l Dei l

Eon Lilu, on 02 May 2013 - 11:23 AM, said:

It's really unfortunate that it's the case, but you're right.  GW2 initially started with a traditional cash shop full of convenience items and item skins that you could specifically choose and purchase.  But they quickly found they could make a ton more money dumping new stuff into the RNG gambling chests, or special "limited time only" purchases.  Obviously, they're just doing what makes them the most money. If ♥♥♥♥ing idiots would stop buying the damn things, Anet would probably move away from the gem gambling and add more reasonable options in the gem store.  And if the gem store itself wasn't making them enough money, maybe they'd actually look into real meaningful expansions.  As of now though, I don't see any reason why Anet would stop doing this monthly content (with limited time gem store products) since it's apparently working for them. As with any business, the way you sway them is with your wallet.  No amount of bitching on the forums is going to make them change something that's proven to make them money.  If you don't like it, don't buy it. Don't keep dumping your money into it hoping it'll be different (and then bitching about it).  It won't be different until it stops making them money.

There are no professions with a high skill cap. This is a very simple MMO.

Why so many ecto's for everything?

Lordkrall, on 15 January 2013 - 11:07 PM, said:

Are you kidding me? Factions, Nightfall, and EOTN gave much more than that. Factions alone included, new professions, 20-40 hours worth of a new campaign, new PvP types, alliance/factions system, new elite dungeons, more armor and weapons, new music, new characters, new OSTs, +100 new skills(common and elite), new enemy races, etc.

FYI: "New features" would include new areas as well. ex. "We are featuring a whole new continent!"

These new GW2 patches include stuff that should have been done before release. There are absolutely no excuses to why guesting, observer mode, an improved LFG tool and other "improvements" aren't already featured in the game.

Rickter, on 03 December 2012 - 09:59 PM, said:

Dishonored doesn't have Ascended armor.  I'd vote for it.

"Bag of gold" that contains silver... Mega fail ANet.

Forget the Y-o-Y crap, look at Q2, they were veering into the ditch and GW2 pulled them out of it.  And they're heading right back into that ditch in Q4 if they keep adding "articifical difficulty" to the game instead of real content.

Trei, on 21 November 2012 - 02:34 AM, said:

I actually do not care at this point if the majority like this or that as I am completely done myself. If the game continues on and becomes a huge success, awesome. If the game withers and dies a slow painful death, awesome. I have nothing invested in the game anymore.

What does baffle me is all these people that are glad they added gear treadmills and wondered why they weren't in the game in the first place.

First off, apparently you did zero research before you bought this product and whoever did that should probably be more prudent with their money. You might have problems in the future if you don't.

Second, I KNEW exactly what I was buying and was perfectly happy with the product until Arena Net decided to add a feature that they had stated multiple times that they were very against, even looked down on and considered it insulting to game players as a whole.

This also brings me to another thing that baffles me. A lot of people are saying "this is an MMO, it NEEDS gear treadmill..."

My question, which was also Anets question until November 15th is Why? Why does every MMO need something like that? I think the problem with GW2 after looking at it clinically and trying to be unbiased is that basically you had no character progression. Note I did not say "gear progression" which in reality is numbers going up everywhere and not progression at all, hence why it is called a treadmill.

People had run out of things to do because the way Anet set things up discouraged playing around with builds. Skills are rather static and many are just the same skill but with a different name and icon for each profession. Weapon skills are by design totally static. The only way to change attack skills is weapon swap and some profs didn't even have that. Also, each profession had utility skills that were clearly superior  so each effective build used the same skills. This led to the feeling that your character after you got the desired elite and hit 80 had no progression, because the progression you were supposed to do was in your own personal skill. Apparently, Anet didn't take into account how rampant ADD is.

Anet really has no way to expand your actual character progression beyond adding more skills and weapons. Which is something they will avoid since GW1 drove them nuts with thousands of skills and they couldn't balance the game. I would like to note that it has come to light that only 2 people at Anet work on balance so their reasoning at this point is moot as they are not really balancing the classes anyways.

My meandering post has a point. Anet wanted to retain players and to do so they chose the easiest, laziest method. Gear treadmill. It doesn't take any effort besides making numbers go up to design and it keeps hamsters on their wheel. Anyone with a brain would not welcome it, especially  those that knew before they bought the game what Anet supposedly stood for. If you don't understand why a lot of people are pissed and have left then you probably didn't.

Either way the game goes on. Some of us just have to wait longer for the game we waited 7 years for.

So, a Vial of Condensed Mists Essence dropped for me today.  My first thought was "Awesome! I can make an ascended item!"

...until I looked closer at the mat cost.  Potent bloods are almost 25 silver each and I need 250 of them.  And that's before even counting the ectos.

Now, to give you some background, I don't get a ton of playtime.  Between my family and my job, I don't get to put in nearly as many hours as I was able to do back in my college years, but that's why I came to GW2.  I played GW1 back in the day and I was really looking forward to a game where I can jump in and be judged by how well I played, not how long I played.

After hearing ArenaNet's manifesto on the game, I thought that's what I would find.

And it was.

Until this latest patch.  

I know to a lot of other people, this mat cost is nothing, but it's sad that it feels like I can't play MMOs and still be competitive anymore.

Mesmer. I was very happy they put tem in GW2 but it's just the mesmer in name, not playstyle anymore.

Clones ftl.

KillSlash, on 27 October 2012 - 12:09 AM, said:

So you CAN do it, so that makes it well designed and awesome? Okay

1. Bad camera
2. Bad collision
3. Shoehorning platforming into a game engine not designed with platforming in mind.
4. Forcing people to contend with 1 & 2, while also dealing with a mob of other players obscuring your already terrible FoV.
5. All while racing a sadistic timer.
6. Failure results in a wait. Furthering frustration.

Now I ask you this. What actually makes it good, or well made? Anyone? Aside from a nice new polish for your epeen, what exactly about this puzzle is well designed? That its hard for the sake of hard?

Arenanet has a really bad habit of making things overly hard for the sake of it, with very little attempt at balance. (see also Personal Story missions).

Suffering through poorly implemented, fake difficulty, gameplay, isn't good design.
It's not fun because its hard for all wrong reasons. It's cheap difficulty imposed by technical issues inherent in their game engine. Issues they didn't even try to work around.

If it were hard simply do to timing, it wouldn't be so bad. But it's compounded by really easy to avoid [in terms of developing the puzzle] issues, that simply make the difficulty cheap, rather than challenging.

As for me? I'm not sweating it, you get jack for doing it. No title, and the boots are just an existing skin, so I went in a few times, failed and just decided to do something else.

By looking at the thief he means making every build equally horrible, right?

I completely agree. After playing tournies during BWE2 it was tough going back to 8v8s when we were lacking people during the stress test.  It makes analyzing specs for tourney use very difficult and I think it hurts casual players ideas of balance and what builds are actually effective.

Arghore, on 04 June 2012 - 01:40 AM, said:

I think the 6 in your second equation should be a 12.

Besides that though, while I appreciate math as much as the next guy, I don't think it's the right way to approach this situation.  Nobody cares how many options there are, they only care whether or not THEIR builds still exist with the new system.  You could get rid of only 10 overall builds, but if those builds are the ones that most people use, the system is guaranteed to be deemed "broken."

Additionally, if originally traits had been in a single pool of 60, and you could put any trait in any major slot as you allocated trait points, and then the system moved to having 12 in each line, people would be complaining just as much.  The only reason this is currently a problem is because of where the system started.  Any change from there is, again, guaranteed to be deemed "broken."

The traits are not the whole problem, but gear and skills are already dev-controlled enough. Balancing them should be easier. Everything there is already categorized. One slot for a armor, one slot for an healing skill, a pre-set build for weapons, etc.

Something there is broken? Nerf it. A weapon's skillset synergy is broken? Change the way they interact with each other: you can easily do that, because they'll always be stuck together.

With traits, it isn't that simple. Nerfing is a solution to some, but it's not to others, because balancing issues do not strictly come from their individual power, but from countless, hidden, overpowered synergies that the devs can't predict, and the community will find out sooner or later. This lack of balance will eventually destroy the "freedom" that many people are here defending.