Ryden Lotus

2PM EST Tuesday Score Update. JQ took the lead over an hour and ago.

Since guesting is being added tomorrow, can we all agree on a server where we can all guest for regular Non-Dungeon PvE content?

One where maps aren't completely empty?

That way DE's are always active and full of people participating.

Can a mod make a 2 polls ???
one for US servers and one for EU servers so we can vote on it.

Castaa, on 14 December 2012 - 10:03 PM, said:

Does this count as a trinity?

I won't be posting anymore quoting AMA that is currently on-going, despite the fact that the Guru News link hasn't been updated in over an hour, instead let's talk about what was discussed.

Vertical progression is here to stay.

Ascended gear was imagined post-launch.  They claim it should have been in there at launch.  This is a fix to what they perceive to be a design error in the gear progression.  Never mind the fact that Legendary-Exotic-level max stats were supposed to be balanced around the end-game.

Looks like the game's going to introduce a shallow power curve.  They won't introduce any new item tiers.  They are just going to raise the stats on new items.  Like WoW epics.

However, don't worry, ArenaNet is looking into the idea that maybe their grind is too much and re-evaluating the costs.  I'm sure they'll patch a price fix around the same time that Cash->Gem->Gold sales taper off from people trying to purchase ectos and other stuff off the TP.

In short, I will no longer be paying money to support this game.

Because the way ArenaNet handles money in this game is broken. They're stingy and only allow the tiniest trickle of money into the game, and they tax what little mone you get. The game has been forced into a deflationary spiral, devaluing everything except prices which ArenaNet controls. This is to drive people to the gem store to buy gems to convert to gold.

A surprising (even to me) number of my friends have moved on from GW2, even one really hardcore friend from tumblr whom I was sure would be with it for years. And aside from the vertical progression bait & switch, the reason I hear the most is that they're sick and tired of being broke and they strongly dislike the cynical feeling of the game - where it almost feels necessary sometimes to buy gems if you just want to bounce around everywhere with the waypoints.

I've been playing a lot of other games lately, and they've all shown how unfun GW2 is in its current state. Mass Effect 3, Champions Online, and even Free Realms have a far less cynical approach to online gaming. GW2 is a casino dressed up as a game, the people who play it are gambling addicts.

GW2 is just not a fun game. More and more people are realising it. Sounds like it's begun to sink in for you, too. OP. Move on, don't draw it out.

Silvercat18, on 24 November 2012 - 04:39 PM, said:

Nop they are not.

I came to a game that promised me no gear grind for TOP stats armor , just for looks...

Wait , what do i see now? Gear grind at its best. WoW style.

So nop , people that came hoping Anet would keep their promises like me are also on the quitting stage now.

KryTiKaL, on 18 November 2012 - 06:31 PM, said:

Then the Lost Shores patch dropped.

Repost of a repost - OP was lost in the shuffle. I apologize.


This thread has been deleted from the official forums without any reason. Banns have been issued to the people posting. Please spread this information.
I did not get banned, i am merely reporting this to the various gaming press outlets. I know friends in game that have been banned for as little as quoting an ANet developer.

=== Snip ===
*1. “The game will be released when it’s done”. Yet at release date several of the things that were promised and were sometimes even indicated as being ‘top priority’, weren’t “done” (and several of those still aren’t available):*


• account security measures (these were only implemented after launch, when the damage was already done)

Eric Flannum
security is a big, big priority for us.

Martin Kerstein
We are taking account security very serious and there will definitely be ways to protect your account.

• measures against botting (still being implemented)

Eric Flannum
Discouraging the use of third party programs that exploit the game and negatively impact the experience of others is a top priority for us.

• no guesting (still not available)… which is becoming more and more of a concern now that world transfers are limited to once a week:

Martin Kerstein
When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature.

• no rollback functionality for accounts (still not available)

And I won’t even mention spectator mode or ladders for pvp, as ArenaNet has been evasive about when those would be made available from the very start (and I’m not much of a pvp person anyway).

*2. Dyes are character bound, not account bound.*
In short: a lot more grinding is required (or cash shop purchases) to get all the dyes you want on all characters.

Eric Flannum
And what we do is, as you find sets of dye, you unlock them for your account. So as you unlock dyes for your account, your characters just have them available for them.

Kristen Perry
Once you unlock the color, it will be available across your entire account, not just the individual character.

3. No dedicated healers, every profession was supposed to be equally viable in all roles, and every profession would be equally welcome in a party.

Yet (for example) the guardian (with most of its stills being support/healing based) is so close to a healer that he is always welcome in a party, 90% of his skills are support oriented, whereas a thief or ranger (with much less support options) are often refused from parties and are much harder to spec for support (with far less options). In short: ArenaNet’s implementation of professions failed to make them all truely equal.

*4. No need for “LFG” for hours to get into a group.* Yet the cities and the lower level zones are filled with people just looking for a group who wants them so that they can play through a dungeon in explorable mode. This is actually a follow-up to the previous point… if all professions would be equally effective at all roles, then nobody would have a reason to refuse people from their party because they are a ranger and not a guardian.

Also, there isn’t enough motivation to play through story mode dungeons with lower level players. A level 35 player wanting to do Ascalonian Catacombs will have to spend a long time looking for a group, because very few groups actually want a level 35 stranger in their party when they do dungeons. There isn’t any kind of reward for the party for playing with lower level players.

*5. Ever branching story:* with only 1 ending and several knots where branches come together again, these story branches are extremely disappointing.
I would at least have expected different endings if you choose The Vigil, the Durmand Priory or the Order of Whispers.

Colin Johanson
Every race has three branching dynamic stories right off the bat where they can pick from. So, for example, the humans you can pick to be from the city streets, the city nobility, or a commoner, and based on that choice you get a completely different personal story than somebody else. And then within that story, there are more branches that you can make decisions that further branch the story in other directions. So, I can be from the commoner class and you can be from the commoner class and we might experience a different story because of that. And then if you take that and say, all those options are available just for humans, then the other four races all have all these other completely different branching stories you can do as well.

This is just plain misleading. Very few of the branches are only available to one race, most of the branches actually are identical and not race dependent at all.
It’s not a branching story, it’s a ‘merging’ storyline… it starts off with a couple of different branches per race, but it quickly merges into one main storyline, with a few very small branches (paths) along the way that quickly merge back into the main story. After the first few levels, what race you took and what options you chose at character creation quickly become irrelevant, and you are all merged back into the one story thread.

*6. No grinding dungeons for tokens. Earlier on in the development, PC Gamer spoke to Eric Flannum, and he confirmed:*

Eric Flannum
“It’s more of a badge system, so this is something that we did in Guild Wars 1 as well. Our basic philosophy is that you should never complete a piece of content and get something you don’t want. So it’s going to be the case where you go through and are guaranteed to get a piece of gear that you didn’t have before, and that you’re going to want.” So, you’re guaranteed to get a piece of gear every time you do a dungeon? “Yes.” Sweet.

By now we all know how much grinding is required to get the dungeon pieces.
In fact, there wasn’t supposed to be any need for grinding at all.
On top of that, there is a severe lack of personal goals once your have reached max level and you have explored all the zones. There aren’t any long-term goals worth going for, other than the dungeon gear (or the legendary gear). So if you don’t want to pvp, all that’s left to do at max level, is the repetitive grind.

Colin Johanson
Most MMOs these days make you grind and do really repetitive, boring content over and over again. There are moments of fun, but then you’re back swinging your sword over and over again, chasing around a moth or an ogre that’s standing around in the world doing nothing. That’s the part of the genre we think players are done with. We want to make something that’s better than that.

Eric Flannum
I think MMOs have two primary stigmas attached to them that non-MMO gamers hear and drives them away. The first one is the ‘grind’, the idea that you’re going to have to do a repetitive task over and over again… we wanted to eliminate that.

We don’t want the player to ever have to grind and do something they don’t want to do to progress in the game.

Isaiah Cartwright
We expect content—not long, grindy progression—to be the deciding factor that keeps people playing our game. We want everyone to stick with Guild Wars 2 because our content is fun and enjoyable, not out of some dogged determination to slowly, slowly advance.

*7. No gear treadmill...* yet after we reached max stat gear (exotics), ArenaNet first introduced Legendary weapons, now Ascended armor, and in the future Legendary armor… all with better stats. The rare gear (legendaries) was supposed to differ only in skin, not in stats:

Colin Johanson
The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.

Mike O’Brien
Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games – we leave the grind to other MMOs.

*8. Zones remaining “relevant”:* although the level scaling is a great idea, as it is right now, the game encourages grinding in only 1 zone: Orr. If you’re playing in Orr, you can easily make 6+ gold per hour and you can work on gathering resources that can be used to craft legendary gear. If you’re playing in any other zone in the game, then you can count yourself lucky if your “scaled up” rewards net you 2 gold per day, and you can forget about those legendaries.

Which is the main reason why Orr is still full, and most of the other zones are almost empty. There is nothing in those zones to entice players to keep coming back and do the events there again. Meaning that in many zones (even on full servers), a player playing through those zones will never be able to do the group events or take on the champions… because there’s simply no one else around to help out.
So please up the rewards in all other zones in the game and give every single zone something unique and worthwhile, to make it more interesting for max level players to return to every single zone and replay them over and over again.

On top of that, the scaling still doesn’t work too well, making lower level content far too easy if you’re scaled down from level 80 in full gear… even more so if you’re in a group. It doesn’t “remain challenging” as was the intention.

Right now, instead of addressing this problem of replayability, ArenaNet is spending most of its time into making new and higher level content to give players something new to grind for… and if that works, then Orr could soon see a significant drop in population as well.

*9. No crafting of throwaway items.* As it is, the tradingpost is a joke. Some higher level items are in huge This thread has been deleted from the official forums without any reason. Banns have been issued to the people posting. Please spread this information.
I did not get banned, i am merely reporting this to the various gaming press outlets. I know friends in game that have been banned for as little as quoting an ANet developer.

Eric Flannum
Our goal with our crafting philosophically is that you’ll never make an item that is a throwaway item. You’ll always be making something that is going to be valuable to someone. Whether it’s for yourself, whether it’s to put on the auction house, whether it’s a consumable that people want, there’s never a time when you’re just making something to increase your skill and then you’re just going to vendor it or chuck it or whatever else you’d do with it afterwards.

And finally, a few more of my concerns:
• The rates on the trading post and the currency exchange (gems) are ridiculous (15%/36%). Have a look at the rates on auction sites like ebay, as they are much more reasonable.

• Inflation on gem prices is ridiculous. On release date you could buy 100 gems for around 25 silver. Right now you’ll need closer to 90 silver for those same 100 gems. And still very few people actually consider it worthwhile to pay real money for gems to transfer them to gold.

so who want to level up their crafting skills are forced to make a fair amount of throwaway items.

Bomb kit nerfed, turrets get their overcharge buffed but still die quickly, toolkit gets its two decent skills buffed whereas the other three are still mediocre, and the harpoon gun gets a bunch of useless buffs because grenades are still stupidly strong underwater.

I feel like this update was Anet’s way of saying they want to update the engineer class without spending the time to actually address the issues players have discussed on the forums. What’s even more insulting is the fact that they buff ele weapons to give them stat bonuses, but ignore engies completely.

As of Yesterday

https://www.guildwar...-ascended-gear/

"This is just the beginning. In November, we’re only adding the first level of Infusions and Ascended Rings and Back slots, so that leaves us a lot of room to build upon these levels of Item progression in future content.  As we release more new end game content in the future, you’ll see more Infusions and Ascended item types being added to the game.  Eventually, you’ll be able to kit yourself out with a full set of Ascended gear and high end Infusions to help give you the edge in end game content."      

- Lindsey Murdock, Game Designer   

3 Months Earlier

http://venturebeat.c...s:guildwars2-16

"Here's what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can't realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game.  Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear.  We don't make grindy games -- we leave the grind to other MMOs."

  -Mike Obrien, President of Arenanet

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

While it is pretty clear of what Arenanet has in mind going forward, many of us want to know "What happened?"  One does not simply decide to simply build a MMO claiming to "defy all existing conventions" & 2 months down the road completely change ones business practices & betray its playerbase without reason.

Some speculate "No endgame, not enough micro-transactions, player activity declining" & well I have a opinion on those matters which I will share, but none of these issues should have been addressed with a gear treadmill/power creep.  This is one of the milestones Arenanet promised its playerbase which made it unique in the MMO industry & now threatens to go back on.


No Endgame:

While I am sure to get opposition on this, I happen to agree on this matter.  GW2 is very limited on endgame.  Here is #1 reason.  Players are limited to 2 Zones.  We have a MASSIVE world out there & only 2 zones are populated.  Why has this issue gone overlooked.  Currently the majority of the 80 population is found in 1 of 3 areas.  Lions Arch, Orr, Frostgorge.  Why?  There is no incentive/reward for players to be active in the other zones.  T6 crafting materials, exotic/rare drops, higher exp/karma/silver for participating in dynamic events.

Suggestion:

Zaishen Daily Dynamic Events - Each day 1 zone is selected (Outside of Orr/Frostgorge).  For the first completion of every dynamic event in that zone the player would be rewarded a large % increase to Dynamic event rewards.  Significantly higher than that of Orr/Frostgorge.  For example:  Orr/Frostgorge reward something like 378 karma for completion.  ZDDE would reward 500.  Once every dynamic event in the zone was completed the player would be rewarded with a 20-30 T6 mats of their choice & a fair sum of silver.  ZDDE applies to 80's only.  (Yes, I'm aware it would have to be affiliated with some other organization, just using Zaishen as a GW1 reference)

Not Enough Microtransactions:

This is 100% on Arenanet.  Currently there is nothing in the gemstore that appeals to me as a player.  I do not speak for everyone but I think many would agree that items such as Black Lion Keys are not a viable purchase.  I conducted a study on these very forums & the numbers speak for themselves.

http://www.guildwars...een-r-d-thread/

The probability of a player getting a desirable item such as the permanent bank/trader is likely less than 1%.  When Black Lion Keys are going for roughly 1G which equates to $2.00 US Dollars, its hard to justify such a gamble.  

Suggestion:

New additions need to be added to the gem store more frequently & not just during holiday events.  Additions such as unique emotes, musical instruments etc.  Black Lion Chests need to have a much much more appealing drop % for desirable items.  5-6% would be more realistic for items such as permanent bank/trader etc.

Player Activity Declining:

I don't necessary agree with this.  I will say that of my 6 friends who started playing GW2, I am the only one continuing to do so but my inner circle is not indicative of the games population as a whole.  GW2 is unique in that there are no monthly fees.  So one has the freedom of coming on & playing when he/she chooses.  I think we will always see a increase in activity during event weekends & lulls when there is not.  I feel GW2 is fine, but when one fundamentally changes the games core philosophy with additions such as the one that is coming it is very possible that players will move on/leave.  After all, "No grind/No treadmill" was one of if not the main selling point of this franchise.

Personally I don't think we need this at all.  Ever.  But whatever makes you happy.

We never played for 2nd, and I hope u SBI learn to appreciate WM after this weekend cuz look how you do without them ;P

Arenanet set some pretty high standard and made this game so good that when i got to the "last stage" of the game, i was pretty excited about killing zhaitan.


Instead of some epic fights ( Flame Citadel was so much better ), i ended up getting so disappointed by it.

Just before we fight zhaitan, we were made to kill 3 dragons with cannons. Only problem is that the cannons face only the problem and you cant even tab to find the dragon and you cant even hit anything if you dont have a target. The only thing you can do to acquire the target is to basically spam click on the dragon lol.
And 98% of the time, you're just trying to not get killed by the risens.

Now if you think thats bad, wait til you see how we kill zhaitan.


Spoiler alert.

We fight risens for 5 min until some ultra cannon get charged up and shoot the dragon's tail. Then, after a few mins, the dragon was hanging onto some weird tower. Then the fun begin for us. It was up to us to kill the dragon.

We will spend the next 5 min, shooting fireworks ( No kidding. Just go watch any videos of the fight ) at the dragon with ZERO resistance. Zhaitan will NOT move. Your cannon can only shoot at 2 angle. You can turn your cannon by 45 degree if you use the 3rd skill slot and you can only turn it once before hitting its limit.

Also, there will be ZERO mobs spawning to try to kill you either. So yea, you will spend the last 5 min shooting fireworks at the dragon. Watching a rock would be more interesting to say the least.

Nuke Divinity's Reach and I'm quitting >-<

I have just one wish for this update - please, no more risen.