f13.net

The recent world event has hardly gone unnoticed by anyone playing GW2. Especially the introduction of a mudflation model to a game that was advertised as having a stat cap on top level gear.
After reading threads with over 10k posts and more than 100k views on the official forums, the public outcry over the bait&switch that ArenaNet pulled, seems to have produced.. something.

Today I got an E-mail from A-net with a survey asking me what I thought about the recent event. Of course I told them it was rubbish and amateurish and...

But what do you guys think? Is this an honest move from the live dev team or just another version of smoke&mirrors?

Guild wars suffers from the same problem every MMORPG suffers: the player base that is most passionate, interested and committed to the game provides feedback that is literally poisonous to the overall game.  It's weird as a developer to have to listen to the people who are NOT as dedicated/interested in the game, but that is really what you need to do.  No one wants a gear grind for a pvp/wvw oriented game save crazy poopsockers.  When they complain that they "have no more progression" or "ran out of content" you need to take what they are saying with a big grain of salt.

The "Lost Shores" event has pretty much dismissed my assumption they had a clue. Some of the game design mechanics are interesting, such as level capped zones, dynamic events and lack of a trinity and suggested they thought deeply about the structure of the game. But now I think those ideas only worked due to slow iteration during the design phase.

I think mudflation is probably inevitable. MMO players are a lot more fickle, love their virtual carrots and the game is more expensive / has a richer PvE game they're going to want people to remain engaged with. It would have been nice if they had come up with a new mechanic here but oh well. And since WvW isn't balanced at too close a level, and SPvP is immunized, I don't know I even consider it a huge deal unless it gets to the WoW levels of all gear being obsolete every 6 months.

The Lost Shores weekend is where GW2 lost a bit of it's lustre for me and I responded to the questionnaire that way.

I read the marketing for Lost Shores and as soon as I saw "one time" occur twice for the same overall event, I put it in the same category of "not for me" as most of the dungeons in this and other recent MMOs. Nowadays I fit gaming into my life, not the other way around.

And I'm ok with that. I've never been an uber achiever even when I did have the lifestyle to support exclusive gaming. There's a lot in GW2 for me to enjoy. I don't need to be part of every corner of it any more than I needed to be raiding the upper tiers of WoW or doing any of the Flashpoints in SWTOR or any of the RvR in DAoC. I enjoyed all of those and many other games without much care for the kinds of things other players were doing in that same game.

Ubers will affect how the game evolves because when they're the only ones talking, the Devs have no choice. Surveys are nice, but the fulfillment rate on those generally skews to the ubers anyway.

But putting that group aside, games change. They chase the business models that work for them. If GW2 changes into something I don't recognize because they focus on rewarding the players spending $50/mo on gems, them surviving as a company is more important than whether I personally agree with them  :grin:

It is the way of things.

...you played DAOC without RVR? whyyyyyyyy

I think it's a combination of fractals being cockblocked big time and gear that is two ilvls higher which means only the catassyist of the catasses will end up with it.

I've already dismissed Fractal from my playtime.
It's just way too rigid for my liking. I have to stick to the same group if I want to progress up in the difficulty, if I ever missed a night with them, I'd slow down their progress or get left behind. But don't think 5 levels is enough, apparently, this shit goes up above 20. (!!!!!!)
So currently the guild is split between High Fractal, Medium, Low Fractals, and people who farm classic dungeon for gold to sell.
World v World isn't gonna draw anyone without the rewards. The only time I spent on WvW is when the guild mesmer offered portal ups in Eternal Battleground for the Jumping Puzzle chest.

EDIT: Checked my mail, didn't get the survey. I guess Oceanic players can suck it, huh?

Fractals take way too long. Having to do four at a time to advance really makes them a pain.

Three at a time.

I love Fractals, but I'm in a regular group in a high functioning guild. I'm tackling them casually, so maybe I get left behind. Whatever. I just don't care about chasing the carrot. They're fun until they're not and the gear just isn't powerful enough, even with the new stuff, to make me obsolete. I can't get het up about the gear or the Fractals.

The event and new zone, though, are abortions. I only got to do Phase Three, as I had a family emergency Friday and Saturday, but it was awesome... until the TWO reinforcement phases. Those were awful. And it should've been rerun that evening for people to do. Have the chest lootable only once. But no... they failed on making the chest non-exploitable and made the event once and once only. That's bullshit for people who missed it. Years and YEARS of lessons about length of events and exclusivity of time windows just disappeared. It's inexplicable.

I don't get the new zone. Why would I go there? I've heard better gear, but so what? Like, honest to god, so what? I get leveled up and down, mobs are either hard or not hard no matter what your gear is... it kind of ties into my not being upset about the gear creep (though I can understand the objection on principle). Gear doesn't matter when it comes to stats. There is nothing rad looking there. I do not need more greens to drop. Ergo, I do not give a fuck about this zone filled with mobs which take half again as long to kill.

Sorry, Fractals go up to 4 on higher difficulty. I did FDS-2 and got surprised by the 4th world. Talk about a rude surprise.

Money. That's all. There are exactly 3 resources that matter in this game. Money, skill points, and those fucking way-too-rare WvW tokens, and money is the most important. More yellows/oranges = more precursors = more money.

Got the survey finally, time to give them a piece of my mind!

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/829607/awesome/feedback.jpg)

*CLICK*

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/829607/awesome/feedback2.jpg)

 :uhrr:

Event sucked and I made sure the survey reflected that.  I could care less if they had an event as 1 time, but FFS don't hand out uber loots to people at it...the word retarded doesn't even encompass how dumb an idea that was.  If you want to create a bitter playerbase then yeah keep fucking over people who can't attend your one time events.

I haven't gotten a survey, but since I spent Sunday puking every 30 min. with a bad case of food poisoning I wasn't able to do anything anyway. Maybe they know enough to only send it out to accounts that logged in during it.

I just got my survey and I missed the event, maybe random, I don't know. I did however tell them how dumb I thought the event was and that because of the event I would be unlikely to refer friends. Basically said how dumb it was to have a one time even then give away awesome loot at the one time event. Also I don't like how the Fractals lvl system works and made sure to let them know that too. Just make it so you can go into the highest Fractal available to anyone in the group and it would be prefect. Right now people have to keep running the lower ones over and over helping friends/guildies and not progressing or they leave their friends behind. Neither one is very cool.

Yea pretty much the same. The gear progression thing doesn't feel like nearly as much a reversal of promise that having a once-and-never-again and be-there-for-three-hours-minimum that this event was. Shit, I've seen Straights turn over multiple times in 3 hours  :awesome_for_real:

I played all of four months. It was painfully slow and boring, with the only redeeming factor to me being a playable MMO that was not-EQ1. By the time it launched I had already burned out on AC1 and UO and just wanted something that didn't incur XP loss and deleveling. But that aside, back then, PvP to me was an FPS game. Eventually I learned it can be cool in an MMO, but it took Planetside and then all the way to WoW BGs for me to see that.

I haven't gotten a survey yet, even though I was present at every one-time event, completed the investigation line, etc. I just think they aren't prepared to do massive events like this. The IDEA of a new high-level zone is good (fucking Orr and the Plinx train needs to die already), but... this is not it.
The '4th world' is the end boss on every even difficulty level. It doesn't take too long, and the rewards are quite good. Fractals are absolutely great IMO, though they highlight the need for a solid LFG system. One of the devs said a better LFG is in the works, but that can mean anything. I mean, even LOTRO's LFG system would be 'better', but that doesn't mean it'd be 'useful'.  :awesome_for_real:

So, hearing elsewhere that it can take 2-3 hours to get through 3? Is that true?

2-3 hours is WAY too much in my experience. The average time was 15-20 minutes per fractal for me in a 100% pug (so 1 hour worst-case for a set of 3), and it was the first time for all of us.. plenty of the usual PUG issues too like disconnecting, failing the jump sequence, etc. This is at levels 1-2 + end-boss, haven't really progressed further (I'm content scrubfarming the lower fractal levels later if it turns out that they start to become adventures in dickpunchery later on)

e: I misread the post /failboat

One guy disconnecting is the end of that group 5 man strength too.
At least at this state of the game. Cause the guy gets kicked out of the instance...and usually LA is overcrowded and you joined in an overflow.
You cannot rejoin THAT overflow to enter the instance once more...

So yeah........ derp.
I do agree the dungeon is fun. But the caveats and hassle of gathering 'correct FDS level' party is shit.
I want to explore all the fractals and just forget about this dungeon.

A guildie picked up the vial of mist last night - his celebration turned sour when he realized he needed 250 T6 mats and 50 ectos just to craft the back piece.
Just for a back piece upgrade.  :why_so_serious: And it's Bind on Pickup. So it's useless if you don't craft it.

Good Grind A.net. GG.

Nope.  But one of the questions is "did you log in during the event"? And then followed by a "why not?"  I made sure to let them know they were going in a direction I wasn't comfortable with.

That's really the thing. There's still this retarded grind attached to anything engaging in the endgame. Which shouldn't surprise me; I played GW1 and the only way that their "no grind" philosophy was ever justified was because you weren't grinding for better gear in terms of stats. You grinded like a motherfucker in that game. You do here. It's mostly optional, but I know I'm never going to get a Legendary, for instance, or one of these back pieces. I don't have that in me anymore. Still love the game, but I'm playing it precisely as I did GW1: log on, do some things, keep my expectations for my toon low.

There needs to be something to work towards for the achievement oriented player. And it needs to be an effort to get so they feel satisfaction on completing it. Ideally something you don't absolutely need to compete so you can opt out if this is not the flavor of grind you want.

I can't really think anyone else has a better answer for the MMO end-game.

Yea I consider it core to the genre, with the real question being how the curve works.

Unlike now-you-must-raid of most early MMOs, here there's some more options, particularly Karma farming to upgrade from Exotics. Sure it's uneven because the vendors are tied to world events that range in difficulty due to either zone design (getting to Grenth) or encounter design (the zone-wide Balth event versus just suffering through the transforms during Melandru). But unlike dungeon'ing, you're pretty free to jump in or out, like any DE.

I like it personally. There's a barrier there but it's not as arbitrary as the dungeon dedicated groups where players create variable rules requiring certain builds/gears/etc.

In my opinion, all this goes back to the "wall" in all MMOs. Once you level cap and are equipped in all the gear you solo'd to get, you either need to shift to a different mindset which includes looking and waiting for groups to continue progressing, or you need to switch to the other game (from PvE to PvP or vice versa).

I'm working towards 100% the world and doing as much WvW as I can during my playtime. Once a gear grind starts to affect those things, I'll move onto something else until they make it easier to acquire that gear. I like what they did with the karma jugs, but as soon as those were added a guildie said 'watch out for a new tier of gear'. It's almost like they included the karma jugs so that it WAS easier to get exotics and then they could justify the new tier by saying '%% of our playerbase has exotics - we needed to add this'.

 :tinfoil: I know - but I just do not get the design decisions they are having right now.

I don't think the Karka event wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been shoved into a single weekend only - but for someone with some limited playing time, it's rather hard to justify 3-4 hours in the middle of a Sunday, especially when I had no idea it would even last that long after I had spent a chunk of my Saturday exploring the Fractals and the new zone.

They made a lot of mistakes with this one.  Newbie weekend on top of a high-level one-time event.

The gear itself will take most people forever to acquire.  I'm okay with that.  It's like GW1 in that respect.  The stat bonus really isn't that significant, especially not compared to the effort required and auto-leveling knocking it down.  I've done just fine in all Magic Find rares, so I really, really don't care.

But it seems a lot of people get upset if they can't have the Best right away.  Damn Achievers.

My friends and family group just ran our first level 1 fractal last night and got absolutely destroyed by some giant invulnerable golem spewing instakill mines all over the place.  We are pretty experienced folks who have raided at least at a rudimentary level.  Am I missing something here, they seemed insanely hard.

The ones I've done all have some gimmick you need to figure out.  Once you deal with that, they're fairly easy.  I've only been through a few, however, so I don't know if they're all like that.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/black-lion-trading-company-weekend-sales

Hope lube is on sale, my butt's still sore from last weekends event I didnt attend. 

Interesting. The numbers people on are reporting over on BF are really different. Stuff like "in a good pug 90 minutes, if they have no clue, 2-4 hours?"

EDIT: Sounds like it is just a couple of them in particular that cause problems?

Possibly... I haven't played all of them yet. It's also possible I got lucky (since I only did 2 pugs, so the sample size... isn't very big).
- underwater: This one was about 15 mins on average between the two runs. It's basically three trash packs (which we murdered in record time due to having powerful underwater skill combinations + lol whirlpool), a pretty tense underground swim sequence, and a (boring hp-bucket) boss. We actually all died in the swim part on the level 2 run, but someone made it to the boss, so we respawned there, yay! I think the second run was under 10 minutes, actually.
- underground: OK, the last boss here took a while until we got the bucket part down, so it was probably closer to 30 than 20.
- cavern: This one was decently fast too; zerg event to start, running from fire, mini-boss fight, more running, end boss. 20 mins?
- asura: This was the longest by far (in no small part due to the lazer puzzle and the jumping - both are harsh on pugs). About 30 mins.
- colossus: I actually don't remember how long this one took, I was pretty absorbed with carrying the hammer / trading it off with someone else in the pug. It felt shorter than the asura one, though.
- icy place: I don't remember much fighting here at all except for the two bosses and maybe two groups of svanir. 20 mins?
- end boss: the trash didn't take too long, and after the obligatory wipe on the boss, we didn't have too many problems there either.

The dredge one and 'cliffside' (I think that is the one you mention with the hammer?) got called out as taking up to an hour each.

Well, my 30min assessment is mostly based on the duration of the chocolate orange buff still being active at the end (I'm a compulsive consumer... what can I say, a stack of 250 costs like 2 silver, and it's almost 30% free magic find!  :why_so_serious:) when I checked on the 'faster' fractals; I ate those at the start since apparently zoning into a fractal kills your consumable buffs. I really didn't feel the hammer one was that long, but we were pretty efficient at getting the seals down + that was in the level 2 group which didn't have any problems with the jumping portion either. Ditto with the dredge, we had someone who did it before who made it go really smoothly (we got the ice elemental boss at the end instead of the dredge, if that counts).

This happened to us yesterday and even worse, we completed it with 4 people and the fucking thing wouldnt mark itself complete. WTF Anet. Buggiest shit ever.

never bought gems after the price skyrocket like crazy.
i think it's just another event i can safely ignore.

Big brother much?  Yeah, I guess I'm too casual anymore but I neither go out of my way for events, nor when I was on took part in anything.  All these "one time" events they are doing do not include me and they only make me feel like this game isn't for me (even though I do really like it.)  

As a player who has around 340 hours logged so far in GW2 final, the announcement leading up to the lost shores release made me quit entirely. Cold turkey.

It was that combined with the terrible culling problems in WvW that pushed me away.

I've got two level 80s, a 65, and a 51 and I literally have no idea what a fractal is or isn't nor do I know anything about these crab things other than the promo pictures I've seen here and there.

If the goal was to drive away people like me, for whatever reason,  they have succeeded.

Dumb question: I've seen "culling problem" a lot, but what is it and what does it affect? Sounds like a big problem, just curious if it's affecting me and I don't know it :-)

In general, every major game breaking issue I've seen raised everywhere feels like it's some other game. My biggest gripe is the repeatedly breaking DEs. But while Southsun was a bust for me, there's dozens of other zones I won't ever go back to either. Feel like I'm wearing first-to-MMO niave horse blinders. Or maybe it's because I'm only experiencing 1/3 of the game :wink:

Just crossed over 200 hours, and that was with three weeks off in the middle due to travel. I've felt same-priced games were well worth that money when my entire time playing was 1/5 of that. Good show Anet, particularly given I had no interest in this game until the week before early launch.

Culling = 100 people in an area, and the game only renders 50 of them. Except some of the 50 you can't see, can see you, and vice versa, and people are fighting things they can't see, or getting hit by things they can't see, and it's a mess.

WTF?! I assume that was discovered in beta and yet they went with it anyway?

It's not something that is so much "discovered" as "intentional". To reduce lag or whatever.

It actually was worse in WvW at one point than it is now; it is still quite bad at times. (It happens in PVE too, this was one of the major complaints about this weekend's event.)

EDIT: I should add, those numbers were pulled out of my ass to an extent. I don't know to what degree that it happens as a % of people or whatever, just that it happens and affects the game very noticeably.

It's terrible. Go to your borderlands or to a borderlands where you hold the garrison. Go to the inner wall and go up to the corner facing the north east - the tower there. Now, look to the south towards the wood-planked walkways. You can't see any enemies standing on that. Look to the west at the tower opposite of you. You can't see anyone there.

Now imagine that there are 100+ people fighting a 3 way fight there. You can see some spell effects but you can't even see half of the friendlies and sometimes zero enemies.

Here's a shot from the worst night - there was a bug that made it so once a character was removed from your renderer they never reappeared. The results were pretty comical with only your group remaining visible after about 20 minutes. There's also video of this night from Freelancer's stream - the date on this file is Oct 7th.

http://imgur.com/KTjcZ (http://imgur.com/KTjcZ)

edit: In related news I just logged out of planetside 2 in disgust - there is MASSIVE culling there too! Granted, this was an enormous fight but no enemies loaded further than 15 ft away. And you couldn't shoot in that general direction and actually hit them. They'd just fade into being suddenly and roll you over. (these were crouched engineers or heavy assaults - not lights or infs)

I can understand it being intentional, but for them to get through Beta without a permanent solution is clownshoes.

So you can hit all these people with AOEs, but not with direct stuff, and you're not sure if they're hitting you and it's all just a big CF?

Glad I was holding off on WvW.

It's not solvable, it's an inherent problem of large player count battles. You get [some number] of enemies in a tight space and you start lagging out some percentage of them. Reducing the number of entities you are asking the client to track and render protects them from gameplay degradation. It's why Eve battles lagged (and it was a lot simple visually and spatially) and why it happens in planetside 2 as well, plus why most first person shooters have very small teams.

Guys, this dude knows the solution to all problems in GW2.

(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/829607/awesome/claims/idunwanna.jpg)

With the amount of post infractions due to negative commentaries on official forum, one wonders if this is like a plant marketing or some shit.

A few million paying $25/month. Riiight.

This reminds me of a few people crying for 'elite servers' on the SWG and WOW forums: only accessible if you pay a $50+/month sub fee, but you'd get personalized events, better CS, etc. In reality it's just elitism and people wanting to distance themselves from the unwashed masses or something.


Actually, didn't EQ (or EQ2) do something like this? Or am I confusing it with the exchange servers?

Ya EQ did it and they kept up the personalized stuff for maybe a month or two. But they kept charging a premium for a couple of years.

I didn't play this for ages and then logged in on the last day of the event.  I also have no clue about fractals (I have a generator program though!) or anything else.  However, having read reviews of the event here and elsewhere, it sounds as if it was a mess and people are angry.  Makes me wonder if this is heading to the graveyard soon.  Sheesh... that means another game that's new to me but dead to everyone else!  That happens way too much!  No worries, though.  I'll be back in the US in December and it'll be all BLOPS and Borderlands 2, all the time!

Cliffside could take a while if people are bad at easy jumping puzzles and can't figure out the mechanics nor how to swap the hot potato.  A group that's run it even once before should breeze through it.

I've run Cliffside twice as fast at level 9 than at level 2; experience makes a huge difference even with double the mobs and much more boss health.  btw, little tip with cliffside: as a dagger ele, I stayed behind at the first arm to occupy the mob while the other four went to the next arm.  Held them off until three came back and hit the seal again and I stayed behind again.  I was just downed when the group came back for the last hit, but kept the mobs from regen'ing the seal.