Zephire.8049

Which doesn't matter if you're a teen being grouped with adults, or vice versa, when you now have to be on high alert and/or deal with a huge difference in maturity and experience, or have your gameplay impacted because someone was sent to bed by their parent. Or someone had to go deal with their infant that just woke up and now you're stuck starting content from scratch or PUG a partially complete instance during the game's off hours. That disclaimer exists solely so a company can't be fined because players are using harsh and/or explicit language in chat and so they can do as much or little chat moderation. It's the exact same reason why forums and social media say they're not responsible for what users post. It doesn't mean there needs to be forced group content because technically there's no rule against it. And seriously, as someone who dealt with crap as a teen, being forced to group up with strange adults in games was terrible for my mental health. You don't know people's backstories and there are so many reasons why someone would be uncomfortable being forced to group up with strangers in a game that is otherwise very friendly to solo players while giving them the option to play with others if they want. Forced group content and competitive group content caters to a certain mentality at the exclusion of everyone else. The game can certainly improve some social functions and streamline others but without any examples of brand new systems can be added, it just seems like you want content or features that punish people for not being as social as you think they should be.

There was also the gate in Pre-Searing Ascalon in GW1. You could only head outside the wall if another player joined you meaning solo players couldn't complete some quests and couldn't do the achievement for getting to level 20 in PSA. The result was standing in town asking mostly brand new players to join you and do this specific thing so you could do this other thing. It was awkward and intimidating and I think I only went past the wall a few times because the game forced you to talk to strangers in a town and forced you to group up with them and maybe they really would drop group after you got through but they may also stay even when they said they wouldn't. Maybe some people have fond memories of that but I definitely don't. Forced interactions are bad. Also GW2 is rated T and and putting in situations where a teen as young as 13 has to play with a strange adult is skeevy. At least open world metas are big enough it doesn't matter and people can leave or hide chat if they want. Group content takes that away as an option and "encourages" communication by punishing groups that don't communicate and don't already know how everything is done.

I'm much the same as @voltaicbore.8012 in that I play GW2 because I like the design of such games but fewer and fewer games offer it anymore, and those that do tend to have limited content/stop being developed after a year or two/cost $80+ CAD. Plus with MMOs there's the option to play with friends, which isn't the case in single-player games. I just like being able to play solo if I want and GW2 allows me to do that and I get to control how much (or little) I interact with others because the game is designed so other players around you won't impact your own gameplay with a handful of exceptions. If I want to just chill out with Netflix and map completion, I can do that. If I want to do metas, I can do that. If I want to do fractals or raids, I can do that. Heck, if I want to PvP, I can do that. There are so many ways to interact with others and everyone gets to choose what they're comfortable with and meet up with like-minded people. And among the reasons why I'm picky is because I am done with all the "trash talk" and harassment and I have quit countless games because to progress you were expected to just put up with it. If you force interaction via group content that can't be solo'd or avoided, you will end up with a minority of people driving away other players not just from that specific content but the game in general. I'm not against GW2 getting more social tools but with IBS's story, they were already pushing forced grouping and that was a terrible thing to be blindsided with, akin to going to school only to end up in a group project with strangers the moment you enter the classroom. Istan also had/has several events where players can negatively impact others and that just results in people yelling at each other. Since you didn't give any concrete examples and how they'd work aside from dueling (a hard no from me and thankfully it's impossible to add to the open world due to the engine), there's no specifics to comment on. I'm just stating that how the current game is works great for me and MMOs aren't just for social butterflies because there are so many reasons why someone may play an MMO.

The skyscale does effectively have unlimited flight if you know how to use it and have the global mount masteries. Sure it can't go all the way up into the skybox (unless it's starting off high or there's something for it to grab onto), but there's no need to do that from a gameplay perspective and allowing free flight would make map exploits and breaking out of maps even easier. It would also render terrain and mobs pointless as you could skip all of it—just go above the cloud layer, aim where you want to go, and hit auto-run. But if you use the skyscale as intended, you can cross vast distances. Sure it's not as fast as the griffon when there's open space, but it gives you more control over where you go and you can pause if need be. LW4 and forward maps also have balls of volatile magic/karma that refresh your flight juice and stamina in certain areas so you can have extended flight.

Already happened. Millions of people bought the base game before it went free. Millions of people bought HoT before it was included with PoF. Millions bought PoF when it becomes bundled with EoD sooner or later. If you're so frugal that you would rather wait years for something to be cheaper, more power to you, but not everyone wants to deny themselves something they're enjoy when it may or may not be cheaper in the future. It's also been custom with software and gaming that the longer something is out, the cheaper it gets over time with a handful of exceptions. Do you also get mad at companies that put out a Game of the Year version that includes several DLC where the game is 2+ years old because that's "unfair" to people who bought the game at launch? And for what it's worth, I'm someone who pre-ordered GW2 and then paid full price for both expansions. Them being made free/included with PoF never bothered me because I got years of enjoyment out of them and the change means it's more accessible to others thus more people have a chance to enjoy something I like and all the potential content and friendships that come from that.

For what it's worth, devs have said the reason they don't add a skip dialogue option past the personal story is because it increases the chance of an instance bugging and forcing players to start all over again thus negating the benefit of skipping dialogue to begin with. Though that's not the most comforting thing when you have time to read a novel while waiting to play the playable parts of LW2.

Some people like discovering things on their own, others would rather "get on with it" or have limited play time. You don't need to use the wiki if you don't want to, but it is a resource for players if they so wish and there's no difference between the wiki and all the game guides that have been put up over the past three decades except it's officially recognized and ran by Arenanet. But the API is so useful that even if there wasn't an official wiki, one would have been made long ago because people like having the option to look things up. Even with the wiki, there's demand for and support for content creators who make guides or otherwise explain things because even though the game explains them, sometimes someone misses it or it's presented in one way while they only really get/understand things if it's presented in a different way. If you don't like guides, don't use them, but don't get mad that other players have the choice of looking up a guide. And again, most of GW2's crafting and achievements are straightforward. If they weren't, people would complain about things being unclear after every single content release when the wiki has not been updated.

There also has to be consideration for player retention and making the first world boss people come across too punishing doesn't help with retention, especially with GW2 billing itself as a casual-friendly MMO. You can scale things up when it comes to difficulty and mechanics, but a game really only has one shot at a good first impression and if someone's first experience is eating dirt because a starter boss was tuned more for veteran players than newbies, why would they stick around when there are other games they can play for free that don't essentially insult them for the grave sin of being new? World bosses are dated when it comes to clear telegraphing (and that can definitely be improved) but they still teach things. SB teaches: AOE is bad Don't try to solo everything Don't run through things that hurt Actually do mechanics because if you don't, you and the people you're with are going to be punished for it Pay attention to pre-events and whether or not they're being done Shaman: Stability is good Watch for moving AOE's Bosses can change phases How to change your graphics settings and/or play with <10 FPS Fire Elemental: Fire = bad Defend highlighted areas Mobs continually spawn during defense events You sometimes have to do escorts to get the event you want Jungle Wurm: Stability is good (again) Bad AOE is denoted using an orange circle Pay attention to where you are so you can avoid damage/CC Enemies telegraph their attacks and you can use that to avoid them Yeah they don't have breakbars, but few of the OG world bosses do (and aside from Karka Queen, they don't really do much anyway) and it would make more sense in a revamp to make mid-level world bosses have more clear cut mechanics rather than throw a ton of mechanics at new players who are still figuring out how to dodge and don't know they can buy things off the TP anywhere in the game. There can (and should) be a tutorial for breakbars in starter zones, but they should be their own thing where players can take time to read their skills instead of tied to events that demand attention and don't allow time for players to look at what all they're doing and changing their skills around. It sucks when you're doing events with people who ignore any and all mechanics, but you can't just throw everything at people who are new, be it in gaming or in real life. Once people get their feet under them, that's when you start introducing more things to know—you don't shoot a water cannon at someone who's trying to stand up.

Or we could leave the newbie world bosses alone unless it's to make them better teaching tools for mechanics. SB already lays down large damage fields, does a fear or knockdown if you're slow in destroying the portals, has portals that spawn mobs that range from being regular to being champions, and you can't run through the SB because its body does damage to you if you attempt that. It essentially teaches new players to pay attention to visuals and to work together rather than go it alone. The only reason why it doesn't seem difficult is because if you do it when most level 80s are doing world boss trains, there's a ton of level 80s pumping out stability and healing and cleansing so you don't have to pay attention to the mechanics or what you do. If you want challenges, go to HoT or later and do Drakkar for a challenging world boss that fails more often than not. SB also doesn't drop interesting exclusive loot so you can just skip it, letting newer players have their fun and spend that time doing some other farm (e.g. Drizzlewood or Silverwastes) to make more gold in the same amount of time.

This is true. Also given the beards on human and norn, I kinda doubt that plant-based facial hair would have both a good model and attach to the face well. Though hey, maybe they managed to figure out a way to improve customization that is neither jarring nor full of clipping issues. I would love to see sylvari with facial hair (and new options for other races), but I think it would go like the pegasus griffon skin: Great concept art but the execution leaves so much to be desired.

That sounds like ADHD to me, not addictive gaming mechanics. Contrary to the idea that ADHD always results in a lack of focus, it can also result in hyperfocus (at the expense of everything else, including basic biological functions) on certain things. Gaming (any game, including such addictive hits as Tetris, Solitaire, and Minesweeper) tends to be one of the more common hyperfocus activities given it's constant positive stimulation and something to do. That or addiction, but in both cases it's on the player to seek help to break the cycle, especially for a game where the vast majority of players have no trouble putting it down when needed.

I don't see that happening due to the simple fact that you get the raptor (which is superior to the warclaw even without masteries) from finishing the very first PoF mission. If people don't have PoF, they can't get any mount, and if they do they're able to get a better one the moment they start it. Plus people like to have the option of doing things when and how they want, and being reliant on others for a rather moderate speedboost isn't the most fun thing around.

A better comparison would be reading a full piece of work vs. reading the Cliff/Spark Notes of it. You retain more information and can pick up more nuance with the actual book but if you lack the time, the Cliff/Spark Notes version does well to get you to the end with a summary of the whole thing. None of the collections in GW2 outright require guides, but if you're short on time (such as the OP is) or having a lot of trouble with one specific part, it makes sense to look it up and that's not a sign of bad game design, just that different people like different things and guides mean you can select your difficulty for collections, so to speak. OP is trying to play on hard mode when his life only allows for easy and then blaming the game for it.

It should also be noted that Grothmar, Bjora, and Drizzlewood all came out after the Skyscale but you can move around them just fine without. In fact, the skyscale is slower in Grothmar and Drizzlewood than other mounts and unless you have endurance or stealth off cooldown, you will absolutely get sniped out of the sky by snipers. Also Grothmar heavily favours the raptor, beetle, and jackal given how flat it is. Really, the skyscale is more "I don't feel like swapping mounts so I'm fine going slower" than "this mount invalidates all other content. So it's weird to assume that the skyscale will invalidate EoD maps when we have three maps (four if you count Dragonstorm) that prove that doesn't have to be the case.

Initially I was fine with the warclaw not having PvE masteries on release but with all the nerfs it's had since (which included nerfing its function in PvE) to the point its use in WvW is limited, I think giving it a second life in PvE is better than leaving it alone. It's a cool mount with good skins but if you don't WvW and aren't sitting in a city, you won't really see it. Even just reverting all the nerfs on the PvE side of things (something they can do) would go a long way in making it a decent mount in PvE. Not the best in anything in particular but it would graduate from slightly better than no mount at all (though some classes/builds do render it useless) to slower than the other mounts but faster than perma swiftness.

Subscriptions were the same thing back in the 00s and early 10s, then it moved on to things like collector's editions that don't come with the game/$300 CE's that take $50 to produce/Day 1 content patches, then loot boxes, then a general "live service" model, and the latest big thing for companies to get constant money for minimal effort is... season passes. Also all that extra profit coming in? It goes to board members and share holders, not back into the game which is why so many publishers talk about laying off staff despite record profits. You're also conflating two separate things. EOD has nothing to do with income given that living world episodes were sustainable indefinitely and even as IBS was being made at the start, the developers weren't told an expansion was in the near future or not. GW2 also brought in enough money to sustain the development of two different projects for years before said projects were cancelled because they were eating too much money, not because there was not enough money for them. There's also a significant negative psychological impact of season passes not unlike those that came with subscriptions. Only instead of "I need to play X game because I'm paying for it" it's "I need to play X game because if I don't I'll miss out on the daily XP". Also what's the difference between a $30/2-3 month season pass and a $15/month subscription, really? You're paying a similar amount in the long run, getting the same content, and are pressured to keep playing (and paying) beyond what's enjoyable or healthy.

Why is going for a stable business model rather than "the most" bad? As long as the gross profits are stable and higher than production costs, that's a successful business and Anet was essentially founded on not chasing maximum profits. Which we can assume serves them well given they were founded 21 years ago and have been sustained by all of two games over those 21 years and have barely changed their business model at all while most other MMOs from the MMO boom and bust were either shut down or had to drastically change their business model to survive. Even NCsoft seems fine with it, so if everyone is fine with stable profits, why bother changing the model now in a move that would destabilize it for possible temporary financial gain and risking financial (and company) loss? Because while GW2 is stable, it does not have the sheer profit margin to be able to sustain itself for more than one or two quarters if they do something that would alienate the current playerbase and turn new players off from even trying the game.

It may be annoying to see but provided your instance is full, those 5-10 people aren't really affecting things since even if they were to fight the bosses, that would maybe cut 30 seconds off the fight. People who refuse to do the pre-events for the Megadestroyer and Shatterer are far worse than Dragonstorm leechers, imo. There has to be an assumption that there will be a certain percentage of people who will do the bare minimum to still get rewards so as long as that's the case (which is with Dragonstorm) it can be frustrating to see but the impact on everyone else is negligible.

Raiding Fractals WvW PvP Skins Achievements Titles Legendaries Open world metas Dungeons Helping new players Playing music Roleplaying World completion The story (on one or more characters) Playing the trading post Taking breaks between content patches. Just chatting Building up a useless collection And the list goes on. GW2 differs from WoW in that the endgame is what you make of it because the choice to go with horizontal progression instead of vertical means once you hit 80 and get exotic gear, you are good to go do anything you want (minus T3/T4 fractals due to agony requirements) and you won't find yourself having to grind content for a dozen hours whenever a new content patch comes out. And once you get ascended gear, you don't have to worry about anything until/if new, better stat combos come out. Which is a tough concept to wrap your head around if you're used to always chasing a specific carrot. Fashion Wars is a big part of the endgame for a lot of people, yes, but it's far from the only thing people can do. And you can always just not play GW2 and go play something else because you'll never have your gear invalidated, so the endgame can be playing other games.

Leaving out whether GW2 should have a sub—optional or otherwise—here's how it happens in every game that I'm familiar with. Option 1: Zero benefits and it just sets up a monthly withdrawal so people don't need to remember to buy it. The problem is if it's optional, there is zero incentive to sign up for it unless you don't want to remember to buy a sub. Option 2: Some minor benefits that don't directly affect gameplay... maybe. The problem with this one is design decisions start being made based on the optional sub and making things just annoying enough to "encourage" players with the means to buy a subscription monthly so as to not deal with them. For GW2 let's go with can only deposit materials once every 15 minutes, a 10-slot subscription-only bag slot, and the ability to craft a second ascended crafting item a day. Pretty minor compared to other "optional" subs out there but still not enjoyable for players. For one getting a pop-up saying "Cannot perform this action for X more minutes" is annoying. Second while 10 slots isn't much, it's 10 more slots than you'd have otherwise which means you can do more content for longer without having to pause to deal with your inventory. Third that would mean people who pay to play now get more daily gold while also suppressing the market so those who can't pay make less. And from there decisions end up becoming "Should this be available to everyone?" or "How do we add something to incentivize people to move to the subscription?" It is never a one-and-done deal and how much or how little influence the subscription has depends on marketing and upper management, not developers, and all it takes is one greedy person to get power and the non-paying players would be out of luck (just check out the history of GaiaOnline if you want an extreme example of this sort of thing). But what it sounds like is you have an issue with the artificial scarcity of the cash shop's design and how some items are only available for a short amount of time and are trying to find a solution to that. And the artificial scarcity model is a bad one but adding a subscription on top of it only pushes the user-unfriendliness onto a different group of players and may not even solve what you want to be solved.

Subscriptions (and season passes) are predatory and not needed and I would absolutely quite GW2 if it brought in a subscription of any kind. You can already pay $5/$10/$15/$20/$50 a month on gems to get personal benefits while also giving Arenanet more money without creating a class divide and incentivizing design decisions that funnel people into a subscription for basic QoL features and punish those who cannot afford a subscription. The current model brings in all the money they need as far as we know and like you said, GW1 was founded on being subscription-free and GW2 is also founded on that principle. To change it nearly 9 years into the life of a game and go back on what they promised nearly two decades ago would be a great way to torpedo their loyal customers while not having enough new customers come in to replace them as player retention has been an issue for as long as GW2 has been out.

If you have so little free time, MMOs probably aren't for you given GW2 is at the top of AAA MMOs that respect players' time and real life commitments. Alternatively you can use one of the many guides out there so you can work through collections faster because there's zero reason to spend an entire day (despite living a busy life) trying to find something unless you both have the time and enjoy the challenge.

GW2efficincy has a page for that! Granted it's only for GW2efficiency accounts, but it's the best we've got. https://gw2efficiency.com/account/player-statistics While we don't know exactly what the most common combos are, we can extrapolate and assume male charr revenants are the least played combo around with female human guardians the most common. It may not be 100% accurate but it's in the ballpark.

The main issue is two-fold: redoing thousands of skins onto new models and the engine code. Unless a new race were copy-pasted from an existing player race and given a texture change, every piece of armour would need to be adjusted and tested for clipping with the player model and other pieces of armour, and weapons would need to be adjusted for size. At ~750 skins for each weight (not including outfits, back items, or weapons) that will require a lot of time from both modelers (to change the model be it stretch, squish, add, or delete areas) and artists (who have to add texture and dye channels), and QA time to do a test run for any immediate bugs (though a number would still slip through given the sheer amount of combinations). And the player's race is essentially hard-coded into the game the moment they're created and it's literally impossible to change a character's race without the database imploding (hyperbole, though barely). Part of that is the 1-40 story and those options but it's more than that. Plus the personal story is old code that can be broken so easily there are still bugs that have existed for years because they're not considered worth the risk of fixing since something else could break due to the fix. If Anet really wanted to, they could probably fix a bunch of them but the resources vs benefit calculation favours the (lack of) benefit from those fixes. There's also the lore aspect of things because quaggan, skritt, tengu, etc. weren't part of the fight against Zhaitan. The quaggan and skritt were brought on as allies during the personal story but neither lead any forces. Quaggan only had a (small) group of fighters in HoT and skritt only joined the Pact during LW4. Tengu have been AFK until this year. One thing GW2 likes is its lore and none of the races you mentioned were there 9 years ago in the timeline. Other issues with adding new races: Dialogue. Bringing on two new VAs per new race per episode is expensive and it can complicate things for the writers. Animation. Whole new animations have to be made/modified to be acceptable for player characters. New model + model customization. None of the NPC races are up to par to be a playable character thus would have to be remade from scratch with customization options being created for them. Plus all past NPC models would have to be replaced with new models. How to integrate them with past episodes. There's dialogue that specifies player race in old content and that all needs to be updated from LW2 forward. The typical single player game can easily have over 100k lines of dialogue with MMOs having far more. If that dialogue is spoken instead of text, they need to bring back the VA to re-record their line and add that in. Can of worms is opened. If a new race is added, there will be a massive amount of complaints and demands that X, Y, and Z race also be added as playable. As cool as it would be to have even more options, there's a lot of logistical issues for adding new playable races at this point in time.

If you know there's not going to be any content any time soon, sure, you can unsub. But companies rarely tell you "There will be no content for a year" so it's either keep playing to prepare for new content you think will come out or unsub to save money and potentially have to grind old content out ASAP if new content does drop. There's also the social aspect of it, so even if you don't have an interest in the (lack of) content, if all your friends continue to play it's either pay to also play so you can socialize with them or drop it and potentially lose that social group. If you've never run into that issue, cool and I'm glad for you, but back in the 00s it was a tough choice at times. And as @Maikimaik.1974 said, if you sub for multiple months at a time you can't unsub in the middle of it to save money—you are out that 3-, 6-, 12-month sub money regardless of how much or how little content is put out or if you decide to play or not.