thelast

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Because I doubt it's costing them any money, for now.

Trying to think of a way to fix it? I can't, it seems to be too embedded in the game now.

So far in PvE:
DPS is everything
Healing is useless
CC is mostly useless
condition damage is useless
pets/minions pretty useless
hardly any interupts/shutdowns so mesmers are for gimicks and rangers are ultra useless

Good luck with that anet......

My point was this is like "looking a gift horse in the mouth."

Back on topic:  The first expansion is literally make or break.  If people don't buy it, GW2 is over.  These "free" updates are not make or break...  if the expansion is good, all will be forgiven.  If not....

The only logical reasoning I can come up with is that they want people to log back in and play, get hooked even though the new dungeon is the typical constant CC knockdown annoying bullshit we see everywhere else. +1 to the designers they are truly geniuses. I really don't see anything special about this that would take anyone from let's say world of warcraft. Sometimes GW2 pve reminds me of WoW pvp, I'm CC'd 90% of the time and I may as well just /afk if I can't play my character.

So far we've had a month for each stage of FaF, and previous content rolled over into the next stage so it could be completed at a very leisurely pace.

One of the things GW2 fans were excited about before launch was the idea that the non-subscription financial model would relieve pressure to keep playing.  The idea was that you don't have a need to "get your money's worth" out of your monthly payment, so you could take a break from the game when RL or fatigue sets in, and then come back and not feel you lost something.

I know a lot of people have complained that FaF seems like little content spread over too much time.  Maybe having a dungeon only available for 13 days will make these people happy.  Personally, I like that I could continue doing non FaF things in game, and do FaF whenever I felt like it.  I'd much rather see small amounts of content added each month rather than it all give over one month and nothing for the next three.

I can think of pros and cons to this kind of limited content:

Pro: It creates some exclusivity.  Only a slice of the GW2's lifetime population will experience this dungeon and have the rewards from doing it.  This isn't a motivator for me, but it seems to be for other players dying to feel special and unique.

Pro: It feels (slightly) less theme parky if content is finished once and for all.  "I defeated the Molten Alliance" and four years later "Oh, I did that just last week" is the reply from someone who just joined.  Again, not too big a motivator for me, as I have pretty strong suspension of disbelief, but I get why people feel more immersed in one-time content.

Con: Somebody spent time creating this content, only to have it disappear after 13 days, presumably forever.  It's not doing anything for those people who come to GW2 and complain that it doesn't have the quantity and variety of content like a mature MMO.  After thirteen days Tyria is no larger or more diverse than it was back in April.

Con: The game starts to feel like a chore for some players.  I've got a really busy couple of weeks, say, but I better squeeze in some time to get in game so I don't miss out.

What other pros and cons are there to this kind of limited content?

Would it have been better for the Molten Alliance to become a permanent part of Tyria?

Or would a longer, but still limited time (say a month like all the other phases) be better for the players?

Or is even 13 days too long, and the finale should have been shortened and made a one time event like the Mad King or Karka finale?

Just finished the new dungeon on the first run, the only slight challenge are the final bosses. The rest is just a long boring walk, there's hardly any challenge or even better, a reason to do it again.

The game broke for me last patch. I may come back to it once the designers realize that "progression" is not just doing the same thing but with bigger numbers. This is problem with the entire game. After you've gotten to level 30 with a single character you may as well say that you've beaten GW2 because the gameplay experience doesn't doesn't progress afterwards. The game focuses too much on being a grind-gratification engine.The story is god awful on all fronts (to be fair I think most game developers should be sent back to grade school to learn plot and story structure). It's not worth the time dedication. F&F just proves what a waste of resources amateurish story writing can be.

It's not going to "break" GW2.  There are still plenty of fanbois (as prven by this forum) who'll continue to play the game and if ArenaNet's current offerings do not entice people to buy, then it'll continue down the slippery slope to full blown Asian F2P MMO.

At this stage, I don't give them any money.  They haven't earned it.  Nothing they've released since launch entertains me.  I get most of my entertainment through WvWvW which is player-provided.  ArenaNet released the maps months ago and PvP is still a horrible mess.  They don't deserve any further money beyond the box price.

It's impossible to feel any sense of progression in this game unless you farm.  I log in, I do the daily, I do the checklist of dragon kills that are guaranteed loot drops and by that point, I log out.

I've been mucking about with my installations and I've been doing STO and probably head to LoL and SMITE for PvP games.  I might even re-install RIFT and TERA.

I'm hoping Wildstar development kicks up, or at the very least FFXIV:RR.  FXIV:RR will have a subscription fee and they're even willing to admit that FFXIV sucked and had to be re-engineered.

If you really look at what's been added to the game, you have Southsun Cove.  Karkaland.  And FOTM.  And a map or two to sPvP (the deadest part of the game.)  That is all the content for the last 8 months.  Everything else has been temporary, because they have to create artificial scarcity on content to drive the Gem Store items.  Skins, continue coins, all that stuff.  It's all driven by the Gem Store to be temporary content.  Either farm your ass off while it's live or pay us to save your RL lives, because that stuff's not around forever.  If it were around forever, who'd pay us money to shortcut it?

Simply accept the fact that a good portion of ArenaNet's resources goes to monetizing the trickle of content you get at release.

Personally I feel like ANet has dropped the ball by pushing the living story so much. It's a lot of wasted resources for something that isn't very memorable or interesting. The game still lacks meaningful endgame content.

As an avid GW1 player I was rather disappointed that many of the aspects of GW1 that I loved had not returned for GW2. Many of the lessons learned in GW1 also it seemed had not been passed on to the sequel. Its not that I dislike GW2 it is more that after GW1, GW2 was a bit of a let down. I generally try to avoid threads like this but... in this game in particular since the onset the game has been described by both players and even developers using a lot of worse like potential and future.

The stock answer to any criticism saying: "this game is bad it doesn't have "X"" Has been "Yeah but it has so much potential".

And if you follow the official forums you often see the words "future end game content" or something similar.

Now nearly 8 months after launch, there have been several very meaningful additions (fractals, guild events, ect.) and many good balance and bug fixes but the general layout of the game is basically the same as at launch. The "potential" has not really been fulfilled, and while fractals go a long way towards some sort of "future end game content" they still have a ways to go. I still feel like GW2 is searching for its formula for what makes good GW2 content.


So really my question is this: If the April 30th update is not the type of changes and additions we hope for, do we just have to accept that GW2 is what it is and it may not be significantly changed?

http://massively.joy...-brings-custom/

Is anyone else a little pissed that the very slow evolving, 4 month, SINGLE PLAYER, living story event's finale is a dungeon?

Did ANet not learn from the outrage over the Personal Story Line?  (rhetorical)

I think they should keep PVE and Dungeons events separated.  I rarely have time to play in more than 30 minute increments without interruption.  It took me less than a month to get to the last mission of the Personal Story.  It took another 4 months to complete the Arah story mission because I could not commit to the time, clear the entrance, and/or get a group. I had to actually take a vacation day from work when my son was at school to be able to have the time.  I accept that I will not be able to play some of the longer dungeons, and never be able to level in FOTM.  Please stop teasing me with Single Player PVE events that require a group to complete.

Am I the only one that has an issue with this pattern?


Edit:
I added a reply on post #9 and #50

Agreed 100%. I have a list of traits that I use written scribbled on an envelope next to my computer.

Would be nice to save them. I don't care much about the cost to re-trait, but I hate that I gotta find the damn guy to talk to to do it. At least let me re-trait when I want to switch armor and weapons too, aka out of combat. And no, please don't make it some consumable from the store that costs 100 gems.

I think GW2 is missing a very important feature from GW1. That is a Trait Template similar to GW1's Skill Template.

Also, I still don't see the purpose of retraining traits and the associated fees. I do not believe it is an effective gold sink. I also do not see how it impacts game-play positively. It's more of a nuisance as I'd like to switch my traits based on the fighting situation. I may choose to go from greatsword to sword/focus or to sword/shield in a dungeon or to face certain mobs. Now, I will have to teleport to a town, patiently wait thru infinite loading sequence, go to the npc, pay a small fee, and then allocate the trait points manually while my teammates wait for me patiently in the dungeon. Is this an effective process?

Why can't I simply load trait template when i am out of combat, switch my weapons and continue? If it's a gold sink, why not just let me pay an equivalent fee every time I load trait template that reallocates trait points?

What do you guys think?

El Duderino, on 11 April 2013 - 03:35 PM, said:

Gated content is bad.  But look at what's been added.

We've had limited events in Halloween, Karka, Christmas and SAB.

I wish I could do tables...

But since August 28th, when WoW released the 5.0.4, the pre-expansion patch, the same time GW2 launched.  Since then, WoW has released a new raid with mechanics better than anything GW2's PvE content offers.  In fact, most of what GW2's offered have still been one-time events (stretched over a long period, but ultimately silly repetitive game-play) that ultimately leave no impact upon the game.

WoW gave Isle of Thunder and Throne of the Thunder King and Troves of the Thunder King (1 player scenario)

GW2 gave us The Lost Shores, The Living Story (zerg those events) and two rather boring 'Living Story' events to one-man.

I honestly think WoW's PvE content, thanks to phasing especially, makes a much more impact on the world than GW2's content post-launch has.  Yes, in Orr and stuff, you can see the effects... but GW2's isn't persistent.  It resets, so on some level, the effect is even worse.  Considering how much PvE farming you have to do, your 'impact' on the world is even less enhanced by the fact that you come back to the same people trying to recapture the Temple of Balthazar.  Only no one gives a shit about the Temple of Balthazar anymore.

Personally, progression is probably the only thing I am not that fond of in this game (and even more of it might make me quit - I nearly did so in November), and I don't really see a particular need for it. Games don't have progression because gamers ACTUALLY want it, games have it because progression is cheap. You need to balance comparatively little for it, no area needs to be designed, and so on. It's just a dial.

Let's say that Arenanet finally sticks to their original plans and has no progression anymore. What happens?
Gear gets cheaper.

The question here is: Why is this a problem? Why should that gear always retain the value or even grow in value? This argument you make isn't logical and doesn't follow - if gear has less value, then other things grow in value instead. Like it always happens in games without gear progression.

Additional tiers aren't inevitable - they're just the laziest way to appease the lowest common denominator. If they actually do it, it'd show they really didn't have much in the idea department.

Personally, I'd prefer progression in form of being able to discover more by the world actually changing large scale frequently. That, by the way, fuels progression-less games.