How happy are you with Guild Wars 2 right now?

We are in a pivotal moment of Guild Wars 2's history - a few weeks after the release of the game's second expansion, which has received pretty good reviews and appears to have a better reception by the playerbase than the first expansion. Despite ArenaNet's shenanigans with the mount skins, it appears to be a successful time for them. With that in mind, IMO it's a great time to see how happy the forum community is with the game. So, without further ado...

I was in the mostly happy category this time last week, but the Mount Skins thing put me in a bad mood. I still think most of the game is in a good place, which is why I didn't want to say that I was "mostly unhappy," but they NEED to do something about the 30 skins locked behind the gambling box before I would consider giving them any more money.

I'm more and more thinking the frequency of balance patches needs to be moved up, but otherwise i think everything else is fine.

@Ohoni.6057 said:I was in the mostly happy category this time last week, but the Mount Skins thing put me in a bad mood. I still think most of the game is in a good place, which is why I didn't want to say that I was "mostly unhappy," but they NEED to do something about the 30 skins locked behind the gambling box before I would consider giving them any more money.

See I don't get this at all. A company makes a bad decision. It's ONE bad decision. It doesn't effectively change the game because a couple of weeks ago none of these mount skin exists. And it changes the entire game for people, even though they were playing happily without those skins, even though they don't need those skins to play the game, and even though more skins will be coming in the future.

The game is the same game. The company either made a mistep, or people are expecting too much from a five year old game with declining monthly revenues that wants to keep providing content.

Last week I was mostly happy and this week I don't like how they're selling mount skins so it's all gone to kitten. This, to me, is a perspective issue.

A company does thousands of things right, does a handful of things wrong and the community is ready to bring out the pitchforks. I'm really glad I'm not a game developer.

I'd be happier if it hadn't locked up hard on my twice last night alone. Hopefully updated graphics drivers and reboot put that nonsense to bed.

More in line with the OP's intent, I'd like to see more armor skins (not outfits) and a map-wide meta or two (maybe in LS4?)And hopefully a bit more market research before attempting somewhat obviously unpopular monetization schemes.

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:I was in the mostly happy category this time last week, but the Mount Skins thing put me in a bad mood. I still think most of the game is in a good place, which is why I didn't want to say that I was "mostly unhappy," but they NEED to do something about the 30 skins locked behind the gambling box before I would consider giving them any more money.

First, its not just one bad decision, its been several over the years the game has been around, and each time they've gotten too much heat for something, we get very weak mea culpas from Anet, only this time this problem was one that was more noticeable and more unforgivable by a larger subset of the player base, including many new players to the game.

Fact is, I know first hand what kind of outcome this predatory behavior can create for someone financially. I know that this was and is a shady business practice, and from Mikes response know that they are putting more effort into trying to figure out how to get away with this BS later on hopefully after the dust settles rather than actually admitting fault and trying to do better by their player base.

As for the "one mistake" thing: all it takes is one mistake when climbing a mountain to find yourself smashed against the rocks below.

middle of the road for the middle of the road.

Waiting to see if people comeback, if Anet has more to offer or not.

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:I was in the mostly happy category this time last week, but the Mount Skins thing put me in a bad mood. I still think most of the game is in a good place, which is why I didn't want to say that I was "mostly unhappy," but they NEED to do something about the 30 skins locked behind the gambling box before I would consider giving them any more money.

Here is the thing. It has nothing to do with the skins. It has to do with the fact that in 1 day we went from 5 mount skins, released with a festival, to 36 mount skins, all available in the cash shop only.

It would be nice to be rewarded for completing content instead of being rewarded for farming gold.

Some of those skins are damn lazy re-textures. They could have easily have been added as collections/achievements.

In releasing the mount pack, Anet made their stance very clear. We will not get mount skins by playing the game. We will get mount skins by farming gold or swiping a card.

Inbefore “farming is playing” - don’t be thick. They aren’t the same thing.

I went with mostly happy.

Although there are a few things that cause concern for me, including the recent MountGate, the fact is, night after night, I log in, spend time with my guild, get some gathering or some achievement done, role play with my friends, etc. Night after night, for several hours, I forget about my problems in the real world, and I'm entertained.

The only problem is have is deaert is my least appealing region type to explore, and S4 is set to continue there. But honestly that's not a problem at all - it may be my least favorite, but that's not saying much. I'm still extremely excited!

@Erasculio.2914 said:We are in a pivotal moment of Guild Wars 2's history - a few weeks after the release of the game's second expansion, which has received pretty good reviews and appears to have a better reception by the playerbase than the first expansion. Despite ArenaNet's shenanigans with the mount skins, it appears to be a successful time for them. With that in mind, IMO it's a great time to see how happy the forum community is with the game. So, without further ado...

I don't care one bit about the RNG loot boxes. Let me get that out of the way. What kills this game for me is the lack of incentives to actually PLAY it. These 31 mounts could have been tied to in-game objectives (as rewards). Anet could have used these mount-skins to incentivize weeks, or months of actual GAMEPLAY.

Instead, they dumped them straight to the gem-shop. So, I logged on the night they were released, and bought them all (no big deal). 45 minutes later, I was right back where I started: with nothing to do.

I don't care that RNG loot-boxes are part of the game. I don't care that individual skins on the gem-store are $25. What I DO care about is that nothing I want comes from actually playing the game. I hate that I log on every night, and end up logging off 10 minutes later, because everything is stale, and old; and I've done it dozens and dozens of times (and won't get anything I want/need from doing it again).

Your 31 mount skins gave me 45 minutes of mild-interest (yay, credit-card swipes). But the actual game is really boring and stale... because you put no effort into it making it fresh/rewarding.

Please don’t turn this into another mount skin thread...

More changes when balance patches happen would be nice, along with it to make Power and condi builds equally (or near as damnit) viable in fractals and raids.

We also need more repeatable seasonal content, on a yearly and monthly basis.

I am loving every minute of it! It is the perfect MMO for my life and super duper fun.

@Erasculio.2914 said:the game's second expansion, which has received pretty good reviews and appears to have a better reception by the playerbase than the first expansion.

I've experienced a much more controversial view among the players. Replayability, nothing to do after a few weeks and the disappointment of people who liked the large, map wide meta events of HoT would be the other side of the coin. Many described it as a good one-time singleplayer experience, but not a good MMORPG expansion that would keep you busy for some time as you would expect it.

Despite ArenaNet's shenanigans with the mount skins, it appears to be a successful time for them. With that in mind, IMO it's a great time to see how happy the forum community is with the game. So, without further ado...

Other than that, regarding the 5 man instanced content, I think that 0 dungeons and only 3 new fractal stories in 4 years (Nov 2013 - Nov 2017) don't really speak for playing GW2 from the point of view of a veteran player. Reworks and revamps don't satisfy as much as a completely new story, setting, instance.The last raid wing was added in February, now it's November. There were neither dungeons nor fractals or raid wings at the release of the new expansion PoF. Compared to other MMORPG expansions I don't know how PoF was supposed to convince people to play.

The pace and amount of new gem store content aggressively increases while there's more than ever a lack of rewards and things to work towards in the game itself. Play through the story, pull out your credit card and buy everything from the gem store instead. Or farm massive amounts of gold by doing the same thing over and over again like a generic asian grinder MMORPG and convert it to gems.

It's like they forgot about the existence of GW1 where you could still earn your rewards, skins without a gem store.Also, the current story of GW2 seems to like getting rid of GW1 characters as soon as possible in an awfully written way, which is just disrespectful to the lore of the franchise.

At this point, the only thought I have left for the GW universe is how it would look like if they released GW:Utopia instead.

Great game, nice release cadence, plenty of variety.My only dissatisfaction lately is the mount skin situation. But that ship has sailed and no sense it letting that tarnish the rest of the game.Looking forward to what comes next, content and feature-wise.

@Vayne.8563 said:See I don't get this at all. A company makes a bad decision. It's ONE bad decision. It doesn't effectively change the game because a couple of weeks ago none of these mount skin exists.

It was a bad decision, but they haven't fixed it yet, OR promised that they will fix it, and until they do, it's not just a bad decision, it's a bad consequence for the game. Yeah, the mount skins weren't in before, but we had reason to anticipate that they would be, and now we've seen them, and many of us want them, but we don't want to engage in the corrupt practice of gamble-boxes, so we have no other method of acquiring them.

They can fix this.

They have not.

They have no promised that they ever will.

Until they do, it will remain an ongoing wound in the game.

I forgive their mistake instantly, but I can't forgive them for deciding to not correct it.

@Haleydawn.3764 said:Please don’t turn this into another mount skin thread...

This will keep coming up until they actually fix the problem. Until then there' no point complaining about the mount skin complaints.

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:I was in the mostly happy category this time last week, but the Mount Skins thing put me in a bad mood. I still think most of the game is in a good place, which is why I didn't want to say that I was "mostly unhappy," but they NEED to do something about the 30 skins locked behind the gambling box before I would consider giving them any more money.

One decision can change the perception of a game in a major way.Imagine they would announce tomorrow that they would stop to support the game altogether, no more patches, nothing. Just running the servers like GW1.

Now that would only be one decision, and the game would not change by one bit from what it was yesterday, but would lead to a major change of how the community perceives the game and affect their decision of investing time and money into the game in a major way.

So you see, if one change effects you, it can have a major impact on how you perceive the game, even if it doesn't change the core gameplay loop.

Setting the game on a Lootbox gambling course for monetisation in the future effects a lot of people and they have every right to be upset at that development and voice their criticism.Plus with cases like this, it is only a matter of time until it actually does affect the core gameplay loop, as acquiring cosmetics is an integral part of GW2.

Only voted this because I'm far more disappointed that Anet is frittering away the goodwill and consumer confidence given them by GW1 players. If the game made me unhappy, I wouldn't log in. As to stories, content, and marketing, I've simply lowered my expectations quite a large amount. At one time it would have bothered me that I was using my faith in Balthazar to summon Hounds of Balthazar to fight against... Balthazar. Now I just shrug.

I'm ambivalent regarding this game. It is something to do. If they announced tomorrow that they were going to Sunset it, I'd say "oh well" and return to another game. It is too far gone to be what it could have been. I've gone from confidence and trust in Anet while playing GW1 to thinking now that their boat has no rudder and no Captain.

I picked the bottom option because the "I'm more or less happy. Things could be better, but they could be worse too." doesn't really sound like a "Meh" option that I was looking for.The game isn't horrible or I wouldn't still be playing it, but the game has a lot of "meh" and "ugh" situations in it that keep me from really enjoying it.

Actually getting content updates/10.

Played GW2 for like ~4 years of no content updates, now we get buttloads of content updates and new maps all the time. It's great, the games finally in a proper state.

I'm fairly happy, glad to log on every day.I'm just bored/frustrated/perturbed that some decisions are made not for fun or balance, but to prop up the trading post, and not in a good way.The heavy, heavy reliance on RNG in some cases makes it even worse. We've been saying it for years, and there have been little to no corrections on things like Mystic Clovers, Crystalline Ore, pearls, and leather.

Well I am more or less, I thought it would improve much more the rewards of big events. I hoped they were not so stingy with the points of achievement that can be achieved, you know, 3 points for completing a collection ...Also expected new legendary, and fantastic skins ... the weapons skins that can be obtained in the game are something ... mediocre in general ... and on the new armor skins, seriously, should put a little more than you win When it comes to designing and creating new models, I really can not believe that they do not have good artists, when they abound on the internet ..

And they have very forgotten what is WvW and PvP. I do not know what to do to improve this game, I always see users saying very good ideas but never put them into practice ... it's as if they were very afraid of failure or simply believe that being a user more than a lot of them. ideas are not reasonable ...

They may be better, but, I do not know, after the fiasco of the skins, and people can not take very seriously the work of some people ...

I find myself reading this forum way to much, in the hope that something will be revealed by the devs that will send the game in a better direction, ofc this never happens... The pitiful reward structure of this game is its main flaw in my eyes, until they upgrade rewards across the board this game will never reach it's potential.

I was somewhat surprised by my choice in all honesty. While I like PoF for the most part, some things are sticking in my craw.

1) The story remains problematic. It gets really old trying to complete story chapters. Yoda is right, there is no try, because when I try, the game DC's and I need to restart. Talk about a buzzkill. This means that one of the primary sources of (my) enjoyment in the game is something I avoid rather than embrace.2) Persistent world PvE continues to suffer from the visual nightmare, which means I have to strain to see what's going on, get headaches from doing more than a couple of group events and have to stop playing, or at least go off by myself.3) I am not pleased by the general trend in the store. While companies can choose to package their "products" however, they please, my preference is to know what I'm buying, and to not be made to choose to pay more for what I want because it is bundled with something else I do not want. My reaction to this tactic is to not buy. Yes, I'm not even a blip in the road, but that fact is immaterial to my own like/dislike for the store. I also dislike sales tactics which are based around "tricking" people to spend more for an item than they would were the item priced at a straight cost the market would bear. As far as I'm concerned, government regulation of these practices is overdue, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.5) I recognize that there seem to be fewer and fewer rewards for players to play for in the game. I have no idea what the internal pressures are on ANet, but this is a disturbing trend.6) I find myself liking mob design less as time goes on. There's too much reliance on AoE, and too many conditions that get instantly reapplied when cleansed. While I don't want a return to core armies with paper attacks, I'd like a little different approach to providing challenge, one that is less annoying.

had a longer break and only logged in to unlock the episodes of ls3 when they where released. i came back some weeks before pof came out and so i had plenty to catch up with. i played the complete ls3, got some new chars created and had a first look into pof. i created the shining blade and got the druid packpiece of draconis mons, currently my goal is to get all the ascended items of the ls3 maps to finish a vipers trinkets set. after that i will get back to pof and finish the complete story and maps plus their achievements. so from the amount of content i have atm i am busy and happy as the content is moving more in a direction to connect to tyrias history. that was always a big point of dissatisfactory on my side as i found the personal story around trahearne and the pact as too much watered down in comparison to gw1. it felt alot like drained off content and focus on gem sales.

looking forward to where this red lady incident will bring us. such small teasers make a good game as it makes the world feel more alive.

my mid term goal is to finish all the fractal levels and the legendary backpiece. also the nightmare fractal as i want the dagger skin for my soulbeast.my long term goal is to finally start with raids, i hope by the time i start with them there will be still enough players playing them.

some days ago i visited the hall of monuments to tame the available animals with my ranger. i realised that this ofc was in the middle of the northern shiverpeaks, the old eotn area. im looking forward to see this area again in the future. full gw2 graphics. i liked the eotn maps in gw1 for their design. spend some time to level the titles and doing chestruns, hardmode etc.

in the end there will be plenty to see in the future. since ls3 i have the feeling it all starts now after much time wasted in the start.