starlinvf.1358

I have a bit of insight into that. Fun can be considered an element of a reward system just as much as any intangibly tangible item. "Fun" games without rewards are better described as the catharsis experienced by the outcome of the activity, which itself is actually a purely psychological reward. Physics games tend to get the most mileage out of this, because its limitations are inverted by nature. IE: physics game play have to explicitly define limitations, where every other type of interaction has to explicitly define whats allowed. MMORPG and RPG-lites are most heavily defined through white listing actions (literally programming them in), and directly prevents outside solutions. So to get anywhere, players have to exploit loop holes in how the rules are defined to break/beat the design intent. Since this inherently limits their freedoms, players will naturally turn toward Power and Economics to solve their problems. These 2 things are easily held hostage by the Devs, but struggle with a common problem associated with that kind of Oppression...... How to keep the villagers down, but not so much that they revolt? With GW2 specifically, our power is capped quickly, and heavily across the game.... so that shifts nearly all of our attention toward the "Wealth-based" Reward system. Cosmetics are just an extension of that, since status and expression are a form of social currency. Solo players don't realize it, but they are also enslaved to same system, because they are their own social circle. However, there is a second and third element that puts a lot of overt emphasis on the TP and Liquid gold. Element 2 is the amount of things integrated into the game's Crafting system. Crafting was clearly tacked on later half way through development, since the game's drop system runs almost in direct odds with it. In fact, its obvious they had started with GW1's trophy system to create the gear upgrade path, which was later consolidated to Karma, and the Drop system expanded to include armor. Element 3 is the TP creating a ubiquitous value for liquid gold as a major trade medium, where other games tend to put more trade value on items and barter more as a result. Gold may still act as a frame of reference..... But the main reason MMO inflation happens is rooted in how very few items have real value to the playerbase (often being drop only), leaving little reason to spend gold on anything else. If you look at how nearly all micro-transaction models have a separate currency that is normally there to bypass the economy, its an immediate admission that the Devs don't want you to actually value it. In a lot of models, they're trying to be their own gold sellers. The Gem store is an oddity, and actually rather cleaver, in how they use the "own gold seller" model to promote the gem store itself. Normally the Secondary Currency is sold as the solution to "the problem" of the game, where the Gem exchange is sold as the solution to the inaccessibility to the Gem store exclusives. What bit them in the ass is that the Gem store is loaded with too much exclusive value, so almost no one want to sell their gems, but nearly everyone is willing to buy them off the exchange. That gap increases the more the devs try to leverage crafting as a gold sink, because gems can't be sold for enough gold to be worth it. The cheapest legendary weapons are $50 based on the exchange rate, while the Gen 2s (being 2500g) is around $120. We make so much gold (even outside of festivals) that any project under 150g is considered Accessible, while anything under 30g is Trivial. To us..... most item rewards are worthless, because our gear system plateaus so quickly. And the crafting requirements are so well distributed, and demanding increasing volumes of raw materials, that we'd take ages trying to gather them ourselves. The TP's ability to deal with both of those problems, the ability to sell off items we don't need for a useful amount of gold, and gold being the only medium it uses, we end up with a huge emphasis on having substantial amounts of liquid gold for its flexibility within our economy. The usefulness of Items/Materials constantly ebb and flow.... but Gold is always useful. This is how Economies are supposed to work.

Tyria is not ready for Betty White

It depends on how you define the metrics. Players regularly misinterpret their own metrics when doing statistical analysis, either out bias or simple ignorance. When you aggregate everything, players measure/"feel" the existence of content as the "inverse of drive absence". Its a fancy way of saying "how much time they spend hooked into the dopamine stream".... But I've found the need to emphasize the explicitness of the double negative, because whats actually there has a non-linear relationship to what they perceive. WoW had an expansion roughly every 6-12 months for its first 4 years. Thats insanely fast, and is what set the bar for our unrealistic expectations across every single game. But if you look at the interest curve (if you can still find those statistics now), the pattern of the engagement rates (ie people actively playing) is a sawtooth pattern. If you graph that as a trend, you'll notice the rate of decay over an expansion can vary significantly. That statistic is whats important to this conversation. People only really care how fast new content is being released, based on how fast they are running out of stuff in the existing content block. Blizzard has this down to a Science- which is why the release schedules for content within an expansion are carefully metered out over time. The Xpac drops, and the first raid wing doesn't get released until 2-3 weeks into it. Then its another 2-3 week gap for every wing after that (usually breaking for Festivals). They based this on well documented trends in its player base over the years, and is represented as their average "burn rate" for content. The Psychology here is that players have a rough idea of how much "content" is in an expansion, and the anticipation of an upcoming scheduled update increases their tolerance for downtime. This is partly why roadmaps exploded in popularity over the last year or so, because players are more willing to put up with something, if there is the promise of a reward at the end. Sound familiar? They found a way to present content releases the same way they present reward systems. Its also why the season pass was so popular in the previous paradigm, despite practically being the same thing. And the promise of DLC (at all) a selling point for the main title in the one before that. The reason this falling off in effectiveness is largely attributed to the last 8 years of constantly being burned for displaying any ounce of trust. All these things I've mentioned above is essentially taking advantage of how player "forward thinking" operates in their cost/reward analysis. Since the "rewards" of looking far forward have been unsatisfying (to put it nicely), this has directly shrunk the span in which value assessments are being made. This is why terms like "incomplete game", "at least it released", and "I'll wait till its finished" became the part and parcel vernacular for everything In-Dev, be it AAA or Indie in nature. We're now less concerned about what a game "could be", and even more intently focused on "what is" when making long term extrapolation, and sweeping conclusions about everything. This narrowing of our perception of a game has had a direct effect on how we view burn rates for content. Around 8 years ago, the average burn rate of a big release (be a game, an Xpac, or even a balance pass) had a half life of around 4-5 weeks. That means you need something every 6 weeks to keep the majority on-track, even if that big thing is spaced out over multiple weeks. The End cap and New start point is needed to ensure a degree of satisfaction. By my current observations, most games now have a half life of 10 days. And that is absolutely fucking terrifying when you realize its happening in brand new game releases just as much as new content blocks for existing games. Players are also a lot more sensitive to content recycling, partly due to stuff not being satisfying enough the first time around. So if your content is too similar, or is repeated too many times over the course of play, that accelerates the burn rate by almost double. This phenomenon is but one factor contributing to the rapid player fall off of content blocks in both GW2 and WoW, despite similar amounts lasting significantly longer in previous years. Our tolerance for repetition (or even obstacles in some arguments) is the lowest I've EVER seen in all my years of online games. Which brings me back to the original question. The timing of the releases are actually not the issue. Its the fact that we're getting bored faster then they're putting stuff out thats the problem. This has always had a truth to it.... but its exacerbated by the % of time we're now spending "bored", and how quick the novelty of new content wears off. I spend a lot of time around In-Dev games between Steam and Kickstarter, and you can track similar cycles in their develop releases. There is definitely a correlation between the level of practical repetition in the game, and how fast players get bored with it. To get some perspective on matters; something Minecraft does that manages its repetitive nature is how its tiers its activities, and how it scales production. The vast majority of the game is about gathering and processing resources. But the issues it would normally face are mitigated by the frame work of Multi-level Project Management. The relationship between tools and productivity creates a dynamic where you are always solving similar problems differently at different phases of a play through. At early stages, you do a lot of things manually at small scale. As you move up the tools ladder, you start industrializing. You're attention span is still the same size, but the way you can break down and compartmentalize tasks is what keeps the repetition from being overbearing. For a Master class on this concept, play Factorio. I am 110% serious. I've yet to find another game that elegantly creates this natural experience of progressively expanding industrialization. Rough spots and all. And in this perspective of what pitfalls this game avoids, and which ones it has, you quickly start to recognize the problem we're seeing with Modern reward systems, and the framework in which most games have us do things like farm and grind.

How about a break, so I can unravel my brain before Wintersday without having to FOMO about reward opportunities. The last round of boss rushes really suffered from this, since its piling on the exhaustion until they hit the breaking point. Even before the Rushes were added, I usually took a 3 week break after Halloween from being so farmed out on Mad Lab.

By far the biggest issues is how its filtered, followed having no way to advertise "Looking to Join" under multiple categories. From a Player perspective, we should get 2-3 levels of granularity, so its possible to address a whole content block without having to selectively check each map. This will also greatly help for group leaders and activities that span multiple maps, or the leader is willing to do from a list of maps based on interest. Being able to search them all at once would also be a bonus. Secondly, we could benefit from a notification system when a group advertisement comes up in a chosen set of categories. On the flip side, a feature to let players express interest in a category, which can help signal to a Commander how many people are waiting around for a group to open. On its basic premise, this 2-way notification should speed up the organization process for Pug groups, since its no longer relying on players actively searching LFG at specific times to find those openings.

Thats because the first 15 character levels have a modified Exp requirement. This is meant to accelerate those first few levels by a factor of 2, and gradually decreases to factor of 1 at lvl15.

Its because the races have low sexual dimorphism, and its directly reflected in their culture. The situation with the outfits comes down to their body frames. Skirts on Charr are a pain because of the tail, and generally has to be designed around that. And no... letting clip is not the problem. The way the tail is part of the skeleton, and how it directly affects morphs when animated, requires certain metrics. Historically, Bell Skirts are most compatible due to how they flair out and animate a bit more rigidly. With Female Asura, their height and body proportions work with some sexualized elements, but not others. Most of the contention seems to center around neck/shoulder, chest and waist line (and to a lesser extent feet). That might sound obvious at first..... but if you look closely at which outfits got that switch off, I'm willing to bet alignment was a factor. However..... I'm also more inclined to believe cost savings factored in as well early on, since many of the newer outfits seem to be built with more metrics in mind. I've noticed for a while the older outfits leaned toward not using dresses for Females, while the newer ones do. And I'm pretty sure thats because older dresses were designed around the Human Female exclusively, and the decision based on if they wanted to fix it up or not for the other skeletons.

While this is helpful I find it quite strange that the developers won't add this feature to the game's own website but rather allow a third party website to do that! One thing you'll learn quickly is that game communities will typically do a better job then Publisher/Developer when it comes to external tools. The community will make what it needs..... an officially web site will only make what its willing to pay for, and fits its agenda. Plus theres been an ever growing trend in letting the community manage resources itself, since it costs the company nothing. If anything, I'm more paranoid when a company does provide something, because theres always a catch now. Like how BF3 had Battlestats.com be its launcher, not because it was better... but because EA wanted to insert itself like Facebook. Same thing here. Anything they're not trying to make money on, they just let community do for them. But then they started making official build templets, after 8 years of people asking for it, because ArcDPS paved the way for them, and now they can capitalize on people's dependence on it. I'm hard pressed to find another big title game right now where this isn't the case in some form or another.

Terrible idea. Trust me. Celestial is useless, especially in open world PvE and story missions - there are other, better ways to achieve what you need. There you go: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PGhAwilJwuYUMFGJOqO7vNA-zRhYBRBniVQgbRSIGUVp0UBEYCkYgURQY7FJM2MvlImBA-e (attuning to Earth will make you immune to critical damage) But most importantly, make sure you learn the combat mechanics properly to avoid damage: do not stand in AoE, dodge when necessary, and trigger protective skills at the right time. :) You say useless..... yet its still being used for various builds in WvW. The game doesn't start and end at Alterac vall... I mean Open world.

Yet by that same behavior, populations in expansions drain out over time as well. Everyone has to get it through their heads that we're dealing with a basic finite resource problem. The same problem exists with all entertainment media, because theres only so much attention that can be grabbed. HOT got around this problem by having a well scheduled Meta across a limited number of maps. This makes the routine extremely easy to flow from one map to the next, gaining or losing people at each transition. The Worldboss train works the same way, and both actively compete with each other for bodies. But people cried and cried about having to deal with large meta events, so LS3, POFm and LS4 maps scaled back their use to boss fights; seeing as bosses are one of the things often complained about and needed "avoiding" by solo players. And frankly, it worked. Casual players didn't need to do it, and could trudge around at their leisure. The issue being raised is by Achievement Hunters. These are not casual players..... They want something specific, and are putting in the express effort to chase it. Which is why I don't buy into the excuse that them wanting to be Solo players is a compelling reason to try and "design out" the group requirement for GROUP EVENTS. All it takes is minor organization, a bit of knowledge, and many of these events are actually easier with 5-10 people due to scaling. But what truly irks me to no end is how these things are made to be enablers of social interaction, and that Solo players require major accommodation because they refuse to participate in a social space...... which is made astoundingly baffling by the incredibly low barrier for getting this player base to lend assistance. I've never seen a game this easy to PUG effectively; and a significant number of players will go out of their way to help without being asked. This means the key to all of this is Awareness. If awareness is low (like in a low pop map), building awareness is not that difficult by reaching out to the map chat, to city hubs like LA, and especially to one's guild. But that awareness has to be considered in both directions. If you're not contributing back to this system, then you're perpetuating the very problem you're complaining about. With all that said, players have an internal conflict of interest when it comes to content. They always demand New and More at ever growing rates.... but they also refuse to let go of previous content, because they haven't milked out the maximum rewards from it yet. This demand is whats creating this paradox. Unsurprisingly, the original Living World format solves ALL of these problems, because only the current content matters at given time. Complaints about wanting to experience all past content is whats lead to their preservation-- while also demanding new content be bigger and exciting and act as sprawling epics, with new rewards that are objectively better then previous because otherwise its a waste of time, and those rewards should build on previous rewards, so we can feel Progress, and involve all the things so everything can feel rewarding and....... you can see the pattern here. Once players get tired of places, the move on. Trying to make them come back just for the rewards has created this perpetual loop of swarming, exhaustion, and migration. Having less people around you is the price for not being part of that bandwagon at its current "hotness". The fact that a person is upset that they want the rewards, outside the popular cycle, and then citing Rewards as the solution to getting people to come back, poetically reinforces why using these comprehensive achievement/rewards as a motivator was a bad idea in the first place. ..... For us... not for Anet. This is giving Anet an easy solution to a complex problem, because we'll do anything for a shiny-- except make friends, apparently. Above I pointed out how HOT got around this problem... but thats kind of a misrepresentation. All it really did was manage to be at the top of the stack for farming "Hotness". Istan replaced it for awhile, and then largely abandoned after the rewards were nerfed. That really does say a lot about the internal mindset of this player base, despite what they constantly state outward about the need for new content. Everyone LOVED the POF maps, with how open they are, and no filthy map metas getting in the way of things, and how they're not stuck to a scheduled, and the rewards feel great..... and now they are mostly empty outside of a Bounty, Achievement, or HP trains, done by people explicitly out to help players needing to get things done faster. Its almost as if participating and contributing to the social space is productive! But you Solo players stay classly, and do you. If it isn't clear yet...... there is NO SOLUTION to this problem, because we're gonna just keep going in circles until Gamers at large get over themselves about reward systems. Until that happens, we're stuck just juggling 5 issues and choosing which 4 we're willing to deal with at any given time. That or stick to single player games that make you the center of the universe, and never have to socially interact with anything else.

When the novelty of "effort" wears off..... all thats left is the cries for ever growing convenience. I'm all for it!!! Hoping one day that my Job will do itself, and my pay increased regularly to keep me "excited" about the ritual of not doing it myself. :P

What? (15char)

What? (15char)

:+1: I agree. That's what I meant when I said they need to solve all the issues GW2 has before anyone dares talking about a sequel, because - as stated in the article - those issues, which are caused by how the game is being handled by the devs, will only transfer into any new product. I would state its the other around. Legacy code and Regression are the 2 biggest, continuous issues any long long running piece of software has to face. Why do you do think WinXP was such a breath of fresh air after 4 generations of OS on their 9X architecture? The reason it doesn't happen often is the time (and money) it takes to build up from scratch, or at least barebones. Starting over lets you cut loose all the mistakes and all the limitations of the previous engine, and get to make all new mistakes, and slam face first into new limitations. Projects started prior to 2010 were mostly built out of DX9/DX11 mind set... and the last few stuck with it came out around 2014. Moving forward, it became obvious that top to bottom multi-threading was the future. The bug push to move servers into Cloud computing only helped double down on this further. So a lot of games after that time period were designed to support it.... but too few of them actually implement it properly. As much as I rag on the Devs for a lot of things...... engine development usually comes down to around a dozen or so Engineers, while its the job of the Designers to set the right requirements. If those 2 groups are properly managed, and communicate well, every other Dev team is a separate issue. FrostBite makes a perfect example of all of this; good and bad. Early version of the engine were incredibly sturdy, and benefited from being incredibly focused on FPS games. But over time EA kept piling on new requirements that the engine was never designed to consider, because they wanted a propitiatory engine for all their games, and Frostbite was already there. The tipping point was switching to it for Mass Effect Andromeda, and had next to no architecture to support massive branching narratives, large open world maps, nor the procedural systems that were going to drive them. But all these new requirements are having an impact on FPS games, the one thing its usually good at, because it has a lot of irrelevant code to support unused bespoke systems in the mix. If they do ever get the funding and approval to do a complete rebuild of Frostbite, you can bet the Engineers are going to go even more modular so it can swap out entire code base elements as needed. That way they don't have to kludge support into an existing frame work, and the instability that comes with it. More importantly- if a module breaks, it only breaks modules that depend on it, and not everything around it. Another thing to not overlook is "Sticky note Attrition". Its a phenomena in software development where a developer doesn't have time and/or the will power to design their code properly, and properly document it. The result is That Developer being the only one that fully understands that section of code, and if lost for any reason, that level of understanding is lost forever. Others can try to reverse engineer it, but its always a gamble at best. So that comment about "bad management will cause the old problems into the new engine" is essentially false. Bad management might lead to a similar issue.... but its patently a new issue that does not have, nor could have been the result of the previous issue. Taken in the context of what I said above, its entirely possible that the issue can be avoided in the new engine (by knowing what situation to avoid). But trying to fix the old engine is more or less impossible when its code base reaches Black Box status among the remaining developers. The Engine team is currently trying to piece meal overhaul every section of the engine. But the legacy content, which was made to run on legacy code, and doesn't work right on new code, thats been making the entire exercise an uphill battle, with extra gravity, covered in itching powder, while being followed by a kid asking inane questions every few seconds. When they hit the wall, thats it.... But most of that can be avoided by starting over with a new engine, and building a new game on top of it. The Entropy can never be stopped... but those steps and restarts is how we avoid them becoming overbearing. But until then, we're sitting at the performance cap of DX9 architecture; and there aren't many directions left to go.

The Varietal comes from hits on the same type of Herb gathered. So if you're looking for a specific type, you can simply look up the herb and see which level range of herb nodes it comes from. Most of the time its one for one.... but for some odd reason I see a lot of multiple clove seeds from single clove hits.

None of those classes get interesting until they're post 80...... Guardian however is easiest to manage due to its high level of self-sustain through utilities. However, you're going into this with the mind set. The game does NOT conduct itself to having a Main that you player over everything else. Group comps in raid are also very picky, so being able to switch to a needed role is extremely helpful in finding groups. Snowcrows has a matrix of Raid bosses along with each Build, to tell you what fights they're good for. The issues with picking each class..... Firebrand has to run in pairs with a Renegade, so that spot tends to get a lot of competition now since groups want them the most. Tempest is spotty depending on the fight in question, but since Weaver is better DPS, that would be far more applicable. If you run tempest, its usually to back up the other supports in some capacity (or used as "weaver training wheels"). I don't know how Scourge fits in the practical meta, so I can't speak for it. Which leaves Chrono and Druid. Mesmer is in kind of weird spot right now, as its Simultaneously the most flexible class for Raids and Fractals, but its boon build has been muscled heavily by Firebrigade being easier/better in static groups. Druids are notably better off, since the other healing builds only work in very specific team setups. The down shot, like most healers, is that you have to baby sit the DPS... but unlike most other games where you target heal, GW2's Area centric support mechanics makes THEIR positioning a big problem for you. Druid itself is not that hard to play... but the fact that you're more dependent on everyone else's position, makes it a continuous source of frustration. Chrono and Druid still hold the highest role compression of any other team comp. 2 Chronos and a Druid do all the support roles, which takes 4-5 slots in a Firebrigrade comp due to them being DPS/Support hybrids. This universal applicability and low slot contention makes them popular in PUGs; but since Static groups can afford to tailor more to each encounter, it depends on what the rest of the group is running. That said..... Chrono as a single pick gives you the most options, since it can effectively place itself anywhere in a primary or secondary support role, Support/Damage role, or Tank, and manages itself. Incidentally, this high flexibility also means you have to adapt your strategies; so theres a lot of small nuances you have to learn with each job (and each fight), despite the overall rotation being the same across the board. This extends into fractals, where a competent Chrono can take care of themselves, and lend a whole arsenal of boons and crowd control for every fight you'll encounter. Chrono Tank is one step higher on difficulty curve, mainly because they're built to be self-supporting while also providing support to a whole sub-group.

I dunno man I still come on because the game has so much artistic in to it. And you'd be surprised how many animations are more geared towards young adults nowadays Still a drop in the bucket compared to ones aimed at selling toys to kids. Pop Culture is kind of Derivative enough as is.... but the issue with cross brand promotions is this dilution effect where brands start to mesh together, and eventually get overtaken by the strongest (ie makes the most money) ones. I call it the Minion Parable. Its a thought experiment where you introduce Illumination's "Minions" into your universe, and consider how long it will take for everything else to become irrelevant in their presence. If we want to talk more recently.... Gears of War and Terminator. While neat as an idea, it rapidly breaks the internal consistency of the universe. A literal aberration. The reason Fortnite could get away with this, where as Gears can't, is largely drawn from Fortnite embodying Pop Culture as a concept. The character designs don't have any real substantial integration or logic to the world they inhabit, or to the flow of the game; thus they make a great canvas for personal expression, and acting as an extension of social media, social interaction, and endless marketing opportunities. Perhaps a better way to put it is the game is designed to not require they fit to specific theme, and creating value from the chaos.

It would range from pointless to detrimental. Pointless, because mobility is the entire reason for the Flying mount discussion keeps coming up; and its ability to bypass obstacles is why its always gets push back. Detrimental comes into play when you start to realize areas of the POF are meant to be hidden for gameplay reason (not just perspective reasons... although that is strong motivator to limit it). With talk of renewing the Drytop method of unlocking maps piecemeal over time, free flight/god mode runs of the risk of revealing things too early. The Speculation Meta also has a bad habit of drawing conclusions on limited evidence, and not letting it go. Normally this would be just fun trivia.... but with Anet's track record, any hint of cut content quickly whips the community into a critical frenzy. I'm not defending Anet on this (they do deserve it to a degree).... but the speed at which this stuff has been derailing releases, and discussion surrounding it, is becoming exhausting. I'm gonna take a shot on this, and presume the line of reasoning you're using is drawn from Single player game sensibilities. Only some of that is ultimately applicable to Multiplayer games, and MMOs have their set of issues when it comes to freedom of movement. This is because all players are always in competition with each other over something. It may not be direct, and may not even be conscious of it..... but that sits at the root of the psychological drive for "Parity" seen in every MMO community. The moment some situation arises where this offers an advantage, all hell will break loose.

Just to be fair...... mobile games sectors of many companies make hand over fist way more then most of their other properties combined. If we're being honest.... the main reason many publishers even keep console titles running is to keep BRANDS relevant; letting them license it out in all directions. They then start leveraging that branding to crap out mobile games on the backs of a brand's name, while usually doing nothing to help further it in the process. So trying to use Mobile games as a litmus test for how good a game is doing, is exactly the kind of disingenuous idiocy thats causing so many brands to get dumped onto shoddy licensing deals and blatant cash grabs. And since we're using this flawed logic of the Chinese market...... thats ACTUALLY starting to happen. Language hasn't become a demand yet, but there is clearly entire movies being written (NOT adapted, WRITTEN and APPROVED) in a way to avoid "offending" the Chinese Government. Its not even an issue of what the people want; its what the Chinese gov deems acceptable for its people. And since the Chinese Market is bigger then the RU market, why both? Your own argument practically justifies this position, despite attempts to hold it up as a source of victimization. There are way better arguments to be made in support of your cause, yet you're relying on "they don't make enough money, ergo they need to spend more money to service my market" as the solution to both your problem and theirs. Also, the book example is pretty bad, considering where Literacy is a complete barrier for entry, but movies have the ability to convey its story entirely visually if required. Bad movies rely on exposition dumps to advance the story. Action centric movies ultimately don't. Even character driven plots can be carried visually, even if its dialog heavy, by showing the audience the right things. And while we're on the topic..... Most Chinese movies never leave the Chinese market, and even of those most don't get a theatrical release in the West. Outside of Hong Kong's long history with Cinema, its only been in the last 6 years or so that China has actually stated putting a big effort into crafting movies targeting an international audience, rather then merely exporting big budget ones aimed mainly at their domestic audience. And really the only reason they are doing this is to try and prove they are better then Hollywood, with huge investments and massive projects. Its ironic that its likely not even being done for the money, or for making good movies; but merely to prove they can usurp Hollywood. Anet's problems run much deeper then simply marginalizing potential markets. They're having issues with their existing market share, and is been frequently fumbling with strengthening it for years now. Having seen what happened to Tera, Guildwars hasn't gone so far as directly pandering to an audience for profit motive...... but theres long been an air of mismanagement in their design and development projects, and a spotty understanding of its broad audience. It goes far beyond what you're accusing it of. Localization is around 5th on the list that require energy to pull them out of a decline..... shuffling that to the top without addressing universal issues (such as waning interest in game modes, and declining longevity of Openworld content blocks), is openly inviting people into that struggle. The major significant value in that is being able to experience whats left of the game before it dies off completely- and thats not a very optimistic prospect for the game itself.

Some skins DO have 2 versions given, but many of those (as rare as they are) are a side effect of them already having 2 assets from production for other reasons. The Day/Night skins are a unique feature to those items. And I highly doubt they'll do what your asking, given its the reason they were created in the first place.

To break this down in very amateur literary student kind of way....... Its simply the power of the story arc. The commander HAS to win (eventually), because the story requires it. The stakes are simply too high at this point for any other outcome, short of the writers wanting to cut it short... and even if they try, it'll be extremely difficult to make it satisfying. You also have to look at each main story line by its theme. Pact Tyria is broken up in to 3 Act. The first is about the Character, and itself is broken up into 3 parts.... Coming to Grips with Society, Facing your past/personal demons, and Standing up for whats Right (and introduces a new threat). The second part is about Destiny's edge and Orders. Both run in parallel (DE as part of Dungeon stories, and Orders as personal story), and are ultimately about Cooperation. DE's side is about Forgiveness, overcoming Grief, and Personal dynamics. The Orders are about Leadership, Friendship, and Sacrifice. The third arc are more diluted due to the pacing.... but is largely supposed to be about Adversity, Overcoming fear, Open mindedness (in relation to the pact's strength in methods, and understanding theres more to an enemy then its external components), and the power of Unity. LS1 was a mixed bag, and didn't really have a common theme throughout. Although one could easy argue that it was about Scarlet's "hero's journey". LS2 refocuses on essentially repeating the Pact arc (Unity/Cooperation) on a more global scale. Working to convince the 5 largest kingdoms in Tyria to not only look beyond own concerns, but to also set aside their differences in light of past threats, and come to terms with the inevitable threat posed by the remaining Elder Dragons. Heart of Thorns was a proverbial "Darkest Hour". This combined with parts of LS1 and all of LS2 were meant to form a complete story arc; with the start of HOT being the lowest point of which they had fight back up from. LS3 is Doubt. The first half is about end capping HOT, and having to deal with the Fall out of Modremoth's demise, and rising doubts about if their actions are helping or hurting. The Second half was mostly focused on more personal aspects of "Doubt" and Mistrust. Doubt in allies, Doubt in Leadership, Self-Doubt, and Mistrust of others; along with the struggles of building Trust, and the ways it can be manipulated. Path of Fire is a near-complete Hero's Journey, with the inciting incident kicked off in LS3. This, along with the Commander being the underdog for the majority, is probably the main reason the story in this release was so positively receipted compared to previous ones. LS5 repeats a similar arc twice. Once against Joko, and again with Kralk. Joko's arc focused more on personal development in all its its characters, playing on the fact that Joko is a force of Personality. Kralkatorik's arc is highlighted by multiple failures, plunging rapidly into Darkest Hour, giving it a theme perseverance to reflect how they are fighting against an Apocalyptic Force of Nature. The end is clearly a twist to set the stage moving forward, making the Dragon's influence a lot more personal.... and thus a lot more dangerous. Icebrood Saga looks to be setting up for a theme of Betrayal (Temptation) and Redemption, seeing as Jormag's minions have always been established as being willing, rather then dominated. Thus the Commander doesn't get power as in "Power", but ultimately succeeds through being an opposing thesis of the antagonist... be it philosophical, metaphysical, or methodical. In Zhaitan a is a fate worse then death. Scarlet is the Commander's Equal but Opposite. Modremoth's hive mind is a perversion of Unity. Caudecus, in his monumental arrogance, twisted the White Mantle's righteous indignation into whole sale terrorism. Balthazar, disillusioned with his pantheon, and disregarding the lives of Tyria, willingly walked forward the apocalypse in his quest for Vengeance. Joko sought to become both hero and villain, establishing himself as being too powerful to oppose, but also the only thing powerful enough to offer salvation from the Dragons. Fighting Kralkatorik is fighting Entropy itself..... win or lose, the outcome is eventual and inevitable. And if talk of Jormag is to be believed, the hints of existential dread spattered thus far will be brought to the forefront.

The UI doesn't make distinctions about what features you do or do not have unlocked, primarily because you can still get associated skins for gliding and mounts from various sources. Teasing you about it is just a bonus.

You know that mysterious evil dude sitting in his chair, petting his black cat, never revealing his face? Or the glowing suitcase from Pulp Fiction? In the tradition of story telling even mysteries have to serve a purpose. Just haveing a mystery for the sake of it doesn't work and is bad story telling by defintion. So even if that might be the final word of the devs it is still huge wasted potential. Maybe. I personally believe it could have gone somewhere for sure. But nonetheless, creating lore and then dropping it before it is concluded is not only unprofessional but also very dissatisfying. However we don't know for sure. They still can bring it up again I suppose. Again, unprofessional and dissatisfying. But we all have to deal with it, i guess. I have heard rumours about that. I wish they would put these stuff IN the game, and not just write some text and put it somewhere on a website. I have never understood this sentiment and I never will. Oh I didn't know that. I usually check the Wiki for lore, but I cannot find this "answer" anywhere. Can you provide a link or a hint where to look for it maybe? Yes, the community has come to term with this mentality concerning cantha, or at least it seems so. But really, you can say that about anything. Before the path of fire expansion someone could have said the same about Balthazar's or any of the God's involvement in the story. I didn't see Balthazar becoming a part of the game, but it still happened. That's the wonderful thing with story telling, nothing really is impossible, however some thing might be more difficult to set up in a satisfying way than others.Whatever the reasons may be for Cantha not to be released, with all the nostalgia surrounding it one would think the finencial potential is there without doubt. But I might be wrong about that. Ill address three points Mystery for the sake of mystery is not bad storytelling if done correctly. And here it is done correctly. No matter what they do with it, itll never live up to 15 years speculation and imagination. Allowing the readers to wonder and imagine is what fantasy was meant to be about. Sure its evolved so that every last tiny detail is often over explained, but a good fantasy writer will find ways to allow their reader to “dream”. Mysteries allow for that. Perhaps labelling it “mystery for the sake of mystery” is a misleading term, but such things absolutely must exist. I will emphasise though that it doesnt work for everything and every sutuation. In the patch notes for halloween it mentions about visiting a general in la if you defeated joko. Try that quest line and collection. Esp the items you pick up along the way. Again, Im going off a vague memory Financially i have no doubt cantha would be a huge successTo add to this... there was a time not long ago where every single fiction genre in popular media was making an effort to try and scientifically explain EVERYTHING that was extraordinary. That includes SciFi, Fantasy, Mysteries, and even Religion were trying to gain validity by attempting to break down every single minute detail as if part of a large mechanical system. I don't remember what kicked it off.... but this was all part of a large push for "hard science" in fiction. I wanna say Lost... but it might be older then that. The problem that immediately arose is that a LOT of writers were not good at maintaining consistency, and rapid increase in complexity mixed with pseudoscience caused many to quickly paint themselves into corners. Lots of lines wasted on exposition that likely wouldn't pay off later, or opened new questions that were never meant to be asked. Much of this comes from stories going longer they ever planned, or a just a lack of experience in long story arcs. You all have to remember that sprawling multi-season, interconnected story lines were almost non-existent before the Sopranos became popular.... and the writing staff needed for it, incredibly rare. Most shows were written season to season, not knowing if they'll get renewed for another year. It was a terrible time of arbitrary rules, difficult suspension of disbelief, lots of sloppy attempts to retcon without looking like a retcon, plot holes, lost threads, jarring character shifts, and a fair share of Studio meddling driven by a desire for ratings. Member midichlorians? I member....

Not all that much different from Bow. You're melee weapons are your strongest, but the Rifle works with power builds, while the bow works for Condi builds.

Gunzerker!!!