Dante.1508

Money has always been a thing of need within gaming, we all just got used to shelling out subs all those years.ANET dared to be different and for a long time it worked, but times change, products get older and new things cost.. so it is imperative the business finds new ways to combat mother time and keep making money in order to develop the product further and/or development something new.As for time gating.. heck that is as old as the arc in terms of MMO's.. time gating is used primarily to provide oxygen in the development cycle. We gamers want content and we want it yesterday.. I wish it could work within JIT space but that just isn't going to happen when you consider just how fast we can tear through content these days.There is a reason expansions take years to develop, test and launch.. money and through that development cycle they have to make money in order to spend money, otherwise ANET would have to continually keep holding out the prayer pot to shareholders.. that might work for awhile, but it only goes so far and the slightest hitch in the revenue stream can have profound effects on your viability. So ANET have to look at ways to support not just its own financial viability long term, but that of NCSoft as well and that is no mean feat.Even at the cost to customers and limiting the games life span..

You are joking, ofc ... isn't? No Dead serious i hate Rangers longbow.. At least Necro Staff skills are useful in crowds..

This is blatantly false. Some classes are harder to get a grip on, but every single one of them has access to a build concept that mixes self sustain, for minimal damage loss, that works perfectly in open world. The only class that has an arguably timing focused style is Thief.... and Daredevil can circumvent that in a big way. Its called Pattern recognition.... Nearly all fights you need to learn at least some mechanics. Even in the case of some mobs. But none of the world bosses have situations where they don't telegraph in advance. Most have patterns that can be tracked like clock work. Even in the SB fight you're citing, simply walking forward at combat speed is more then enough to clear the AOE circle before the hit lands. The Aatxe roaming the fight are much bigger threats because of their knock backs, closely followed by shadow mobs clustering up for multiple hits on you. If you think that fight is bad, the bounties in POF are a nightmare for even experienced players. But with the exception of 2 Djinn fights (because they are extremely mobile), all are manageable by paying attention to play field. Even in the "seizure inducing effect spams" environment, simply knowing what to look for allows you avoid the majority of threats before they kill you. And if you don't know.... simply observing the fight from a distance, gives you the freedom to sort through all the telegraphs. To this day I still see people standing in the blue ice during a Claw of Jormag fight, despite it causing a huge amount of damage as it stacks up on them. In fact.... death rates at World Boss fights used to be a lot higher, simply because everyone stood around trying to DPS their way to victory. After the revised Teq fight, and exposure to HOT, people became so paranoid of damage, they ended up developing reflexes whenever their HP drops. At this point, the only builds that can't take hits at all are the glassiest of Raid builds..... which if you're running in open world, shouldn't surprise you at all if you're dying. Try doing them with a 300+ ping time daily and tell me how easy it is when you must gauge in advance a .6th of a second to survive, i know it sucks being Aussie but toning some of this down would make the experience far more friendly and enjoyable.. Thats why many are standing in things, its because we can't see it.. And teq is horrible the water effect hide the circles of death.

almost all of those(including alot of the areas in Dragons Stand) can be outright bypassed with mounts, i just mapped HOT on a character that has never done any of the HOT stories.(Used WVW for the hero points, cause lol screw that noise.) and was able to complete all of them. You -will- however need some of the HOT masteries still. Yes mounts made it easier but its still a horrible area. How? Using wvw for the HPs means not fighting the idiotic champions at said hero points, and with the mounts especially the skyscale you can bypass ;literately -all- combat in the maps. Because of the insane grind many still do not own the skyscale, also me personally i never goto WvW, its not a gamemode i enjoy at all and seeing how dead it is most days i'm not alone.

Actually ... based on seeing what GW2 has become ... this could be good. People always doomsay when the leader takes off ... but never wonder why things haven't been going well ... the leader has a hand in that you know. True but the game has slowly deteriorated from the Guildwars 1 vision since Guildwars 2 release, i'm not sure its ever going to come back, way to many decisions stopped it. From what i've seen its usually the ones in charge of the money are the ones that has a hand in things. Um, no hold on here. Don't bring GW1 into this. GW2 has nothing to do with it. Mike started Guildwars 1 which imo was a far superior game, Guildwars 2 while adding a few requested features never was as good to me, and now sadly as far as i know the last of the older guard are gone. Now we are stuck in modern systems aimed at mobile type gaming mechanics.. Not good.

Actually ... based on seeing what GW2 has become ... this could be good. People always doomsay when the leader takes off ... but never wonder why things haven't been going well ... the leader has a hand in that you know. True but the game has slowly deteriorated from the Guildwars 1 vision since Guildwars 2 release, i'm not sure its ever going to come back, way to many decisions stopped it. From what i've seen its usually the ones in charge of the money are the ones that has a hand in things.

almost all of those(including alot of the areas in Dragons Stand) can be outright bypassed with mounts, i just mapped HOT on a character that has never done any of the HOT stories.(Used WVW for the hero points, cause lol screw that noise.) and was able to complete all of them. You -will- however need some of the HOT masteries still. Yes mounts made it easier but its still a horrible area.

"added" Its always been there, as its always been the DNA of F2P cash shop models. The difference is the level of aggressiveness across the whole industry to back port older designs to fit into the new "live service" paradigm that is the worst of all worlds. GW2 was kind of paradoxical at first, since the Gem store had very little value in the beginning.... but the players have "spoken with their wallets", and shown impulsive behavior is the only way to coax us into spending significant money on anything. Theres no small amount of irony in that Cosmetic upgrades (being the most benign option to offer for cash) just absolutely exploded in light of the current culture's integration of status symbols into the virtual space; where in times past there was a layer of isolation that most games tended to enjoy. But you're wrong about Vets not noticing the state of things. GW2 was ahead of the curve when it came to cosmetics. And keep in mind, even pre-wardrobe, there was major emphasis on being able to fine tune aesthetics, and had beaten other fashion games (such as BDO and Warframe) to the punch by a couple of years. If anything, GW2 avoided the temptations until the Elemental Sword showed them how wrong they were...... proving we'll pay massively over the odds for something that is even remotely interesting looking. The fact that they haven't gone all-in yet kind of baffles me. But then looking at how they handle the rest of the game, I wonder if their production problems also extend into their monetization attempts. A bit of poetic justice given the game's under-tapped potential in so many areas. Another thing to keep in mind is that when marketing stuff works, we're not supposed to be aware of it. Looking at Fortnite, that is the Status Quo publishers are looking for now. A pay-into system that has no objective value, so it can exploit every weak point subjectivity allows for, while avoiding a self-considered "objective" legal system. Its like the Variable Pricing thing Amazon has toying with for years, but has no method of comparison that allows it to be caught. So I disagree that everything is tacked on. If anything, its proper co-existence rather then deep integration seen everywhere else. But its that layer of separation that makes the aggressiveness a lot more transparent. Outfits in BDO have the same problem, since no in-game options makes it stand out more. But what gave BDO the leeway it has, comes mostly from its Character Creator; something good enough to get you invested initially, and offers enough catharsis until you're too attached to your character to give it up easily. Yet Fortnite hides what it does by integrating all the cosmetics into its reward system, the same way Overwatch did (and is directly modeled after). Fortnite is also more devious in that your attachment is not grounded to anything static..... the perfect platform to churn seasonal fashions, with the least possibility of any given element causing a conflict. Even Overwatch couldn't get that far, since the distinct character designs creates a hierarchy of Heroes players will want to dress up, and certain designs are wildly more popular then others. D.Va is rarely top tier play-wise, but runs close second to Mercy in dress up value. Its gotten far worse in 4 years.

Hot is a thousand times harder due to a lot of the maps, gated enemies and gated areas..

Well unless they make the living world bosses easier solo i'm not buying anymore no matter what they tack on to try and force it.. They just aren't fun at all and way too painful to follow solo.. And trying to get people to join you in them is impossible. I spend way more time in Tyria core than any of the other content..

Since taking a 4 year break its insane how much mobile style gaming has been added to this, it feels terrible and not enjoyable at all.. I guess others don't notice because they have been here the whole time to get used to it.. But wow it feels tacked on and nothing like other mmo's i've played.. Money is one thing ruining game flow to get money and to artificially gate customers is another thing entirely.

A lot of customers like to know if there is any future in the games they are currently playing, as they have invested a lot into their accounts.

Core game content should never be paid for.

Depends what you want out of it.. Casual social environment to play or competitive esport fest.. The former is great fun the latter, you should look elsewhere.. Not telling just explaining.

Are we talking open world or story missions (as you complained about the latter in another thread)? I agree that less constantly forced combat in open world content can be beneficial to the fun of exploring maps, but I disagree with making story missions no challenge whatsoever. A thing has been making the rounds about how the difference between skilled and unskilled players performance is 10 fold. With the exception of HOT, very few areas of Open world and story are above trivial in difficulty. What most casual players don't realize is how important a cohesive build is to the game..... or that the bar for it is insanely low. Its not enough to "just pick" skills and traits on face value; you have to think about covering needs and looking for force multipliers. Also..... you don't tank and spank past level 15. Dodges are universal for a reason, and only get more important as you move up the content blocks. For some people it took years to wrap their minds around it... but once you start to understand that the classes designs are made around PvP sensibilities, everything else starts to fall in place. Its also at this point that PvE's weaknesses become obvious, since the AI offers no challenge, and the majority of mobs are easily defeated by spike damage. So if the game is "cheaply smashing" you, its pretty much guaranteed you're either not avoiding attacks, or your build has no damage. Both of those are easy enough to remedy. Yes builds help but classes vary wildly.. certain classes can destroy most content solo but a few are really really bad.. weak and need a very good ping and hand eye coordination to pull off, i get that.. When i say smashing us cheaply its most definitely bosses and stuff that pop up out of no where designed to just kill you instantly. Many living world bosses drop so many AoE the only way you don't go down is luck.. pure and simple luck.. That personally voids all skill when a room completely drops red circles and unless you've done it multiple times or you are with a group you are dead, thats not fun, that not skill its just tedium..Most living story bosses are just dead run back in style game play, which is bad game play. And whats trivial for some is hard for others. Are we talking open world or story missions (as you complained about the latter in another thread)? I agree that less constantly forced combat in open world content can be beneficial to the fun of exploring maps, but I disagree with making story missions no challenge whatsoever. Most definitely living story.. but some bosses and gameplay are designed to just put you down instantly... it feels cheap because it is..

I'll post what i wrote in the Guildwars 3 poll... I'm torn but i have to say no..I've wasted a lot of money on my account over the years losing everything to a new game would suck.. And seeing how Guildwars 2 has become over Guildwars i'd hate to see what a cash juggernaut Guildwars 3 would become.. Yes it would be lovely to have a new great game but how these companies force micro-transactions down our throats these days, i'm of the opinion be careful what you wish for.. I'm just being realistic.. What i would buy is a remastered Guildwars 1 with Guildwars 2 graphics, i don't even need to jump like other people seem obsessed with.

I'm torn but i have to say no..I've wasted a lot of money on my account over the years losing everything to a new game would suck.. And seeing how Guildwars 2 has become over Guildwars i'd hate to see what a cash juggernaut Guildwars 3 would become.. Yes it would be lovely to have a new great game but how these companies force micro-transactions down our throats these days, i'm of the opinion be careful what you wish for.. I'm just being realistic.. What i would buy is a remastered Guildwars 1 with Guildwars 2 graphics, i don't even need to jump like other people seem obsessed with.

What if they don't replace these people? That is 8 less employees to build future content if there is any future content.. To be honest they need to stop throwing resources into t-shirts and bobbleheads and more into the actual game but hey what do i know..

As a ranger main i'd take necro staff over longbow any day..

Its probably a terrain issue more than a phobic issue.

I doubt they'll ever fix Longbow because its the main weapon Gold Farmers use.. Everyone blames WvW but i believe thats a bigger reason.

Its not so much the combat for me its how the game smashes you constantly so cheaply and the artificial slow down that makes the whole game feel like glue..

Not good at all.. But not surprising seeing what this modern GW2 has become.

I have to agree with this, its the only class i cannot play and never do.

I only use shortbow, longbow is useless and far too slow. I think I already mentioned that the weapon is not slow in any way shape or form. Rev hammer is slow, necro staff AA is slow. LB for ranger is not slow. Period. Edit: that was another thread. Let’s look at the weapon then. AA is faster than Necro and rev, slower than a sb but with nearly twice the range, boo hoo if you believe that slow. It does more than REVENANT AA levels of damage when stacked with buffs, which is ridiculous. Rev hammer AA is ridiculous but at least it’s dumb slow. 2 skill needs no explanation. It’s always been good.3 skill gives you stealth, meaning you have potential disegage and the ability to reposition for bettter kiting.4 skill ignores LoS, so you can shoot it inside anything you see while covering a respectable area and slowing people down.5 skill is a super fast CC that gets stronger the closer you are to someone, giving you better potential to keep someone away from you and kite. It also pairs good with traits like Ancient Seeds and Rapid Fire to lock people down and pew pew to death. If you really believe this weapon is bad, you’re either lying or just really ignorant. Personally found longbow to be niche.. Its great in certain areas but as a condi Soulbeast i have no use for it.