Tevesh

Menehune, on 17 December 2012 - 05:12 PM, said:

I present the following statements, mr. white knight. Make of them what you will.

I know NOTHING about coding and making videogames. I am not supposed to know anything because, you know, it's not my job.
Surprisingly enough, I don't give a * about the complexity of a videogame, in the same way I don't give a * about the complexity of an airplane or the complexity of cooking a perfect lasagna.
But somehow everyone expects an airplane to not explode in a fiery ball of death when they board it and their lasagna to not taste like faeces. Why should it be different for videogames?

Because modern players are sheep, that's why. Because modern players get married with videogames, instead of playing them and moving away from mediocre products.

This doesn't mean I approve this kind of forum crusades or think they'll ever accomplish anything.
I use my wallet to get my message across and I think more people should do the same.
But whatever floats your boat, I guess.

If you think it's acceptable to play a bugged piece of garbage, because most major mmorpgs had many bugs at launch and because videogames are oh so complex, be my guest.  Enjoy the current miserable state of the genre and enjoy mediocrity.

It's not the bugs themselves.

It's how they manage to fix something, break it again, fix it again, break it again at every single major update.
Same goes for TP and guild chat.

I don't know about the modern generation of sheep players, but I'm tired of paying to be a beta tester. They should pay me to test their garbage, if anything.

inb4 thread locked

if you want my opinion, GW2 has a LONG WAY to go to even step up near WoW's level. It's PvE fails, it's WvWvW was done half-assed, levelling and skill system is extremely stale. There's too many things "wrong" with the game.

There is not debate at all. With geargrind, gw2 is just an other clone. Just, way more trashy, with an incompetent support and dev team releasing trash, way less improved functions.

To preface this, I'm not trying to say "QQ I'm quitting". GW2 is still fun.

Now, on to the conspiracy theory. If you don't feel like reading a wall of text, there's a tl;dr at the bottom.

GW2 is centered around its cash shop, which is not unreasonable, because Anet wants to make money and the cash shop is going to be a significant (if not primary?) source of that. The other one being box sales. Compared to a traditional sell-the-box-and-done games, Anet is committing to keeping up the servers for an indefinite period of time and putting out monthly content updates for free (as opposed to paid DLCs in most other games). So naturally, they'd be interested in players using the cash shop.

Prior to GW2's release I wouldn't bat an eyelash at that. Yeah, sure, if they want to go with a cash shop instead of sub, that's cool. It's cosmetic-only stuff, right? No problem there.

But then I realized just how deeply the presence of the cash shop influences the game design. I'm going to use WoW as a counterpoint here, but people familiar with multiple sub MMOs will find them largely interchangeable.

The basic idea is: Anet wants everyone to stay poor. Because if you don't have enough gold, you can always go to the cash shop and get more. They want you to get more. How did they change the game design to facilitate this?

- Low-scaling rewards. A lvl 10 completing an event will earn about 0.5 silver. A lvl 80 gets 1.5 silver. Compare to a lvl 10 quest in WoW rewarding 3.5 silver and lvl 60 in vanilla about 50 silver (it varied and I can't remember exactly - been a long time). A maxed character in GW2 earns 3x more for doing basic activities than a low lvl character, whereas a maxed character in WoW made 15x more.

- High taxes everywhere. To continue the above example, a waypoint to a nearby place at lvl 10 costs 10 copper. A waypoint at lvl 80 costs 1.5 silver. In other words, a 15x increase, when rewards increase only 1.5x. WoW doesn't have waypoints, but flight paths don't scale with level at all, just with distance (and ones in expansion areas are more expensive, but we're talking no expansions here). Trading post tax is also quite high at 15%, compared to WoW's 5% tax off the profits + variable listing fee, which almost never came close to 10%.

-Lack of a trading function. This very heavily compounds the trading post tax by taking away an option of bypassing it. People would be trading bulk amounts of materials and expensive items such as precursor between themselves, which is less gold taken out of the economy, which is bad for the cash shop.

- Dye drops. There's a thread right now where people are talking about the recently reduced dye drops. Unidentified dyes are fun to open and I can see why people are upset. I'm also upset, but I'll say that it makes sense for dyes to be more rare that they even are currently. Why? Cash shop. Why would anyone buy dyes from cash shop if they're 3 silver on the TP? Anet saw that and patched it up. A sound decision all around, but unfortunately, the simple existence of dyes in the cash shop takes away a tiny bit of fun from the game here: finding and identifying dyes.

- RNG everywhere. I'm not going to go into a detailed explanation here, because I think everyone knows this one. Suffice to say that RNG instead of guaranteed whatever is good for anet because gambling in any form takes the gold out of the economy.

- Inflating prices on the already-expensive crafting components. I first saw this as a simply stupid design decision, but it's actually quite intelligent, if you only look at the bigger picture. Why use piles of t6 crafting materials and ectos to craft the new ascended gear? Well, because those materials are already in demand for creating legendaries! Kill two birds with one stone: create a new gold sink and make the old one bigger by inflating some of the crucial ingredients. Meanwhile, we get a rich orichalcum vein which significantly devalues a semi-rare material that's not really a limiting factor anywhere.

- This is a bit of an anecdotal evidence, but I think ecto salvages have been stealth-nerfed in November's update. Whereas I was not getting ectos from about 20% of the salvages before, now I'm failing to salvage them from over 30% of rares. (I've actually recorded some stats, but the sample size only around 100 rares and it's in no way conclusive because there may be other factors involved, such as the type of item).
EDIT: Apparently lots of people on official forums thought so too, but it's been statistically proved wrong since. I'm still getting terrible results from salvaging rares.

- Worldwide economy instead of server economies. This serves to largely eliminate a "middle class" : a casual trader or a crafter, who would spend some of his time at the trading post for a profit that's well above average, but not sky-high to the point where he can pay his rent by selling gold. In a worldwide economy, only the most dedicated market players can compete and there's no room for crafting because there's 5000 instead of 50 crafters online at any given time willing to undercut each other. As a result, 0.1% of players (Occupy Lion's Arch!) may become absurdly rich and never need to use the gem store in their life, but the 4.9% that would've been moderately rich are instead locked out of the trading game and kept at a controlled level of income that anyone can get from farming Orr or dungeons or whatever. The remaining 95% are unaffected.

- Lastly, the very existence of the cash-to-gold conversion is bugging me. 300g for a Dusk is a huge amount of gold to me. I have about 100g at the moment and I play quite a bit. Probably about 2 hours a weekday on average and much more on a weekend. So it would take me hundreds of hours to get a legendary, which is working as intended. But, I could put down roughly what I make it 2 days at work and buy that Dusk. (Slightly more if you make minimum wage, but for anyone with a job, with the only exception being that 0.1% professional in-game trader, RL-income is higher than game-income.)

I'm not about to do that, because it feels like cheating and I don't think I'd get much satisfaction out of buying my legendary with cash, but the idea that you can do that certainly diminishes the game as a whole for me. Moreover, there are people doing it and they're increasing the cost for everyone else by taking the gold out of the economy.



TL;DR: The cash shop in GW, although not directly selling power, influences the game in a lot of ways. The existence of the cash shop and gold-to-gem exchange makes it Anet's prerogative to keep players poor so they are tempted to buy stuff or gold with cash.

- Rewards don't scale well between low and max lvl characters
- There are high taxes built into the game in form of AH fees, WP fees, and lack of trading function.
- Drop rates get normalized to be in line with cash shop items, not with "fun". Dye nerf is an example of this. Requiring a ton of t6 mats and ectos to craft the new stuff and deter people from their legendaries is another.
- Global market as opposed to a per-server economy eliminates a "middle class", downgrading them to the baseline income/
- Ability to buy the most desired items in the game with cash via gold-to-gem, which just shouldn't be there.

I wish Anet just charged 15$/month for this game and never had this cash shop.

Filled it out for kicks. Doesn't matter though. They have all the info they need. This is a PR move, nothing more.

ArenaNet has proven themselves incapable of dealing with criticism. Their mods merge every negative thread, just to make the game look more popular. Does anyone really think this survey will amount to squat?

I mean, these are the same people who got nothing but bad feedback over the Halloween skins being in gamble boxes, so what did they do for the next event? They stuck the minipets in too!

I have a feeling they made this survey, just to poll the playerbase, so they can do the opposite of whatever the most players want, just to disappoint the optimal number of players.

I have been playing a lot since headstart, and won't stop right now. But I definitely feel my motivation declining lately.

The Lost Shores Event was extremely dissapointing, apart from the glaring technical issues the design choices there make me really question if any thought has gone into it. Excluding at least half the playerbase from the get-go by making it one-time, and then giving out top rewards - if some dev had actually wanted to alienate as many players as possible, then he did a good job with this.

Next on the list the levelling mechanism within Fractals of the Mists. I do like dungeons, and I generally like the ones so far included in FotM (apart from the Swamp one), but that level mechanic is as poor as can be. So to have a decent shot at getting ascended rings, I need to get up to level 10. Currently stuck at nine, because my guild is taking things slowly, and without a functional LFG tool I am literally forced to spend my time idle in LA, possibly changing overflow servers at times, and hoping for a stroke of good luck in finding a group for my exact level.

What are people going to do who start playing say a month or two from now? Who is going to take them through the levels of that dungeon, considering the time that takes? When even now with the initial rush being strong I have problems to find a group, how will that turn out in the long term?

Finally the utter lack of communication about the whole issue. The bit of PR blurb we got the other day does not count in my eyes. I would like arenanet to come forward and be open about their design intentions with the ascended items, the gating mechanism in FotM, why they think the Lost Shore Event was good, and in general more openness from their side as to where various parts of the game are heading. Like classes, wvw, pvp, what have you.

Another big thing is the crazy moderation they do on their public forums. Getting infractions without even understanding why, and naturally not getting any reply back when sending an inquiry about it to the given email address, makes me stop even trying to communicate with them. Worst forums I have experienced in an online gaming career which has lasted about 14 years now.

My overall feeling is of great dissapointment, with a sense of letting go sometime soon.

rusticgamer, on 26 October 2012 - 07:48 AM, said:

hot join spvp is 50% thieves or more.  these so called "ignorant" people have already "found out more" and have decided to play them instead of their "weak" main.

and when i say "found out more," i mean, they have discovered how overpowered thieves are.

mesmer burst is just as stupid, as is their ability to get away if they want to.


elite
burst chain
win

somehow losing? run away, nothing can stop you

rusticgamer, on 26 October 2012 - 07:48 AM, said:

oh?  like randomly dodge rolling hoping the thief or mesmer misses?

or blow a stun breaker or immunity, just to have the thief/mesmer do it again after a short period of time.  
or maybe they will just kill you with sustained damage.


there is absolutely nothing stopping a thief or mesmer from running away and coming back in 30 or so seconds and just bursting you down over again when your defensive cooldowns are down.
not that they have to run away, they have plenty of ways to avoid taking damage already.




I've played thief, mesmer, ranger, engineer, warrior, guardian.  Troll all you want, thieves [and mesmers] are very overpowered.  
I've been playing since bwe3, and they just keep making more and more retarded decisions on balance.

I think during the stress testing, they were afraid nobody would play a thief/mesmer, so they made practically last minute changes before retail. Which made them stupidly overpowered.

Elementalists back in the beta could burst as high as thieves can now, and look where they are right now...they have light armor, same base health, medium lowish damage and it's easily avoidable, and cannot stealth. GG


Arenanet is failing again, just like gw1 from what I hear.  Some classes escape the nerf bat, and some classes get hit twice without needing it.  Very disappointing that they dont seem to give a shit.

@AlucardsSoul , you sir are correct, I am completely deserving of the ban.  I mean honestly what was I thinking going on public forums claiming I tried to make a recipe and asking for a return of the items that "never had"?  Guess I would also be too stupid to take a screen shot of the items so that I could post it on the forums and on the wiki as I was preparing to discover an item that hadn't been made yet.





Don't worry folks, that's just a picture of the items that I never had and claimed to lost.....  And pay no attention to the chat box on the bottom, everyone wasn't waiting to see the recipe work or anything... it's clearly a complete hoax!

As for my request for them to reimburse me in gems... They stated they could not return or restore any items, (which makes them on of the first MMOs to be unable to when said feature has been available for years in other games) but based on their response, it was the only reasonable idea I could come up with that made any sense based on what they claimed they could do.

Anyways, as to everyone else, hopefully they will be able to work things out for me and get this issue resolved.  This company has been known to be very good on doing right by there customer base.  As angry and dissapointed as I am with my loss, I'm still trying to be some what optimistic that things can get fixed.  My ticket has already been escalated to above the regular customer support persons.

Quote

Not quite correct. Our decision to move from Vabbi to Gandara was a hard one. But the reason had nothing to do with the influx of Russian Guilds. In fact the few Russian guild leaders I personally spoke to were great guys and were very keen to have us (DVDF) play with them and break free of the sterotypical Russian Guild.

Our main issue was that there was an expectation my guild would be WvW'ing a lot more than we would be. Which while we do enjoy WvW we also want to do other stuff too We felt this would lead to frustration from hard core WvW players agiainst us 'not pulling our weight' and frustration from Guild members who would feel under pressure to do so.

So it was better for everyone for us to move to a server that more suited our PvX nature.

The following is my opinion. You are entitled to your own opinion and your decisions. This is what i would do, and if you think i am a horrible human being for doing so, then think what you will.

Leave the girlfriend. This is not Selfishness, it is Freedom. Do you think Freedom is more important than a Relationship? I do, maybe you disagree.
You only have ONE Life, you are allowed to live it the way you WANT.

I do not spend any time with my family, for the simple reasons that our interests differ.
I do not want to go to Florida with them and sit on the beach getting my skin burnt.
(and pay a couple of thousands of dollars for it)
I do not want to go to a safari because i dont like getting bitten by mosquitoes. This is something i can view from my HDTV
(I do not like the smell of mosquito repelants either so that's not a solution)
I do not want to go to the movies because you cant pause in the middle to go #1
(I can pause youtube or blueray)
I do not go drinking and smoking with friends because I get a headache afterwards
(drink all you want, smoke all you want, and die all you want, dont bring me with you, ok?)
I do not want a girlfriend or relationship, i have "friends with benefits" and a ton of "junk" on my computer to "entertain" myself.
I do not want kids, i hate crying babies. I dont want to be spending all my time and money on someone else who will be completely ungrateful for what I do for him.
I do not believe in any god, I believe in myself.
I believe in Guild Wars 2. I will be happy playing it.

These are my life choices. I am happy. People have been brainwashed to believe that you need Love, Friends, Career, Children or Money(oh how so many people deny this) to be happy. I claim you dont. I once had all of the above(Money, Career, Friends, Girlfriend) except Children. I threw it all away. I have one thing that I always wanted, Freedom. And because I made that choice, I am happy and I know i will live my life mostly the way I want and not walking that set path of Love/Friends/Career/Children that others set for me as the PvXwiki formula of guaranteed Happiness. Do you have your own Will? Make it ROAR!

Do you know how ungrateful people are? Here is an example:
For the past 7 years, I woke up at 7am in the morning and grabbed the newspaper downstairs and brought it upstairs for my grandma to read(because she cannot walk and pick it up herself), without failing a single day. On one day i did not wake up early and picked it up at 9am instead. Immediately, all those 7 years i have been doing that are now VOID. I am now officially an a-hole who does not care one bit about his grandparents, and the black sheep of my family. This incident btw, caused a family feud(over a piece of paper that was picked up 2 hours late).

If somebody is imposing rules on you that are clearly overexaggerated, there is clearly ways that they are going to make it look good for themselves and bad for you.

"A completely unreliable lazy bum who cannot even wake up in the morning to pick up the newspaper for grandma"
is the exact term they used to describe me and not
"Somebody who picked up the newspaper for his grandma to read every day for 7 years"

Your Relationship
What she will say to others who will listen:
"He only thinks about his video games. He has been talking about this for the past 5 years, I am sick of it! I ask him for just 1 week to go out and his stupid video game comes up again! Can you believe what he is putting me through?"

What you know is happening:
For 52 weeks per year for 5 years(or more), doing whatever she wants. You now want 1 week off, she will not let you.

Guild Wars 2 comes first, not because it is the best MMO of the decade, but because it is what you WANT to do, your WILL. And if she cannot accept your will, why should you accept hers?

Just try, just once, break the rules she setup. Play GW2 and refuse to go out for that 1 week. DO advise her that you will be doing that whether she likes it or not, that this is what you want to do for that one week and ONLY for that 1 week.
If she cares about you, she will forgive and accept. DO NOT break the rules of your relationship again after this.
If not then this is who you have in front of you:
"I like your Money, I like your Attention, I like your Affection, I like to show up with my boyfriend in public, I like everything you can do for me, but I do not like you"