Gotejjeken.1267

Basically this. OP knew the OG lootbox was gambling and chose to 'whale out' on it. Not to mention they have precedent for doing this--things like the OG Mad King's Mad Memories back was only available Halloween 2012, then they later added other ways to get it. Since time is money, my Mad Memories was devalued too! 🙃

Some basic examples: F1 can (and should) be traited for the blind---a defensive function. F2 is a blast finisher, so blast into stealth--a defensive function. In general, yes I understand in PvE you just spam them all off rotation because 'mah DPS' and anets infatuation with LI encounters (even most fractals and strikes are this way)--but untamed was made for competitive, and there you should not be letting the pet autocast those lol.

Unleashed pet skills cannot be set to auto-attack (it was in the patch notes). Honestly unsure why you'd want to as they all serve a defensive function...

As someone not new to competitive (i.e., play way too much WvW), but new to PvP, I have to agree. I'm just about to hit rank 20, which took basically 2 days of 3-4 hour sessions to do, and already I've seen enough toxicity to wonder if ranked will really be any worse. Even had a dev team wipe a clearly new team literally 25-500 with the dev jumping up and down hiding (so no one could possibly get that achieve). Just not a great look for unranked or pvp to anyone that isn't already used to GW2 competitive. The only reason I personally haven't dropped PvP is the lege backpack seems cheaper than warbringer--just have to get enough rank tickets. Now I haven't played ranked just yet so I may just straight up leave if somehow it is more toxic than unranked.

Yeah, hammer is essentially relegated to sPvP because the CC's were designed around it. For the rest, I don't have much on soulbeast being better in open world pve than untamed--seems wrong though since unleashed ambush skills (specifically axe) are insanely good at tagging. Hammer seemingly would also be better at tagging because all its skills are cleave; and yes they may have a smaller radius but you also aren't getting nuked by ranged reflect mechanics.

Clearly you are new to MMOs. Anyway, my last comments on this are yes, they store player data for players who are inactive--that way when you take a 10-year break to collect your decade armor all of your account is still intact. Other than that, not derailing this complaint topic any longer--can all go back to arguing about steam discounts.

I mean, you're comparing offline games to online ones--so I'm not sure where this is going. I get the argument that digital is cheaper on developers for offline games, but not online, and especially not MMOs. I'd probably wager (from a development perspective) that account data is gigs per person, and over a million+ accounts that never get deleted for inactivity. Then you add backups. That's a lot of storage. At least from my work experience, as we are entirely digital and store a ton of finance data, and the size of that is pretty staggering. I also think you may be overestimating the production aspects of physical copies. They have manufactured them in the past (all the way back to GW1), and also just recently contracted the Aurene statues for manufacture--not sure either of those drove them to need a Steam release. Especially since physical is always driven by demand--someone is buying them, whether it be a store or a person; they don't just produce physical copies and hope to sell them. Anyway. my wager is Steam release is due to falling player population vs. maintaining a game of this size--something you don't need to worry about with offline games. Basically, Steam itself taking a cut on an already thin profit margin is causing them not to discount at all--that should be telling. If the game were practically free to run (because its already made) they'd definitely discount to drive up sales. That they are not doing so is telling me the expense of running it is greater than the players they'd get by a discount.

Sorry, I didn't mean it literally--I mean if you have a million players you are saving state for all of them. You might as well have a million copies of 'the game' then because you are saving state for everything that isn't a static asset. Essentially my point being that storage is not cheap, and we all know anet isn't efficient in the least with the coding so its definitely on the larger side of data storage than the smaller. And that's just data storage, because servers are another matter entirely; these types of servers cannot be cheap especially in game like this where large-scale event rendering is common. My overall point is SaaS type games like this are not 'free' because there are no physical copies being shipped. They're very expensive and very much have stakeholders watching sales. The Steam launch being primarily that, because a decade in and something major is going to need to happen to keep things going. EDIT: Also, not saying they shouldn't discount, because they knew launching on Steam would lose them profit but gain them players, and Steam has sales all the friggin' time, so it's literally expected at this point.

They essentially DO need to keep a million copies of a game somewhere, how do you think player data is stored? 😂 I think you also grossly underestimate what developers and artists charge. These aren't fast food wages here. But anyway, my advice to you is learn a little more about how game economics work.

You think it's infinite--but storage costs money. Just because digital goods are not tangible doesn't mean they are pure profit.

All depends on the PvP sub-forum. Any pet balancing is going to 100% be done from there again if the 'we won't balance based on golem numbers' stance from the devs holds up. Pet balance and skill updates have rarely if ever been about bugs (unless they were ranger favorable ones); they are always done around competitive. My guess for the EoD pet fix / quickness update for feline is because mechanist is so dominant in PvP right now, slightly fixing up ranger to reach that level of power creep should offend no one.

I did, and am now concluding that apparently you can't understand the concept of sunk-time costs. There's man hours behind these games and part of that is factored into profit--so when a digital storefront takes a cut, yes, they lose money. But reading through some of your other hot takes like 'everything loses value over time' (spoilers, not true) I understand economics is not your strong suit. The 'tldr' is stop trying to guess what Steam players want. They may want to buy the entire game in one bundle because its way easier to understand that way--and if they don't, they come back to the gem store where anet retains full profit. Win-win for the developer.

They lose money because Steam takes a cut for using their storefront.

Oh, you were talking about Guild Wars 1...I just assumed at this point 'Guild Wars' is synonymous with Guild Wars 2. Which yes, confusion. As that FAQ entry about GW1 is most definitely aimed at veterans who have a GW1 account, not all the incoming new players to Guild Wars 2 through steam. Or who would be interested in linking their Guild Wars 2 Steam account with the site launcher. Anyway, this is what I mean by being 'too helpful', as even as someone who has been around since 2005 pre-searing days I was utterly confused by this review.

It's this wording that is super confusing: and you will not be locked out of linking your account to Guild Wars in this way I'm not even sure what it means because you can't link Steam and 'main site' accounts (and we don't know if you ever will be able to). This is where the confusion is coming from. Also I agree with this: It is true, the 'experienced' players attempting to be helpful is counter-productive because most of us are seriously jaded at this point. It's one thing to offer advice in game but marching out into Steam review sections and such is just going way beyond what is needed IMO. Let people discover the game like we did....

The level 80s will leave once they get their decade armor done. Could be griefing too but someone would have to be dedicated to do that for more than a few minutes; so I'm guessing not griefing, just have to get the achievements done. Other than the decade armor there is little to no incentive to return except for possibly map completion--I'm not sure this is all that intrusive to new players though.

We don't ever know if you can link your Steam acct. to your GW2 one, so part of your review is speculation. Basically, Steam is for the people that don't like downloading third-party launchers--just like I personally don't want to download Origin or any of the other launchers, so use Steam for anything that isn't GW2. Obviously, I DL GW2 with its third-party launcher because it wasn't on Steam in 2012....

You're pointing them out based on subjectivity only. Who cares if someone makes another account on Steam? How does that affect literally anything negatively? Review bombing based on 'there's no point to make another account on Steam' absolutely can affect the game negatively though. It's objectively sabotage, so yes, I'm confused as to why you or anyone else would do this.

Can't you literally just add a non-steam game to the launcher if you really want to use steam for some reason? I really don't get the complaint here, other than if they add steam achievements or something.

The 'prestige' complaints make little sense--I can get out my beta hat or GW1 unlock gifts and have prestige. I can see being miffed about not having dye packs in the gifts anymore, but those asking for big rewards for a 10 y/o account makes little sense. Again, you have some of us playing from GW1, so 17 years atm--it is what it is.

Yeah great, sabotage your own game. That makes a ton of sense.

Can out-DPS it in OW on soulbeast, guaranteed--even with the OWP nerf.

Sure, but I still think it's counter productive. A rental at least is needed for QoL, otherwise WvW will never get new players, or get a fraction of what it could.

Doesn't affect me in the slightest, but it was a question that popped into my head thinking about Steam release. If we have an influx of F2P accounts, can any of them actually get Warclaw? If not, I doubt they stay very long at all...

Well yeah, I think by the end of that post you agree with me though. They really need a way to separate live from test, or if they can't then put the player facing features first to get people to want to test. And I do understand both ways, I've seen it. Testing while impacting your production environment is literally the worst thing you can do, but here its somewhat excusable as we're talking about a decade old game.