Guild Wars 2

Ashen.2907:

The fly in your dinner plate can make the entire meal unpalatable.

The glass is empty it is then.

Edit in act your fly analogy is perfect:

you think its a fly and want to throw out the entire plate of food because it is all unpalatable. The fly was in fact designed to be a little tasty mushroom.

Some people don’t like little mushrooms and left it but ate the stuff they like.

Some people think its a truffle, they eat the rest of the food on the plate as well ofc.

Danikat.8537:

Ashen.2907:

Which is why, if they decide to even consider it, ANet would want to read the countless posts on the subject (here as well as on other forums) and revisit the CDI method of community interaction. They most certainly should not spend the development resources without some market research.

But that’s why I’m saying the people making those posts need to be specific about exactly what they want from a housing system. The majority of topics I’ve seen don’t go into much detail and there seems to be an underlying assumption that everyone knows what good player housing looks like and everyone agrees on what features it should and should not have without anyone needing to explain it.

Having seen one game burned by that already and the ensuring arguments about what essential features were missing which showed that there are many, many different opinions and it’d be impossible to accommodate them all (because some are totally contradictory – like instanced vs. un-instanced vs. shared instance housing) I’m very wary of it happening again.

- the ability to design the house itself, including walls, roof, floors, stairs, inner walls etc
-ability to design out building and surrounding land like gardens
- the ability to place items you can use, e.g bookshelves, armor dummies, display cases, chairs
- good control mechanism for placing items.
- it has to be instanced for obvious performance and sprawl reasons that are pretty well understood.

Mentioned Wildstar because that is the outstanding feature of that game:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=top+10+wildstar+houses&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjI6IjR68LTAhUKOsAKHVNOCvoQsAQITA&biw=1102&bih=780

Housing like wildstar or better i would say where people showcase their custom house designs and don’t just buy house template x and fill it with junk you cannot interact with. Not sure if GW2 engine could cope with this.

Bad housing that is poorly configurable and doesn’t allow free form design is a waste of space imo.

Silent The Gray.3091:

Ashen.2907:

Another alternate view:

HoT maps – I dislike them. I know that I dislike them because I tried them. Playing on them may not even qualify as play because it is not particularly enjoyable for me.

Action – avoid HoT maps for the most part.

Its not reasonable to expect people who are paying to have fun to spend their “play” time not having fun. Customers telling you that they do not like aspects of your product is kind of important if you want to continue to sell to them in the future.

But pointing things out you don’t like and the reasons why you don’t like such a thing hurts people’s feelings, and it’s 2017, you aren’t allowed to approach things in such a logical manner anymore.

The point was people generalizing all aspects and features of a product because they don’t like an aspect of a product. Then there are those that just blame others ofc (its easier than admitting that a product aspect is just not suited to their taste right) for e.g ‘customers’ actually represents a wide range of persona and user groupings with an equally wide range of opinions on such aspects.

http://www.deskmag.com/en/steelcase-maps-work-cultures-among-11-countries

you can see that america is at the end of the spectrum for individualism, where eu is a mix.

Did a different person design the light set, it looks disjointed and awful.

the problem here IMO is that people debating about HOT have different mindsets and different mind maps of how they evaluate value in a game. My issue is that some mindsets are destructive and pointlessly negative and at times hyperbolic, the glass is empty. il try and describe this:

My mindmap of HOT

-Hot Raids : I hate the concept of raids (rote v react, been there done that etc). my action is ignore and occasionally debate.

- Hot maps: I love them, i already have 30 easy maps, i like options. My action is to play and enjoy.

- Hot difficulty: At first I founds it hard. Action – tried to work out why other found it easy and learned more about sceptre/focus, now i enjoy it.

Overall opinion: Worth it for me, I hate raids but can live with ignoring them. Sometimes i let myself get annoyed by negativity others in forums (bad on my part)

An alternative view I have seen

-Hot Maps: I hate them. Action – don’t play them.

-Hot difficulty: Too difficult. Action – I don’t play in hot maps, its broken.

-Hot gliding: Love it. Action – adds to QOL, happy with it.

Overall opinion: I hate HOT, the developers rushed things, expansion ruined whole game, its too expensive, developers don’t listen. This is my online opinion.

Its impossible to debate the latter, because actually its a disguised rant that refuses to self reflect and uses blame rather than taking ownership for game play selection. The answer is to break down the problem, which means ofc these threads go nowhere – which is what we see.

works fine for small groups imo, 1v1 is doable but more of an issue in that you are missing the specialization you get with 4 stat armor.

I think there are a couple persona to consider here Vayne if you are looking at channels and engagement, the first is the player new to GW that hears about GW2. These players are likely to be attracted by look and feel in videos and advertising then start looking at reviews. These guys are not going to be following GW specific forums, they are new to the game. Its possible these guys will read about dramas in big sites, but they are sub consciously looking for confirmation that their excitement about a product is well founded, its human nature, especially when there is a lot of positive reviews to confirm the bias.

The second and main persona, is mr average gamer – mid 30s, played for over a decade now. Mid 30s your cooked you can think for yourself and in the main is capable of critical thinking. For e.g one of the main dramas at the time was the flawed argument that getting GW2 vanilla free with HOT = paying for vanilla twice. A 35 year old adult will evaluate themselves and see that HOT was the average price for an AAA expansion not (Vanilla price + Avg expansion price).

I agree there are other persona that would be affected by this kind of drama, but there is always drama these days and again confirmation bias is huge these, and I suspect generally most of the unhappy players were already unhappy and no expansion will change that. Happy players allow for disappointment as they are engaged and want to trust more.

I think there are a couple persona to consider here Vayne if you are looking at channels and engagement, the first is the player new to GW that hears about GW2. These players are likely to be attracted by look and feel in videos and advertising then start looking at reviews. These guys are not going to be following GW specific forums, they are new to the game. Its possible these guys will read about dramas in big sites, but they are sub consciously looking for confirmation that their excitement about a product is well founded, its human nature, especially when there is a lot of positive reviews to confirm the bias.

The second and main persona, is mr average gamer – mid 30s, played for over a decade now. Mid 30s your cooked you can think for yourself and in the main is capable of critical thinking. For e.g one of the main dramas at the time was the flawed argument that getting GW2 vanilla free with HOT = paying for vanilla twice. A 35 year old adult will evaluate themselves and see that HOT was the average price for an AAA expansion not (Vanilla price + Avg expansion price).

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

what bad publicity exactly? apart from the usual nay-saying in gaming forums by the usual negative types the game was received very well across the board, for example:

pc gamer 85
ign 76
metacritic 85
mmorpg 82

If you were following meta critic at first, the game was down around 50. It LATER came up to 85. There was a concert effort by people who were outraged to downvote it on metacritic and that number was very low. I remember posting about it at the time.

Game review sites are meaningless anyway. Most games are sold by word of mouth or advertising. Anyone who wanted to do a search on Guild Wars 2 at that time would have encountered articles in places about fans being dissatisfied, and even reddit, which is usually quite positive about the game, was on the warpath.

In general terms, if you post a stupid negative post on reddit, it gets downvoted to hell. The negative posts on reddit are few and far between. Back then, reddit was on the warpath and the first page was filled with negative posts that remained top rated posts for days on end.

I agree there are often a few loud complaints that take front and center, but this was something completely different.

I said publicity, and those sites along with advertising is the publicity/word of mouth and on average HOT was well received, and is well regarded then and now. The fact is on average the typical punter who has not played GW looking for an opinion on HOT are going to see this and videos, and not disgruntled self-centered highly vocal posts on forums and reddit.

There were articles on MMO sites that told of how the community was unhappy with the company and the game. That’s publicity most new games never get. Those articles are rare and they did exist for HOT. That IS bad publicity.

There are always articles about complaining about this and that which is perfectly normal in this day and age online especially in gaming forums and the like. These articles do not however represent the whole community where many have applauded the complexity of the new zones and the design. This also does not counteract the position that on balance there was and is far more positive feedback than negative, and in channels far more likely to be evaluated by the man on the street looking for a new game. The real evidence is Anets behavior, if HOT was disastrous they would not be investing in a new expansion. That’s not to say there are not problems with the initial HOT zones (i personally think raids are too exclusive at present) but good games change and adapt and learn, and i see that within later zones.

Djinn.9245:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Blue.2734:

Wow, not a very nice person, are you? When you are lost and trying to figure out where you are and where you need to be takes a few minutes and the spawn rate is pretty high for mobs. It is so nice to see there are still the elitist that think their mean and not helpful things to say are okay and just for the record, I have played it, although not as high as some I have seen my mastery level is 23 all zones open with completion between 57 to 96%. If you have nothing nice to say, then please say nothing at all.

You don’t really get ‘lost’ you just use the in game map as you have done until you get familiar with the map. If you need a reference you just port back to a WP.

How can you tell someone else that they don’t get lost? O.o

I get lost in HoT all the time and I have been playing in it since it came out. And going back to a WP all the time costs money.

vesica tempestas.1563:

RE mob spawning, find a spot where mobs don’t spawn, then look at maps as much as you like. In other words no need to blame the game when there are perfectly safe solutions available.

If you don’t know the maps well, how do you know a place where mobs don’t spawn?

No-one knows the maps well to start, that’s the point of new content. You play them and you learn by playing, how else do you learn stuff in games? Re not using WP because you think the silver is too expensive – 1 daily reward in 1 day that takes 5 minutes will give you the price of 200 WP portals..

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

what bad publicity exactly? apart from the usual nay-saying in gaming forums by the usual negative types the game was received very well across the board, for example:

pc gamer 85
ign 76
metacritic 85
mmorpg 82

If you were following meta critic at first, the game was down around 50. It LATER came up to 85. There was a concert effort by people who were outraged to downvote it on metacritic and that number was very low. I remember posting about it at the time.

Game review sites are meaningless anyway. Most games are sold by word of mouth or advertising. Anyone who wanted to do a search on Guild Wars 2 at that time would have encountered articles in places about fans being dissatisfied, and even reddit, which is usually quite positive about the game, was on the warpath.

In general terms, if you post a stupid negative post on reddit, it gets downvoted to hell. The negative posts on reddit are few and far between. Back then, reddit was on the warpath and the first page was filled with negative posts that remained top rated posts for days on end.

I agree there are often a few loud complaints that take front and center, but this was something completely different.

I said publicity, and those sites along with advertising is the publicity/word of mouth and on average HOT was well received, and is well regarded then and now. The fact is on average the typical punter who has not played GW looking for an opinion on HOT are going to see this and videos, and not disgruntled self-centered highly vocal posts on forums and reddit.

kin korn karn.9023:

Drakz.7051:

I have had matches where I battled few people but broke through doors and killed the lord and won the match yet I doubt I got top stats but we would have lost if I hadn’t xD

Getting top stat doesn’t really mean you’ve helped win the match or carried all the time.

Absolutely. Yesterday I had exactly this match you describe, and with 0 top stats. Like I said before, people are taking the screenshot way too seriously. My real point in this thread is that I can’t believe how stupid and random pvp is now. Most players are just braindead. It’s rarely about which team is better anymore; it’s almost always about which team is worse.

Which sounds like the same thing, but it’s not. The glass isn’t half-full or half-empty, it’s kittening bone-dry.

yup glass half full, glass half empty and the worst of all, those that play, don’t enjoy it and think they are better than everyone else – and have to tell the world as much.

Imagine someone is 100 rank points above you and calling you braindead because you don’t adhere to their level of skill, this is the real anti social behaviour that ruins good pvp.

ye i know this ^^ but the point is the tools are there for those that want things to be easier.

Ashen.2907:

I am pretty sure that people find HoT to be more difficult because that was the developer’s intention for the expansion.

The Devs offered a different challenge from the mobs in existing zones in HOT, otherwise it would simply be different pixels, spam skill x. We already have 30 zones that offer that. My point is players are saying HOT mobs are difficult when actually they are as trivial as you want them to be to the point where they can hardly scratch you. As per comment above if you don’t consider the following then that’s why the mobs are difficult, i.e its like fighting a boss called ‘fire boss’ in armor called ‘melty ice armor’

use damage reduction food/util (for e.g -10% all dmg taken)
use toughness food/util
use defensive Sigils and runes
use condy removal and toughness talents
stronger preference for defensive stats.

I like the idea, the problem with commanders on map is that it quickly becomes a zerg train that is pretty boring. Encouraging small groups with a size limit could drive out a lot more smaller melee fights.

Blue.2734:

Wow, not a very nice person, are you? When you are lost and trying to figure out where you are and where you need to be takes a few minutes and the spawn rate is pretty high for mobs. It is so nice to see there are still the elitist that think their mean and not helpful things to say are okay and just for the record, I have played it, although not as high as some I have seen my mastery level is 23 all zones open with completion between 57 to 96%. If you have nothing nice to say, then please say nothing at all.

You don’t really get ‘lost’ you just use the in game map as you have done until you get familiar with the map. If you need a reference you just port back to a WP.

RE mob spawning, find a spot where mobs don’t spawn, then look at maps as much as you like. In other words no need to blame the game when there are perfectly safe solutions available.

For info, Here’s a couple things i bet my bottom dollar people who struggle with mobs don’t do:

use damage reduction food/util (for e.g -10% all dmg taken)
use toughness food/util
use defensive sigils and runes
use condy removal and toughness talents
stronger preference for defensive stats.

This is why people find HOT difficult.

Tanner Blackfeather.6509:

I instead see it as it should be included for free in the next expansion.

As they’ve said that each expansion will give the previous ones so you “only ever have to purchase the newest one”, that purchase coming with a growing number of holes in the story flow seems counter to their stated goal.

I think this is a fair shout.

GiggleFairy.3807:

Ryou.2398:

Clearly tons of people left because anet needed to appeal to esports which was understandable but they did not really divide the skills therefor alienating different kinds of players. Esports pvp killed build diversity period, now I know elite classes did not but they could of easily been fixed.

Believe it or not most mmorpg players these days need and want build diversity.

this is so true. my complaint is how certain gear is locked behind raids and it turns me away from this game. i play necro and want viper accessories but cant get them due to that. people who play now and want to get to that point in the game have a hard time finding groups because those groups are full of veterans looking for more veteran players that are geared up and know the mechanics.

i’ve got a full viper/trailblazer mix set and dont raid, gear you can use the mystic toilet to swap stats and wvw/spvp/fractal for the rest. Took about a month once i decided this is what i wanted to do.

what bad publicity exactly? apart from the usual nay-saying in gaming forums by the usual negative types the game was received very well across the board, for example:

pc gamer 85
ign 76
metacritic 85
mmorpg 82

no the sub is a reality for MOST AAA rpg, it is not a concept it is the name of a payment type, i.e a compulsory monthly payment and it was GW that proved no sub with a non pay-to-win shop can work for AAA games. people may continue to ignore that fact that living story is in fact free but that is factually correct. the arguement above equates to ‘I think it should be free because i think so’

I will help you : play for free → earn gold → swap gold for gems, get episodes for free.

ProtoGunner.4953:

In my opinion it is bad communicated and new players are left unhappy. Imho this should be just free for all and all time. I expect that from an MMO. The damage is bigger than the money you make. You can see that on the forums. Every now and then someone asks here what’s going on.

You already getting to play free without a sub, so you may feel entitled to having everything for a free but content costs money to develop, servers cost money to maintain etc etc. As for living story, this is an old old old story, was discussed to death years ago. If you want it free swap gold for gems and get it for free, or get it for free by simply being onlnie when it is offered for free.

Think of it this way, a shop has a sale on for 2 days, you arrive in the shop 3 months later and ask for sale prices, not gonna happen.

OriOri.8724:

ArchonWing.9480:

OriOri.8724:

ArchonWing.9480:

OriOri.8724:

ArchonWing.9480:

You can always place an order for them at 50s. If someone agrees that it’s a good idea, they’ll sell it to you.

Failing that, consult guildies, friends, and other trustworthy individuals that think similarly so you can trade internally. A pool of 10-20 people is more than enough to generate the coins needed.

You’d have to wait for the tens of thousands of buy orders with higher prices than 50 silver to be filled before someone would fill yours. So this doesn’t actually work

Oh, so you mean these tens of thousands of people think a higher price than that is reasonable?

Just because you have a buy order out does not mean you think the price is reasonable. If you need coins you need coins, and since its just not practical to gather them yourself, that means resorting to buying them. And if you have to resort to buying them, you have to put up a buy order that actually has a chance at being filled.

That need is purely subjective.

It is not about needing coins. It is about needing coins now. The game gives you coins for free. You can also get 1 a day and from the occasional daily. You can also get mystic clovers from the track.

The problem actually fixes itself

No, it doesn’t. You people really need to start letting go of this notion that you can gather the coins you need yourself if you are just patient. If you want just 2 HoT legendary weapons, that requires a bare minimum of 500 Mystic Coins. With 20 guaranteed each month, assume (lets be extremely generous here) 5 MF dailies each month, that’s 25 guaranteed MC each month. At 500 needed as a bare minimum, this is almost 2 years worth of waiting to gather the coins yourself. That’t not acceptable to wait for 2 skins. It just isn’t.

lets say 6 months is a reasonable time to get a legendary from scratch, so in that time you gained 150 coins simple from playing, so basically you need to earn a paltry 2 gold a day to buy those coins which takes minutes to earn. the issue is the modern ‘i want it now’ culture.

lukejoe.1592:

Wow, talk about the thread that just won’t die. I think it’s safe to say that HoT hasn’t been a success, but you can draw that conclusion from the sales numbers…this thread that WON’T DIE is just further proof what a massive unforced error their marketing and release were. You can’t spin crap into gold, Anet! That lesson seems to be on the verge of costing them a company.

..is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.

fact is GW2 lives on, people still play it, people still enjoy HOT, Hot was good enough they are making another expansion (you wouldn’t do that level of investment on something that has proven to fail) Life goes on.

kin korn karn.9023:

Should get double rating gain for such a clear carry. I generally don’t put too much stock in top stats, but this is my experience with s06. I usually either have to do practically everything for my team or eat a loss. Makes it pretty unlikely that I’ll manage to climb out of gold this season.

It’s unbelievable how unskilled the typical pvper is these days.

Great players carry players naturally and enjoy it, its a side effect of their skill.

Skilled but bad team players carry people then complain about others or act like martyrs and think they should get special treatment. Note unskilled players can be great team players.

You should ask yourself what you want to be seen as and aim for that when you play.

castlemanic.3198:

vesica tempestas.1563:

i would agree with that then and the answer to keep everyone happy i think is to show lots of stuff, but simply don’t promise it – say here are all the things that we will try to deliver, but no guarantees. Lots of people don’t get that though, they see a thing and call it a promise and equally im sure this could be a risky thing in the gaming industry I would guess?

It’s actually a terrible marketing strategy to do that though. Providing concrete ideas and saying “this is what we want to accomplish, but things might change” is the WORST thing you can do marketing wise. If you say a certain set of things may not come out, it’s not marketable, nobody will consider it a promise and everyone will simply ignore it. If you say “this WILL come with the game”, THAT gets attention. That is something solid that grabs people’s attention. That is marketable because it’s stated as a fact, something that WILL happen, something that you can put your money on because you know it will happen.

Unfortunately there’s no in between. That’s just the nature of human attention.

yup exactly so you go for best endeavor and try to predict the best that you can in an ever changing world knowing that the further in the future a thing is the more unpredictable it becomes and accept predictions for the future may and will go wrong,

i would agree with that then and the answer to keep everyone happy i think is to show lots of stuff, but simply don’t promise it – say here are all the things that we will try to deliver, but no guarantees. Lots of people don’t get that though, they see a thing and call it a promise and equally im sure this could be a risky thing in the gaming industry I would guess?

Heres another angle, lets assume a marketing mistake, now lets assume Anet have learned from that – the answer is don’t market until you a 100% sure of mvp (i.e its built) – guess where we are at now.

Personally i would love transparency and offer everything up from with caveats, but then im just a dev, marketing guys know their stuff better than me

@castlemanic well lets explore what happened, lets assume a promise was made, something happened that meant that promise could not be fulfilled, now that can be a couple things:

- Something else went up the pecking order and became more desirable based on focus groups and feedback, resources and time is not infinite, things change. Being flexible to change is good.

- they screwed up. There’s a well known saying ascribed to great dev teams – fail fast, fail often. Maybe they screwed up and cou’dnt deliver, so they picked the next most valuable thing on the want list.

- They ran out of time. Also happens in reality, 1 bug could knock out a team for a month, could be an hour. Assumably that promised thing was more complex than anticipated, should they delay the release for that one thing (generally a poor call) should they deliver later etc etc, lots of choices to be made.

None of this is about poor development, its simply about being able to change plans on a day to day basis to meet day to day demands.

ofc this is where marketing or someone promised something early can be dangerous – it binds you in a terrible way, and that in my personal opinion is bad, i see it at work myself, the marketing team want to promise everything up front guaranteed, dev teams and product owners want to publish the ‘minimum viable product’ as a starter for 10.

go AG, the toughest most tenacious server in the game

on a different note, i do find the idea of guilds swapping servers to chase the dream deeply annoying, in my eyes having a cause to fight for and loyalty generates the best content.

NotASmurf.1725:

The “people overhype stuff too much so we’re not saying a kitten thing” is the single most kittened policy ever. Do you know why the bits they threw out were hyped up so much in the past? Because there was barely any communication so when we got anything we assumed “oh, so that’s where all the effort went!”.

So now they “learned their lesson” and communicate even less? What kind of backwards false sense of logic is that?

With nothing to look forward for months then getting a patch that’s a hit or miss followed up by another 3-4 months of silence I almost completely lost interest in this game. I check the news, but don’t log in anymore and that’s sad.

Personally i think they should go for it and release some kind of video showcasing what they are aiming to release with a little caveat that they may not deliver everything. win win.

@ castlemanic ‘promise’ or simply a feature that was deprioritised in place of something else? that’s the thing, everything has a cost, you cannot deliver everything, so you pick stuff. reality is a lot more complicated than jsut broken promises, no-one wants to break a promise, but choices for the best have to be made all the time. The alternative is the almost dead waterfall development life cycle – I promised to build ABCDEF even if tastes change or context changes or other issues arise that are critical.

they promised -> they lied -> they over hyped etc etc. Notices its always assumed that a decision was made in error.

@ Ardid everyone on the internet is an expert, Anet clearly did not listen to ‘us’ (everyone on the planet us?) ‘it wasn’t complete’ so on and so forth.

In reality if you understand software development you will know there is no such thing as ‘complete’, there is simply a backlog of things to build that never ends and you pick the next most important thing next. separately you decide when to release, for example releasing with ABC and wait for live feedback to see if customers want D next or do you deliver nothing for another period and give ABCDE and risk D being a waste of resource (there is no right answer here)

DemonSeed.3528:

Namer.9750:

Overall, this situation isn’t really surprising, and reminds me a lot of the old T8-9 vicious circle: After a few losses, the population sinks, guilds leave, the remaining players get zerged into oblivion over and over when faced with higher numbers, and the server looses again and again. No wonder people loose their movitation and transfer.

Yeah it’s a bit of a snowball effect. My server has been through the same as your server and demotivation hits fast and hard but it will pick up again, just have to ride it through and it may take a few weeks before it starts to recover again. What tends to keep the server alive is the few that stay and and fight it out trying to motivate who is left and the ocassional newer players that trickle in. If you can ride the storm just do what you can, the only other alternative is to move unfortunately.

+1, tbh with the right state of mind it can actually be a lot of fun playing the massive underdog, sometimes annoying ofc, but deeply satisfying when you stick it to the enemy Good to see the regular commanders still out there, nod of respect to them.

‘they can’t take criticism’ is a pretty childish assessment of why a professional has chosen to no longer post in a gaming forum, and kinda demonstrates the issue. (i dont mean that as a personal attack, i see that comment often)

re hype,

No hype -> too much hype -> they promised -> they lied! -> they over hyped! -> it can only be perfect or don’t tell us, but tell us early! but don’t tell us too early! it goes on lol.

professional game critics criticise games and game design they do not criticise individual devs. Also, forum patrons will typically not care or understand what part of the game the dev works on, i.e is he an engineer working on the engine, is he a designer, etc etc. Also the issue is not necessarily the objective carefully worded critique, its all the other noise we know exists, and that’s the problem ofc the dev gets bogged down trying to deal with noise. Lose lose and a waste of peoples time.

There is another simpler answer, devs are just like us and care about what they do, and have decided that they think more harm than good will come from posting to said forums – the issue is actually people ascribing some sinister ill thought out reason behind this.

Adry.7512:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Its a waste of energy being concerned about an xpac we know absolutely nothing about yet imo. The expansion will have content some people love and content some people hate and vice versa. life is much less stressful if you avoid trying to scry the future or pick appart xpack info when it is released and just enjoy the ride to a new expansion when it comes – its the fun phase on a mmorpg where we get to get excited about new stuff and analysis is the excitement killer!

Hahahaha you do have a point there, but there is a difference between stuff people like and stuff people dislike, versus nothing being there when there should be. This thread is about something this game needs but doesn’t have. This is not a thread arguing about something I dislike about the game.

nah its all the same thing 1 person thinks feature xyz but not b should be there and definitely P! , another person thinks its xyzq and definitely not P! and we argue and we argue and we argue then expansion comes and we missed all the fun

My personal approach is a personal wish list and hope some get ticked off and get myself all hyped about other new doodahs when they are announced – give me suprises Anet, my life needs excitement! Guess i’m saying fearing negative things is a way to depression :P

Devs are busy writing code and testing and doing all the things we want them to focus on. That aside, how can forum patrons possible criticise if they are not part of the day to day development work and know exactly what all the problems are first hand? the answer ofc is they cant, but yet they will still criticise anyway, pointless exercise.

to OP, the gear treadmill is not part of the GW world, if it was then the game would die a death – there are other games that do that, the market is full.

Re raids, agree an easier mode would be better value, more people would get to enjoy that content, including those that love complex dungeon fights but just cannot be bothered with the rote memorization of rotations and meta build or fail approach (perfectly fine to support that with the harder mode ofc for those that want it).

^^ lol exactly Sojourner : no hype -> too much hype -> they promised! -> they lied! -> they hyped!

personally i love a bit of hype, there’s only a couple times in the lifetime of a mmorpg when we all get excited – new releases and new expansions. Hype is fun not a legally binding contract that means everything hyped must be delivered or else!.

Its a waste of energy being concerned about an xpac we know absolutely nothing about yet imo. The expansion will have content some people love and content some people hate and vice versa. life is much less stressful if you avoid trying to scry the future or pick appart xpack info when it is released and just enjoy the ride to a new expansion when it comes – its the fun phase on a mmorpg where we get to get excited about new stuff and analysis is the excitement killer!

glass.3245:

From GH here (paired with ROF).

Your players’ builds are very squishy on the whole, I imagine it’s a bit demoralising when they get stomped by a party much smaller than theirs. AM are condi blobbing and tend to focus on you because you’re the easier target.

Speak to your guilds about doing some proper work on your WvW builds, get them all on TS, stay tight together and keep your head up. AM aren’t good, they are just a bit blobby, you can still turn this week around.

I do a fair bit of roaming on AG and everything was fine until a couple weeks ago, however something has changed and the population mismatch is noticeable. Re your get gud comments, strange because a group of 15 held off a force of about 40 at our EB garrison for over an hour of attacking last night before they gave up, I must surely assume they have crap builds too and are only good when they blob right?

iKeostuKen.2738:

WvW is basically follow the leader and spam all your aoe and cleanses as much as possible while running in a zerg.

PvP just sucks beyond belief. Its actually the worst it has ever been, the esport being shut down supports this. Useless builds, slow balance patches, low build diversity, buggy movements (will randomly get stuck on nothing), Projectile issues (Many times projectiles will go out of range when your upclose to players), Burst builds that can negate a lot of damage (while still fighting back).

I dont think this can compare to WoW at all.

WOW pvp is an utter power creeping mess and has been for many years, don’t think it compares to any mmo out there including GW.

RE WVW, don’t follow the leader unless there’s some big juicy fights on the go or you want to farm, its a lot more fun.

Khisanth.2948:

vesica tempestas.1563:

Not every idea comes from the client, especially when innovating otherwise GW2 would simply be a re-skinned GW1 aka this thread. Sometimes vision and courage of your convictions is involved – anyone still use a blueberry?

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Sounds great … assuming you actually understand at least some of the things that needs to be done.

It’s like someone setting out to build a better suspension bridge without understanding any of the engineering princples just because they think they have a great idea.

well i think Steve jobs knows a thing or 2 as does Anet in their own field.

If its more of a typical feature development (that doesn’t apply here) then project start up sessions are all about creating a shared understanding and it is the responsibility of the engineer to bring to life the costs involved so the product owner and full team can make an informed decision.

Not every idea comes from the client, especially when innovating otherwise GW2 would simply be a re-skinned GW1 aka this thread. Sometimes vision and courage of your convictions is involved – anyone still use a blueberry?

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

good luck to him, BDO is a pve grindfest with terrible translation/writing, avg repetitive graphics at a distance with no soul (its a classic case of fidelity > artistic quality) and PVP that requires you to spend cash and deal with already established monopolistic guilds.

vesica tempestas.1563:

[Snip]

Vesica I don’t care if it’s in the pennies. It’s still a lot of pennies. At the end of the day those pennies turn into pounds and then double zeros on the end. It’s awesome deal for new players or freeplayers. But it’s not tempting to old customers returning.

And I see the word ‘free’ be throwing around often. I don’t want it free. I want to pay the value of the expansion and what’s included (aka) not paying the same game repackaged. So I don’t end up being one of those that paid £35+ and continue to pay 30-40 for every minor expansion in the foreseeable future year round.

Essentially I am not committed to handing out £40 to Anet every time they release a new ‘dlc’. A couple of zones, and crafting and revamped lvl is not enough to pay the same game twice over.

And from what I have read from quotes by anet. It looks like they plan to sell all future content that way. Reselling the base game to you twice, three, four, five, six times over. And the price will probably increase to reflect that.

What I would have preferred is buying the add-on individually based on it’s value and not packaged together to amp the price tag.

[/quote]

they are not reselling previous content, they are selling the expansion at the average expansion cost for an AAA mmorpg and giving all previous content for free for those that don’t have it (the opposite is that new players would have to buy all content to access the expansion which obviously doesnt work) For existing players you get the new content if you find it appealing enough to buy. Buyers prerogative.

You can call it ‘dlc’ all you like, but HOT is similar in size and form to every other expansion released by AAA mmorpg, new zones, new class, new mechanics, new instances and in the case of GW2 no sub to access all this. To give you an eye for cost, consider that just 1 developer & tester & designer is going to cost you 1/5 million a year. Then there’s server costs and then all the other costs that go into running a company.

yep agree ^^ even if you only rack up a few hundred hours you will probably have seen all that is to be seen, and have moved into the achievement/character refinement/instance/pvp phase. Devs will never be able to produce unique interesting content fast enough to give a constant stream of new content.

Now for me what makes mmorpg unique is the virtual persistent world and long term character/avatar that you invest time in, and if done well this can become a very enjoyable thing in its own right. A player find’s stuff to do with their char because they enjoy playing and ‘being’ their char, slowly improving in some perceived way be it personal skill, builds, achieves, wealth, skins etc. If however you do not connect with your character and only care about consuming content then things are going to dry up for you, and there’s nothing you can really do about that.

This is what i was getting at earlier, If HOT doesn’t appeal, and you don’t feel like returning to GW2 then the real issue is that you are bored with GW2 as a whole and no expansion is ever going to fix that.

I wonder if Anet have considered the value of commanders and wether its worth considering incentivising the commander role further?

Would also be interesting if commanders got a special skills bar that activated if he had a squad of say 20+. Nothing OP, but perhaps a skill to do stuff like fire flares, reduce cool down on emergency WP , reduced personal resource (or gold) cost for siege to give a couple ideas of the top of my head.

Hit them hard then run away screaming, seems to work for me :P