Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

Main this is, that it should be locked behind content. It then makes sense that harder content rewards better items then easy content. That does not mean that easy content should also not reward very good items.

The important part is that it’s rewarded ingame, not how hard the content is.

Gear IS rewarded ingame. Do you get anything with stats from the gem store? Or are you suggesting they lock cosmetics with no stats or usefulness whatsoever behind difficult content?

Seller: “This is my product”
Buyer: “I like your product”
Seller: “This is its price”
Buyer: “I think it is adequate”
Seller: “Let’s exchange!”

Exchange happens.

Buyer: “Wait. I want a totally different product than the one I made the informed decision to buy”
Seller: “But this is the product I offer!”
Buyer: “It is not what I want now. You are greedy”

Didn’t they already return it to the store? I believe that’s when I got it.

Market responds to supply and demand. Nothing “should be worth” anything, it just is according to supply and demand.

Some may feel sorry for the changes this will cause, if any, but the next state of the economy will be just as good. Not for you personally but the economy doesn’t really care.

I find it interesting that in this “A gets for free what B had to buy beforehand” situation, complaints come solely from the side of those who bought the item.

If it’s wrong in principle to give someone an item others had to buy, shouldn’t this rattle the morals of at least some of those who get it for free?
Or is it that it only bothers those on the B side because of personal loss, indicating no objective morality whatsoever? Would B be complaining if he was gifted something expensive?

Also interesting is that giving away this dye takes nothing from those who bought it except exclusivity. People are complain because… they don’t feel unique? Is it a threat that I will now sport the same expensive colors as you? Do you feel so devalued and fragile in your self worth that you have to be mad at others being gifted things? Are people really this insecure?

The methods you criticize are as legitimate as the ones you want to practice. Each player does a dungeon the way he or she wants.

If you join a group that’s set on speed running, you should stick to their philosophy. If you don’t want that, don’t join them or simple leave and join another group whose playstyle is more suited to you. Or start your own.

Zerker speedrunners should be allowed to zerk speedrun too.

It happens when the level you’ve been downscaled to changes. If you’re downleveled to, say, 50, and then walk a bit to an area in which you’re downleveled to 51, you can pop another tablet. Just go back and forth between that invisible dividing line and summon infinite tablets.

They all blow up at once. Did it a lot with 3 other Rev guildies and crashed my own client twice.

What you can’t do is move them all at once. Only the youngest tablet responds to that. Unfortunately.

Formula: rage at a bug, mention wasted time, mention spent money, mention uninstalling, mention gem store, say you’re going back to another game.

- If the “other game” is that good, why does anyone stop playing it? And if there was a reason, why go back to it now? Is GW2 the “other game” in a Diablo forum post somewhere? Is there someone going back and forth between two games constantly uninstalling and going back? The big questions.
- I sense sarcasm when you thank Anet for reminding you why you quit. You should seriously thank them. You had a reason before, you seem to have forgotten it, they made sure you wouldn’t waste any more time because the reason is still there.

Also, the reason you won’t get your 45min back is because time only runs forward. It’s not the code’s fault. You wouldn’t get that time back if you had done the boss either;

Having said that, can I have your stuff?

Either do it for the enjoyment intrinsic to the activity, in which fun is the reward, or for the gold rewards – in which case fun is a welcomed extra, but don’t pretend that’s why you play.

OMGtotesGuardsies. my Guardian.

Finished yesterday at reset with over 6 min left. The only difference in strategy being that the group ganged up at the crit spot. Someone always said “crit here” or a version of that in all chat – if you have the pop up balloon option on you’ll easily see where to stand. Cleave hits both new crit spot and old foot spot.

In short, hit the crit spot. Same performance as usual. Nothing different.

EDIT: People still ranged on the first stage. I suppose it helps to stand on the crit spot in that stage too.

Fadhli.9086:

GinsuChef.3765:

I think it can be made into a passive effect and added to existing utility skills. A few classes have signets that give extra toughness and making fall protection a passive effect to those signet seems natural. Another possibility is to add it to a healing skill as a passive effect.

I’m sure there is much to consider but finding a spot for it in utilities seems like a better fit.

I don’t think it’s even a good idea to have it under a healing skill or utility skill. Why? Imagine when you are thinking of jumping off a cliff while being chased down. I bet you won’t be able to change to the relevant fall damage reduction utility in time, considering you are in combat.

Or maybe you already have it equipped (and assuming its passive effect reduces fall damage), then you use the active portion of the skill.. what happens? What we know is that passives won’t work if the active skill is used and is on CD.

Or maybe we place it on the active skill itself… I’m sure when we jump cliffs, we jump more than one time – in succession if it’s from a very highpoint.

All of those disadvantages are already present in the current setup. And all those alternatives are still better than being a traited effect.

I’m all for having it as a signet passive, for example. I’d still have to be out of combat to change into that signet, but it would be a lot less work then re-traiting.

Peope’s right to easily kill it is not above others’ right to feel challenged. Being a casual player isn’t an argument as much as being a hardcore player is.

If you can’t enjoy Tequatl because it’s too hard, too bad. Some people don’t enjoy plenty of other bosses or content because it’s too easy.

As it is, there’s something for both (with hardcore players getting the short end of the stick – 2 out of 24 bosses). And that’s ideal. ArenaNet caters to both majority and minority, and if you think that’s bad then somehow you think that your needs stand above others’.

On the daily reset Tequatl run, this happened even before the update. It might still be needed to arrange a group specifically for this after they re-balance.

How unpredictable was it that the odds would be against you? How many attempts does it take to realize this? If any. I mean, who really believes they’d put in a gold or ectoplasm multiplier? Free money? Really?

Soleil.1304:

This is the path of regression that will kill the game and kill the good name you’ve built.

Just to clarify, by “this” do you include a whole new expansion and everything in it, a whole new city, a new trait system? Active word being “new”.

Becuase if, in the face of this, you really get so enraged over one skin being up for 24h and decide it’s all copy-pasting, I don’t even know what to tell you. Seriously, I don’t.

1. Not everybody wants that;
2. Some wanting isn’t an argument.

If a game gave you everything you wanted for nothing, it couldn’t even be called a game, as nothing would be an actual reaward.
Some things take effort (like the legendary’s ability to switch stats on the fly), that’s how it is. Put in the effort or live without it.

They might be silent because the kind of change we want would take time, effort and a lot of details to considerate – even if they have already decided to give in and change the pricing/add character slot.

After all, a lot of people have already pre-purchased. They’d have to figure out how to return the money to those accounts, flag them on their database to add a character slot, all things that need to be planned, tested, retested before they’re executed.

Not to mention profit projections that need to be recalculated with a price change, reports to be re-written… and you forget that ANet are developers, coders, creatives – money related issues are probably NCSoft’s decision. As far as we know, ANet might have had the same reaction as we did when they heard the marketing/pricing plan, but had to suck it up and obey.

TL;DR It’s complicated. We know nothing. Let’s wait.

You can buy HoT with 500.000 bolts of silk. Core game included.

Tigaseye.2047:

zoejo.2317:

Tigaseye.2047:

That way, they would (presumably) have a more guaranteed income, without bleeding half their (paying) customers dry, or making people who genuinely can’t afford it have to find money for a sub.

1) What makes you think they don’t have a more than enough income as it is?
2) The fact that there’s someone who can’t afford something isn’t an argument for a change of business plan. Their plan works – otherwise they’d change it. If someone can’t afford something they just won’t buy it. I don’t expect a change of business plan in the real estate market just because I can’t afford a better house. I’ll just live in the house I have.

Well, I don’t really know if it works, or not?

I know they haven’t gone out of business, but I don’t know whether it is working optimally, or not.

Do you?

Personally, I don’t really feel it is working for me, one way and another.

I have spent quite a lot, but I don’t really feel like the money is going where it ought to be going and as such, I am becoming reluctant to spend more.

Clearly people do have various issues with the current system – you can see that from the threads that keep cropping up.

I can’t be sure that the model’s working for them, as much as anyone else can’t be sure that it isn’t. However, companies are made to profit and if they’re not changing their business model, the safest conclusion is that it’s working. The gem store vs. subscription option they took has lasted three years – it points towards the current model being sustainable.

You said one right thing – “Personally”. As you can imagine, the formula for profit takes into account the behavior of the population as a whole, not of each individual.

You seem to be unhappy with the trade. The solution is to stop consuming. You don’t expect every other company you make transactions with to change their model and offering to tailor your personal liking – why do you feel entitled to demand it from ArenaNet?

Yes there’s been threads with the same complaint. Out of all the threads posted here, however, it’s not a significant percentage of the player base. Out of all the player base, it’s possibly negligible.

Again, ArenaNet has statistics to power their decisions. We don’t. Our personal opinions matter little.

Tigaseye.2047:

That way, they would (presumably) have a more guaranteed income, without bleeding half their (paying) customers dry, or making people who genuinely can’t afford it have to find money for a sub.

1) What makes you think they don’t have a more than enough income as it is?
2) The fact that there’s someone who can’t afford something isn’t an argument for a change of business plan. Their plan works – otherwise they’d change it. If someone can’t afford something they just won’t buy it. I don’t expect a change of business plan in the real estate market just because I can’t afford a better house. I’ll just live in the house I have.

A lot of you make the assumption that “if they lowered the gem price, more people would buy, therefore they would profit more”.

May I remind you that this conclusion is, unless you’re an exception, completely baseless except for your intuition. Nothing wrong with that. But know that ArenaNet, as a company, has people dedicated to data analysis and advanced statistics that demonstrate inequivocally that a certain price is better. If they run the prices they run, it’s probably because that’s where the profit is. And we can’t legitimately blame them for that.

After almost 3 years of selling gems to players that number in the millions, they can now run very accurate linear regressions that predict the most profitable prices. That is more evidence than any of us can provide to back up our opinions.

While the price might be too high for your budget, Anet sells for a whole community. It’s irrelevant whether you, as an individual, can afford it or not. Profit is predicted based on the behaviour of the population.

Honestly I just wish they had fat ones too. But I concede to the argument of these being heroes that run around all day, some in heavy armor, fighting as a job, and therefore necessarily in good shape.

Timegated =/= slow.

Timegated means nothing’s stopping you from getting something, but an arbitrary and imposed time limitation.

Slow isn’t arbitrary – it’s just slow. The nature of the proccess requires time to mature/complete, but that’s not forcibly imposed or arbitrary.

If it takes me 3h to make soup, that’s just slow. If my oven will only work once a day, that’s timegated.

Adry.7512:

yes it is successful cause they did a lot of things right. regardless, there is an undoubtable feeling of emptiness when you play this game that for SOME REASON does not keep the average player consistently playing

I hate to sound repetitive (even more when repetition seems to be your biggest issue), but again, where’s this coming from?

Did you poll every player for this “undoubtable feeling of emptiness” or the consistency of their playing habits?

I’ve asked before on this thread too. I wasn’t going to bring it up again because, as I said, your lack of response is an answer in itself. But then you go and accuse others of not expanding their thoughts:

Adry.7512:

i simply dont care unless he expands on his thoughts

You also seem to forget that Anet is a business. They’re here to make money. I guarantee that if things aren’t changing, then the money isn’t short. Which doesn’t happen with a player base where the majority feel the way you say they do.

You feel demotivated. As your friends do. That’s a shame. But the game has only grown bigger, and the company more profitable. It’s certainly not because the majority is demotivated.

Adry.7512:

zoejo.2317:

Where are you coming from saying the clients are not happy? Did you look at their sales record? Can you back that up with something other than the voices of the few forum goers?

You’re a minority. The game is successful. It’s not changing anytime soon.

your putting words into my mouth. re-read. also, please dont take minorities out of the equation, its quite bad to do so. on top of that, what part of “Anet continues to change the direction of the game” slipped past you? i would be happy to explain. you seem to not understand the bigger picture. please restate what you said more constructively so i can better discuss the topic with you.

Edit: what is funny is that your perspective might actually be the “minority” in this subject. anyways may i ask what argument are you willing to discuss? what evidence must be presented to someone who isnt saying anything? to ask me to back it up (i would guess u mean evidence), then present nothing, but a poorly constructed opinion?

You said the clients are unhappy. Yet the game is expanding (e.g. to china) with a very healthy projected profit for the future. In the face of this, where are you coming from to say the clients are unhappy?

It’s not a poorly constructed opinion. Actually it wasn’t even an opinion. It was a question. You stated something on a public forum, and I asked you to explain what you based that statement on. You don’t have to do it as it is a free country – and that will be enough of an answer.

There’s a difference between their “Play your way” and “Sure, we’ll change the game every single week in order to keep up with everyone’s most minute baseless complaints, even if they’re contradictory somehow”.

It’s a game. It’s a preview. Of content that you’ll get anyway. In a GAME.
I’m sure it’s not something worth getting upset and all riled up about.

Where are you coming from saying the clients are not happy? Did you look at their sales record? Can you back that up with something other than the voices of the few forum goers?

You’re a minority. The game is successful. It’s not changing anytime soon.

And by “everything”, you mean ascended? The one tier only really required for the highest levels of one activity in the whole game?

Sounds completely unreasonable.

I once missed Fire Elemental because I got a text and look at my phone.

Like you said, it’s your opinion. Developers must have had their reasons not to have it up front, and the game survived just fine. Your opinion was either a minority or of not enough weight to make nothers avoid the game.

Be happy it’s coming now. A feature in a game shouldn’t cause you that much frustration, feeling abhorred or angry.

Can I have your stuff?

Zaklex.6308:

For all of you complaining about this, and those that know nothing of programming..let me put it in simple terms you might understand. The code that allows single and party entrance into an instance like Toypocalypse is shared with PvP, which means the code is the exact same thing for PvP as it is for Toypocalypse. To stabilize PvP they had to make some changes that made it so parties could not join the same instance together. In order to allow parties to join Toypocalypse as a party they would need to duplicate that code, make what ever changes are necessary just for Toypocalypse and insert into the game code, which could lead to more bugs and problems if it’s a rush job. By waiting until Wintersday 2015 it gives the team a better chance to get the code correct and limits the potential for it being buggy. Most if not all software that has code that is used in multiple functions doesn’t duplicate that bode but just does what A.net, fix it for it’s main purpose until there is sufficient time to rework it for both purposes. Besides, Toypocalypse was originally intended to be a solo join experience as a random group.

To fix the issue they’d need to completely rewrite the code, better to allow them a year to do it in vs a couple of months.

Hard to believe it’s that hard. Every single instance in PvE keeps the party intact. Even one particular instance that happens to be the same exact map.

If they copied code from PvP to Toypocalipse, why not copy it from dungeons/story/etc? Using PvP code actually makes less sense to begin with, since Toypocalipse has absolutely no competition.

Therodin.2970:

I wish that if we complained enough they would decide to devote the time it would take to fix this before wintersday is over, but im sure they already have the holiday plans set and we will just be SOL for this cold cold wintersday

It appears they’re (or at least Gaile) bent on using the power argument to shut down any discussions about it. Google “just because fallacy”.

Toroxus.9256:

Empanda.4617:

Toroxus.9256:

joshc.3129:

Toroxus.9256:

It’s broken and, according to Anet, will not be fixed this Wintersday. Please try again in 2015.

Where did you find Anet saying they won’t fix it? They aren’t going to add something that’s broken and walk away not fixing it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Toypocalypse-and-Parties/first#post4629767

Sorry, get over it. That’s all I can tell you because that’s all they tell us.

But, I do have an alternative: If you want to do Wintersday-esque activities with your friends, do the Infinirarium over and over, or play a different game.

That forum is about parties in toypocalypse not the actual game play of killing those adorable toy part. So no their not going to fix the fact you can’t get into the same group with your party, However they’ll probably try to fix the fact that it’s not activating. If they care enough….which they may or may not knowing anet.

What part of the following did you not understand?

according to the designers [the Toypocalypse] must remain in this state for this year’s release.

Regarding the subject of that thread. That’s how discussions work. Don’t assume he’s talking about a different unrelated problem that they’ve shown interest in correcting.

Took me 30 min to find a map with ongoing events.
The problem wasn’t lack of player as much as the whole events were over. The 10 rounds had been done, players left and the instance was still up with people ending up in there anyway. You can see from the timer that the event had passed and had been successful, the instance just didn’t vanish and kept accepting players.

If you want to see this in action, just remain in your instance to witness the continuous flow of players coming in and back out immediately.

On top of this, I felt the need to ask: Couldn’t this change have waited a month? Has PvP been so unstable that you needed to do this NOW, harming one of the central activities of a whole celebratory update that people love and excitedly await? But the topic had been closed – something I’ll mention again at the end of the post.

And while I’m at it, how has PvP been stabilized, namely regarding matchmaking? Has anyone noticed any difference? I went to the patch notes looking for these new stabilizing strategies Gaile mentions but there was nothing in it. Which leads me to the question:

What big stabilization in PvP justified amputating the Wintersday update like this? What was the “too significant cost” to letting us enjoy Toypocalipse as we did last year? Really, I’m just asking for the same objectivity that was required of us in the above linked thread.

I’m also not a fan of “this was not a choice”. Again, I’m not a developer, but I understand that Anet is a company, players are clients, the game is their product. Therefore, the following applies: you can’t give your clients something that’s widely appreciated and then take it back. If you’ve done something right before, you now need to go around it to make other things better, not trample over it and take it back from the hands of the community you gave it to in the first place. This isn’t about coding, developing, gaming – it’s about businesses, clients, and products. What Anet has done here is idiotic in videogames, as it is if they were selling apples. Would you go to people’s houses and take their apples back if suddenly you realized you could make your business more streamlined and efficient by selling oranges instead?
At Anet’s level, it is legitimate to complain about decisions like this. They’re a team of many many people, they’ve had significant experience in this business, plus the two years the game’s been up, plus the fact that they’ve tried both sides of Toypocalipse – the parties, and the randoms. That they couldn’t foresee the impact of this decision is not forgivable. Anet, you should have known – that’s all there is to it.

Finally, back to their comunication strategy. While I’ve mentioned most of what bothers me, I’d like to bring up how tasteless it is to lock the thread I linked before. Like I said, we didn’t get a good reason. No one was at peace, no one read it and said “Oh, ok. I can understand, when you put it like that”. The reasonable action in a conversation that hasn’t reached that point is to try and communicate. What Gaile (by himself or under orders) did was walk out, shut the door, or worse: played his authority and told us “This conversation is over because I said so”.

While I was almost ready to accept a random combination of words that mean nothing (“The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP and some Instance Activities”) I am definitely not forgiving that closing of the thread like we are six year olds. With due respect to toddlers.

We had a staff member reply to us in a previous topic (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Toypocalypse-and-Parties/first#post4629767) that has since been locked – which is, honestly, a terrible thing to do when things were not getting out of hand, no one was being disrespectful, and the explanation provided was not suficient by any criteria. That last point is actually what I wanted to expand on.

Anet, and the developers speaking behind Gaile Gray, don’t seem to be aware of how inadequate their excuse is. Mostly because they forget that we (most of us) are not developers or coders. A proper explanation for something that was “unfortunate but intended change” can’t be a general statement that has absolutely no meaning to us:

“The alteration came about because code changes were required in order to stabilize PvP”

What does this mean? I read this sentence and I continue to be absolutely clueless as to what happened. This explanation is not only broad and general, it is counterintuitive and goes against what this game leads us to believe in the first place: that PvP and PvE are two neatly separated dimensions. It is also counterintuitive because:

a) every other instance in PvE works fine with your party without PvP being affected, and
b) one of those other PvE instances happens to use the same arena and parties are fine.

This said, when Anet throws “in order to stablize PvP as a whole”, they are basically saying nothing. Don’t ask us to understand, because we don’t. Quite literally.
And then Gaile, who I accept might be as lost as we are and just replicating the words of the developing team, builds his logic on top of that empty sentence he gave us before:

“I’m sure if you look at this objectively, it makes sense to set a short-time event for single enters in order to stabilize all of PvP, which is a permanent element of the game.”

Yes, objectively that makes sense. Objectively, the starting argument wasn’t even an argument but a sentence that’s completely devoid of any meaning. Logical steps are as valid as their first statement, which remains a random combination of words for most of us. There might be a logic, but we can’t grasp it.

RoyalPredator.9163:

Well, the opposite at me. I don’t care about explorations, I care about Power, Money, Politics… and Family.

Slow down Frank Underwood..

I cared for all of it. Good balance.

It gives you greens and the ocasional rare. Is access to greens and rare what makes it unfair? Greens serve no purpose but to be salvaged. Just do events and you’ll get them 10x faster than if you only fed it bloodstone.

You’re losing nothing by not having access to the backpiece (which, btw, is solely your choice). There’s no advantage. Fairness doesn’t apply.

When you can’t have something because you don’t like what’s required to get it, it’s not called unfair. I hate working – should I say it’s unfair that other people get paid but I don’t?

Allaraina.8614:

zoejo.2317:

When I see a Charr whose second name is a combination of two words (Fiercepaw, for example) I think it’s dumb and assume the player is an idiot. I’m often wrong about that.

My bright pink charr warrior Snowball Fluffypaw is going to find you and give you a hug. =D Then he is going to get a twinkie out of his pink quaggan backpack and offer it to you.

I love being wrong

When I see a Charr whose second name is a combination of two words (Fiercepaw, for example) I think it’s dumb and assume the player is an idiot. I’m often wrong about that.

I troll people at world bosses by placing portals right under the chests. In fact that’s why I do world bosses. I go to great lenghts, with mesmer friends and experimental portal guns combined, to teleport people far away and usually down a cliff to die. I always count how many players I got.

I suck at this game. I have a lot of fun, but holy kitten I’m really bad.

I’m terrible even with my main character. I play the cheesiest PU mesmer build in PVP because I can only win with such easy modes. Not ashamed.

I tend to imediately assume all thieves are idiots, but it’s probably because they kitten me in pvp most times. Wait, I tend to think everyone’s an idiot because most classes have a good chance of downing me.

I mess with role players when I find them. They completely ignore me, nicely played. Respect.

I like norn female characters because of how curvy and busty they are. Would totally bang Eir. kitten readheads.

Not before the Moderately Humid Middle.

PCanineBrigade.4916:

“I kill fathers and mothers.. Now I hump their children!”

This quote from HOTW: yes.

Also, Ulgoth:
“Tremble humans, for you will show me Jamaica”

So, does anyone who says the game is dying/losing players/failing financially, have any reliable source? Some official numbers?
Is it really all speculation?

First off, sorry if there’s a better place to post this. This section seemed right to me.

Since I haven’t been bothered by the horde of gold sellers anymore since that annoying week when they seemed to be going at it full force, I’d like to thank the staff for whatever they did. Truth is, I haven’t seen any in weeks, and it hasn’t popped up on the forums anymore. I’m assuming gold sellers didn’t just spontaneously stop, so ArenaNet’s staff must have figured something out or worked overtime to fix it for us. Thank you for that.

Thank you everyone who reported every gold seller as well, I’m sure that helped a lot.

I felt that after all the rage it caused, some recognition was due too.

Guardian’s staff auto attack has a little rainbowish glare if your graphics are set to high enough too. Not unicorns though.

So many good ideas here. I also think Mario hit the sweet spot for difficulty level. For me, it was the right amount of fun/stress. Shatterer needs a dynamic change, and for starters I’d make it like the final boss in the grawl fractal: you can’t stop moving. Serves us right for stacking on his right side for years :P

P.S. A way to get that Branded armor: SUCH a good idea.

The Mursaat.