Guild Wars 2

Relshdan.6854:

Boneheart.3561:

I’m seeing about a dozen, maybe, posts mentioning that policy should be scrapped? The number one topic I remember sparking fiery outrage, like the Centralia mine, is precursor crafting. It seemed quite natural, at least to me I dunno I’m weird, to not want to share anything that wasn’t so close to being complete that it might as well be kissing the finish line.

Are there some factors I’m missing, gaps in this incident that would justify the rampant contempt? Am I leaving out too many words, causing confusion or misunderstanding? How can ArenaNet exercise transparency on conceptual content without being susceptible to vilification (general issue, nothing to do with who’s innocent or guilty in the precursor crafting incident)?

nope…you got it.
the policy they adopted a year in was smart. features/intended completion dates they talked about over a year ago, are still called “promises” by forum goers to this day. a whiny/entitled portion of the forum(s) posters ruined it for everyone.

State of the Game thus ended………so they tried CDIs….some were constructive/successful (how to improve living story)…others were disastrously combative (Ranger CDI / WWW CDI)……….now we don’t have those either.

with respect to how this has gone down historically, how should they communicate with this specific angry/cynical community?

By adding huge caveats to everything they announce. If they could add flashing lights that said “SUBJECT TO CHANGE”, that’d do it. Throw on caveats to every statement, “We want to add X, but it may not happen because Y”

The fact is you’ll always have unreasonable people, they never go away. But you can’t cater to them and can’t assume that they are the foundation of the player base. Far more people were likely upset by the lack of direction than by precursor crafting still not being done. And even that would have been even LESS of an uproar if they’d just said every so often, “we have tested several ways of implementing, but none of them seem like they would work without wrecking the economy, we still want to do this when we can”.

It will just not apply if you have any other swiftness boon when you cross it, can that be fixed for the patch as well? Is this intended behavior?

I have a new idea that I think will really shake things up. You can’t give us specifics, so I propose a smilie based status report. It would look something like this:

Balance Updates:
Map Updates:
Fractals: :P
Dungeons:
Super Adventure Box:

I think knowing that new world bosses were smiley face + winkie face would make us all feel a lot better.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Romek.4201:

@colin

maby you should than not make a blogpost with things you will give us this year BUT

a blogpost with things you work on

i guess people would be happy to read things like: we work on housing but far from release, we have 3 dungeons in beta status, we had to restart work on precursor crafting and its back to alpha status ………

something like this

That would also break the company policy of what we’re allowed to discuss in regards of what is in development

Though I wonder if we went a little more broad and kept a rolling “top categorical issues” the community team communicated or owned that summarizing high level things the development team is aware of and might or might not be working on, but see’s as core fundamental issues to address, and players just had constant brainstorm threads on those topics – if it’d at least get us halfway there.

Seems like the problem is the company policy is a bit too rigid, then, or perhaps the interpretation of it. If it prevents you from describing or hinting at anything at all in development, then that basically means that there’s no possible way to keep things like the Super Adventure Box disappointment from happening.

I feel like there is a nice medium ground between the older roadmaps and the current policy of denying anything is being worked on until two weeks before launch. Like a statement that just almost categorized things as being in active development, in passive development, slated for future development, or shelved.

Be as vague as possible, you don’t have to say “we’re working on a new fractal that will focus on this and is scheduled for this date”, saying “New fractals are currently being developed”, “New fractals are on the schedule for release soon, stay tuned”, or “New fractals had to be shelved for the moment, but we expect to pick them back up soon”

Such statements can lead to pain and groaning, but way less than not saying anything, having players making assumptions, and then becoming disappointed/angry that they got their hopes up for something that you could have told them was not going to happen. Similarly, a lot of dungeon players are close to giving up on the game because a recent interview seemed to indicate that work on new dungeons has been abandoned completely and probably won’t ever pick back up. If that isn’t the case, you should correct it, if it IS the case, you should explain a little more as to why and what you feel replaces that game mode, be it more open world organized fights or working on new fractals.

TL;DR is that if you leave the status of all game modes completely up in the air for months at a time, then every single player is assured to have their hopes dashed in as brutal a manner as happened this last week over something

It would be crazy cool if your choices of dialogue could somehow store as variables to be used later within the story. Like if you suck up to Phlunt, he is nice to you, otherwise he is crazy rude. Or, and this is probably too much, choices that actually determine which version of a story step you can complete on a character.

If sand giant was in a format that took just a bit less time to whittle down, I would be thrilled. Nobody ever seems to want to do it as is because it takes so much time. Other than that, I don’t know of many problems I’ve run into.

I would say that giving champ boxes per tier of the zephyrites would also be a great idea, it gives farmers somewhere to go that benefits everybody.

People taking things literally are why we can’t have nice things. The rules of this thread are that he won’t say anything to interfere in the game’s economy, and why would he, he’d have to fix it. While just saying that something exists will lead to more usage of the mystic forge and throwing things in for science, hinting at something cool that can be created or even something lame that can be created would be interfering.

Nobody should think that there was a deeper meaning.

Sindex.9520:

Please don’t do that. Don’t create a hype, if there is none. It’s bad enough that we have had a fair share of disappointments with certain developers own dubious hype. Like the Final Rest mysterious drop location, or what we got in the Thaumanova Reactor fractal.

I think he was just being silly. He was asked whether there are hidden recipes that haven’t been found, and he said, yes, which of course there would be. There has never been a better spot I can think of in any game to hide easter eggs.

Either that or precursor forging has existed for the last year and we just aren’t smart enough to have unlocked it. That’s why they won’t tell us, they’re disappointed in us. :-(

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

John Smith.4610:

Wanze.8410:

Are there still Mystic Forge Recipes/items that havent been discovered yet that are not recipe sheets for food feasts/pots/trays or recipe sheets for satchels/boxes of armor?

Does Zommoros still have some secrets up his djinny sleeve?

Yes.

Is it Mounts?

It’s the Christmas present you always wanted, but never received.

Great, now I have to figure out what could possibly be the recipe for a Hummer Power Wheels.

Here is the issue that has been raised in a nutshell. In this thread about how there is open communication, I don’t expect a response, because that’s typically how these things go. It would be nice to have back and forth.

Nobody expects everyone at Arenanet to know everything. The sane amongst us understand that sometimes things promised or intended don’t pan out. But even a post saying, “so we heard you and this is what we’re currently thinking, but I have no idea whether this will be implemented soon” or “we’re sorry, we do plan to get to this, but we just can’t right now” is better than complete silence.

I’ve loved the back and forth with John Smith in the q&a thread over there, it’s been pretty fascinating even with the understanding that he WILL NOT answer questions about anything specific that might affect the current economy or future releases. If we could have more threads like that, I think the general tone of the forums would improve. But I mean…. the traits thread is dozens and dozens of pages long and doesn’t have anything apart from a “yeah, we’re listening”.

A lot of this is on the community because it’s easy to provide disincentive for you guys to talk to us, and I’m sure for you it seems like it’s a sucker’s game. But the knowledge that I might be able to go and ask John Smith a question and get an answer is REALLY nice. I wish that extended to dev and strategery as well.

Bestest way at this point to just make all legendaries and precursors account bound, then increase the precursor drop rate. Make it so you can switch precursors through mystic forge recipes.

My gut tells me female, but there isn’t really any official indication either way.

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)

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

To be fair, you DID say that your stats would tell you if our momma loved us enough, so…

That being said, numerous psychological studies have demonstrated that personal sense of wealth is largely a state of mind after needs are met, so if you feel poor, it’s probably because you open up the trading post and see legendaries selling for what is likely 20 times the gold you’ve ever had at once. Doesn’t mean you are not wealthy, nor does it mean that the person selling the legendary has a leg up, per se. Most of what you need to excel in this game is easily affordable with a few days worth of play, the insanely expensive stuff is almost entirely optional.

In this sense, Guild Wars 2 does not track real life, and yay for that!

EvanTeicheira.3962:

Hey Sevei! Thank you for the report! I have a few quick questions for you which could help us substantially in trying to identify the root of the problem (pun intended):

• Did you create the first tier of the back-piece (the Exotic-level item) before today’s patch?
• Was the seed in your bank or in your character’s inventory?
• Have you progressed through any of the construction steps introduced in Episode 4? If so, which steps have you completed?

If you could also provide a screenshot which highlights the issue, it would help us greatly!

Thanks, and see you online!

1. Yes
2. In my character’s inventory
3. Yes, just about all of them except for mist/chaos pot

Same issue, didn’t even realize….

This probably falls under the category of “questions you can’t answer”, but… given the proven poor value of the recent Tyrian Explorers Knapsack update to the gem store, is it simply that you feel adding an “Empty Box” item to the store for 100 gems is too gauche?

I kid, a more serious question regarding that might be, what goes into deciding what the precise value of items in the gem store should be and the balance between what an item may be actually worth in relation to similar items and what its price is set at? Are there times when something is priced at a point specifically to influence purchases of other things?

Also, add my name to the list of amazed and envious in regards to the massive amounts of data analysis and manipulation at your disposal.

Yup. I was one who was certain we were getting a new map despite some saying it was a tease. But I don’t think they could pull this off. Too much would have to change, and there is a genuine risk of very heavy backlash if people decided the old content was better.

It’s #3. Just a tease. Or deliberately misleading what is happening.

UNLESS, and this is my one caveat, the ascalonians become human again and continue war against the Charr. That would be considerably less work and might only need some npc movement and dialogue changes. And we’ve seen in the past that those are not as hard for them.

Flash.6912:

I think either Dragon Bash or SAB3 come out during mid season break.

Oh… I think there won’t be a Dragon Bash for quite a long time. It would be like having a birthday party for someone who just died last week. SAB3 seems likely, though. Hopefully with something to do for people who hate jumping puzzles this time.

They ARE really weird and annoying, but mostly because they just seem crazy out of place in most of the places where they exist. The changes to Lion’s Arch and the current vine situations at least feels somewhat like part of the world, the toxic areas are marked by enemies and activities that clearly don’t belong in that spot, not to mention a GIANT ugly icon that mars the map.

And they’re in Queensdale, which is even worse considering that’s a starting area, it’s easy to start a brand new character and suddenly wind up in the middle of something that can wipe you even at level 80.

I think the personal story “this area doesn’t make sense” issue isn’t actually as big a deal as it could be. Anyone starting understands that they are coming in a long time after launch, and any confusion can easily be cleared up via wiki or map chat. So for most people it would probably be an “oh, ok, I guess I’ll find out more about that later” and then move on. If I were actually new, I’d be more excited to know that things can actually change within the game.

This has been my take since playing after an extended hiatus. The game is better and more promising than it’s ever been. It remains to be seen whether that will or even could continue, but as of right now, I think they’re on a hot streak.

Zaxares.5419:

That was intentional though. ANet tries to avoid creating events where players can subvert it to spawn Champions to farm instead of actually completing the event.

Can probably blame that one on what happened during the Scarlett map takeovers. Was hard to find anyone to help complete the event because most everyone was just trying to upscale and leave open the events that would spawn champions. Personally, though, I’ve never found champion bags to be much better than normal drops.

But to the original poster, if you’re in an area where there is a zerg and that is what you’re asking about, then you should consider forming an impromptu group, because group damage is weighted more heavily than solo players. It rarely matters except in instances where there’s dozens of people attacking the same champion/boss like in world boss events.

Doing world bosses I’ve had more than I think I could ever use, that and bloodstone. Just spend an hour or so doing boss runs a day and you’ll collect quite a bit quickly. Dulfy’s event timer even lists how much dragonite each boss gives.

My advice is just to acquire gold, lookup the builds you want to run, and then buy the traits. That’s what I do. It’s fun to occasionally “unlock” something, but there’s no need to play the game on someone else’s timeline.

That said, no, it’s quite easy to level a character these days. The trait system is bad and (in my opinion) has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, but the fact that you can buy one of the 2-3 only grandmaster traits you’ll ever use for 1.5g isn’t too bad.

Compromise: coma?

I’m calling it now, I bet we’ll get the last bit of Dry Top that people have already found and see the gateway to a new zone that will be explored in the next releases following the break.

jheryn.8390:

Jaken.6801:

We got our “explanation”.. yeah…

http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/07/22/flameseeker-chronicles-introducing-guild-wars-2s-dragons-reac/#continued

not really convincing…

I agree. Lame.

Yeah, made me sad. Lazy writing is lazy. And it wouldn’t have stood out as much if it wasn’t for the fact that it was in the middle of such an otherwise well-written story. And that it would be very easily improved by simply adding a text bubble like “I’ve seen references to a plant dragon in a lot of Scarlet’s research named Mordremoth”. I seriously hope they took away the idea that this was a misstep and not that we’re being nitpicky. Because we ARE being nitpicky, but also not wrong.

It’s hard to think of more questions, you’ve done such a thorough job.

Can you talk more about your role within the development process? You’ve alluded a few times to what seems like very specific periods of input to the process, do you have daily discussions on a project like Dry Top as it’s being developed or is it just an advisory role at the beginning and end?

On a different note, how involved do you get on a day to day basis? Do you operate like a stock trader with 3 monitors of different markets or just look at a daily snapshot of activity? Is part of your job identifying major anomalies or abuses in the system as they happen and flagging them for developers to take care of?

Again, this is fascinating to math/programming nerds like myself that frequent these boards, so thank you! I wish we had more threads like this with developers/writers, it makes the game more enjoyable to hear about how much care goes into it.

Not to be a downer, but I suppose this means we won’t see any major balance updates for awhile, which is somewhat disappointing.

lordkrall.7241:

^ Well to be fair people have been wanting a solution to the “ghost problem” since release more or less.

It also works with the personal story, seeing as that is locked in time, so even if the ghosts go away in the open world they would still be able to take part in the story instances.

Is true, and it would be incredibly cool, shocking and would open up a world of possibilities. But that world of possibilities might not be as fun as the old world, I could easily see this being a case of “be careful what you wish for” for a lot of people, unless something happened like the ghosts became normal Ascalonians that regained their previous corporeal form and are fighting the Charr still. Especially if they formed an alliance with the separatists.

And even then, as I said, I’d be disappointed that resources had been diverted to something like this.

Arewn.2368:

And while I like the biconics just fine for the most part, I’ll actually be really happy if they can just kitten off for one release and we can see some other characters get some focus.
I know we have to finish up what happened last time and go talk to the Pale Tree, and we’ll probably see some resolution between Rox and Rytlock and the whole warband affair, but if they could just stop after that for this patch and actually focus on some other character for a while, that’d be great.

100% agree about diversification of story, it’s very nice to see that they are still able to mix together old and new stuff. Though I don’t think we’re at a point yet where I’d want to just stop altogether, are we to wait until Mordremoth has taken over the entire map? I want them to press through for this story and then take a break for game balancing, polish, dungeon paths, etc. I think that’s what they’re already planning, though, if you think about schedule. Mad King’s Day is in what, 5 more cycles? Plenty of time to wrap things up and take a break from the story until after Wintersday.

I’m not usually one to join the naysayers, at least haven’t been the last few weeks, but I can’t possibly imagine how or why they would actually make Rytlock’s gambit work. The charr/ghost fight is one of the most popular parts of the game and integral to the Charr storyline. Not only would it ultimately be unpopular and require a complete redo of the story for the Charr, it would also represent a tremendous misuse of dev resources in trying to fix a part of the game far from broken for no particular reason except it would be interesting to see what happens.

However, as a failed attempt, I’m sure this story will be fantastic.

LadyRhonwyn.2501:

Stark.1350:

This content is permanent. I.E. it’s not going anywhere. So 5 years down the line, you can keep coming back to it. Burning yourself out by only doing these events over and over again is your own problem.

I only see one problem: the T4 requirement before you can get the skins. It’s already a rare occurrence now, during my play times to see that happening. So how often will it happen in 5 years?

Mega servers mean maps will always be as full as possible. Dry Top is on an hourly schedule so everyone knows what to do when. It’s definitely conceivable that t4 happens occasionally a year or two from now. Plus, it’s a fully automated event/champ train on a level 80 map. Even if you don’t need a skin, it’s very farm able.

Ashen.2907:

You are suggesting that people who are dissatisfied with something (GW2) should leave it be and yet you do not like something, complaints about GW2, and continue to read them (apparently). Don’t you find that a bit odd ?

And you are replying to my pointless comment, an act that is even more pointless. And I’m replying to THAT comment. The cycle of pointlessness continues…

I mostly just want to convey the idea that perhaps ANet does actually try to address the concerns people have, which is something that people seem to not even consider because (and I’ll be brutally honest about it) the first season of living story was a huge misstep. I think they’re back on track, but as far as executing what they were hoping to do, I can’t imagine they aren’t a little disappointed with the results.

But that’s changing, and too many people who post threads like this don’t recognize that, I’d be surprised if most of them have even fully played through the new content. I spent 3 hours in Dry Top today, it’s the most fun level 80 map they have made and it’s not even done yet.

I don’t think there’s reason to lock this thread, they probably plan to adjust this at some point, but it’s a bit too early to expect changes to it, and they have sort of stopped telegraphing their plans very far in advance. So all we can do is just keep providing feedback.

I can understand that concept, but the thing is that I am 100% sure they value you. If you step back and actually look at the direction they are currently moving in, it’s clearly TRYING to address specific criticisms of the game and of living story content. But I can only imagine that it’s really hard to care about criticisms of people for whom nothing can really be done apart from just undoing four years worth of planning and development. All they can do is just do their best and try to make people happy. Sometimes they won’t actually succeed in that, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care or they don’t hear you.

And as I said, it couldn’t be more clear that they’re trying, Dry Top is a permanent map full of interesting things to do. It is, in other words, an example of something that their critics of LS1 were asking for. But the complaints of “no permanent content” have become “not enough permanent content”. If I’m a developer, I would find it harder and harder to believe I could ever pacify some of the “fans” here.

I will never understand why the official game forums easily have the most negative comments about the game from anywhere. I can only assume it stems from the One True Comment of the internet: “I know you can read this, and I think you are terrible.”

Either enjoy the game for what it is or find something else that you like better, but all this endless whinging is really irritating. It’s a new game, lots of new developers, new designers, of course it’s not going to be the same. And if what they have delivered isn’t what they promised, then just maybe what they promised wasn’t plausible. If you want to criticize anything, then criticize that they promised something undeliverable. But do it a year ago, when that criticism was actually something not said a million times over.

KarateKid.5648:

With the exception of the occasional kitten (usually on the weekends), FGS’ train is still calmer and more disciplined map chat than QD was on its BEST day. I will farm FGS (not on the train) for tier 6’s and “listen” to map chat – that train is usually only 1) lost/scattered 2) telling jokes or 3) asking if trio is up 90% of the time. A lot better than the spittle-filled soul-crush that QD map chat “sounded” like.

At the risk of derailing the thread, I agree, another example of awfulness was the first year queen’s pavilion. So many people that were like, “we’re not going to even try to finish the events because we get more from these destroyers”, so they changed it up so that you got the same amount of loot but only if you completed the events, which also had to be done in non-zerg mode.

So if you need a good example of why champ train busting is primarily a gameplay issue to ANet and NOT an economic issue, there it is. Plus champ bags are probably the most overrated items in the game, 90% of the time they give you what you would get from doing two minions. Which, in the time it takes to wait around for and kill that champ, you could farm so so many creatures.

pdavis.8031:

So as long as we are asking questions…what about champ trains and event trains “ruining the economy”? I’ve seen this argument as the reason that the champ trains and event trains were nerfed. Apparently, according to some, that they were nerfed because too many people were making too much money, and that was bad for the economy as a whole. Can you shed any light on this? Or were they in fact “increasing inflation” as has been claimed. Thanks!

I’d be interested to hear about champ trains, too, but a slightly different directions. Do you have a hand in sort of attempting to guide the zerg towards events that will help balance the economy or is that primarily something done for the sake of gameplay?

And as for champ bags, are these used as a testing ground for experimentation? Seems an ideal control given that it’s usually the same players every day.

Keep your questions vague, people! This isn’t the place to argue decisions, it’s to learn why decisions are made, albeit in a way that isn’t possible to profit from.

Oh, I have one more. John Smith is a pseudonym, right?

I have three questions:

1) Is precursor crafting something being held back because of technical concerns or because of economic concerns, ie a massive surge in demand for certain types of materials? I know you’re limited in what you can speculate, but I have a theory that the crafting is largely being held back because legendaries and precursors are possibly the biggest driving force of the economy and a change in how they function could cause massive waves. Wanted to know if I was correct in this.

2) When you consider game inflation, do you primarily look at the prices of farmable material and blues/greens or do you take into account super-rare items acquired from drops, rewards or gems? Is the reason you say inflation isn’t a problem simply that the items with crazy high prices are the only things with a price rising so rapidly?

3) Can you give an example of a situation where what seemed a good idea for balancing had ridiculously bad consequences? A true learning experience in GW2, I suppose you could say.

Also thanks for doing this! It’s extremely interesting every time you have something to say.

Sort of feel like the death of Belinda wasn’t meant to be an emotional high point so much as it was meant to be an emotional catalyst, which I thought they did in a nicely understated way. We haven’t heard the last of this conflict, and I feel certain that any real tragedy to come out of this storyline has yet to really hit. Unless I’m badly misreading, what they were trying to do was nudge us to be emotionally invested in the small rift growing between Jory and Kasmeer. At least for me, that was accomplished, which is impressive given that at the start of this story, I was barely even tuned in to the two of them.

Anime is cool and what not, but I have no interest in something that just beats you over the head with teh feels. I want a slow burn and I feel like that’s what I’m seeing. It’s been said before, but this is chapter 2. It would be a mistake to try and set up an emotional climax this early on.

Two things. First, totally agree, this has been my favorite story from the game since some of the initial racial paths. Easily top 5 gw2 stories and has the potential to be one of the better stories in any mmorpg. Yall even got me to care about the Kasmeer/Jory/Belinda relationship which, I’ll just be honest, I didn’t think was possible. It’s only two chapters in and I can’t wait for more, it even felt like you incorporated some suggestions from the forum after the last story. Which, if you did, that’s amazing, if you didn’t, that’s just as great because it means you’re already heading in the direction that most of us are hoping for.

Second, totally agree, I need to know the justification you guys had for why everyone just knew it was Mordremoth and knew him by name instantly. It’s the only sour note and im betting it’s got an explanation.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I can see where everyone is coming from in terms of explaining why the player character might have known the name of this particular elder dragon.

However, while in the story (and each time that I’ve repeated it since), I find myself taken out of the story and wondering how the group jumped from wondering why Scarlet behaved as she did and what she unleashed with her drill to suddenly identifying the force behind her as Mordremoth.

In other words: great, there’s some possible explanation, but it still pulled me right out of the story.

And it’s too bad, because it was the single sour note in an otherwise wonderful symphony.

Agree, so I hope bobby or angel can offer their rationale they had while in the room. There’s no way they didn’t have a solid answer in mind.

Entire server, across multiple maps, all frozen

I want to say that I like abstract art and impressionism quite a bit. And as someone who likes that style of art, the loading screen is terrible. The colors are completely imbalanced, the visual flow is nonexistent. Plus, despite being abstract, a piece of art should evoke the subject, and this just completely misses the mark for what is, first and foremost, a ghost town in the middle of barren wasteland.

I’m sorry to whomever spent time working on it, and it’s just one man’s opinion, but I think it’s just a complete fail.

I think a lot of people who complain about the story haven’t been paying attention. But that being said, you can’t quite fault them for not remembering details of the story that they’re bored with.

So… it’s more interesting when you pay attention and it definitely definitely makes sense, that’s not a valid complaint. But if you’re bored with the story, then I can’t really help ya, that’s the story being told and if you don’t like it, then nothing to be done, there’s lots of people that enjoy it

Also I think some people are responding to the lack of cutscenes. I know I personally pay less attention to dialogue being said around me than I do to dialogue in a cutscene. Heck, I pay more attention to text dialogue than I do to ambient npc dialogue.

I’m not sure that it’s actually 20 developers, I’m pretty sure the 20 includes all parts, designers, writers, developers and managers. Meanwhile, they transitioned some developers off of the living story into working on other projects.

If they wanted to make the mobs not farmable, they could always, you know, make them not endless.

Arrow.4619:

I think this is mostly an oversight on ANet’s part (unless they have something personal against the above Sigils and Traits and the players who use them), but it needs to be fixed. If the issue is that certain mobs have zero experience, and therefore don’t count as “foes” then simply make them all worth 1-5 EXP on kill or something and fix it. If they can make a mob worth zero experience they can make it worth 1 experience and allow those Sigils and Traits to work normally.

This. Breaking the mechanics of the game to prevent people from getting more XP is not really acceptable and definitely not fair.

See, the problem is that it’s entirely plausible these changes are coming within the next month or two. It’s entirely plausible some might come in the next patch. But this thread illustrates the reason why we can’t actually know what the status of these projects is. They assumed last year that they had nothing to lose by announcing rough plans ahead of time, but they have learned that isn’t really the case.

And personally, I’m not an apologist for the company, I just empathize with developers, because anyone who does development has to deal with this sort of thing. Unless you have a ton of money to throw at every project, then you will have a lot of problems meeting hard deadlines without sacrificing quality. Why not just add a second developer on something? Because that basically doubles the cost of that feature, it is an absolute budget killer. The project managers are going to be more worried about that last part than getting a specific feature in place.

So each project is a choice and a decision of what has to take precedence. Also worth noting is that the job market for developers is absolutely KILLER right now. So hiring a new developer is not as easy as it was a few years ago, it costs a lot more and you have to constantly worry about the ones you already have getting poached.

AnAspieKitten.5732:

GW2 promised many things and it still do. Players were expecting giant, epic battles. We were told of a dynamic, “living” story which is something we don’t have in others MMO.

……

You can’t let people think you’re going with something big and then do it so slowly. If you do this, you have to communicate, which they don’t. All they would need would be to state if they’re planning to implement weaps, races, dungeons, zones, gear, blablablah, anytime soon. Regularly. And people would know what to expect, the hype would be controlled, there, no disappointment whatsoever.

OK, your first part answers why your second part doesn’t happen anymore. They’re not just sitting around over there playing cards all day. They aren’t just trying to think of the least amount of work they can possibly release. They want to make a good game and they do the best they can with what they are able to do. If they promised more than they were able to deliver, then, well…. that’s like 90% of life.

But a lot of people just hold them to words they said 2 years ago like it was a solemn oath and had been written out word for word in the EULA. It wasn’t, they told you what they really wanted to do and they weren’t able to get to all of it given things like budget, timing, and some creative turnover.

At this point, if what they are doing isn’t enough for you, then hop off board the train, realize it’s not going to happen. But don’t get angry at them for not being able to live up to their promises, they’re not your dad. And understand that the reason they won’t tell you what they have planned is because they know that if ANY of it doesn’t get done in time or changes in scope, they will get more threads like this whining about how they don’t deliver on promises.