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Lyer posted:I think Anet drank too much of the grognard kool aid. Yes people needed more things to do, but making it a larger grind doesn't constitute more content. It's the eternal curse of persistent online games that make money by encouraging people to continue to play. They need to make sure players keep playing so they keep buying things from the gem store. How does a developer keep them engaged? Option 1: tons and tons of content. Problem is, they've got finite resources--there's no way they'd be able to produce enough unique, varied, and good content that it'd keep players engaged long enough for the next content drop. So you end up at option 2: stretch the content we can realistically create by encouraging repetition. This isn't inherently a bad thing, at least in my opinion, though I know a lot of players and pundits think it's a manipulative Skinner box even in its most benign form. Where Guild Wars 2 stumbles here isn't that it chose this option--frankly, it was the only realistic one, given the apparent difficulties ArenaNet has pushing out new content at a good rate--but that it doesn't pace rewards well. It never has, really, but to a degree that's been okay, because enough of the content has been fun enough that players (like me) come back regularly to play some more. Heart of Thorns fails that second part--so much of the content is so repetitive, and so difficult to actually succeed at, that it really draws attention to how poorly-paced the rewards are (two blues and a green, anyone?). They've got two options again (well, I guess three, if we're including "things are actually fine financially so nothing actually needs to change from ArenaNet's perspective" as an option). They can either keep the lackluster content they have but improve the pacing of the rewards (GIVING IN TO CASUALS) or improve the content and do a better job of rewarding players for doing things that are actually fun. That second one would take effort and resources, though, quite a lot of them, so I'm not holding my breath.
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Nov 24, 2015 23:48
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Visidan posted:I remember when guild decorations were going to cost karma. Now you need 5000 gold for one person to learn scribe, then a further 200g for this Lmao, time and money well spent.
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Nov 24, 2015 23:49
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Captain McStabbin posted:A clock to see how much time you've wasted and a globe to see where you could've gone instead. Clock doesn't even work. So uh, nope.
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Nov 24, 2015 23:49
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The scribe thing strike me as stupid because like, I get that they wanted it to be a group thing for the guild to work on, but what happens if that guy leaves the guild or dies or whatever? Doesn't seem well thought out.
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Nov 24, 2015 23:49
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Killing dungeons, wvw and fractals didn't help anything.
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Nov 24, 2015 23:49
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There was always a lot of apprehension when anet announced HOT at $50 and we were told it would contain 4 zones. Supporters and people who did the preview weekends assured us that these zones were huge – 2 or 3 times the size of a regular zone! It's basically 12 new zones! Verticality! – and instead we got 4 slippery turds of overtuned boring event chains combined with a grind that would make most MMOs blush. Personally, I enjoy the rush of 'being there' when new content drops, exploring and finding everything out with guild members before the inevitable Dulfy guide drops (and I'm astounded they all took as long as they did). In that sense, I guess I can't say I didn't "get my money's worth", but $50 was incredibly steep for what we actually got. I feel a bit like one of those idiots who bought a ~*~ goon mystery box ~*~ from SAMart and were astounded to discover that it contained a 35c whoopee cushion, 2 pairs of plastic vampire teeth, and a yellowing N*SYNC CD.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:04
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I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a huge drop off soon, I think people are getting fatigued with the game, the grind that's meant to keep people playing longer is starting to turn people away from it because it's so daunting.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:13
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Harrow posted:They can either keep the lackluster content they have but improve the pacing of the rewards (GIVING IN TO CASUALS) or improve the content and do a better job of rewarding players for doing things that are actually fun. That second one would take effort and resources, though, quite a lot of them, so I'm not holding my breath. I honestly think that the latter wouldn't be that resource intensive, but it'd require them to have a clear design vision and prioritize their resources in an effective manner. How many game systems have been released with a great deal of song and dance about how they're the Next Big Thing, only for these systems to be dumped by the wayside? Dungeons had their throats slit; Fractals haven't been meaningfully updated in 2 years; WvW got jumbled around to the point where no one seems to actually play it anymore; sPVP gets poked with a stick every so often to make sure it's still breathing; the Living Story has a thoroughly ironic name; etc. Their latest game system, Raids, is going to appeal to a paltry percentage of the total people who actually play. All of this paints less of a picture of a lack of resources or willful maliciousness (e.g. designing the game systems to squeeze as much profit out of people for as little effort as possible) and more plain-and-simple design incompetence. No one at the top end seems to know what kind of a game Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be or what you're supposed to do when you log in, so you end up with game design more reminiscent of someone picking stocks by tossing darts at a newspaper than a thought-out effort with resources prioritized appropriately. Vermain fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 00:13
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Brain In A Jar posted:a yellowing N*SYNC CD. watch it mister
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Nov 25, 2015 00:15
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I wish HoT came with an N*SYNC CD.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:18
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Speaking of grinds I haven't even collected a full set of bladed armor yet. Not only is the idea of getting 2500 airship parts daunting (especially since you are essentially at the mercy of how often you get an cache/bag with 25 parts in it instead of 3 or 5), but I have yet to even be in a single Verdant Brink that got anywhere close to tier 4. "Play during prime time, try to get taxied to an active map" are not useful advice to me, and considering the amount of time you have to invest to make sure you get high enough participation for both day and night, it is just a poo poo show. I haven't moved on to any of the other zones besides cursory exploration involved in doing the story because I still want to get my anti-hug armor.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:22
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it'd be less of a chore listening to that cd than trying to get the guild armor
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Nov 25, 2015 00:22
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Kenshin posted:On the upside, if they follow the pattern they had in GW1, the next expansion will be great. Except Factions had a bunch of awesome poo poo like Alliance Battles, Fort Aspenwood, and Jade Quarry. HoT had nothing even close to those.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:24
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUu7TqlDDpg e: if you imagine he's singing to Colin it's a really great song LITERALLY A BIRD fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 00:24
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Excuse me HoT has Stronghold.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:25
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Stronghold is a bit poo poo though. Factions was cool, even if it was a bitch to navigate. Useless maps, it shares with HoT. I just got booted to the login screen for player inactivity while in the loading screen for a pvp match. My team are probably 5 minutes into the game shittalking the idiot who left them 4v5 while I'm sitting here like a lemon watching a little yellow circle say "you might get into spirit watch soon, honest!" edit: lmao just loaded in to the map after the game had ended and everyone else had dced. about 5 seconds later it timed out and i get sent back to heart of the mists Deformed Church fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 00:28
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Waci posted:Except Factions had a bunch of awesome poo poo like Alliance Battles, Fort Aspenwood, and Jade Quarry. HoT had nothing even close to those.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:31
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The grind is real and its becoming a nightmare.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:33
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Harrow posted:It's the eternal curse of persistent online games that make money by encouraging people to continue to play. My experience so far, like 10 hours into HoT, is that I'd be happy as a clam if I just got the first skill in each mastery tree right off the bat. Give me the basic tools to have fun with your goddamned game, ANet, then take me on Mr Bones' Wild Grind. The fact that I had to spend the better part of an hour trying to navigate Verdant Brink without a glider is stupid, and the fact that I can't do most of the boss content in the zone without first grinding out bouncing mushrooms and updrafts is extra stupid. Like 90% of what I want out of HoT is to glide around pretty zones for a while and putter around doing meta events. I don't really care about progression or grinding for ascendeds or whatever new treadmill poo poo they added to HoT, I just want to wander around looking at cool set pieces and playing events a couple hours a night. One problem I really do have is that I can't just wander around the zone looking at things. If you're not in a group and doing meta events then you're dead as gently caress in these zones. E: I haven't really looked into it at all, what's so grindy about HoT? All I've heard is that ascendeds suck rear end to make (nothing new) and that you need them for Raids (not surprising, if the "difficult endgame content" were tuned to be difficult but doable for exotics then ascended gear would make it really really easy) Magres fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 00:33
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Visidan posted:and a gift exploration for this 
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Nov 25, 2015 00:33
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poo poo I'm still level 9 mastery and every time I come to this thread to read up on updates or what's coming up it just makes me wanna log in less, don't even see the point of getting log in rewards, don't feel like leveling alts anymore and I don't need any mats for anything since I'm not going to craft twilight or anything really, hell I was thinking of making some sinister stuff for my fire warrior but I have the levels/mats for that at least but again, what would be the point since I'm barely playing the game. I loving hate the new maps, they're pretty and the verticality is a cool concept but everything else about them sucks and I don't wanna log in just to spend god knows how long hoping to find a good instance, I don't know what Anet was thinking with that poo poo. I don't get the grognard pandering at all, are there really so many of them playing this game?
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Nov 25, 2015 00:35
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loving idiot devs actually read their own forums and reddit, without taking it with a grain of salt, is the reason
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Nov 25, 2015 00:37
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Alteisen posted:I don't get the grognard pandering at all, are there really so many of them playing this game? They're absolutely not, which is why their recent design decisions point more towards a failure at the top-level design end than explicit catering to a large demographic. They just really do not know what the game Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be about, or who plays it (and for what reasons).
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Nov 25, 2015 00:38
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I think it's really easy for developers whose lives revolve around a game to lose perspective of how much most people are willing to play, and too distracted by how much their "whales" (the people who spend gobs of money in the gem store) play. (yes Arus I know you spend a lot and don't poopsock but I feel like you've gotta be an outlier)
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Nov 25, 2015 00:39
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Alteisen posted:poo poo I'm still level 9 mastery and every time I come to this thread to read up on updates or what's coming up it just makes me wanna log in less, don't even see the point of getting log in rewards, don't feel like leveling alts anymore and I don't need any mats for anything since I'm not going to craft twilight or anything really, hell I was thinking of making some sinister stuff for my fire warrior but I have the levels/mats for that at least but again, what would be the point since I'm barely playing the game. Dude just look at the screenshot above your post.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:39
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Vermain posted:They're absolutely not, which is why their recent design decisions point more towards a failure at the top-level design end than explicit catering to a large demographic. They just really do not know what the game Guild Wars 2 is supposed to be about, or who plays it (and for what reasons). Lol they had the wildstar dev team develop HoT
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Nov 25, 2015 00:40
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Lyer posted:loving idiot devs actually read their own forums and reddit, without taking it with a grain of salt, is the reason Reddit is like 90% complaining about this poo poo right now, and has been since we started learning about HoT. If anything, they need to listen to it more.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:49
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mike12345 posted:Dude just look at the screenshot above your post. I saw, its pretty insane, a clock and world globe for all that effort.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:51
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The lack of dev posts/communication in general is super awful too, as someone said. I guess now that the hype is down and the product's shipped they've lost interest. Hell, even the anet tagged guys in the game don't seems to talk to anyone.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:56
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Just wait til it comes out that they're all run ragged trying to improve everything, so busy that they can't take, and you're all sat around making GBS threads all over their difficult endeavours. For shame, goons. For shame.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:00
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Brain In A Jar posted:There was always a lot of apprehension when anet announced HOT at $50 and we were told it would contain 4 zones. Supporters and people who did the preview weekends assured us that these zones were huge – 2 or 3 times the size of a regular zone! It's basically 12 new zones! Verticality! – and instead we got 4 slippery turds of overtuned boring event chains combined with a grind that would make most MMOs blush.  to finish that.I'm probably going to be around for a bit on the weekends but other that that I might take a break from the game until they iron out the bugs (lol). e: Illuyankas posted:Just wait til it comes out that they're all run ragged trying to improve everything, so busy that they can't take, and you're all sat around making GBS threads all over their difficult endeavours. For shame, goons. For shame. Mercurius fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 01:01
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i'm still logging in and having a blast suck it nerds
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Nov 25, 2015 01:04
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On the upside HoT got me playing enough that I got my mesmer to 80 and fully unlocked chronomancer (after fully unlocking berserker) and my thief from 30->61, and I can still enjoy logging in occasionally, I just don't really have the urge to play a whole lot because doing anything more would require a much steeper time commitment (it'd be super cool to get a machined shield to compliment my machined sword and finish up Chronologicus but at grinding out those last few masteries or finding more reclaimed metal plates), and if I'm not playing much I'm not sure why I would bother spending money in the gem store. I get it that I can make steady progress on that stuff when I log in just spending 30 minutes to an hour but it feels so distant I feel like I can get more satisfaction sooner from other games.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:08
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Mercurius posted:All of the content Devs have dropped off the face of the earth and there's no communication about what any of them are doing other than stuff we hear secondhand. Super Adventure Box confirmed
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Nov 25, 2015 01:14
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Just hopped in this thread to see what you guys think of HoT so far. How convenient that this page seems to be mostly bitching about it being pretty much what I was expecting. Guess I made the right choice in not bothering. It's a shame GW2 is such wasted potential because you're all mostly pretty cool dudes and dudettes who I like playing video games with.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:45
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This is why some of us got wary when the news about raids came out. That hardcore mentality is like a virus.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:45
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Vargs posted:you're all mostly pretty cool dudes and dudettes who I like playing video games with. Do you not play games with anyone else?
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Nov 25, 2015 01:49
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Game seems to be down. What am I supposed to do with my time? OTHER things? Ugh.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:52
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Generic Octopus posted:Do you not play games with anyone else? He's probably not taxi'd into the right map to play with others.
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Nov 25, 2015 01:57
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Some tips to get rid of the grind from someone who almost has the HOTS masteries all unlocked with some occasional play. Get exp boosters! use your massive unused stockpile, buy them with laurels or do WvW Dailies because the chests give a 20 minute exp boost when opened, also buy up some cheap food and halloween utility consumables in bulk, you can also pick up a 24 hour exp boost from the guild tavern if it's upgraded. Pop your exp boosters before opening reward chests, you can have 4-5ish unopened chests at a time before they open themselves. Grab some random people and do every hero challenge boss that you know how to reach, auric basin has 5-6 quick to reach ones and verdant has a veteran fight that is right below the entrance, they have good rewards every day and massive exp. Do adventures that you can consistently gold medal, once you know how to do them, you can gold them every time after, verdant has adventures north and south of the entrance that are easy to gold once you know what to do and you REALLY want to have a exp boost active when you gold them the first time because you get 80k exp. Check LFG occasionally for people taxi'ing to meta events in auric/dragon stand, you can find invites to tahrir/octovine and get credit on all 4 of the events for massive exp and then open 20+ chests worth a lot of gold and a hero challenge that will be zerged down at the end. I could blow through half a 4 million exp mastery in a hour of doing hero challenges/adventures and a meta event per day. Baron Von Pigeon posted:I haven't moved on to any of the other zones besides cursory exploration involved in doing the story because I still want to get my anti-hug armor. I did the same thing trying to 100% the first zone before moving on, but I'd highly recommend exploring Auric as soon as you can, the meta event is very rewarding. And if you can stand getting through tangled depths and finding the ley line tunnels, you can get to dragon's stand so you can taxi in to people doing the map. Ra Ra Rasputin fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Nov 25, 2015 |
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Nov 25, 2015 02:01
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