.7504:

Sigh. And this is why, despite the near-Herculean effort by the wonderful Chris Whitside, I feel that this latest push to improve communication is, like all other attempts before it, doomed to failure.

I understand why this policy was initially put in place. But you (as a company) are following the letter of the policy to the detriment of your relationship to your community, as opposed to following the spirit of the policy when it makes sense to do so.

Players have a tendency to take an offhand comment from a “red” post and turn it into a guarantee carved into the side of a mountain in fifty-foot high letters. Posters still point to a tentative “maybe we could do something like a scavenger hunt” for precursors into a broken promise and fail to recognize that it was never a promise in the first place, several updates have been released about their plans, and the process is still on the table. No doubt many hours of work have been put into the process, and a fair amount of money invested by Anet, but doing it right is more important than doing it quickly, particularly since this particular system has the potential to harm the game if done wrong. But the lack of comprehension and understanding on the part of the players shows the dangers of talking about plans too early.

I completely understand why they would want to err on the side of caution, particularly since the way the Trading Post is set up, speculating about things that may or may not happen in the game has the potential to crash the economy that is carefully constructed and maintained.

If you think people are upset now, this is a brief thundershower compared to the hurricane that would come.

I never played Everquest, Ultima Online and so on, back in the day. But from what I’ve heard, in the beginning everything was open world, and it caused a lot of problems. Instances were created and utilized for a reason, and while it’s not a perfect system, it’s better than a free-for all. Anet may be experimenting with a step backwards by tweaking old ideas about open world content, but that doesn’t mean they should disregard everything that their counterparts at other games have learned over the last twelve years or so.

Wanze.8410:

Iirc, Anet mentioned why ascended gear is bound and untradeable in a twitch video about it last August. They wanted to give everybody a long term goal by crafting ascended gear.

Unfortunately the allowed the intermediate materials to be traded (elonian leather and so on) which negates much of the “long term” part of the goal, but it did revitalize the economy somewhat.

I’m not the one complaining and making demands that no one here has the authority to grant.

ipan.4356:

And you’re not helping things at all.

You know what will also cause the dev’s to lose their jobs? Being laid off because the game goes broke.

That’s amusing.

This game doesn’t have a monthly sub option. Most of the people complaining here don’t spend money on the game. Most of the people spending money on the game are not complaining.

Your arguments are not going to have any effect on Anet/NCSoft revenue, and therefore have little chance of having an effect on anyone who isn’t responding here. That includes both the people spending money on the game and the bosses who make the rules.

oshilator.4681:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll start a separate thread shortly to discussion one of the potential ideas for how we could help provide at least a bit more of a clear picture similar to CDI to help guide and discuss topics while staying within the company policies on communication development.

I’ll also make sure your feedback is passed up the chain from those who gave feedback on that specific policy.

Thanks folks!

“Up the chain”? You’re the Game Director. How does the chain not start & end with you?

I’m pretty sure Colin doesn’t own NCSoft. His title doesn’t have “executive” in it either, so he’s probably not on the board of directors or anything like that. In fact there are probably several links in the chain above him and below “NCSoft CEO.”

The devs make the game, they don’t make company policy.

ipan.4356:

ColinJohanson.2394:

I’ll start a separate thread shortly to discussion one of the potential ideas for how we could help provide at least a bit more of a clear picture similar to CDI to help guide and discuss topics while staying within the company policies on communication development.

I’ll also make sure your feedback is passed up the chain from those who gave feedback on that specific policy.

Thanks folks!

We don’t want you to “stay within company policies” – we want you to change the policy and communicate the direction you’re going in more.

So, you want the devs to get fired.

When someone with greater authority says “we will do it this way,” you do it this way, whether you agree with your boss or not. Telling the boss “I don’t care what you want me to do, I’m going to do it this other way,” will lead to disciplinary action up to and including termination of employment.

To put the dev comment in plain English, “I’ll tell my boss that you are not satisfied with the way things are done, but we have to do it this way until he says otherwise.”

What you want is irrelevant, you don’t sign the devs’ paychecks, and you don’t get to give them orders.

Conner.4702:

I said it to Chris before, but I feel the need to say it again. It’s the company policy that is partly to blame for the forums turning into a massive cesspool. While most game forums don’t smell of roses this one is by far the worst. A lot of people have soured on you guys due to this policy. It really is time to reassess how rigidly you want to hold on to this policy.
I’ll guarantee this it will only get worse if the same pattern keeps being followed. As the downward line is much steeper than the upward line that pops up during the brief, 1-2 months worth, communication periods.

The individuals who can change this policy do not interact with players on the forums.

Spirigo.2897:

Complaining on the forums makes you look cool. That’s all there is to it.

No it doesn’t! (Am I cool yet?)

Chris Whiteside.6102:

tolunart.2095:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

And whilst we are on the subject. if you think everything mentioned in a CDI is going to be agreed upon and magically created overnight then your expectations are perhaps a little bit high.

Chris

It’s the Twitter generation. If you can’t compress an idea into @100 keystrokes it’s not worth trying to read or understand. These are the same people who go to a restaurant, spend 20 minutes taking pictures of their food and posting to social media, then complain about the service because their food is cold.

These are people who are so caught up in narcissism that they can’t even understand that they are responsible for their own problems.

It is probably incorrect for me to say this but your post made me lol.

Thanks for social commentary humor, you have made a rather somber day turn into one where i am smiling now.

Chris

P.S: Somber because my Yellow Tang died 0-: not because of anything else.

Sorry about your fish

The funny thing is the story is true – I read an article not long ago about a restaurant where the management noticed a dramatic rise in complaints and bad comments on Facebook and such. They used to have video cameras taping the kitchen and dining areas so they found some old tapes and compared them to footage from their current system. They found that vs. 10 yrs ago people were taking a lot longer to order because now as soon as they sit down a lot of people are absorbed in their phones – talking, texting, surfing the web – where they used to pick up the menus immediately and order within five minutes or so, now it’s more like 10. Then the food arrives and they spend more time tweeting about it than eating it. This adds an extra half hour or so to the average visit and these are the people who are more likely to complain that the service was slow, food was cold, etc. The service is still as fast as ever, the customers have changed.

Food for thought…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

And whilst we are on the subject. if you think everything mentioned in a CDI is going to be agreed upon and magically created overnight then your expectations are perhaps a little bit high.

Chris

It’s the Twitter generation. If you can’t compress an idea into @100 keystrokes it’s not worth trying to read or understand. These are the same people who go to a restaurant, spend 20 minutes taking pictures of their food and posting to social media, then complain about the service because their food is cold.

These are people who are so caught up in narcissism that they can’t even understand that they are responsible for their own problems.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Lheimroo.2947:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

MFoy.3284:

Mr. Whiteside –
I have a simple question for you. Can you (or anyone) point to anything that’s been actually implemented from a CDI?
-M

The wardrobe.

Permanent new content, the story journal, less grindy achievements, account wide dyes, etc, etc.

C’mon. If we’re going to have a chat we have to be more reasonable and less like ravening dogs just trying to score points on each other.

I just picked the most obvious one, as it had cropped up a lot during the “Horizontal Progression” CDI and we got it. Wonder of wonders. It’s also the one which lacks a downside to rant about.

Wardrobe made the price of precursors go up!

So there.

And Lineage II makes more money for NCSoft than Wildstar and both GWs combined. Maybe the bosses at Anet have to fly to Korea every quarter and beg the Lineage devs for funding

It’s not hard to figure out why this cycle happens. Look at the constant complaints about how expensive gems are getting – the price of gems hasn’t changed since launch. If you buy them. If you exchange in-game gold for them, however, the price keeps going up – because a lot of players are doing it too.

Anet doesn’t pay their staff in game currency. They can track which accounts are buying gems with real money and when the majority of those players are logging in to do Living Story related content, Anet is going to provide them with more Living Story content. When relatively few of these accounts are wandering the WvW area or going through Fractals, then those parts of the game are not a priority.

Not saying this is good or bad, it’s just reality. The company needs money to keep the lights on, and logging in for 10 hours a day to grind gold so you can buy gems or a Legendary costs money, it doesn’t add to their bank account.

There have been numerous improvements made to the game. Two big ones from recent updates: the wardrobe – you can now use any unlocked skin on multiple toons. Then there’s the ability to go back and replay past chapters of the LS – casual players can unlock it by logging in once and going back when they have time instead of feeling pressured to spend all their free time grinding for rewards/achievements before they go away.

These are massive changes to the game that have been requested by many players on and off the forums. Not everyone wants these things, not everyone cares about them, but part of growing up is realizing that you are not the center of the universe. There are a lot of players in this game, and those improvements make the game better for most of them.

As for marketing hype, if you fall for it then it’s not the devs’ fault. Advertising and marketing hype goes way beyond this game and the MMO genre. And while I have your attention, I’m collecting donations for my efforts to ban the dangerous chemical dihydrogen monoxide. This killer must be stopped.

Read the TOS. 100% uptime is never guaranteed.

laokoko.7403:

tolunart.2095:

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

At any rate, I also think Anet is working on something much bigger.

You been saying that last year.

And last year they were, you saw the results in April. Those kinds of changes aren’t programmed in a week or two.

I’m not the one complaining. Other people are complaining about the lack of content they want. Or the lack of content. Or they think the April patch is lackster.

What I means is that the devs have been constantly working on “big projects” since the game launched. The projects themselves change, but they are being worked on. People, especially younger generations, have become trained to expect instant responses, instant results, but to make big changes to a living, interactive program like an MMO takes a lot of time and effort, and sometimes things happen in the background that change the direction of other things that we never even see.

No one at Anet is ignoring the game, or wasting players’ time. But people need to realize that what an individual wants is not always what is best for the game, and sometimes not possible to put into the game without breaking other things.

laokoko.7403:

Vayne.8563:

At any rate, I also think Anet is working on something much bigger.

You been saying that last year.

And last year they were, you saw the results in April. Those kinds of changes aren’t programmed in a week or two.

phys.7689:

tolunart.2095:

What about all those threads about how Anet doesn’t listen and doesn’t communicate with their players? This must be a hoax. I simply can’t believe that a bunch of random angry people posting complaints on the internet can be wrong.

What it means is that bunch of random angry people can be right.
It also means that sometimes what they plan, may not be what the game needs.

I am happy with the quick response and extra work those guys did to solve things. I really think they could save a lot of time an energy by running more things by the intended playerbase.
Not like they should always listen, but they can at least know how something is going to be received.

And broken clocks still tell the right time twice a day. Anet devs have always shown the willingness to act quickly when necessary, and to have acted on this so quickly they must have gotten a lot of feedback from multiple sources.

The biggest problem is that a lot of people who post on the forums think the forum posts are a representation of the player base as a whole – it isn’t. Most players approach the game casually and don’t get as invested in the game as forum posters do, because it’s just a game. This is something you do for fun, it’s not a substitute for real life.

Many people see five different posts that support their position and think that this represents the majority of players. It clearly does not, and they continue to shout to the heavens that they’re being ignored, Anet doesn’t care about the game or the players, etc. Then on a handful of occasions the forums have aligned with other sources of data and the devs have moved quickly to make changes to the game when necessary, and the same individuals point to these things as proof that their views represent the majority. It’s not true, it just means that this time the devs (and perhaps a number of other players who are not active on the forums) agreed with them.

The devs have a responsibility to a much larger group than the vocal complainers on the forums.

BlueZone.4236:

Yeah, I’m aware of that. Q3 & Q4 2010 is where WoW peaked and is now well into its falling phase. Only time will tell how the next expansion affects it and how it’ll tail off.
But it won’t go into a free fall and hit zero (not that you’re saying that or anything).

More likely a slow decline levelling off at 2-3 million players who are so invested in the game they won’t leave until the last server is shut down. Dramatic crashes seem to be rare among these games, though you can’t tell that from the way posters bash games on the forums.

I find it ironic that most of the games proclaimed “dead” are still in existence, and considering the expense of just keeping the game running, let alone developing new content, they are making money. Competition is starting to take a toll, there have been a few games that shut down (or announced they will soon) recently, but overall there are a lot more people playing these games than some posters think.

But WoW’s day definitely has passed, and while it may hold on another 10 years with a small but dedicated player base, it will not be an industry leader much longer.

Faux.1937:

But this is were Silence is bad, a LARGE player base thinks it isnt coming back,

What? Anet announces something in large letters with pictures on their main website and most of the players still don’t know about it until after it goes live. An offhand comment during an interview on some website? 99% of the players haven’t even heard about it.

BlueZone.4236:

Just so people know what “short” means, Q1 2013 which is where 8.3 million comes from.
Q2 2014 is where 6.3 million was stated (EDIT: We’re in the Q3 2014 right now, silly me).

The drop isn’t sharp, it’s following the expected trend of how all games behave in its lifetime (the shape, not the time frame), and is expected tail off slowly or until Blizzard pulls the plug.

Actually, reported sub numbers for WoW is about half what it was a few years ago, and that’s even if you don’t believe the claims they use accounting tricks to inflate the numbers.

It’s not unexpected, but with the ever-increasing competition from other MMOs and similar online games, especially the games that dropped their sub requirements or launched without subs. It’s assumed that there will be a percentage of players who move on from these games, and others who unsub and come back for expansions, but there’s writing on the wall – clearly, WoW is losing more players than they can bring in.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Tickets-for-Review-3-days-older-Part-2-merged/page/22

What about all those threads about how Anet doesn’t listen and doesn’t communicate with their players? This must be a hoax. I simply can’t believe that a bunch of random angry people posting complaints on the internet can be wrong.

chemiclord.3978:

Ah, so Star Citizen is the next “golden child” of MMOs, I see.

(yawn) We’ll see in a year after release when the locusts abandon it in droves for not giving them everything they want and nothing they don’t.

See also; every other MMO in existance.

What happened to Wildstar?

There’s always something to look forward to, until it gets here. Everquest Next is also far enough away to be all hype and no reality.

So, you keep making these “suggestions” that you know the devs are not interested in implementing, and in fact have already rejected as a possibility before GW2 even launched. And you keep asking for evidence you know that no one can provide. Your interest in the idea is “academic” but you refuse to consider arguments against the ideas because there is no evidence to prove that the idea is bad. You can’t prove a negative, but that’s beside the point.

You’re doing nothing but wasting everyone’s time and arguing for the sake of arguing.

ipan.4356:

It’s interesting, I agree with some of your points, except the last one about being 5-10 years away – I believe we are much closer.

There have not been many great leaps in technology since 2000, in part because of a lack of investor confidence in tech companies. Companies like Microsoft aren’t doing much more than slight improvements to existing tech, and it’s very hard for new companies to get funding to explore new ideas. So personally I don’t expect to see anything too exciting in the next decade or so…

chemiclord.3978:

Oh, I understand that, but what you’re describing is something that is present in ALL MMOs, to varying degrees. Sandboxes tend to be on the most time consuming, to be sure, but they ALL really require some degree of significant time investment if you want to really get “into” the game.

GW2 is definitely better than any I’ve played in keeping that required time investment down if you want to feel like you’re progressing, but it’s still there.

Not really… “free to play” MMOs tend to require less time commitment and offer more paid shortcuts than sub-based games. In a sub-based game there is always the idea in the back of your mind that it’s going to cost $15 a month whether you play every day or not. But if you play every day then it costs 50 cents a day, if you play every other day it costs $1 per day, and if you only play on weekends it costs like $4 a day. So it naturally holds more attraction for players who can commit to playing every day, or close to it. Those with less time to play don’t feel as though they’re getting their money’s worth and would unsub at a higher rate.

But without a sub, the incentive to play shifts. Yes, you can grind all day long but you can also buy an xp doubler for $2 and get a lot further in the game. Or the game focuses on visuals like Secret World of GW2 where you can buy outfits from the cash shop. There are different strategies to attract different kinds of players.

Vayne.8563:

Most sandbox games so far seem to require a bigger commitment. Most people don’t have the time. The age of the average gamer is going up.

Sandbox games are definitely a niche product. WoW took MMOs somewhat mainstream and improvements to console systems (like adding an online service) helped bring a lot of non-traditional MMO gamers into the genre. But while they can show a profit, there just isn’t a big enough market for more than a handful of sandbox games. They are essentially the framework of a game, a setting and tools players use to create their own games, a lot like the rulebooks for the original Dungeons and Dragons games.

As time goes on and these tools improve, it will become easier to create content or generate content randomly that makes sense. Sandbox games can become more appealing, but when the stock market’s love for new technology crashed around 2000 or so it set back development of new tech quite a bit. So we’re still 5-10 years away from a leap forward in technology that could do that.

Filaha.1678:

So… no evidence, just the same assertions and poisoning the well?

Gotcha. Well, obviously no point in asking you for evidence yet again, so I’ll leave it there.

No one can provide what you are asking for. The system you are asking for does not exist, therefore no evidence exists regarding how well it works.

However, a similar system existed in the original Guild Wars, and the problems and abuses that came with it are the reason why the devs created a better system for Guild Wars 2. Instead of standing around calling out in chat for someone to trade their Dusk for your Dawn for however long it takes for someone to accept the offer, you can simply sell Dawn on the TP and put the money towards a buy order for Dusk. It’s far easier, safer and more elegant than spamming chat with countless “WTS” offers and such.

I’m not sure what you expect to happen. Do you think the devs will take your word for it that you’ve solved all their problems, and spend months developing and testing a new and completely unnecessary trading system, only to find out after it goes live that it doesn’t work the way they hoped it would. Then they say “oops, we wasted months of time and resources on something that didn’t work,” and start over?

The devs have the ability to examine an idea without writing the code for it, and have a pretty good idea how it will work. If this really is a better system, they are probably already working on it. If it’s not, then restating your idea over and over will never get anywhere. And considering the devs have specifically said they do not want P2P trading in the game, it’s probably not going to happen.

News flash: Company concentrates on providing more of what the majority of their (paying) customers want, discontinues work on what the majority of their (paying) customers don’t care about.

This has never happened before in the history of business. You’d think they’re trying to make a profit or something.

This game has subtle but very important differences that set it apart from other MMOs. Things like no mob tagging – every player who fights a mook/boss/world boss gets his own loot, no “first shot gets loot” or need/greed competitions. Crafting mats come from shared nodes, no one gets to the ori node before you do and steals your crafting mats. The economy is game-wide rather than server specific and designed around items and materials being available to everyone at once.

The general idea is that nearly every drop and every event reward reduces to a handful of game currencies – usually gold but also karma, event currency like candy corn, dungeon tokens, badges, etc. Because items are so widely available you then have the option to buy almost anything you want. And most items are so plentiful that you can buy as many as you can afford at any time, then play the game at your leisure to collect more currency to buy more later on.

The problem comes because players were taught by other MMOs to focus only on the “end game” and the exclusive items the end game provides. No one cares about how the level 40 gear looks because you’ll be level 50 a day later. Level 80 rares and most exotics are so plentiful that they are dirt cheap and useful mostly for converting to other currency or as lottery tickets in the search for rarer items.

The game wasn’t designed for a focus on exclusive loot and visual prestige: it exists, yes, but players who want it are all directed into a tiny subset of the game where they compete for a few options and ignore most of the game world except as a means to obtain these few exclusive items.

Other MMOs do much the same thing, but they were designed to attract and keep these players (either through monthly subscriptions or selling upgrades directly) and so the game becomes an endless treadmill exchanging one exclusive reward for the next. Because GW2 was not designed this way, those players quickly run through the rest of the game (the part they ignore because it doesn’t directly lead to these exclusive rewards) and have to be held back from obtaining the final rewards too quickly because there won’t be any replacements coming every few months to keep them logging in. Without any new goals to grind out, the game becomes boring and they move on to something else.

Of course, some players who have been trained to expect this endless cycle of grind/reward/new grind/new reward will be disappointed but short of completely redesigning the game there is nothing the devs can do about this. This is not the game you’re looking for. You can complain about it on the forums endlessly, and nothing will change because a few million casual players like it the way it is, or you can move on to a game that was designed to support your play style.

Until there are some huge leaps forward in technology (download speed, real AI, virtual reality immersion, etc.) new games are going to be mostly remixes of what you’ve seen before with the occasional twist. Even Everquest Next’s promises like the ability to destroy any objects/terrain and drop into the underworld to unlock new adventures and so on is just Minecraft with a graphics upgrade. And it opens the door to a whole new level of griefing that could just destroy the fun of the game for most players if it’s not tightly controlled.

Depending on how deeply you get involved in a particular game, or genre of games, it’s easy to eventually become bored and disillusioned with them. In adventure games like MMOs, it’s just not possible to write thousands of unique quests, then do it again and again in different games and expansions. Eventually the quests fall into a handful of categories and you find yourself killing a dozen Xs or fetching a dozen Ys over and over.

Sometimes you just need to take a break from things for a while, play a different kind of character, a different kind of game, or pursue a different hobby altogether for a while, then come back with fresh eyes and rediscover what you liked about the games in the first place.

It’s not any one poster, this same song has been playing since shortly after launch. Probably since they closed the karma loophole that let some players buy thousands of rares for a fraction of their real price, which gave them cheap forge fodder for precursors.

Behellagh.1468:

eithinan.9841:

But really, Legendaries are simply skins that do not have any impact on game play so it is a luxury item in the purest sense.

Well skins with the ability to dial in stats on the fly.

And the potential for a “free upgrade” at some point in the future, when hardcore players don’t have anything to work for.

Neither of which justify the extreme expense and work that goes into obtaining a Legendary. It’s like saying you want a Rolls Royce because they have extra cup holders.

Unless you want a Legendary weapon and don’t have it, issues related to them are of secondary importance, at least. Certainly not something that is front and center in Anet’s priorities. Most people who want them do so out of a (probably mistaken) belief that they indicate one is an elite player, a cut above the average toon in the game. Myself, I haven’t been impressed by them since the first month or two I played the game, and I started a couple of weeks after launch.

Rainshine.5493:

Esplen.3940:

Might and Magic actually cost about the same as a Precursor, but you at least have progress shown on your way there.

Right. Everything else you can work toward incrementally, but the precursor is this massive, moving! hurdle. And I’m just not sure I earn quickly enough, consistently enough, to clear it.

EDIT: And I think that’s where a lot of people’s despair/complaints stem from.

The goal moves backwards as well as forwards. The lowest sell price could be 1000g this week and 900g the next. If you have 800g put in a buy order and wait, and keep saving money. When you have another 100g you could update the buy order, or you may even be able to buy the precursor outright.

The issue is not the price of the item, it’s the impatience of the individual. You don’t need it right now you can still create a Legendary weapon a week, a month, a year from now. You don’t need to match a sell order’s asking price, you can put in a bid for whatever you can afford and raise it as you get more money.

The entire complaint boils down to “I want a precursor right now and Anet should give it to me at whatever price I want to pay.” That’s just not how it works. You are competing against other players to buy it from the TP, and if those players are more dedicated than you, if they are more patient than you, or if they have better luck than you they have an advantage.

Work smarter to get what you want, don’t just throw a tantrum and expect someone to hand it to you.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s funny that people use the argument that the cheap precursor prices are not relevant because there’s low demand but when the same argument is used about high precursor prices being because of high demand they completely ignore it.

Precursor prices for the cheap precursors are broken because they should be more in line with the other precursors such as dusk. This needs to be fixed! It’s just not fair that some precursors are cheaper than others.

The only fair solution is to do away with the precursor/gift of … system altogether and sell Legendaries directly through the gem store. At a fair price, reflecting the amount of effort that should go into acquiring them. What is $1,000 US in gems? 80,000?

thehipone.6812:

and if b) Does it make sense (i.e. is it fun?) that a player’s progress towards that goal can be blocked or even erased because timmy plays 8 hours a day or has mom’s credit card?

That’s just avoiding the basic issue altogether… much like the real world, some people measure their personal worth by comparing the things they have to the things other people have. IRL comparisons include things like your job title, income, luxury cars, expensive clothes, trophy wife, etc. In-game things include exclusive items like that Liadri minipet which can only be obtained in specific ways, or rare/expensive items like Legendary weapons, the Greatsaw sword skin, etc.

In another game the exclusive items may involve going to a specific area of the game world and waiting days to weeks to months for a rare creature to spawn, or killing thousands of a specific kind of mob looking for a rare items that drops only from those creatures. Or it may mean joining a raiding guild and running the same dungeon over and over again every Wednesday night from 6-9 collecting tokens or waiting for a specific item to drop. In this game it means doing whatever you want to do in order to save up the gold to buy the items you want from the TP.

No matter what is involved, in real life and in an MMO, there will always be those who are jealous of what other people have but don’t want to do the things they need to do to get those things for themselves. Personally I think they would be a lot happier if they focused on what they actually wanted rather than focusing on what other people have. But that’s just me.

Tree.3916:

The problem, mtpelion, is the sort of geniuses who make “precursors are too expensive” threads aren’t going to understand the subtle point this thread makes.

More like they’re going to ignore it anyway, because they were never talking about precursors in general in the first place.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. YouknowwhatImean…

The introduction of the wardrobe is the biggest factor behind precursor/Legendary prices right now: create one Legendary and every character on your account that can use that kind of weapon can reskin his weapon with it. It’s easier to dual wield Incinerator and other one-handed weapons too.

Beside that, you’re competing with other players who also want their own Legendary, as the game ages more players have bigger piles of gold to throw at them. Keep at it, and eventually those with bigger piles of gold will get their Legendaries and drop out of the competition, while your pile of gold gets bigger and eventually you will have the biggest pile of gold to throw at it.

Just glancing at the summary graphs, it looks like the last few months were the best sales/profits overall in the last year or so, mostly due to launching two new projects, GW in China and Wildstar. But certainly the company as a whole is doing well and I doubt they will need to revitalize their products with, say, announcements that they will develop a new boxed expansion to push sales.

Not that this will stop the “(game name) is dead and/or dying” crowd.

https://help.guildwars2.com/anonymous_requests/new

reapersblood.9281:

i sent them a email @ 10 this morning trying to get the email from being blocked

As the quote above shows, it’s standard policy and required by their billing processor. You can’t stop it from happening, but you can open a free email account such as through gmail and use that to open a new account.

Whatever, JS is by far the most open and plain-spoken of the devs and does not engage in “marketing speak” and buzzwords when discussing the game. I am repeating my understanding of what he has said, and I have seen no evidence that he is hiding anything.

I don’t always wear a hat, but when I do, it’s not made of tinfoil.

Brother Grimm.5176:

TLDNR: not needed and would cost Support time and effort to police….not gonna happen.

Especially since this is the main “official” reason why it wasn’t carried over from GW in the first place. The devs already considered this idea, and rejected it, long before the game was launched. The situation hasn’t changed since then, so unless you can bring something completely new to the table it’s not even open for discussion as far as the devs are concerned.

Orpheal.8263:

It is as if ANet hs read just this thread and added just for it the effect of mawdrey…

Players have been complaining about them since the mats were first introduced. Anet does listen, people just don’t understand that their response is not instantaneous.

Botting is against the rules, period.

The account is Dhuumed, goodbye.

Arzo.8671:

Yeah, lack of trinity is nice because, unless you’re one of those 3, you’re not valued. Frankly, I’m surprised that people like the holy trinity. It’s very limiting.

Healing is boring, tanking is frustrating, and going dps means waiting hours for a group. Then someone wipes out and the finger-pointing and rage-quits start, and you get to sit around another hour waiting for a new tank or healer. Fun times.

As for marketing, the game is two years old and sold millions of copies. There aren’t a lot of people out there who are in their target market who have not heard of or played the game already. As for the presentation, perhaps the guys who were supposed to do it weren’t able to go through for some reason, and those who did had a very brief time to prepare. Wouldn’t be the first time.

As I already mentioned, you are actively being assisted by support and have received a reply within two days. There are players who for some reason or another have not had a reply in several days or even a week or more, and they have a legitimate reason to post here. This thread isn’t about how long it has been since you first filed a ticket, some issues will take longer than others, compromised accounts being an especially difficult issue.

You need to step back and stop posting in this thread because you are being responded to by CS agents. Bugging Gaile about it will not speed up the process.

juno.1840:

Behellagh.1468:

John Smith.4610:

juno.1840:

QUESTIONS

1. What gold threshold would you use to classify a GW2 player as “rich” (yeah I know this is subjective, but let’s use the RL equivalent of multi-millionaires — my guess would be 6000g-ish, enough to buy a couple legendaries off the TP)

2. Roughly what percentage of the GW2 player population would fall into this “rich” category (probably tough since “smart” players would have their wealth in inflation-proof investments instead of cash in the vault — an educated percentage based upon your view of the data would be more than satisfactory)

3. How does this category of players effect the economy? (maybe a good/bad/neutral type of classification with a brief reason or two as to why)

Thanks!

These are value statements, and I don’t feel comfortable making value statements.

Okay. How much gold in bank would one need to have to be in the top 20% of active players? Top 10%?

Actually I was most interested in question #3 which is a recurring topic in the forums (at least occasionally). The first two questions were really to put perspective on the answer for the third.

The goal was to put to bed some of opinionated discussions regarding wealth disparity in GW2 and whether or not it has an effect on the “have-nots”.

I can appreciate the lack of comfort on the value questions. Maybe a fuzzier answer on only question #3 is reasonable?

His answer was a polite way of saying “I can’t talk about that.”

Answering any of the three requires the responder to define a “rich” player. Imagine I have less than 1g “cash” in the bank. But:

I bought $100 worth of gems, but didn’t exchange them for gold. Am I rich?

I bought collection expanders and have every slot filled to its maximum, from copper ore to charged lodestones. Am I rich?

I have an inventory stuffed with rare items that are unbound and sellable on the TP. Am I rich?

I sell or vendor everything I own and all my toons are barehanded and standing around in their underwear. But I have a lot of gold now. Am I rich?

The issue is too subjective and too hard to pin down. And ultimately irrelevant because having a lot of coin means nothing if you just stand around chatting with guildies all day. Those working towards a goal will eventually trade away most of their wealth towards that goal, buying mats to craft ascended gear with, buying a precursor or finished Legendary from the TP, or whatever. And those who have the goal of simply amassing as much coin as possible will eventually run out of things to do with it.

The answer to all three questions: it doesn’t matter. A thousand players with 10g each have more effect on the game than one player with 10,000g.