4861

Anet is in a full crisis mode and catching a lot of flack over ascended gear. Mega-thread (200+ pages) got locked, so community started review-bombing Amazon ratings. As we speak, GW2 is on the way to 1 star rating just in time for holiday season.

This is very refreshing to see. I personally see ascended gear to be Anet’s EVE-like monocle moment. Clearly not what the player base expected and went against multiple stated promises not to do exactly that.

I personally see ascended gear as an attempt to monetize and push more people to buy gems. There is no way any sane person would grind so much to get this gear crafted, so they expect people to heavily rely on auction house to get this gear completed so they can proceed with otherwise fun fractials.

4862

I received in my email a feedback form about the Lost Shores event. Still brimming with indignation, I get ready to vent. Clicking the form gets me the ‘server not found’ message.
Well played Anet, that was an exquisite troll.

4863

4864

I haven’t been keeping up with the Guild Wars news and stuff, but I don’t see the problem. If there was no progression, then people WILL GET BORED and stop playing. It will happen. From what I can tell, the gear is really not that big of a deal, but people really like to stir up drama.

Going on Amazon and tanking a games reviews is really, really low though. I’m really disappointed in the Guild Wars community for doing something like that

4865

The problem I see with this is that they’ve been courting a certain type of player for years, and that’s people who don’t want a gear progression MMO. Now it looks like they are going to be changing that design philosophy and people are getting upset.

I agree with you, though. An MMO without gear progression is an MMO waiting to die. I want gear progression in my damn single-player rpgs, so I definitely want it in my MMO’s. I think ANet is starting to realize that what worked in GW might not work so well in a full fledged MMO and are trying to add progression slowly to get people used to the idea. I think it’s going to be a hard sell after years of telling people it wouldn’t happen in GW2.

4866

I am not sure i liked how the tier system was implemented, mostly because it discourages people from playing with people just starting fractals if you are ahead of the, but I am not sure it’s so extreme. As for the game already dividing the playbase by level… hardly. A level 80 can hang out with a level 1, still find it interesting challenging and because the world is huge maybe even experience parts of it they didn’t the first time around.

At level 40, I was hanging with level 60s in their zones. As a caster, I was down in one hit but you know it was possible, and i could gather nodes too. There really isn’t a cap on where you can go. Other games, would be pretty tough to do that. Dungeons, we’ve done a few with a few people not the full five. I’d rather it scaled, but again, it’s still possible. With the downgrade levels, I think this game divides the playerbase a lot less than others.

4867

This is such bullshit. You don’t like a patch so you destroy a game’s upcoming revenue stream? Wow, way to sock it to 'em. Maybe they just wanted to experiment with something new? But instead of encouraging ANet to update or tweak the game, you destroy the possibility of there being a game.

4868

I have to admit, im taking a break from GW2, i quit mmo’s for years, i had enough of the endless gear grind, so when gw2 came out promising no gear progression once you reach exotic i was intrigued. All i do is WvW really, no desire to run dungeons. Already people in WvW sporting the new gear.

Disapointing, Anet have decided to change their stance but then again i think i have burnt out totally on MMO’s i cant stand gear grinds anymore.

4869

The answer is horizontal progression rather than vertical, something anet promised which they’ve now gone back on.

4870

This is not just “don’t like a patch”. This is going back on very explicit promises and commitments Anet made. If you promise one thing, then renege on this promise you deserve to get slammed on reviews. Unless they also offer refunds, such rating-slamming is well-deserved.

4871

Exactly. You can continue offering more content, you can also offer gear grind for people who are interested in it, but only for as long as it is purely cosmetic.

Nobody would be complaining if they implemented fiery wings, burning trail and lightnings out of your ass at the end of ultra-long grind, instead they chose to go with gear, knowing that many people view it as mandatory.

4872

Leaving your other questionable points aside, they have been offering refunds for unsatisfied customers up to six months after purchase date which is extremely generous in my mind.

4873

Part of the problem with the Ascended gear tempest is in how Anet missed an opportunity to set the narrative about the new gear in a clear and proactive manner. News first leaked out from a webpage and then the GW2 boards blew up about situation. After that, Anet was reacting to the forums and took too long to get an explanation out.

WvW is starting to go down the same path. I realize that game companies are reluctant to show their hand in case they have to make changes, but some broad brush outline of where WvW is headed would steer posters in a more positive direction.

4874

Why must these MMOs always be such a race? I have no alts and I’m not even 80 with my character. I missed this whole “Fractal” thing and most of these one-time events because I play other games and do other things besides Guild Wars 2.

They will never satisfy the guys who are now already on Fractal level 999 again and not alienate their casual/semi-hardcore player base (which seems to be the majority).

The problem is that Arenanet seems to listen to the wrong kind of people.

4875

I agree that a lot of the problem here was a failure of messaging. It’s very difficult to do too much official public speculation about things to come, because people absolutely love to wallow in righteous indignation if they can find a “gotcha” where something stated ends up not coming to pass, and as with any iterative process not everything slated currently will ever see the light of day. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

But yeah, if you’re getting really close to an actual patch and you’ve locked down exactly what’s changing, that’d be a good time to work out how you are going to present it to the community.

I do think they should have also added a new set of stat-boosting non-infusion upgrades that would boost exotic gear to meet or exceed the stats of ascended gear and made those items drop from the regular dungeons. Nothing really to say they couldn’t do something like this even still.

4876

This. GW2 is not subscription. I don’t have to even try to fit seeing the content in to get money’s worth off a sub. I also don’t have an 80 yet, but with scaling had been doing plenty of the dungeons with no trouble. Are they looking at players where they aren’t competing with other treadmill/progression MMOs for their time/money but with people who play a mix of straight single-player, small scale co-op and free to play MOBAs to fill up their time?

Like GW1, I was planning on dropping in and out for quite a while (years there) and pacing through existing content was working fine. Most of the people I convinced to play GW2 with me are MMO “refugees” or one person never bitten by the bug. If it turns into a another gear-chase, progression-chase treadmill (which is unfun for our preference) that penalizes you for logging back in after a while “behind the curve” (which defeats much of the attraction with a free to play we can all join each other in) … then we are likely out. More other games supporting co-op mode is a bigger competition for GW2 in our minds than other “progression” MMOs.

And we’ll leave quietly too. We have no issues with MMOs for other people. If the market won’t support one for us, then it won’t. I don’t know if that is the case though. The post event poll was more focused on the event than our other playing and spending patterns. Events are great don’t get me wrong. But the bugs GAH!

For anyone who wants to check, all but one of us spent money on something beyond the box sale too. Speaking from a business perspective, two of us delayed getting the Skyrim expansion for GW2 spending, another didn’t get anything new in LoL. So the pocketbook competition is not other MMOs for us. Though, with bugs, a modded fan-bug fixed Skyrim can start to look more appealing. We’ll get on vent and play something co-op or not at the same time while we wait for more to be up for say dropping into LoL … the difference between that and soloing in GW2 while hanging out in guild’s mumble for more guildies to log in and run something is ??? The two things we couldn’t seem to get less buggy elsewhere were small-group content without a prerequisite gear-grind, and WvW-style PvP. Making those more like “other MMOs” retains us how? How many of us are there though?

4877

Arenanet just posted a sort of postmortem of the Lost Shores event and gives us a glimpse at what they’ll be working on going forward:

Here’s a general rundown of what we are working towards over the upcoming months:
[ul]

[li]Revamping all of our existing dungeons (Story and Explorable versions) through rebalance and overhauled encounters.[/li]> [li] Adding new dungeons to the Fractal of the Mists.[/li]> [li] Adding more variation to creatures, enhancing our open world scaling system, as well as evolving many events and experiences across Tyria.[/li]> [li] Fixing and improving existing content throughout the game, and better tying it into the overall sense of player progression within Guild Wars 2.[/li]> [li] Building on the Southsun Cove’s persistent content.[/li]> [li] Adding new Guild content and Guild progression features.[/li]> [li] Continuing to evolve PvP into an E-sport as outlined here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/structured-pvp-iceberg/[/li]> [li] Adding brand new content to World vs. World as well as adding new reward progression.[/li]> [li] Continuing to build upon the story and adventures of Guild Wars 2.[/li]> [/ul]

4878

So… has anyone else noticed that the bots are gone? I still see the occasional gold seller spam and get the odd gold selling in game mail, but I cannot recall the last time I saw a bot out in the wild.

4879

I still see bots, though a lot less than before. I kind of miss them now, since it made it a lot cheaper to buy T6 Materials, which I need for Ascended gear!

4880

I don’t believe you signed a contract with ArenaNet guaranteeing they are not allowed to change or add to their game.

Most GW2 players will fall into one of two categories. The casual player who doesn’t give a rats ass about what happens at the “end game”. Or the progression focused player who will welcome the new Ascended progression gear and simply run the dungeon with their guild and friends.

I guess there is the 3rd type of player who can’t over look their own sense of self entitlement and demand ArenaNet is not allowed to do anything.