slowerpoke

#2141047 Casual player taking a break

Posted youknowho on 12 January 2013 - 09:38 PM

I'm a casual player that loved GW1 and started out loving GW2. I've run into enough things that have slowly turned playing this game from enjoyable to frustrating and uninteresting, to the point that I'm taking a break altogether. Here they are:

Trading Post - non-refundable listing fees
I was lucky enough to get a pre-cursor (Storm). Being a casual player I knew that I'd never grind enough to craft the legendary so I listed it on the TP, for less than the only other listing. The listing fee was 3g+, half of all of my savings. Within a week five more Storms have been listed, all for less than mine, and with the looming increased drops of pre-cursors I'll probably not be able to sell this unless I re-list it. See next point.
Trading Post - lowering the price of an item requires re-listing and paying another listing fee
This is ridiculous and the game's most blatant mechanic designed to whittle away our bank accounts that I've seen. If we list an item that drops in price after listing we should be able to lower the price without re-listing and paying new listing fees. At that point we've already paid a higher listing fee than that of a lower priced item; no need to double-dip into our bank accounts Anet.
Inflation - Anet has zero incentive to curb the gold to gem exchange rate
The higher the the gold to gem exchange rate gets, the more likely Anet is to have players buy gems with real-world money. I keep picturing their economist kicking back, watching this exchange rate, and saying "Go baby go!" Many common items are becoming too expensive to buy with gold for the casual player. See next point.
Fine transmutation stones - gem store exclusive
I've run out of fine transmutation stones for my main character, let alone having any available for alts that I'd want to level. To buy 10 fine transmutation stones for 360 gems at a gold to gem exchange rate of 1g 64s 23c per 100 gems it's going to cost you 5g+. I wish I had that much left in my bank account, but I listed a pre-cursor in the Trading Post that isn't selling.
Bugs - more than ever
Since launch the number of bugs that I've run into has increased. This is the only game I've seen this happen in. Stuck animations, loud repeating sounds that ignore my volume settings and sound like a kid with no rhythm playing tablas, fractals disconnects, attacking an enemy being randomly stopped, targeting the closest enemy usually targets an enemy further away, etc. GW1 was super solid in comparison, even at launch, and never felt this shaky.
Fractals - all your players are belong to us
So many pve zones are dead at this point, and this is on a full Jade Quarry server. They may as well be instances like in GW1. The Fractals’ gear grind and payout has moved such a large portion of the player base into them that it's hard to complete dynamic event chains or find a group for a story dungeon run. See next point.
Grouping - use gw2lfg.com
Why are we forced to use an external website to find groups this many months into launch? Anet's dev resources seem stretched thin so they probably breathed a sigh of relief when gw2lfg.com sprang up, but this should be in the game. No excuses.
Fractals - ascended items
The devs keep weighing in on this topic, trying to convince us that they haven't gone back on any pre-launch promises about grind and hours of play required to get the best gear and remain competitive. It isn't working. A casual player getting infused ascended gear is going to take a big time commitment and can only be done in Fractals. Get ready to play the same content over and over again!
Playing with casual gamers - good luck
My friend is an even more casual gamer than I am. We've played enough games together that I know he probably won't get a character to level 80. So forget about WvW, most dungeons, and Fractals. He's not interested in spvp so that's also out. This makes it hard to recommend GW2 to him and for us to play together.

Don't get me wrong, the game’s not all bad and GW2 does have some excellent ideas in it. Unfortunately the impression I've gotten is that management (and not the devs) is calling the shots. Launch felt rushed (the Trading Post is coming, we promise!) and the game hasn't completely recovered from it. The game’s built-in money-sucking mechanics range from understandable (armor repair, waypoints) to ridiculous (re-list fees on the Trading Post), and these “cost” moments occur too frequently.

All-in-all Guild War$ 2 feels like a free-to-play game, except that I bought it. And now we're supposed to buy gems with real-world money so we can afford to re-list items in the Trading Post and buy fine transmutation stones to keep a few skins that we like? Nope. I'm done.

#2091867 3 months in and now hate paying for armor repair/travel.

Posted Rhubarb Pie on 22 November 2012 - 01:42 AM

In beta weekends I found this charge to severly handicap my ability to solo areas beyond starting areas. They have reduced the cost for both of these at earlier levels so, at launch, I was willing to give it a chance to grow on me. But now that I am lvl 80 it is again too much. And before you WoW players chime in and say how much more it costs in that game for these two usless expenses, I have never played any MMO but Guildwars... and I expect there is a reason for that.

I work for 8 hrs per day so I can have a house and feed my wife and kids. I love my family and enjoy my house. In a fantasy world I would pay my mortgage, put food on the table and then have the rest of my money to use for hobbies, go on vacation, drugs, hookers... whatever I decide to spend it on. But in reality I have to pay taxes, pay for gas to and from work and pay insurance on my car and my house. I also have to pay a monthly charge on natural gas and electricity in addition to what I use (I live in Canada so I can't just cut it off and not use any).

The point is I get far to much reality in real life. I have yet to find a person that says they enjoy these extra burdens placed on us players. Sure there are those that say they are use to it and have learned to manage their funds but as I play this game more, this involuntary spending of my cash is going to be what drives me back to GW1.

I have my share of usless drops and lagged events but I can easily get past those. I Don't understand how other ex-Guildwars players don't rip Anet a new one for putting so much effort into taking the best aspects of all games on the market but failing to bring along one of the greatest things about their own game and, in fact, draging such a negative function into this game simply because all the other games do it.

Paying for travel and repairing armor sucks. If it wasn't for this I would love this game. I hope people don't reply to this with ways around these chagres like the travel to Lion's Arch through the mists trick or easy places to farm where you don't die. I am against ANY charge for travel and armor repair. It really hurts those of us that like to choose what we spend our money on.

#2084687 Lost Shore event is the worst

Posted Shizu on 17 November 2012 - 09:27 AM

I like the fractals but I can see many problems for people without a dedicated party.

But the event itself? Absolute garbage. It's something I'd have expected in 1998. GM appears and spawns a million mobs in a city. EPIC EVENT OF THE CENTURY.
They really need to stop doing this, because they obviously lack the basic knowledge to support this kind of stuff.
Massive lag, invisible mobs and players, zero skill involved, boring mechanics. I had people in my guild dropping the event half-way because it was so absolutely awful.

And the bugged investigation quest. I'm *ing tired of playing a beta every single time they update something.
We are three months after release and they still can't properly test anything before a major update.

At least we didn't get the massive login/broker/guild chat crash of doom this time. Good job Anet, it only took three months for a fix.