Rasimir.6239

Sorry for the rant, but as a long-time player that enjoys crafting, ESO's "optional" sub is one of the worst examples of how to bully players into paying that I've ever experienced. If I'd just buy GW2 gems each month for the amount I'd pay for ESO+ I'd quickly have a lot more comfort on my GW2 account than I'd ever have on my ESO account, and have it permanently unlocked on top of it.

To me GW2 makes socializing much easier than older MMOs I played ever did, exactly because it does not force me to group up with people. I'm the kind of person that likes to stop and smell the roses, not race towards goals, and I found a lot of my in-game friends by casually grouping up for content and getting to talk to and know people. It's easier to find "my kind" of people in this game precisely because it does not herd you into specific content avenues the way I've experienced in other games. There's nothing stopping guilds from getting to know people by playing with them and asking them to join. In fact one of the guilds I've been in for years I found by chatting with people on the old dungeon forum, getting asked to join their dungeon and fractal groups and eventually their guild. The variety of players and guilds in this game however does make finding people that mesh with what you are looking for in the game more complex. However that is a "problem" you can't fix technically unless you are willing to curb the variety by making the gameplay more restricting to only one (or a few) right way(s) to play.

The real problem is that you can't deposit multiple decorations at once. A single deposit showing up as a single log entry is the right way to go, but having to deposit a full stack of clouds with 500 mouse clicks (250 to "buy" the cloud plus 250 for the confirmation dialogue) is the real problem here. The log "spam" is just an additional symptom.

There's really just one downside to the skyscale: I can't use my SAB raptor skin on it :p Joke aside, the process of unlocking the skyscale isn't for everyone, but for me it was one of the most enjoyable pieces of content this game has to offer. Not just "join a zerg and run in circles to cheese the ever same events" that people seem to love these days to grind whatever content gives the best gold per hour, but real actual exploration, scavenger hunts, going all over the world figuring things out, and playing in all kinds of maps to gather different resources. As others have said, it's not a "must have now" mount, but has a considerable bit of content attached. It's also not a "must have" mount but just a nice bit of qol. If you don't enjoy the quest you can easily stick to the previous mounts that will get you everywhere just as well. Its a classic example of the journey being its own reward.

It doesn't matter if you wait for the game to magically rain full understanding from the sky or other players to condense said experiences so you can grab them from a quick youtube video. You expect stuff to be presented to you free of charge. The game doesn't work that way. It's a hugely complex game world with a wealth of knowledge to discover and experiences to make. Try to go out and actively figure things out. Go into expansion maps, pay attention to animations and acustic cues, to buffs and debuffs both on yourself and the mobs you meet, to tooltips and npc shout-outs. Try to explore, to learn, to piece together what works and note what doesn't to avoid it in the future (or maybe drag it back in a situation where you realise that it might work after all). Yes, there are players in game that don't like to deal with others still learning, that are elitist and try to exclude those with less experience and/or understanding than themselves, and you will find more of those in those game modes/areas that in other games are known as "the endgame", but GW2 has much more to offer than just instanced group pve or pvp. Go into a map and ask in map chat for people that might have fun joining you on the journey to exploring the game. You'll find new people like yourself as well as veterans that like to show people around or just join others to help out. As in wvw for anyone willing to show you around, either to be your body guard while you figure out how the gamemode ticks, or to show you the basics if you'd rather be taught than learning yourself. Get active, try to figure out how things work, try to find like-minded people or just those welcoming to people still learning and exploring the game (hint: there's lots more of those in all gamemodes than the elitist veterans that try to gate you from playing with them). You can even put up your own lfg, something like "new/inexperienced player looking to try my first dungeon - no rush" and you'll be surprised how quickly you'll find people who are chill and have fun joining you on your journey. There is no right or wrong way to play this game, no right or wrong way to teach or be taught. It's shallow on the surface but incredibly complex and flexible once you give it a try. What it does not do is "teach" you the one right way to play, nor does it put carrots just out of your reach to lure you along a preset path through the game. You have to be active, seek out knowledge, learn rather than be taught, grow your own carrots. Once you no longer expect the game to come to you but start on your journey into the game, find what you enjoy, that's when the fun really starts.

For the rest of us the GW2 system really gives us all the flexibility we want. If we want an old-style rank/permission system it's easy to create that (to the point where the default set-up is basically that), but we can adjust it to fit our guilds without having to deal with preset roles. For example my main guild has a rather large pool of guild leaders and no officers. We do however have two "janitors" that are explicitely only responsible for technical stuff (like maintaining of the guild's teamspeak server and other out-of-game jobs). For reasons too complicated to go into now though, in game we have set up ranks and permissions so that the janitors are technically above the guild leaders. If the game had pre-set leader, officer, contact, whatever roles that you couldn't change we never would've been able to configure this set-up that we are most comfortable with. If you are in a guild where the roles and ranks confuse you, then simply speak up in guild chat and ask for clarification and/or ask for who to contact about your questions. No need to make this less flexible for the rest of us just because of a few players that don't mesh with their guild's chosen setup. It's a people problem, not a game problem.

Also cant you preview the dye kits prior to selecting one? I remember that being a thing on my last bday i opened. Yes for 7th(Victorious) but not 5th, 4th, 3rd Don't know about 6th since the chat code for that is disabled.I just checked in game, it's only the 7th that has a preview. Updating the others to have one, too, would be a great qol.For now I just use the wiki widget mentioned above, it works well for me.

This game is endlessly replayable to people who like to choose their own goals and grow their own carots. If you prefer games that tell you what to play and define goals for you, changing this game isn't the way to go with so many others already out there competing for that kind of gamer.

Other, similar games have conditioned many of us to the mechanic of throwing time and repetition at specific bosses/instances/whatever to get the ultimate shinies. This game works different, and in a way that is a big plus to those of us who for a variety of reasons don't enjoy that kind of gameplay any more. Loot in this game IS valuable, no matter what you do, so you can play the content you actually enjoy and gain resources that you save up to get whatever shiny tickles your fancy. There are just a few really rare pieces in this game, mostly I suspect as a bone thrown to those who prefer to run after the "ultimate" shiny. The rest of the loot is accessible in a way that each player can choose what to go after, and how. You can go after things like PoF music boxes, rare minis, region-specific skins if that's what you enjoy, and you will find they are similarly rare and require repetition like you know from other games. You can grind the ever same "most profitable" content if gold is what you prefer. Or you can go and play the content you enjoy, free of the constraints of putting monetary value to your gaming time, and slowly but steadily gather the materials to get your shinies, whether through crafting or trading, eventually. This game's loot system is different from most similar games out there. It might not be for everyone, but to me and many people I play with this game's loot is actually worth more than most other games we've played in the past, and one of the main reasons we are here.

I count that as a dead thread since the owner is not with Anet anymore.If that thread were dead or simply no longer of interest to Anet it would've been unstickied long ago. Anet is very good at keeping the sticky threads to a bare minimum (sometimes too good), so if anything's sticky in this forum, you can count on it being active and monitored by Anet.

What do you mean "has stopped dropping"? I haven't ever had any of those drop until last weekend, when I actually got my first one.

Can you give a summary of your ideas? Linking to outside sources usually isn't a good way to get people to read it, especially if they don't have any idea of the scope or direction of the suggestions.

Right, so the most enjoyable part of this game is moving around the Silverwastes doing chest runs. Good to knowWe're talking analytics, not arithmetic. Just because a can lead to b does in no way imply that any specific variety of b is proof of the involvement of a. i use analytics to help design banking portals, i know what it is.Sorry if you took it personal, but if you re-read you'll notice that I posted in reply to another person (just included your quote that they replied to for context).

Right, so the most enjoyable part of this game is moving around the Silverwastes doing chest runs. Good to knowWe're talking analytics, not arithmetic. Just because a can lead to b does in no way imply that any specific variety of b is proof of the involvement of a.

As an example of numbers showing something different, take me: I play a lot of dungeons, both with friends but more often pugging via lfg. I've finished every last dungeon-related achievement and collection years ago, and dungeon tokens pile up in my wallet without me spending them on anything (and to an amount that doesn't make sense to save up if I had a specific use for them in mind). What do those numbers show? Certainly not that I play dungeons because of the rewards. Of course it's a guess that I might play them because I enjoy them, but it's probably the most likely explanation there is, given the circumstances. Maybe. I still believe the only way to get some "enjoyment analytics" is by either polling the community directly, forum posts or responses on social media and it's not something that can be done by statistics gathered in-game. Those can show popularity, but popularity and enjoyment can be very very different.Popularity and rewards can be very different, too. Judging from my friends list, SAB is very popular right now, although the people in question have already finished all the achievements and collections available in their difficulty of choice. That's certainly not a metric of SAB being rewarding, but just popular. @kharmin.7683 said:People seem to be arguing that Anet only uses one, specific set of data for their analytics. I'm sure that they gather a lot more than they could possibly use.Well said. The art isn't gathering numbers, it's knowing how to use them.

That's a pretty steep requirement, one that is a lot harder to fill. If you're among the lucky that can learn the basics from youtube and master them quickly, within a few practice runs, then good for you, but for lots of people out there, it doesn't work that way, and the cost of finding 9 other people with matching timeslots for hours upon hours until everyone has mastered the content can get exorbitant if you need a different approach to mastering that kind of content. Source: a 50-year-old ex-raider (in previous MMOs) that learns from explanations while doing things. I don't want to count the number of hours I've wasted trying to put together raids with people in similar situations (older, slower learners without "youtube learning talents") only to have them fall apart after weeks of wiping to the same bosses. I'm lucky in that I have younger friends that drag me along if they need a filler, so I've at least been able to experience about half of the raids, but getting enough practice to feel comfortable with the fights is pretty much impossible in my current situation, no matter how much I'd like to get there.

Well, something is keeping you from going to your most enjoyable maps then, it's a matter of priorities.That might well be the key difference in our way of thinking: I don't have any priorities when playing this game other then wasting my time in an enjoyable way. It's entertainment time. I know there are pieces of content in this game I find much more entertaining and enjoyable than others, but I don't make it a priority to choose the content I play at any given time for any particular reason, including weighting the enjoyment I get out of each map at any given point of time.

We all know that S3 zones are mostly dead by this point, especially Ember Bay, Lake Doric and Draconis Mons, all zones that I've been to recently, even when they were part of the daily. And most S4 zones don't have many players around except during a meta, Thuderhead Peaks being a curious exception by my observations. What do these analytics tell us about enjoyment and rewards?Nothing, since they are only a (small) part of the analytics available. You can't just grab a handfull of numbers out of the huge web and base your whole argument on them. Needless to say, I'm sure ANet doesn't do that either. You were talking about what people enjoy and find rewarding.Yes. If living world zones are dead then it means few people find them enjoyable or rewarding anymore.Not necessarily. I for example don't go there often right now because I spend most of my time enjoying SAB. At other times I do go to differens ls maps randomly, but the sheer number of maps can make it so I don't go to any specific map for days or even weeks. You have to take into account alternatives as well as age of content, since enjoyment usually drops the more often and/or regularly you play specific content. Rewarding is understandable, new rewards appear on new maps, better ways to make gold and so on. But enjoyment? How can someone "enjoy" piece of content A and then abandon it 1 year later, maybe they weren't there because they actually enjoyed it in the first place? Or at the very least the new rewards/shinnies outweighed the enjoyment they found in that content and lured them away.Or maybe there are so many things to do they enjoy that they spread out and play a variety of content, as I tried to explain above. Which is what raised my question in the first place. If these people play content because they enjoy it, then content that is not played anymore, like living world maps, by the same count means they are not enjoyable anymore?Again, not necessarily. I wrote this sentence in reply to this:@Taril.8619 said:Analytics will not show what people enjoy. It will only show what people deem suitably rewarding.I challenge the argument that people only play what they deem suitably rewarding. People play for a variety or reasons.That aside, just because somebody plays one piece of content because they enjoy it doesn't mean they don't enjoy everything else. It's not math, where A=B means B=A. There is so much content in this game that I enjoy that I don't have enough time to play even a fraction of it, and I doubt I'm the only one. Case in point: I haven't been to either Draconic Mons nor Tangled Depth in ages, but those two still are my absolutely favorite and most enjoyable maps in this game.

We all know that S3 zones are mostly dead by this point, especially Ember Bay, Lake Doric and Draconis Mons, all zones that I've been to recently, even when they were part of the daily. And most S4 zones don't have many players around except during a meta, Thuderhead Peaks being a curious exception by my observations. What do these analytics tell us about enjoyment and rewards?Nothing, since they are only a (small) part of the analytics available. You can't just grab a handfull of numbers out of the huge web and base your whole argument on them. Needless to say, I'm sure ANet doesn't do that either.

One of the strongest points of this game is and always has been that you don't have to spend tons of time preparing to have fun. The game is set up so that your characters achieve their max stats and abilities moderately quickly, with additional characters being even more quicker to reach their max. Additional account or character bonusses to combat strength, especially if attached to the more grindy achievements like moster or weapon kills, are the polar opposite: you have to grind very specific achievements to get to max numbers. That's a clear definition of "preparing to have fun" rather than "playing what's fun", something this game certainly does not need.

That's a misnomer. Analytics will not show what people enjoy. It will only show what people deem suitably rewarding.You assume that every player is motivated by rewards. I know a lot of people who are, but I also know a lot of people who are not. Lots of people, especially in this game where almost all of the rewards can be gotten in a variety of ways, actually do play content because they enjoy said content. I'm sure ANet is aware of this and knows how to interpret the numbers and account for those grinding the content until they've gotten what they want as opposed to those who keep coming back to said content again and again. For example, I still love this game's dungeons and take every chance I get to jump into one, despite having finished all of the dungeon related collections and achievements years ago, with dungeon tokens accumulating in my wallet, never being used. I know I can turn those tokens into gold and/or materials in a variety of ways, I just don't because it's not fun to me. Putting up a simple "p1" in lfg and running with whatever joins on the other hand is fun. Last time I wanted to run CoE for example, four people joined that were all new to the dungeon (and even to the game in general). It was a decidedly un-meta run, but it was just sooo much fun, I can't help but still smile when I think of it. Analytics is much more than just counting a simple "x people do content a, y people do content b". The numbers are able to show what people enjoy, as well as what people see rewarding. The challenge is to interpret the numbers so you come to the right conclusions. Personally I think ANet has proven quite often that they are good at reading their numbers as well as taking in feedback from other sources to come up with content suitable to the game. Not everything is perfect, but the majority of new features and updates seems to imply to me that ANet has a pretty good grasp on how to use all feedback sources available to them, including interpreting the analytics available to them.

During those un-fun hours you are bound to clash with impatient players that see playing with others of different experience levels or simply different speed as a waste of their time. You are bound to be pressured into hurrying along when you might need a bit more time to practice, or to observe, or to just sort through what you just did and want to do next, all in the name of efficiency. I enjoy a well-oiled raid, fractal, or dungeon run as much as everybody else, but I had too many run-ins with "efficient" players that projected their efficiency ideal on others who needed more time due to being new or inexperienced, and I'm also at a time of life where reflexes aren't what they used to be and practicing a new boss or encounter takes me a lot longer than those friends half my age. Some days I'm just tired and in no mood to rush through instanced content and get berated by somebody who could easily be my son or daughter for not "pulling my weight" so they can minimize the time they spend on the content. I don't care if it's CoF p1 or Whispers of Jormag or some raid boss, I prefer to have time to take in my surroundings, adjust to the people in my party/squad and take whatever time it needs for everyone to be comfortable, rather than expecting everybody to bring a cookie-cutter build and be not much more than a faceless, replaceable npc in the instance. Playing with and adjusting to the rest of the party/squad is part of the fun for me. Being hurried along by those that put efficiency above all is neither helpful to learning the content nor any fun for me.

For example a while back I was running CoF p2, advertising the run with "everyone welcome". I asked and one person honestly responded he was running the dungeon for the first time, so I proceeded to give just a few quick explanations wherever I thought them necessary. Somebody else however proceeded to run ahead impatiently, mess things up, then got nasty about how people shouldn't run dungeons without familiarizing themselves with the mechanics on youtube before they bother others. Totally irational and unneeded in my view, but I could understand that somebody who ended up in such a situation as an inexperienced player wouldn't say a word next time but just try to muddle through. There's many people out there who are welcoming to others and just try to make things work instead of putting the blame on others, but it only takes a few rotten eggs to sour everyone, and humanity unfortunately has enough of those that you have a fair chance of encountering them in game, too.