Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by FlawSGI

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by botrytis

I think all new games will be this way since it seems people have become polarized about everything - it is damned if you do and damned if you don't.

 

I would say people have more of a right to complain, if it was a sub game, but it is B2P.

What?  If people paid money for the game, then they have every right to complain if the it isnt going in the direction they want.

And how many MMO's stay the same as the day you purchased them? I payed the box price and got my value as it was. If I don't like the changes I don't buy expansions and I quit stopping by. Doesn't seem hard to me but there are those with self entitlement issues I suppose. Not saying you are one and all that but if the shoe fits........

So complaining about a service or product you're not happy with makes someone "self entitled"???  I hope you remember that the next tme your mechanic messes up your car or your waitress screws up your order.

The comment was in direct correlation to your response to the quote, not anything deeper than that. I happen to agree that if it was sub game then compalints have more legitimacy, but it's B2P and my response was in that line of thinking. Also I was talking about the product itself and not service of it. I thought when I stated I got my value as it was then followed with my opinions reagrding product change that would have been made clear, my apologies. As for self entitlement, that follows the line of thinking that they can't please everyone and it seems like many think they are supposed to please their personal taste rather than the direction the devs want to go and it is somehow a direct insult when their voices aren't heard. I see pointing out that I didn't mean you still may have ruffled your feathers.  As to your analogies they are horrid seing as how fixing my car is on a case by case deal since hundreds of thousands of people aren't driving my car, same as a waitress getting my particular order right, they aren't taking my order for thousands of others, just me and in both cases it is supposed to be custom just for me. 

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by botrytis

Originally posted by Ginaz

Originally posted by botrytis

I think all new games will be this way since it seems people have become polarized about everything - it is damned if you do and damned if you don't.

 

I would say people have more of a right to complain, if it was a sub game, but it is B2P.

What?  If people paid money for the game, then they have every right to complain if the it isnt going in the direction they want.

If it is a vocal minority versus a silent majority - then what would you do?  Right now this looks like the situation that is going on. If a person got 1000 hours out of GW2 for the price - can you get the same amount out of Skyrim which was the same price?

So because its only a "minority" that are complaining (though you provide no proof to back up what you are saying) that means they don't have the right to voice thier complaints?  Thats some danergous thinking.

It is definantly the minority complaining. And minorities tend to want rather drastic changes... Nazi party, Communist Party, even the American Revolution was caused by a minority. Some good things can come out of this, as can some bad. Usually bad it seems. 

Originally posted by fat_taddler

ANet has put themselves in an interesting dilemma.   Do they continue to add new tiers of gear for PvE and PvP to give players a proverbial carrot or do they cap stats and make all gear purely cosmetic after a certain point (as originally intended).

Seems to me that ANet is pretty much screwed either way.   On the one hand, many  GW2 purists (for lack of a better word) would be upset if ANet introduced tiered gear sets with significant stat increases.

On the other hand, we're seeing more and more players leaving due to lack of meaningful progression once they hit 80.

 

For those that believe stat based gear progression has no place in GW2, do you believe that ANet can continue to introduce creative and challenging PvE content based on the current item stats?   If so, at what point does the ratio of challenge vs. reward cause many players to stop trying?  

 

For those that believe that GW2 needs meaningful gear progression based on stats, what (if anything) would set GW2 apart from games like WoW or Rift which clearly offer more in terms of end-game, gear based progression?

As a purist I wasn't so bothered by having gear that had a tier as i was at their focus of making everything drop in dungeons. You don't just throw some gear into a single dungeon and make drops no longer drop even from dragon events in the open world and make everything drop in 1 dungeon only and expect people to continue to play normally. It just won't happen. Now people are predicting we'll need to use the mystic toilet (the new way of gambling throw some rare expensive mats in there and hope and pray to the interweb gods that it doesn't come out as some piece of crap that you can't even salvage for Ectos) instead of the utilizing the already worthless crafting disciplines that people all spent hours farming mats for to completely level. I mean it's bad enough as a chef that I can't even make a feast in this game without buying expensive mats some of which that don't make any sense (like crystals for example) and throwing them into the mystic toilet to make a feast that I can drop on the ground and share with people in my group or people in general.

I sure how they get a clue because people are tired of misfires when it comes to the management of this title, some of the things they did post launch were the stupidest things I've ever seen done in a game in years. The first month was great possibly because it made sense, until I reached the end game post Nov 16th.

Even tho I agree we don't need more, I hate to tell you but they already had a progression system based on stats. What we don't need is pigeonholing the method of getting those pieces of gear. Originally about a year into making the game they were talking about having a truly horizontal system where there were points to distribute on the toons and all of the gear would be completely cosmetic. That disappeared right before launch sadly.

If they were to make recipes purchasable via karma from the discipline trainers that allow people who maxed their disciplines already the ability to make them (ie. making these mats available from easily obtained drops outside of dungeons) then maybe they'll have a glimmer of a more horizontal progression system. But many of us thing and have said so openly on their forums that they will prolly make this an even bigger mismanagement problem by making all of the mats only available in this single dungeon, or require the use of the mystic toilet instead of the disciplines people already spent all the time leveling.

This is what gets me about it. They have all these broken system put into the game that don't do anything but get in the way of players. They have the mystic toilet instead of using the disciplines that they keep adding to btw, they have magic find that does exactly the opposite of what one would normally use it for but doesn't work on chests/bags when opening them, they have this huge open world that they were supposed to be putting good used to (prior to launch every interview I've read was about how fast and easy it was to make meta DE's and how they would replace dungeons forever in this game, then Nov 15th happened and FotM was born) since then nothing has been added to open world and every Meta event has had their rewards nerfed. I dunno about you guys but why waste your time waiting for three hours for a dragon event only to get there and get blue green and white items, basically junk.

They've got a LOOONG way to go and they can start by taking whomever is in charge over there and deporting them to another planet well out of reach of being in charge of anything ever again.

My Guild has given up on this game as well, and I'm

only shooting for 100% map completion now. The same

problem of grinding an area or dungeon a 1000 times

over and over is still here, and for what? I like to explore,

and this world is big but once I've seen the world and

I have "near best" gear, what will there be to do really.....

Originally posted by boxsnd
Why does progression have to be item based? It's the most boring type of progression. Why not make it skill based like DAoC? It makes sense: The more experienced you are, the more skills you get, the harder it is to play. But if you are skilled enough you can get very powerful.

How bout we literaly make it skill based? Introduce huge pve maps that act as giant dungeons. The farther in, the harder it is. That would be really interesting.

Originally posted by KingJiggly

Originally posted by boxsnd
Why does progression have to be item based? It's the most boring type of progression. Why not make it skill based like DAoC? It makes sense: The more experienced you are, the more skills you get, the harder it is to play. But if you are skilled enough you can get very powerful.

How bout we literaly make it skill based? Introduce huge pve maps that act as giant dungeons. The farther in, the harder it is. That would be really interesting.

Older MMOs used to have exactly that but it died with the dawn of instancing...

Originally posted by Alberel

Originally posted by KingJiggly

Originally posted by boxsnd
Why does progression have to be item based? It's the most boring type of progression. Why not make it skill based like DAoC? It makes sense: The more experienced you are, the more skills you get, the harder it is to play. But if you are skilled enough you can get very powerful.

How bout we literaly make it skill based? Introduce huge pve maps that act as giant dungeons. The farther in, the harder it is. That would be really interesting.

Older MMOs used to have exactly that but it died with the dawn of instancing...

One can bring it back. I propose the making of a rather larger map, that changes completely based on des. It can be a mix of underground and ground level. It will be filled with hidden passage ways no one may ever notice till well a year later. As one goes into the ground, there will be creature of Primordius to fight you and hidden acient cities o discover and protect. Deeper and deeper the adventureres will go, with greater rewards and epic story lines. To prevent zergs, rockslides and rockfalls can split to larfe of groups ib half and even kill. No way points will be around to respawn. It will require real skill to make it down and down and down, and real adventurers will have to communicate as they go through traps And puzzles. Some zones will even have random pvp moments, where groups can kill each other suddenly should they wish for loot. Bosses and fights with storylines shall encompass most of it though. 

I would not have been so miffed about the gear changes if they had done things a) across the board not just one dungeon and b) at a much later date, not 3 months after release. All the early changes did was rock the boat when it simply wasn't necessary. If they had waited 6-9 months and rolled it out to all areas of the game without an annoying grind attached, I would have been far less critical.

Originally posted by NaughtyP

I would not have been so miffed about the gear changes if they had done things a) across the board not just one dungeon and b) at a much later date, not 3 months after release. All the early changes did was rock the boat when it simply wasn't necessary. If they had waited 6-9 months and rolled it out to all areas of the game without an annoying grind attached, I would have been far less critical.

Agreed. However, they have stated they were wrong in doing so, and seeing they tend to go throughmand make future patches better, like karka and halloween to christmas, I have complete faith they will rectify this issue. 

Originally posted by fiontar

Alternative "carrots", like skins, prestige items, titles, guild halls and advanced guild unlocks, etc... can work in place of a gear stat treadmill. The problem currently with Arenanet and GW2 is that they dropped the ball on the alternative rewards.

There have been no new skins since launch. Titles are sparse. Guild halls and other guild objectives worth working towards over the long term are missing. Also, Karma is a great alternative currency, but once you get your exotic stat gear, there is nothing worth buying with that karma you keep accumulating. Why no multi-tier, karma exclusive skins? Mini pets? Prestige items?

The concept of an MMO based on an alternative to the end game stat grind is a good one. Arenanet just needs to greatly increase the depth and bredth of alternative "end game" rewards for players and guilds to earn.

Alternative end-game rewards mean very little when the underlying gameplay is so incredibly shallow.  Gamers like complexity, and I have no idea why so many companies are dumbing down their games to the point of boredom.  Maybe they're just hoping to widen the target audience or something, who knows.  What I do know is that ANET isn't going to turn the boat around just by adding in more skins.

Originally posted by KingJiggly

Originally posted by NaughtyP

I would not have been so miffed about the gear changes if they had done things a) across the board not just one dungeon and b) at a much later date, not 3 months after release. All the early changes did was rock the boat when it simply wasn't necessary. If they had waited 6-9 months and rolled it out to all areas of the game without an annoying grind attached, I would have been far less critical.

Agreed. However, they have stated they were wrong in doing so, and seeing they tend to go throughmand make future patches better, like karka and halloween to christmas, I have complete faith they will rectify this issue. 

The trouble is it's a bit late for that now. The entire reason they're in the current dilemma (that the OP highlights) is because they built the game for one audience then suddenly switched to appeal to the gear treadmill crowd with the Karka patch. Rectifying the issue now is unlikely to do anything as most of the players that left over it will have moved on already.

Originally posted by asmkm22

Originally posted by fiontar

Alternative "carrots", like skins, prestige items, titles, guild halls and advanced guild unlocks, etc... can work in place of a gear stat treadmill. The problem currently with Arenanet and GW2 is that they dropped the ball on the alternative rewards.

There have been no new skins since launch. Titles are sparse. Guild halls and other guild objectives worth working towards over the long term are missing. Also, Karma is a great alternative currency, but once you get your exotic stat gear, there is nothing worth buying with that karma you keep accumulating. Why no multi-tier, karma exclusive skins? Mini pets? Prestige items?

The concept of an MMO based on an alternative to the end game stat grind is a good one. Arenanet just needs to greatly increase the depth and bredth of alternative "end game" rewards for players and guilds to earn.

Alternative end-game rewards mean very little when the underlying gameplay is so incredibly shallow.  Gamers like complexity, and I have no idea why so many companies are dumbing down their games to the point of boredom.  Maybe they're just hoping to widen the target audience or something, who knows.  What I do know is that ANET isn't going to turn the boat around just by adding in more skins.

If you think the game play is shallow, you haven't really played the game. There is a lot of depth to the game and some professions/builds have very high skill caps. There is nothing dumbed down about the game, in fact, there is more of a learning curve for beginners here than any AAA MMO I've played since WoW. I have well over 700 hours played so far and I'm still learning new things almost daily.

I still log in and find there is almost too much to do. I enjoy the world content with out the need for an additional carrot, but I understand why some people need the carrot and also believe that the concept of non-power related carrots is viable with proper follow through.

I never saw any potential for unlimited longevity in the PvE side of things. It isnt possible without the carrot, although I usually tire quickly of that treadmill too.

They should be focusing more on PvP. Thats where the real retention is. Its where the real retention was in the first game as well. I always went back to GW1 for PvP, because MMO PvP in general sucks, hoping they polish GW2 up to the level of PvP that we had in GW1.

I think people need to understand, GW2 is not meant to be WoW. It's not meant to be for everyone. It's meant to be for people that like very equal PvP (in terms of it doesn't matter if you are no lifer student that can play 24/7 to get better gear or just casual player that like to jump into PvP and have fair chance).

In my opinion the worst thing MMO can do is to try to catter to everyone... That just doesn't work. GW2 wants to go horizontal nongrind progression, and that's fine, I think there are many people out there that will happily accept such concept. If they add more meaning to WvW and possibly upgrade sPvP, there will be still many people that will buy expansions. Also PvE content is really nice even without said carrot on a stick.

The last thing, GW2 is not subscription game. They don't really need people to play it 24/7, they don't need to "force" them to play as much as possible. I'm quite sure many people will be happy to pay just for the fact there is no carrot in game that is very polished in other aspects.

The only end-game content that could be worth are sPvP and WvWvW. The problem is sPvP is dead and WvWvW has no rewards. So, basically GW2 has no interest after achieving level 80.

The game has good potential but the actual ArenaNet Management team is hopeless. They just have no clue...

Transforming GW2 in Sims Online/Guitar Hero/Super Mario jumping puzzles just speaks for itself.

Originally posted by Ezhae

Okay, as someone who played GW2 a lot over last months I think, dear OP, you missed the point. 

 

The issue is not in lack of meaningful progression. Most people that waited for GW2 didn't care for that at all. The problem is that the vertical aka cosmetic progressionis currently built around TP. How so? Well let's take an "average" fancy skin, usually obtained through mystic forge recipe. What does such recipe tend to include? Well 250 ectos and some lodestones (usually 100 or 150). Some others are even more expensive requiring gifts that on their own need 250 lodestones.

Now. Lodestones are pain to get. They drop rarely and there is only few creatures that have a chance for the lodestone you want around. What it means, to get them yourself you'd have to spend countless hours killing single type of mob in single place. Alternative? Pay 1-2 gold per lodestone on TP. 

Ectos ont he other hand come from salvaging, around 0.9 ecto per rare salvaged. Sound fair. Problem? Other than trading dungeon tokens for rares, the ways of obtaining them are again based purely on luck and low drop rates. Unreliable, grindy, etc. 

Conculision? It's simply not fun to aim for any of those aesthetic goals because by commiting yourself to it you force yourself to grind day after day after day, either for materials or gold to buy them. 

 

So what actually is wrong? Well, the thing that's wrong is that loot doesn't feel rewarding in itself in the game. Big meta event chests, like form killing dragons in most cases give you just bunch of worthless blues with total value around 5 silver. That's not worth the effort/time to do the event really since just farming some chains in cursed shore gives about same/better results. Same time, if you look back to GW1 you had plenty of bosses that had their own unique drop tables and could give you a fancy looking item. In GW2 you are pushed towards playing TP more than the game itself to reach any of the vertical progression goals because in it's current state the game is built around need for gold. 

 

Bottom line: Looting is not exciting because you don't get anything fun from it. You just get vendor junk. Nothing nice looking, nothing worth much. Instead having that feeling of "Yea! Nice weapon/armor!" it's mor elike "Right... that's 3.50 silver more, I still need 240 gold..."

 

How to fix? Make loot fun. Make more challenging content that has actual rewards. Give me reasons, as player, to actually bother with doing those meta events other than simply "it's for fun". If a game doesn't feel rewarding in at least some aspect it has a serious flaw. At least in PvP i can get satisfaction from winning.

I think many people missed this post or something coz noones replied to it.

But this man/woman speaks the truth. Looting is gw2 is shit and was 10x better in gw1. I love the game, but the dropped the ball here.