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@snoow.1694 said:I believe Guild Wars 2 still has great potential to become an all time great like CoD, GTA or FIFA, but that needs some good marketing moves in 2020. ArenaNet should focus on the competetive aspect of Guild Wars 2 and by that I mean PvP - competetive games are what gets and keeps people hooked. Pay a top streamer to play PvP, give him/her access to cool skins to show off and let them team up with top PvP players. What we can learn from Minecrafts resurgence is that content creators playing games and people creating memes out of them is what makes games spike in popularity. Therefore ArenaNet should:

  • keep the meta healthy
  • pay content creator/s (Youtubers/Streamers) to play Guild Wars 2 and allow them access to skins as advertisement. I am literally talking about people like Tyler1 who are used to 5v5 games and have HUGE potential of creating new memes while playing it
  • develop the PvP menu, create additions to Heart Of The Mist and ease the process of obtaining skins via PvP
  • reestablish the payed esport aspect of Guild Wars 2 by partnering with an esports league - see the 1st place of a tournament as „expense“ for an extra marketing employee, because the winning team is basically that - support in advertisement
  • tell your marketing team to create some fire memes that are actually funny, partner with popular sites on Instagram and Twitter and share them
  • kids love free games and hate getting destroyed - allow „Free2Play“ people access to single elite specializations through purchase via the gem store. Trying the elite specs will make them buy the Ad-ons. Add also free 7 day trails for each elite spec
  • support actual Guild Wars 2 content creators by letting top PvP players create YouTube/Twitch accounts & let them group up with paid content creators as PvP teams to increase their reach

I played Guild Wars since I was 13 years old, now I am 25, work in business administration and when I think back on what made me hooked on it was that it was a literal game about wars between guilds, about the Hall Of Heroes and the sick life action movie like ads Guild Wars came with. We should go back to that concept and let Guild Wars finally get the fame it deserves with it‘s graphics and lore.

IMO, this would practically lose the entire casual community in GW2.

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As many has stated, I do appreciate communication too - but, I do believe that after such a long period of radio silence you need to ease up on "don't speak about something until you deliver" statement. To see that it was clearly a wrong stance to take, you can look at the aftermath of it around communities - things look bleak, in general. Please, do consider spoiling some of the upcoming features to be excited about.

So far, I'm sure some do appreciate this side insight into charr's story as a flashback, but if I'm being brutally realistic - it's not going to bring people who sit things out back, nor it's going to attract new players. We need bold statements and something to truly look forward to gameplay wise - single fractal isn't much, considering how much people have burned out on them in general due to severe lack of fresh content (raids as well), and I'm not certain that anyone truly needed some sort of WvW-into-PvE hybrid - what people wanted and meant by "replayable content" is farms to work towards the only thing which has nice-looking skins as of now - gemstore, gold-to-gem conversion. Perhaps you could break the status quo and confirm or deny elite specs already?

Furthermore, 10-man content's biggest flaw is... ironically, 10-man-content. Putting together a stable group of 10 to learn and progress together through the raids is only really possible in guilds, and those by now are just an organized friendlist - guilds have seen no love for years, and I barely count guild halls as that due to it being a cosmetic feature with a one-time grind to get things done there, nothing more. Another issue is that the game gets really reluctant to grant you access to at least some decent starting gear for raiding - you could give players something to at least be confident about their loadout, like an achievement that grants some ascended armor set with selectable stats. Another thing is that there's little incentive to learn rotations - not because community is lazy, but because many things have really counterintuitive ways of dealing high DPS, and often - boring too. It isn't super fun to count number of autoattacks on Weaver, for instance - and raid meta is incredibly stale and strict to be sustainably fun and flexible for a broader audience. General downfall of raids is a complex issue which requires a nuanced and multi-faceted approach, and unfortunately strike missions aren't the direct answer.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Pre nerf hot and the backlash from it happened because anet decided to bring harder content to everyone's door without asking who wants it, a raid or a fractal cm isnt something that comming up to you and asks to be done, its something that been released on the side as an option.Then perhaps it should have been to the side, not in our face by making, for example, strike achieves a requirement for getting the LS metaachieve. Or by making envoy armor the
only
PvE legendary armor set.

My opinion has been that you wont get ppl to do harder content if they dont want to regardless their skill unless they want to. Tho that end im really just advocating for dificulty settings, strikes wont achieve that imo, not to the numbers they prob hope.

Unfortunately this just plagues strikes, they are fine group instanced content and would be even more succesful had they released a cm for each while keeping nm easy. Having it be part of the meta imo is fine, theres nothing wrong with incentivising ppl to do the new content anet has made and that goes for content i might personally dislike like run around the map and press f achievements.

On regards of legendary armor, i guess? Personally it didnt really get me to raid anymore than i did which was mostly done for the enjoyment of content.

Exclusive rewards for diff parts of the game is a great thing imo and i believe how they gave all the dungeon rewards to pvp and wvw was a very bad call. That being said cosmetically diff legendary armors for fractals and maybe themed legendary armor pieces for diff world bosses make sense, emphasis on different.

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@Captain Dark One.8690 said:ZzzzzzzzzzzzzHow many times have Anet claimed to start listening only to then do whatever they want!

Maybe cause the community as a whole exist of individual people with individual opinions. Most opinions seen are those of dissatisfaction. Look at Raids.People wanted them badly and demanded it cause it was part of the favourite game they used to play (but stopped playing for some reason). Now they are here, people complain how it is impossible to get into and how elitist it is. So long story short, they shouldnt have listened in the first place.Same with living world season one. People complained it was not repeatable. Now it is, but people complain that the maps are empty and everything is much of the same. Season one was so much better.

My point is that they do listen, but they can only listen to the multitude of voices, not only those opinions being voiced, but also those that remain silence.I think it would be great if they would start doing whatever they want. When they build GW2, nobody had a clue and they made it great and groundbreaking in the genre. They should do so again. Start making the game they think is the best game in the world and stop listening to the salty part of the community. Not cause they are wrong, but cause it is impossible to know what the majority wants.

Another element is that people who express their opinion have no experience in game development. Every action has a reaction. Every choice has arepercussion. a few examples.When you introduce player housing, people would spent more time in instanced content and less in open world towns.When you create more maps, the playerbase will get streched outWhen you create harder end game content, there will be people who cant do it and feel left out

I'm not making judgement wether some choices where good or bad, but be aware of this. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Newton's third law of motion applies here, but also know that it is a law of movement. By being afraid of the reaction, there will be no action and there will be no movement. So let Arenanet do what they do best (move forward in the way they see fit best) and let us sit back and enjoy the ride. Maybe the game will go into a direction I'm not interested in, but so be it.

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I'm not sure if anyone has touched on this regarding raids, but if you want more people to get into raids, not only does there need to be a sort of metaphorical ramp instead of a giant leap from say Fractals to Raids, but there also needs to be incentive for people even to care about raiding, and a much easier way of finding groups.

Every time I try to convince people to play the game, one of the biggest concerns they raise is, "Where's the loot!?" I have to tell them that really isn't any loot in GW2 because getting newer, better gear isn't the focus of GW2; This isn't a loot-driven game.

Sure, you can work toward legendary gear - I myself have 2 full sets of legendary armor and several legendary weapons - but aside from flashy animations and the convenience of not needing multiples sets of gear for different builds, legendary items don't bring anything to the table in terms of making your character(s) stronger.

It's also not easy finding groups to raid with. Not only do you need to find a group that raids at a time that's convenient for you, but you need to find people that you get a long with, have the same or similar goals as you, and can actually get the job done when it comes to getting the kills you need to work on that legendary gear you want.

I know there are several ways of finding groups: LFG, Discord, Reddit, etc... But, I honestly wish there was just a raid finder in the game. I badly want to get back into raiding myself, but I don't want to deal with the stress of meeting new people, having to prove myself, and hoping that we all get along, only to find out that we can't get boss kills.

I doubt a raid finder would be anywhere near perfect right out of the gate, but it's better than not raiding at all.

On the topic of Fractals, we don't need any new Fractals! What we need are the super old ones, such as: Aetherblade Retreat, Cliffside, Solid Ocean, Uncategorized, Underground Facility, Urban Battlegrounds, and Volcanic to be completely reworked!

They're so old and outdated that it almost makes me not want to do them at all, especially the Underground Facility! When we get the final boss and find out that we have to fight the Elemental, I want to bail every time.

But, despite Fractals needing a lot of love, what REALLY needs a LOT of love are dungeons! Aside from needing the tokens for legendary weapons, there's absolutely no need to go into them at all. They might as well not even be in the game and the tokens be ported over to Fractals.

I know they exist as an introduction for new players, but Dungeons were all we had before the introduction of Fractals. I remember when the game first came out, Ascalonian Catacombs was unbelievably difficult. Nobody had the damage needed to destroy the Graveling Burrows in time and the NPC would always die.

It got to a point where Frostbow Elementalists were a must have in every single group because of the super high damage output they had at the time, otherwise you might as well just not bother. Now, they're practically (if not) soloable. It's a shame how far they've fallen, and it'd be nice if they got a major overhaul.

All-In-All, I'm super excited for the future of this game. I've been playing (off/on) since the closed beta way back when, and have nearly 10k hours logged in by now, but lately haven't found it in me to play because of the lack of content. (One hour LW episodes every couple of months just isn't enough)

So, here's to the future! Cheers!

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I am glad to know that you are working hard to improve the game. I am also glad to know that you are using content that you have already done before.

I don't know how the story will continue, nor do I pretend to know.But I think it would be super interesting to see mechanics already created in other stories. As for example, the factor of being Sylvari in the story of Heart of Stones, or the decisions made throughout personal history.

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Thanks for the message. I feel like FINALLY after years of all our feedback, someone is at least listening to some of it. One of the things that got me into GW2 was LS1, how dynamic the game was. How our involvement in the game impacted the outcome somehow. Also how Scarlet's impact left a mark on all the maps, how LA had to be rebuilt, how you still see leftovers of all LS1 throughtout the map. After LS1, the game became, to what I can best describe is.... Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray movie (you should go watch it if you don't know what I'm talking about). I feel like my character is stuck in an endless loop, since everything just repeats over and over, and no change. Yeah we unlock new areas to explore, but they are also stuck in Groundhog Day. I'm glad to hear you are going to incorporate some of that success and dynamic content in the Icebrood Saga, waiting for it.

Now that said, and seeing the PvP, WvW upcoming balance message, I beg you to please pay more attention to the Profession forums. There have been a lot of changes to classes that were focused on PvP issues (whinning?) and the effects they have on PVE are terrible. For example, the Chrono rework from summer of 2019, they definitely shouldn't have been incorporated to PVE, I can see it being OK in PvP, but pretty much ruined a perfectly fun and PVE versatile class and should be looked into.

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@DirtyDan.4759 said:

@"Golvellius.7856" said:

It's the toxic elitist community.

You generalizing raiders, that's pretty toxic.

TL:DR: I know you are but what am I!?

You are correct. Though, your ad-hominem only further supports my point. We casual players very much assume/generalize that the community is toxic (which it is). This is why your queues are empty. boink

Though...

Assuming that you are an offended elitist, your TOXIC community does the. exact. same. dang. thing. You assume/generalize that all casual players are unskilled, lazy, entitled, can't follow directions, and/or are other otherwise...bad. And you love letting us know bout it. One thing goes wrong, queue standard elitist diatribe, and the age old casual vs. hardcore dichotomy ignites, often escalating in the same blame game name-calling lame merry-go-round.

Your generalizations are as bad as mine.

...but we've beat this horse into nothing but a single dried out patch of hair (I've been beating it for about 15 years now).

Ultimately it's this: We are the crowd and we're not coming. Our reluctance has nothing to do with skill, dedication, intelligence, or challenge. It has nothing to do with our willingness to follow orders. We can read and comprehend - we understand gearing, builds, rotations, timing, dodging, boss mechanics - all the things you hardcore types think ONLY you can understand for some reason. Trying to address the "problem" of a lack of participation based upon the aforementioned fallacious assumptions will do absolutely nothing.

I mean...look at the pudding. The proof is in there.

It really is, a big honking chunk of us that do not want to group with a small and very LOUD and toxic portion of you. We don't want in your guild, we don't want in your raid, we don't want to be in your strike, and we don't want in your 5 man. We really don't want to bother with you in the open world - but it's easier to ignore you there. We don't...so we don't and we find other things to do. Meanwhile, (for whatever ridiculous reasoning) developers try to satisfy the small crowd of folks that do the content - oblivious for some reason to the mass exodus of our crowd. Then they wonder why we're not there. Maybe they're elitists too...lol. I can picture them rubbing their temples...., "Ugh...casual bads ruining our game! Well, let's toss them a little Strikey-Bone and maybe they'll learn to not be bad."

Kidding of course. :)

I'm saying, try something different. Try separating the oil from the water. See if that works better. I promise you that I'd queue up for anything, listen, learn, and try to complete even the most difficult encounters - over and over again - if I knew that the folks I was queuing up with had easy-going and respectful temperaments like me. I promise that I am never going to queue up for anything in any game that is gated by you toxic types.

I'd also like to point out that there are specific problems with this game (rewards/monotony/etc), outside of the toxic community, that have been stated that I whole-hardheartedly agree with. I also promise that if they continue this course, I'll be leaving and taking the remains my little crew (wifey and sons) with me.

(Also apologies to all non-toxic hardcore folks. :) I know there are many of you who are not like that, just as you know there capable casuals like myself).

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This might be hard to hear for you guys because its a lot of work, and I mean a LOT of work. But if You really want to help prepare players to get into raids the content you should be looking at is Dungeons. The issue with strike missions or even fractals as a gateway to raids is that the new play doesn't recognize those terms and when they're described to them they sound insurmountable and just their names alone leads players to be put off. I've made numerous attempts at getting new players into fractals with no avail due to its odd nature. And the first thing that players want to do when they join the game is do dungeons. Its the first thing that they ask. "When can we do a dungeon?" and that's also the when these players quit.

You want to help the raiding community, Strike missions isn't the way to go. Dungeons are. Dungeons being reworked would provide far more player retention than Strike missions or fractals combine. Dungeons are the biggest turn off point for new players. And they could be used to teach players how to better utilize their skills and mechanics. But they're just not.

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@Golvellius.7856 said:Ultimately it's this: We are the crowd and we're not coming. Our reluctance has nothing to do with skill, dedication, intelligence, or challenge. It has nothing to do with our willingness to follow orders. We can read and comprehend - we understand gearing, builds, rotations, timing, dodging, boss mechanics - all the things you hardcore types think ONLY you can understand for some reason. [ snip ] It really is, a big honking chunk of us that do not want to group with a small and very LOUD and toxic portion of you.

QFT.

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I had way more than enough of raiding and forced grouping before GW2. Started to play this game exactly because it had none of that. No raids at all, no forced grouping, no grinding for gear. Very solo friendly with focus on outworld PVE. Was perfect game for me. I made a decision back then that I will never ever raid again in any game. Have been happily playing here every day since launch, doing my casual stuff that I actually like to do. Best game related decision I have ever done.

And now comes these news that makes it look like that the game is going to turn into exactly opposite direction. Trying to force everyone to group up, to raid? My decision is going to hold. I will not raid. Remains to be seen how possible it will be to continue playing in meaninful way without raiding.

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@Timo.1065 said:

  • Raids are a trickier beast. They're a unique experience and community that we want to find better ways to support, the biggest challenge in creating more is the small audience they attract. We gathered data to determine why, and the most common answer was that there is a giant leap in difficulty between raids and other endgame content, and there isn't anything to help players work their way up.

Raid isn't so hard. Low number of player is ArenaNet fault. You made entrence barier for new pleyers, like Li or KP.Even raid players have problem to play new wings. Li is not enough now, you need to have KP from last boss to run raid with others.kitten dissaster.PS.I have more than 300 Li now.

It's not anet fault that most of the players are casuals and won't attract them either with or without LI or KP.

Raids don't work in GW2 that's the fact, I am surprised they even try to make them visible by creating Strike Missions.

You should be happy they even try to make something out of this unused content and spend some resources.

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Strike missions aren't raids. Strike missions aren't a bridge between endgame content and raids either. Strike missions are just an instanced world boss fight with different mechanics that also doesn't offer too much for it (like fractals or raids - talking about the currency exchange and the drops). To me at least.Concerning raids - I'm new to raids (started with training almost 2 months ago) and I don't see any problems about it (and I'm honestly not your brightest player).I see people complaining about various things regarding raids and here's my thought about it :

  • problem - that it's hard to find someone to train new players . Solution - download discord and join RA. Trust me - it's that easy! I'm 42 years old with a job and a 3 years old baby and I could do it. Why can't you? Cause it's just easier to DEMAND ANet to just hand you anything that you find hard without even trying much? Try it first, complain after.
    • problem - no rewards. Solution - I DEMAND ANet to drop one legendary weapon / armor piece per boss killed in raids. Seriously, are you all crazy? What the hell do you mean with no rewards? You get Legendary insights / Legendary Divinations (for legendary armor), liquid gold (and it's pretty good), shards (you can exchange those for ascended armor, weapons, trinkets, minis), ascended drops that you can use or salvage for more shards, minis which you can exchange for more shards...so what the hell do you mean by no rewards? At this point I'm just speechless...
    • problem - hard to find a group for new players or experienced players. Solution - same as for the first problem - download discord and join RA. Works wonders if you're either new to raids or more experienced. If discord is just beyond your human capabilities, try LFG. Look for a relaxed run. You'll find people that run raids weekly, are fun and aren't elitists (so they expect mistakes and don't kick when you do). I know I found such people. And I honestly don't think that among the hundreds of thousands of players I'm the only "special snowflake" in this situation. Start learning more and complaining less. It makes things easier. For everyone.
    • problem - you never get a training / practicing group, cause you're on a different time zone, at work etc. Solution - I didn't know that being in a different time zone than other players depended on ANet, but you can try and sue ANet's for making this game available in all countries. If being at a job while people are training, sue your employer for not letting you raid at work or quit your job. Does all this sound crazy? So does the problem itself. Just think and you'll finally see it.

I'm not an elitist. On the contrary, I'm a pretty lousy player. I used to read forum posts about how toxic and elitist raiders are and how they kick you if you sneeze in the wrong direction while at a boss that at some point I thought that I'm never gonna try raids. Here I am, 2 months after I started training and all I can say is this : watch a video or two, get on discord (it's not gonna bite you), join a training group and have fun. You'll see raids with different eyes. Oh, and one more thing - stop taking forums for a 100% accurate opinion on state of the game / players. Try it first, decide later.

ANet - raids are fine as they are. And being just a 2 months old raider, if I can call myself a raider after just 2 months, might not be enough for me to form an appropriate opinion, but so far this is all I can say.

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Strike missions are pretty silly. ESO forces you to get good from the get go starting from vet dungeons so scrubs either quit that content or stay in normal and thats fine when content was always harsh to begin with. You have now the WoW problem of coddling your community with nothing but faceroll content, then introducing mythic.

Of course only 1% of the playerbase will play that now when no one can follow mechanics anymore or make a group without their hand held, and the rewards can be obtained elsewhere anyway. /surprisepikachuface

If you want raids to be attractive these days you need WoW/FF14-esque design or have AWESOME rewards. Strikes aren't even located in the same area of a raid .. why not just create easier difficulties of the same content you already had? In ESO doing 0 death runs, hardmode, achievements give you amazing titles and cosmetics and these exist for vet dungeons as well. You need big incentives with rewards if you want people to play your harder content, otherwise whats the point?

On the topic of achievements.. I know Anet wasn't really experienced with typical MMO design , CLEARLY, with GW2. But can you implement a legacy achievement system and stop with this trash AP farm? At the moment it is literal just dumb grind and no one can ever catch up to AP regardless of skill or time invested. Achievements shouldn't just be AP farm, it should be given after you achieved something significant not repeated a silly task 9000 times or nolifed the game from day 1. It actually makes me not want to play this game.

You should also have more solo challenges like VMA in ESO, like Liadrin that was in GW2, very unfortunate it was part of the screw-our-own-content temporary lineup. It definitely could have been expanded on.

I know its pointless to even mention pvp since it was abandoned so early in the games life, but conquest is the lamest pvp mode in my pvp history. GW1 had so much better modes. Even AB was more fun than conquest. Add more modes, or forever have dead pvp. Proper GvG (NOT wvw blob) is a must in guild wars, but we said that since day 1 and it never happened so I never expect it to. I am afraid that is more an issue with your no hard-role design of classes though, so pvp was doomed to begin with I guess. Then again, ESO manage it, but embraced FUN over attempted esports garbage.

This game has made more mistakes that I can even count. I mean a lot of us moved on already anyway but hey it would be cool to see it fixed someday so grats on actual communication for the first time ever.

PS: you are ignoring your biggest money maker in the form of expansions and elite specs. Living world can never last, they are just tiny insignificant amounts of content.

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Sooo raid are not difficult you just have to learn how it works, which the comunity already does. I started raids 3-4month ago went to a training community and now get most of the boss everyweek.

The issue with the amount of people in raid?Its a gameplay that ask you to get better, some player don't want that and strike won't change anything about it.If a group player want to play with a build that do no damage or heal or boon they won't be able to succeed in some boss due to enrage timer.Why not removing those? Why should it be a problem if a group of people spend 1 or 2h killing a boss with their not adapted build?Enrage timer are the problem imo. People already have the handicap of facing more mechs the longer they take, let them learn all mechs and kill the boss in 4h with auto attacks if they fancy it.Best in all that, player that want to speedrun or down boss more efficiently they still can.

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