Pezz.4758

Or you know the third option which the empty maps that the devs just can't seem to fix and low YouTube/twitch engagement suggest. Playing something else.

Funny thing is I actually agree, after finishing my work this afternoon and reflecting on my posts here I did some shopping around and found something to fill the gap of that chill out guild wars after work unwind session. This will be my last post on the topic, and I really hope everything works out for everyone and it all smooths out. If players like me are not wanted here, so be it. As I said its a free market, and new games are released everyday.

I thought I summed it up pretty well earlier in this thread. Its not about the doubling of normal WP costs, or torment runes, or fractal CMs, or locking a marketed cool new mount behind a difficult meta, or sustain changes, or the move towards 10 man content solely as the end game group content. Its about ALL of these changes and no official word on a direction change leaving the players to speculate as to whether or not this game is still, or will continue to be the casual friendly game for RPers and flower pickers. One lesson I learned in my career is exactly as you said, you can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people, some of the time, but you cant please all of the people all of the time. So know your market, and be HONEST with them. Let customers know what doing business with you is like before any contracts are signed, and the complaints drop markedly. If I was selling diesel engine oil filters I would not reach out to Greta Thunberg to do my add campaign. One obviously she wouldn't do it but past that it would make for a very confusing narrative, which would lead to complaints, even if no actual problems exist. I could make all my sales quotas 30 days early and I guarantee I would be swamped with complaints and negative press just on the basis of the campaign. So when you have a game with over 10 years of people pressing 1 happily bumbling around doing there things, all hyped up about a new expansion ready to go and the way they find out about these changes is either hearing it in a stream while waiting to download or worse, seeing their gold stocks deplete unexpectedly and searching for an answer, or getting downed state repeatedly and going looking for the reasons why, its going to be a bad time for everyone involved, even if each individual change isnt a big deal to you. I can promise you its a big deal to them, because if they are here, they aren't in the game. Im not trying to convince anyone of anything, but Im in sales, and there were a MILLION better ways to sell these changes to the customers. Hiding them in last minute patch notes to be discovered AT rollout was an absolute mess, and not clarifying the direction the game is going without appeasement speak in a straight forward respectful adult manner is compounding the issue. I dont care about torment runes and life leech balance, I want to know if the devs plan to continue in the spirit of the game I wanted to play, and if not, awesome, its a free market.

Heres the issue I have with this, if there are other specs that can just as easily get through OW content with little trouble, then why nerf the POPULAR builds that could do so RIGHT before the expansion drop? Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to ignorance. Fine, so assuming it wasnt a predatory bait and switch to force players into lackluster new Elite specs that cause Anet to wait until the last second to release patch notes after closing off any chance to cancel a pre order, what was the reason? Forgoing any reason, why release these changes at launch? Forcing people who have been waiting 2 years to stop mid hype train to re-trait, regear and relearn a new spec, if they are just as capable, then the balance argument is moot? And why should anyone feel comfortable investing in the NEW hotness if its just a rinse and repeat next balance patch hit the random nerf button and a subsect of the player base gets to reroll?

Very well said, thank you for this, sums up my experience all to well. The timing of the release of patch notes is also tickling my self preservation instinct. Waiting until the last possible second ensuring maximum preorders and refutable returns feels like a mobile game tactic, not the community focused friendly Guild Wars 2.

thats an easy answer its a game, my only stated goal is to have fun, and finding out the 45 gold i spent on torment runes for my dps scourge 5 days before the expansion was not fun finding out my power reaper spec, something that hasnt been meta in darn near 5 years got nerfed, was not fun finding out my sustain leach flippy boi condi daredevil was nerfed was not fun finding out ALL of this as i sat in the mightyteapot release day stream as im downloading the content was beyond not fun it felt predatory and dishonest I have some time to kill while the weather is trashy, gotta love Canadian "spring". Being honest with myself Im having more fun discussing this topic on the forums than I would regearing YET again in prep for the expansion. That said, if ive come off rude or anything I want to apologize, I know i have a couple responses at least with some salt in them, and that was not my intent. I just wanted to have fun, and Im not, and it makes me sad, because there is still so much darn snow outside lol

You and I are in conflict over the changes, objectively cohesion is worse than before the changes, where you and I were strangers, therefore, the catalyst was the changes, and thus, objectively creating problems. Philosophy aside, Im not here to argue or prove a point, my issue isnt with you, if Anet would just clarify Ill be on my way, its a marketing issue more than anything. I want a game I can fill hearts and pick herbs and chill in the beautiful world, like I have for years, if that aint the directions, awesome, do you guys, just dont leave it to the last second after all pre orders are in, its shady

What does open world questing have to do with game balance? And if this is the new direction why was it implemented stealthily at the last possible second? Anet could easily clear this up. Make a statement, clarifying their position on open world accessibility and difficulty and be done with it. If I have to be in dungeon/raid form to help a farmer with his apples in X heart quest than just come out and say it.

you keep conflating subjective taste with objective reality perfectly reasonable TO WHOM? and which is it, were the nerfs unnoticeable, or justified? if they are unnoticeable than they are unjustifiable as they have caused a rift for no apparent reason if they are justifiable then they must be having an impact which people are struggling to find the reasons for it cant be both

This I think is a massive disconnect people are failing to recognize. I play GW2 as my stress relief chill out game. My raid days are a decade behind me, Im not asking for nerfs in that content. I just want to do some chill quests and experience the open world when I log into GW2, and THAT is the issue. GW2 has always had the reputation of being the friendly play as you want relaxed chill out MMO with cool PVP. Not a neckbeard world first raider? Forget wow, check out Guild Wars! Heck, back when WoW was relevant they used to use "maybe try guild wars 2" as an insult for people that couldnt hack the raids in WoW. It is in no way because I am incapable of doing the content that I am vexed by the changes, its because the changes make GW2 a redundancy in my schedule. I already have hardcore games I play when Im pumped up to to focus up. Heck I have a massive bloodborne caryl rune tattoo as it is one of my favourite games of ALL time, and I have thousands of hours in it. Bottom line is I just cant make sense of it. I can log into wow and face tank every quest elite or not on a warlock or hunter. It doesnt "kill the end game" or "take away from other peoples sense of accomplishment", dude they literally made the green fire quest a giant solo raid boss utilizing all the solo skills of the warlock. FF is moving more and more towards supporting the MMO soloist, it doesnt take away from the raiders sense of self worth. So why on earth is a game with a decade of catering to casual players suddenly 180 on design, and barring an answer to that, why is ANYONE surprised that people aren't happy about it? Its beyond me, but Ive been called pathetic, bad, lame, no lifer (the irony) for simply pointing out these inconstancies, and Im about done. If the grand vision is dead maps by day 2 and no relevance outside of the core community whatsoever, (check out Metacritic, there is NOTHING ) than congrats, I suppose you showed me.

What is your point? You are right, obviously, no I am not entitled to dictate the vision of the game, I am but one individual in a system. But this isnt a staple, this isnt broccoli or clean drinking water, I dont NEED anything from Anet I cant find somewhere else, I just happened to enjoy Anets FLAVOUR of game, and if the recipe changes, and effects the flavour, I only have a few options, try Pepsi, or tell Coke the New Coke aint working out for me. As much as I have no entitlement to dictate what Anet does with the game, Anet has no entitlement to dictate what I do with my time , and my money. So an expansion releases, I make a few posts explaining my take on it, and I move on, Im not spamming, Ive got what? 10, 12 total posts? So again, what is your point? Are you saying the customer should not be able to express their dissatisfaction with a new direction? How would that ever possibly be a good thing. Im a small business owner, critique is EVERYTHING to growing a business successfully, and at the end of the day I WANT things to go well for Anet, and for the hobby I was enjoying. Heres the thing, this is all very very familiar to me. Rumours about NCsoft coming down and dictating directional changes in content delivery, hardcore and casual players fighting constantly about who mommy and daddy love more, a big content release with a TON riding on it releasing to no real fanfare at all, an upcoming steam release, lower and lower engagement on social media presences, twitch streamers diversifying away from exclusive content. If there was a Chua with orange text this is the exact path Wildstar took minus the F2P switch Gw2 doesn't have a sub. So when you sit there, thinking "these guys are all so entitled, Im going to tell them how entitled they are and if they dont listen they can GTFO," Ask yourself what if everyone posting these thoughts incongruous with yours simply did as you wished, and went away. Without a word, with no explanation as to why, how would that be better for anyone?

the more i play the less i care, i dont even recognize this game my classes got nerfed, my runes got destroyed, DMV simulator and Simon says mini games everywhere?? what is this? there is SO much political bs in the second area, and im sorry but hearing the sob story of a certain someone with my character going along with it, WHAT? ok so ill try the events, they look promising and they are everywhere, awesome, but where is everyone? core tyria has more players right now, whatever it is phasing, population, or just too many people over it events are not happening without groups so i go check twitch and theres less viewers and streamer choice than last week on day 2! half the "arenanet bros" are already streaming their old games and moved on, in 24 hours? the loyalists look exhausted with all the confusion with people logging in to WEAKER characters on the first day of an expansion i wanted so bad to like this, i was rooting for Anet so hard ive tried to stay positive but at the end of the day if i stick it out all i have to look forward to is trying to put 10 player groups together because apparently 5 man content is just NOT in the vision for the game . and ridiculously over tuned metas. and to hide all this in the patch notes that are not released until the VERY last possible second to ensure EVERY last unreturnable preorder is just despicable, 2 years of waiting through a pandemic to pull that kind of bait and switch erases ANY sympathy I have for the team. Im a Wildstar survivor, i know where these numbers lead when you are owned by NCsoft. I wanted to fall back in love and got shafted and lied to instead, good riddance.

all i hear is this maybe learn to dodge maybe get over torment runes maybe dont WP maybe dont expect enough people to be in the maps to do events maybe 10 player content is the future maybe get over fractal CM nerfs maybe try a new class if yours was nerfed maybe maybe maybe MAYBE thats why no one cares about this expansion and the coverage is already day back to pre release levels and no one seems to give 2 cents that this could be the last bit of major content EVER if it doesnt go well MAYBE people wanted to "play how they want" and just had the rug pulled completely out from them by a company that hid patch notes until the LAST possible second

With less than 5 k concurrent viewers on twitch other than a few hours at release, more negative threads than positive, empty maps, unfinishable events due to lack of engagement, absolutely no hype ANYWHERE on the internet other than preestablished GW2 content creators, ignoring ANYTHING right now would be an incredibly silly thing to do. Remember Wildstar?? Ya, me neither.

This SO much this, its a marketing issue in A LOT of ways. Yes, things needed to be brought in line, but I cant get over the fact that this is an expansion, GW doesnt have a level or gear treadmill, so when classes are changed to be weaker, no matter how small, the PERCEPTION that my character is getting weaker as I advance through the game completely destroys any reason to play that game. It breaks immersion. Wait, I just killed 5 elder dragons, Im opening up a new hidden land full of damage and the BIGGEST of big bads, and 5 minutes before I start I read that Im doing it with a broken wing. And absolutely players need to learn dodge and other mechanics, and Anet did a GREAT job of building in tutorials and heart quests to encourage that. But GW2 doesn't exist in a vacuum. When you throw the need to do those things at players that havent needed to RIGHT before a major release BEFORE they are invested, its not going to go well. Heck, Elden Ring just came out and is getting MASSIVE hype EVERYWHERE, when I hear "learn to dodge, learn mechanics, learn to adapt, and overcome" I dont think GW2, I think kitten ya i should check out the new FROM soft game. No, Im obviously in no way suggesting the difficulty is anywhere near close, or the games are anywhere near the same, Im saying the timing of the change into more rigid gameplay requirements could NOT have been worse if they tried. And when I look at the lack of hype around the expansion, on twitch, in player enthusiasm, it seems evident. The expansion as a story driven RPG is worth the cost of investment for me, and i think anyone with the slightest interest in guild wars lore. But as a forever game? An mmo with rigid solo accountability, focus on 10 player content, every evolving away from the "play as you want" mythos, is not what I was sold when I bought into the game. That said, Im having a great time in the story, and Ill continue to do so until its not fun anymore. I just hope the risk turns out to be worth it, because i do want to see GW2 succeed and i KNOW this dev team can figure out how to appease anyone, they just have to figure out WHO they are trying to appease.