Rex.3602

It's been this way for a long time now and there have been multiple threads suggesting this to be changed for convenience. The only reason that I could think of for the devs not doing it (other than not being worth the time in their mind), is that there may be no way for them to easily add a way to remember the last mount that was bound to X before entering WvW.

From my experience and everyone that I know who has used Steam, Steam users are used to many additional DLCs being available to purchase for many games. A listing in the DLC tabs and a complete edition with an appropriate price would be nice though.

So, bigger (huge, actually, compared to how it used to work), faster, does more damage, does more damage over time, gives stability, doesn't confuse or cripple anymore, still launches dudes up into the air/away from you. As for why they changed it, I.. I don't know. It does make me yearn for a 'show/hide player effects' setting real bad though. They changed it to nerf necro down state. Necro down state was op ckmpared to other classes.Yes, the survivability and damage in down state for necro indeed was over the top compared to other classes. I agree that more unnecessary visual clutter is not needed though, since we get a lot of that already.

That's not logical at all since the third trailer has more than double the views of the previous one. /s = Sarcasm, and even without the /s it was obvious.Thank you for clarifying that. Yes, based on my experience, I don't believe the game is actually dying at a rapid pace much faster than is typical for many MMOs. WvW and PvP seem neglected for a while now, but PvE is still quite active in terms of player population and development. I was just making fun of the claims that some people always seem to make about the game dying, from even the most inappropriate data.

Only one logical conclusion that could be drawn from these numbers: the game is dying. :p /s

I would be fine with this as long as there remans an option to keep universal keybinds too.

When I first started playing I wondered why movement of a lot of the UI was restricted. But it doesn't bother me now since I have got used to it. I can only think of 1 other MMO at the moment which I play that has a fairly fixed interface without plugins, and that is WoW.

A bigger playable area and/or invisible walls blocking most of these parts instead would be nice. That way people that want to leave the instance can still do it, but people that don't will be less bothered by these. In some other MMOs I have played, you could simply leave instances at anytime with an immediately accessible option instead of entering a no-go zone, and it seems like it might work better here to allow invisible walls to prevent reaching any unintended areas.

Open world PvE and fractal are both still very active and the player base is active in these. Reaper necromancers are great in the open world.

I would appreciate any news about the next episode at the moment. Even one as simple as "we are working hard on it and are making good progress" (maybe also a mention of the episode's name).

And if they did that with teq a lot of us would be satisfied. It remains a strong possibility to do teq everday for the life of the game and never get that drop. I stupidly started trying again. Took a year off after trying since they were added. Guess thier system works on me... still playing the content. I agree that it would be a better system to also have it as a guaranteed drop after a certain amount of tries, which is why I mentioned that it is the way it seems to work for the gift of aurene. I don't think you should be playing content to get rewards that are based on RNG (just my opinion, of course). That will only lead to possible frustration if you don't get the reward and you get bored of the content, like what seems to have happened to you. I would rather play content that I actually enjoy doing by itself, and see any RNG rewards from it as only a bonus. If you don't care about the skins either way then yes it could be a nice bonus to get one. The problem with this system is if you like the skin and want to try to get it your options are either to give up and find something else to get instead or commit yourself to doing the same meta event over and over and over with absolutely no guarentee you'll ever get the thing you're hoping for. Which is not a great choice. IMO rewards which are only nice for people who don't actually care if they get them or not are not good rewards. That means it's not motivating players, and may be actively discouraging others. I don't care about skins at all, which is probably why it doesn't bother me. But comparing it to RNG drops for gear I find the system pretty similar. It gives you a chance to get something cool as a reward (like a good rare piece of armor or weapon) that in the long run will mean little for your enjoyment of the game. Hence why I see it simply as a bonus, not a necessity to have it. I agree though that a system not based exclusively on RNG drops would be better. I doubt that they will change how it works though since it has been this way for a while now and many people would have got their rare RNG drops already as the system is (again, just my opinion). Easier just to ignore it and hope for better mechanisms in the future like the gift of aurene.

1) Skritts2) Skritts3) Skritts (as npcs and/or playable race)

I think it's fine. It's a nice bonus reward for people that enjoy doing that particular type of content. If you don't like that type of content, then don't do it. You don't need to get every reward available in the game to be able to enjoy it. On a side note, it seems like the gift of aurene is also a guaranteed drop where "One gift is guaranteed to drop once per account within the first 1000 Mistborn Coffers opened", based on the information provided on it in the GW2 Wiki page: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gift_of_Aurene_(container)

And I find it unreasonable for all the reasons posted above. It would've been a "reasonable expectation" if they did not give all those other things for free first. The only reason they chose to monetize the template system was greed, pure and simple. This "new direction" of Arenanet to over monetize and be greedy is exactly why we don't want an official DPS meter. If they ever show that they move away from greed and go back to being reasonable, we can talk about adding an official dps meter again. Good for you if you find it unreasonable. I never even suggested that it is not right to find it unreasonable. The rest of your post is meaningless to me. If you don't want a dps meter because you think it will be monetized, then again good for you. If you had actually read my posts here, I have stated many times that I don't want a dps meter built-in anyway, because I think that would be a waste of dev resources when there is a perfectly functioning free dps meter plugin already available to people that want to check their dps.

There, I put your "argument" in bold so you can't miss it. You made a claim that it is reasonable to monetize a system because the developers spent resources on it. I countered your claim on the basis that we get other parts (that presumably have way more resources assigned to them) either cheaper, or even free. So I'm not accepting your argument that because the developers spent time on something, it should be monetized. Did we pay for the specialization update? No.Did we pay for the wardrobe update? No.Did we pay for the megaserver update? No.Did we pay for world linking in WVW? No.Have we ever paid anything for ANY Fractal? No.Did we pay for the new healing skills added to the game? No.Did we pay for the new grandmaster traits added to the game? No.Did we pay to get gliding in Central Tyria? No.Did we pay to get mounts in Central Tyria? No.Have we ever paid for any festival so far? No. Do I accept your argument that because the developer spent resources on something it needs to be monetized? No.Is that clear enough for you now? What are you even rambling on about? I only stated that I find it reasonable to expect a cost when a service costs something to be developed. Sure it's nice if they give things away for free, but from my experience in life people don't generally give things that cost time and money to develop away for free all the time... You seem to be wanting everything for free. Sorry but that's not how life works, and is not something I would expect. Note that I said "I would expect". When I say things, I am only speaking for myself and my expectations based on my experience. You might have some other misguided experience in life. Everyone's expectations may differ based on their own personal experiences. Is that clear enough for you now?

Let me get this straight, it's reasonable to monetize the system "Because they spent time and money on it" all while they give us the living world episodes for free. And even if you don't get them free, they are much cheaper to unlock than the template system. Templates for one character: I guess developing this template system required way more effort than ALL the living world episodes released so far. What kind of an argument is that? First of all you only get each of the living world episodes free when you log in during the free give away period, otherwise you need to buy them with gems. Secondly you can get templates for free in exactly the same way as living world episodes later by converting gold earned in game to gems to spend on templates, so you can still get it for free if you don't want to spend any money at all. Thirdly I have no idea what you are even talking about here with a supposed argument that I was presenting. There was no argument at all in what I said. I simply stated that "It is reasonable to expect to monetize the system somewhat because presumably the devs had to spend resources in terms of time and money to develop their own template system." This means that the monetization could have been even a tiny amount like a single one-off purchase (much less than what it is now), but I would at least expect something like this since there was definitely at least some dev time and money spent developing the system. You seem to be wanting an argument where there was none attempted to be made. If you have a problem with the way it is currently monetized, like I mentioned several times before in this thread I don't care and have not been disagreeing with you. Is that clear enough for you now?

It would help if wherever large numbers are used in arguments definitive sources are referred to. It's fine to claim that you don't like it or the people you know don't like it, but huge numbers without sources seems misleading because it is highly unlikely that you are able to personally sample that many people for their opinion. Otherwise for example, I could say things like 1 billion people hated the core game and PoF, but 4 billion people loved HoT, if I wanted to push an agenda of HoT being better.

I just do them for fun mostly. The only time that I felt I needed to complete these was to get items to unlock mounts, such as the items for the griffon collection and the item that makes it cheaper to unlock the jackal.

New glider skins sell well. Just look at how many keys people said that they bought with money on the forums just to have a chance of getting the newly added vermillion wings from lootboxes.

Recently Cameron Rich has been giving updates on work that was being done on the new fractal, which was nice to see.

We never said it wasn't reasonable to monetize this system. Most of us would be happy to support anet by buying it with real money if the implementation was good and at a reasonable price.As for communication, when they announce it will come IG some months before the actual release, they tell us that we will got build templates for free (source at 1h4min).But even with this statement, it is fine to monetize templates. Issue n° 1 is that the feature they delivered is not actual template because you can't save it.So Anet's "Equipment and Build Templates" are in fact gear and build loadout. The only real template in the system is what they call "Build Storage" and is basicly slot to save build chatcodes. Issue n° 2 is the heavily monetization that come with them (i.e. not reasonable prices).Let's start with what we got for free (basic version) comparing from before the implementation : 1 Equipment loadout per character + 3 Build Storages (6 if you were in-game the first month of the release) and.. that's all. Let's see then the expansions Anet want to sell us : Equipment Template Expansions are character-bound and cost 500 gems eachBuild Template Expansions are character-bound and cost 300 gems eachBuild Storage Expansions are acount-bound and cost 500 gems for a 3-pack Let's do some Maths next :Disclamer : i will take a low gold to gem conversion rate here with 32 gold = 100 gems (it's higher at the moment)For one character it will cost you 500x4 (Equipment Template)+300x3 (Build Template) = 2900 gems = 928 golds = 36.25 eurosFor 9 characters (one by class available) : 9x2900 = 26100 gems = 326.25 eurosFor your account : 8 Build Storage Expansions : 500x8 = 4000 gems = 1280 gold = 50 eurosSo in total 30100 gems = 9632 golds = 376.25 euros So this is what Anet expect us to buy to fully unlock this feature. I could also add the issues with legendary and revenant loadout bugs but specific threads are already details them well. So you can still say the "QoL" is cheap/fine even if it cost more than twelve the price of the entire game (30 euros), but whatever, i won't bother to answer on this matter anymore. That's my point there. It is reasonable to expect to monetize the system somewhat because presumably the devs had to spend resources in terms of time and money to develop their own template system. The extent to which you may find the monetization to be ok is both subjective and speculative, since we can't know exactly how much work was put into this system internally, from an external point of view. There's no point in discussing this because of this subjectivity and need to speculate. Yes, both can be monetized and there is no question on that. But claiming with certainty that the primary reason for making templates was monetization may be wrong, since we know nothing with certainty of their internal reasoning but can only make judgements from an external position. I agree that a dps meter could have potentially less monetized features. I struggle to come up with ideas on how to monetize this greatly, but I'm sure there are ways if you think about it hard enough. Personally I don't think it would be monetized to a great extent since this is difficult to do. But I don't think they should waste any dev resources on a feature that a third party plugin already provides effectively, should people require it.

For example, when they initially planned GW2, their stated intention for the gemstore was for it to only contain vanity items. Things like QoL functionality, and actual content, were supposed to remain free (apart from buying the game itself, and possibly expansions - i say possibly because they haven't decided yet at that time whether there were to be any expansions at all). As you have noticed, a lot of those original design principles have changed since then. I suspect something like that happened to templates. They definitely didn't intend any monetization for them when they first spoke about them wanting to do that feature in the future, but as you can see, the end result ended up different than that. Most likely, because at some point, someone (not necessarily a dev, might have been someone from marketing, or management) saw a potential to earn additional money from this, and they forced their vision on the design process. By that point, their original intentions didn't matter anymore. And this has shown that if they'll see a potential to monetize a feature, they are definitely not above pushing that monetization to a point where it would be severely negatively affecting that feature's core functionality. All that was my position from the very beginning, and it didn't change. And you're yet to say anything that would counter any of that. When you are implementing something you are doing it in accordance with design. The design can change, which may change the implementation. The majority of both aspects occur together because it is an iterative process. So when the purpose of one is changed, the purpose of the other is also respectively changed because the eventual implementation only serves to fulfil the purpose of the final design. I realize and agree that sentence was a general statement, and not specifically related to design or implementation. I'm not disputing that the current template system could be considered to be monetized. That's reasonable. My point all along was only that this may not necessarily have been the primary purpose, but could be a secondary one (although it could have been a big secondary consideration).

But to make things simpler for you to understand, i will present the TL/DR version:They decided to implement build templates, because they felt the need to have build templates in the game. But, once they decided that, their desire to monetize that feature twisted its design away from its original purpose. Is that easier to understand? Can we now get back to arguing about things people actually said, not things you think they said? First of all, you do realize that design and implementation both go hand in hand. The concept design comes first and then the exact implementation based on this design. So if they had a primary goal to take your money this would have been there at some point in the design concept as an idea, and then later this design would have been transferred to the way it is actually implemented in the game exactly. What nonsense are you even talking about here relating to a difference of purpose in design and implementation, lol? If you had any clue whatsoever about game design you would know how this works and that this is never even possible, since implementation is based on design. I guess you are trying hard to distract from the claims you made in that highlighted sentence. Secondly, no where in that sentence that I highlighted did you even mention the word "design" or "implementation". Some reading comprehension would help here... but I see you are still trying hard to back pedal and claim that you never said the primary reason was monetization, even though I just highlighted it. I corrected that for you. i would be nice if you stop attack us on that strawman (the one that tells template implementation are for monetization only) Well, we have facts that make our point reasonable, you don't like this, i get it.We never say yours couldn't be true but it still just some "maybe" without any facts to back for it, making it less reasonable, that's all. Hahaha, nice correction to try and push your own agenda. I just stated in my previous post why what you seem to call "facts" are not at all facts, but are instead completely misguided speculation. If you can't accept my explanation for some reason, and want to believe that speculation and personal beliefs are somehow "facts", then that's totally your problem. There was no "maybe" in those sentences at all. Don't try to pretend now that you said "maybe" when it's clear this word wasn't even in those sentences I quoted and the particular sentence I highlighted. Because of this there is no strawman at all in what I am saying, because I just gave you the evidence for where you yourself claimed the primary reason was monetization. But it's fine to realize your mistake in there now.

I think that this is a good point. Personally, I think that the core game going free was a mistake because overall the quality of it was not that great imo. I'm glad I decided to stick around and give HoT a chance because I found it much more replayable. this doesnt make sense, if core was bad, going F2P should had been done sooner. they didnt because it was still selling.and if REPLAYABILTY was the big seller, then hot should had done far better, than it actually did Compared to other MMOs that I have played core did actually go f2p very soon. You can't measure replayability simply by taking sales at a point in time soon after release. That is in fact the opposite of measuring any replayability. tell that to swtor. and tera. an teso. and sto. and prolly a bunch of other mmos, that i didnt play.and if the core game was so replayable, how would you ever sell any expansions?OTOH, if hot had the replay value, that you think, it would had done far better.fact is, that only a small fraction of players ever FINISHED it. that is not reply value, that is simply a bad product for the consumers it was sold todoesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out, that those customers will be less than pleased with the company, that made itand when you have several millions of disappointed customers, your company is going to nowhere pretty fast I haven't played those MMOs so I can't compare GW2 f2p to them. But like I said before GW2 went f2p quite early compared to MMOs I have played. No one is going to buy a product early on just because the devs claim it has replay value, unless they are naive. I have seen plenty of games claim this only to later be disappointed. So early sales figures are quite meaningless here for this purpose. Actually, I see plenty of players in game in all of the HoT maps all the time, even years and years after release (but I guess these are all bots right?). In comparison I found the PoF maps to be quite dead as well as boring to me. In my experience core Tyria was in between these too. The map designs in that area are great, which probably helps to attract players there. Do you actually have any exact numbers to support your bold claim of several millions of disappointed customers as a result of HoT? unless "plenty" is roughly 200k players, then it doesnt mean jack. thats like calling a random stretch of road "POPULATED" if 2 hobos meet on the streetnever said several mios left over hot, i said they have disappointed several mios OVERALLI have no idea how many players you need in a map to consider it active, but I see many players in all the HoT maps. Definitely more than the PoF expansion and some areas of core. I prefer not to use baseless statistics to determine what plenty is, since you can always artificially increase the number that you would consider to be "plenty". Like I asked before do you actually have any sources to confirm these several million disappointed players from HoT? I never suggested that these players had to leave the game.

In short, like i said: you got the answers you wanted asked for. You just didn't like them. If you had actually read my reasoning I said it was invalid because it's complete speculation that there are not many players interested in using a built-in dps meter (which I find extremely unlikely since lots of people already use the plugin). Speculation does not equal facts despite how much you may believe in it. If you want a credible argument present one that has facts in it and not only personal beliefs. What is actually a fact is that there is a so called "monetized" built-in templates system that replaced the plugin, but a dps meter plugin is still available free to use and has not been monetized yet. You still haven't made any decent points. They have had since the beginning of the game to announce a monetized dps meter if they wanted to monetize such a feature and disallow arc dps. That's the same time as for templates, and a very long time. Anyway, I'll be waiting another 100 years for this so called monetized dps meter to come out and somehow prove you right... As for you and other people here not claiming it was somehow done primarily for monetization, let's use some actual facts from posts posted earlier in the thread, shall we? Here's some quotes where you claimed this: No idea exactly why they disallowed it, but I'm pretty sure they would have had a good reason other than supposedly trying to increase their revenue. It would actually take extra effort to go out and disallow plugins, and probably is not worth it financially unless there is some other reason to also disallow it. They are not some evil company that is out to make money in every possible way that they can, despite what the haters think. They are no better or worse than any other business. We don't say they are evil, but like @Obtena.7952 like to repeat it (:p <3), they are still a business. If the monetization was secondary they wouldn't implement it this way. For example they could have made real build templates without cutting it in 2 (the account version are templates but only 24 max), it doesn't take space cause it is just text file (and with chatcodes players can completely bypass it, so anet ones slots are meaningless). They could also made the unlocks account-wise (even with a higher price), so it could be reroll friendly like the rest of the game... (that's just few examples) And we don't know who tells them to do it that way (it could be a demand from ncsoft)... Well template implementation prove you wrong on this (and it is easy for them because arcdps developper is in contact with anet to be sure it is always tos compliant).& I think half full, I think people have good intentions.And i think that they are running a business, not a charity, so, of course they are doing it with the primary goal of getting our money. You'd be naive if you thought otherwise. And the template system shows how far they are willing to go to get it. Just look at the design of it. It's clear that it was not designed to be useful (and then monetized as a consequence of some server constraints or whatever), but was designed around monetization first, with the hope that it would end up being useful (hint: that last part didn't really work all that well). Why would you think that with dps meter they would change their tune and do the exact opposite? They didn't have to monetize the template system. They didn't have to cripple it in order to be able to monetize it better. Yet, they did. And in the end template system is as much a QoL as a DPS meter. There's no reason to think they would treat one any different than the other. Sure, they don't have to treat them the same way, but at this point, from your side it's just a matter of faith that they would not go as far as doing something they have shown to be capable of doing already. In this matter i happen to not be as optimistic as you are. Years of observing how this game keeps changing left me very much a sceptic.Convenient to back pedal when you have no sensible arguments, eh? From these, it's evident that you thought monetization was the primary reason, and won't even entertain that there could have been other primary reasons instead. I'm glad that you can see now how silly that was to claim as certainly true and disregard my points suggesting it may not have been.