Originally posted by Eivi This is what happened with WarZ. Not that im comparing Anet with the crappy banHammerPoint, but its a slippery slope.
Lol, ArenaNet has a far better rep then almost every other MMO dev out there so I would say even mentioning that disgrace of a game in this thread doesn't amount to anything. Hell, WarZ can't compare to anything...that company and game are probably one of the worst examples of pathetic game development in history. ArenaNet's mistakes are more on the line of Blizzards. Blizzard is much more known for promising things they can't deliver on though.
Eh... sorry have to disagree in some part. A bit over-exagerated with issues that every game has (bugs and the likes) and the grind concept works for gear as well as leveling so its kind of silly to mark them both. Still I digress as that isn't the main idea of your thread.
I agree with your forum censoring. Its pretty blatent that Anet is attempting to do this, which to be 'fair' plenty of other companies do the same though ANet is definently on the harsher side of this. You can usually tell quite quickly when a majority of posative and often pointless threads exist while those entailing issues are quickly deleted and taken away. Its propeganda and it exists on virtually any official forum with GW2 having one of the more 'harsh' ones around.
The thing is they SHOULD allow these threads to appear and they SHOULD address them first hand rather then try to 'push the dust off in the corner'. Its better to allow people to state problems and push you will fix them rather then to leave them concealed away as if ignorance is bliss. ANet to me at launch (though it has gotten a little better) has seemed to demonstrait a very direct 'tone' about them with the 'we know best' approach which personally to me was quite strong and really bothered me a lot. Don't get me wrong, Apple does exactly the same thing and they have success, but its really not a great quality to have when it involves a game which revolves around a player having to spend time within a game, particularly with a lot of competition and far more advanced areas to deal with then simply the Operating System of a phone. While they have been addressing it a little, they still could use a bit more and by far censoring the forums should be cut out.
Theres a big difference between closing a thread blatently for spam and ripping it down to increase a posative outlook on a game. Chances are if you use the 'spam' excuse on a negative thread yet you can see a dozen pointless posative threads about the same deal, you can tell pretty easily that its not being very fairly monitored. Its not exactly 'reliable' to find any site that would so easily give negative and posative input a chance, but some sites just go a bit to far on one side and I do feel GW2 forums from my observation and words I've heard from others seem to be to far on one side.
Oh noes another GW2 bashing thread. The IDC (intentional disinformation campaign) rolls on.
Moderation always involves censorship if the ideas are reduntant, flame-bait or left to no constructive discussion. Saying a game is bad as "fact" with no room to discuss isn't appropriate for a forum. It's better suited for Twitter, not a forum.
I truly think some people are shocked that an MMO finally has a strong community and following this far after launch. To combat it, a constant barrage of threads are heaved at it in an attempt to shake it out of it's place in MMO history. Lumping it with shrinking games and other financial failures cannot stop the momentum this game has garnered. While it's far from perfect, it's certainly not the blight on the MMOsphere that so many posters here seem to want to label it.
In spite of the concerted IDC, the game is gaining in popularity.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
Originally posted by Eir_S I have no problem with diminishing returns, especially after the 50th time seeing someone I know is an 80 farming the troll or the boar in Queensdale, or Maw in Wayfarer. I mean, come on...
Why cant i farm? Why cant i grind?
devs these days preach 'flexibility' but i cant use bread and butter tactics anymore?
The problem with farming is that some areas will naturally give better rewards than others. Furthermore, players will figure out which areas those are, and if there's no anti-farming code in place, players will farm them endlessly.
That means that everyone else either has to endlessly loop a tiny subset of the game's content or else gain loot at a slower rate because they're not farming. Either option is terrible game design.
Even with properly implemented (which is hard to do, by the way) diminishing returns on loot, you can farm one area endlessly if you want. It's just that you won't get greater rewards than players who are going out and playing the game to have fun. And you shouldn't.
I am having a love hate relationship with GW2 as of late. So much of it I really love but so much of the game is broken to me. Dungeons are not broken to be because of loot but because of how the community plays them. Every team has everyone running from boss to boss not playing the game. And its ANets fault and they are more focused on fixing loot then the game. This saddens me.
A game I love has become to fustrating to play. Sad thing is I think GW2 needs a major overhaul to fix it.
Absolutely true. There's still some people who just don't want to accept that they have terrible management over there at Arenanet and they don't want people who are pointing out these very honest reviews of what's actually happening in the game.
There are three things that are missing from your list tho.
1: permaDR, hundreds of people have reported having permaDR on their account across all characters since November but they say they love us farmers on reddit.
2: just after the annoucnement by Jon Peters that they love legit farmer players they nerf the loot on the only dragon event left that was dropping anything so now all you will get are worthless items barely worth over a silver each. No one buys that crap on the TP.
3: instead of doing what we suggested they do with the T6 materials because T6 materials are so extremely rare one can't find them anymore in the open world or you get hit with DR before you can get a stack of 20, or you have to get bags that drop random loot often the items you AREN'T looking for mostly T5 not T6 (These bags have a double randomness, they randomly drop, and then their loot is random when you open them so it's like a double lottery.) Instead of adding T6 materials to the laurel system like they should so people can actually GET the powerful blood they need, they make two more random loot boxes! One for laurels from the vendor in towns and one for karma a the entrance camp to the most dangerous places in Orr.
smdh.
what makes things worse imo is that they STILL have 2 people working on the class balance. seriously? 2 people. engineers have 1 new bug every week.....wth.
You know I was really hard on EA (SWTOR) for not learning a single thing from mmo history when they developed their game but they had an excuse they actually never made an mmo before, Arenanet doesn't have that excuse. There is absolutely NO excuse for using DR or for not hiring enough programmers to offset the number of bugs you have floating in your game Anet, absolutely none!
No constructive dialogue can be had on game forums without forum mods infracting posters, banning posters, and deleting threads.
Players, in general, have a right to be concerned. Anet's commitments (implied or explicit) have been falling like a house of cards since their acquisition.
No grind? Gone - its all grind at level 80 now.
No gear treadmill? - Gone ever since ascended gear was introduced (FotM gear which is now going to be made available in world for daily "laurels" etc
Good wvwvw system? Gone - the wvwvw has been so impacted by flaws in the game engine (culling and rendering issues) that its become a joke when you "fight" invisible mobs. Also - the free server transfers allowed until recently have made some servers ghost towns as players have fled to what are considered "the best" wvwvw servers.
Quality? Gone - bugs that were reported in Beta are still in-game and new bugs are added every release.
Commitments? Don't believe it. Players complained about elite, veteran, champion mobs because they were dropping NO loot or inferior loot yet require a group (or a high DPS solo toon with time to kill) to take down. Anet said they would adjust the loot drops - never happened. Players complained about the drop rate for "lodestones" - something needed by the hundreds for various recipies. Anet said they would fix the drop rate, rolled out a fix that actually corrected this, then rolled it back saying lodestone drops were increased too much and this was impacting the economy. So we are back to where we started on that issue.
Diminishing Returns - farm an area too long and the good drops disappear. You must change zones and "work off" your DR time. This was supposedly done to combat bots. Problem - bots are largely gone now but the DR code remains. Problem - there is no CD timer or other indicator in-game for a player to tell when they have "worked off" their DR and thus its all guess work (assumption is an hour is needed). Problem - high level crafting mats only drop in high level zones, so when DR kicks in just what the hell are you supposed to do? Go to a lowbie zone to farm mats you do not need? And these high level mats are needed in the hundreds to work towards a "legendary" so really this is just a very annoying time sink foisted on the players.
New Content - every piece of new content added to-date has been a cluster. Massive lag, one time events that players miss when the game server lags out and DCs them, event timing for 1-time events that are not repetable and not conducive to all players in game etc. Its a joke really. Which is probably why Anet MISSED their delivery date for the February content release.
Pre-cursors. Needed by anyone who wants a legendary. Bugs and exploits allowed some to get these easily (such as the final Karka event where it was raining precursors for a small time window) while others can only sit and stew as the prices for these on trading post have gone up hundreds of gold month over month due to near impossibility of getting one.
When any issue, concern, question is posed around all of these game issues (and others) in forums the mods react like flies on crap and BAM - infractions, bans, deletions etc.
Very similar to what happened on The Secret World forum boards before that game imploded and went B2P.
Having been a player since pre-release -3 and having logged over 1000 in-game hrs (3 80s plus several other toons in development) I have seen the game decline first hand, have seen servers become ghost towns, and have seen the forum mods transform into hitler jugend. So beware - this game is begining to circle the drain and only fanbois are welcome on Gw2 forum.
Anet has stated they have no intentions of introducing a new gear type in 2013. They are going to continue to expand on Ascended. Whether this remains for 2014, who knows.
And they are working to address culling. They've recently introduced a patch (in the January update) that does deal with culling a little bit. Culling still exists though. It's either you have culling, or you literally won't be able to move due to the lag. I still remember the pre-optimized WvW in beta. My computer hated me when you had 100-200 people in one area fighting, with siege blasts constantly going off. Right now, Anet has it loading in low-rez models until the client can manage to render the full-res character model. In fights where there are large amounts of people, yes there will still be culling. Also, remember this, large amounts of people disappearing != culling. Mesmers have a skill that allows them to turn large numbers of people invisible.
...There are always bugs. There are less bugs now than on launch. And of course bugs are introduced with each release. They are releasing new content and features. Population does affect some bugs believe it or not. Everything could be working on small scale, but as soon as they release it to the masses, everything just breaks apart. This is just the natural process of MMOs. Anyone who expects any release to go smoothly with zero problems should not be playing MMOs. Heck, even WoW still has problems with patch releases and expansion releases. If you want zero bugs when a new content patch is released, you are in the wrong genre bud. MMOs are an entirely different beast from your single player games.
I'll trust Anet when it comes to the in game economy over the players. I don't think ArenaNet ever promises to "fix" something unless it's actually broken. They might look into it, and reevaluate whether the numbers are good where they are at or not.
ArenaNet has stated that there is no such thing as diminishing returns in the game. However, it has been confirmed since before launch that the frequency of reward is correlates with your level and the zone you are in. The greater the level difference between the zone you are in and your actually level, the less fequently you will be reward. This has been known since before launch. Otherwise it's just random chance. Could it be that some rare things are actually just that, rare? Everyone being able to get it a rare object after 3 kills can't exactly be considered rare, can it?
Now... I might be mistaken, but is it not still February? Last time I checked, we still have 20 days left of February. They never said a specific date in February, just that there would be an update in February...
* Pre-cursors: Last time I checked, Legendary weapons were suppose to be very difficult to get. They aren't suppose to be something you get overnight, or even with a week worth of work. Yes, some people get lucky. Some people are there at the right place at the right time. So what? That's life. They are suppose to take months to get for the average user. There are some who will get it in a matter of weeks, just as there will be some where it'll take years to get legendary gear.
ArenaNet stated that their forums would be HEAVILY moderated before they even released them. They don't want the cesspool other game forums turn into. Consider moving to a less moderated community if you want less moderation. However, ArenaNet doesn't just get rid of criticism. If yoru critcism is constructive, and is not a repost, then it won't be deleted. If you go in there "x sucks," or "this system is horrible," it'll probably be deleted.
And FYI, an infraction != something bad. It's more of something used to let you know that there was some moderation done, such as moving your thread, or closing your thread because it's a duplicate.
I am legitimately curious what people posted when they come to other forums saying they were suspended from GW2 forums. I guarantee you that 99% of the time that it was not for no reason. Most of the time I think people are use to not having to censor themselves on other forums, and they post on GW2 forums as they would post on other forums. Yes, you can't call someone an idiot, stupid, etc..
I've seen plenty of people who post legitimate suggestions or concerns. But these are posts that are respectful and constructive.
No gear treadmill? - Gone ever since ascended gear was introduced (FotM gear which is now going to be made available in world for daily "laurels" etc
Commitments? Don't believe it. Players complained about elite, veteran, champion mobs because they were dropping NO loot or inferior loot yet require a group (or a high DPS solo toon with time to kill) to take down. Anet said they would adjust the loot drops - never happened. Players complained about the drop rate for "lodestones" - something needed by the hundreds for various recipies. Anet said they would fix the drop rate, rolled out a fix that actually corrected this, then rolled it back saying lodestone drops were increased too much and this was impacting the economy. So we are back to where we started on that issue.
Diminishing Returns - farm an area too long and the good drops disappear. You must change zones and "work off" your DR time. This was supposedly done to combat bots. Problem - bots are largely gone now but the DR code remains. Problem - there is no CD timer or other indicator in-game for a player to tell when they have "worked off" their DR and thus its all guess work (assumption is an hour is needed). Problem - high level crafting mats only drop in high level zones, so when DR kicks in just what the hell are you supposed to do? Go to a lowbie zone to farm mats you do not need? And these high level mats are needed in the hundreds to work towards a "legendary" so really this is just a very annoying time sink foisted on the players..
I am by no means a huge fan of GW2, but couldn't help but notice.........
So you want a game with no grind or gear treadmill where you can grind mobs for superior loot or farm for good drops, like some sort of treadmill to get increasingly better items?
Couldn't help but notice that you mistook Grind with Farm. there's a huge difference between spending 1 hour farming the items you need to craft armor weapons upgrades in two days and grinding for 16 months to get the items you need from vendors or relying on RNG. That's the difference.
The first month I made it to 80 and thank goddess they hadn't turned DR on by then or I would never have geared my two level 80s when i did.
Let me just say, he's not just talking about precursors or legendaries you can't even gather 30 powerful bloods by killing the mobs bloods are supposed to fall off of anymore to make a single set of exotic armor, Lost shores is now nerfed too. That's the concern and mentioning anything about it get infractions and bans they find ANY and ALL excuses to infract and delete your message even in the forum posts that are supposed to talk about DR and loot drops they do it. It's ridiculous.
OR they insult the players by saying that no loot dropping for them doesn't really happen, it's perceived or that it's an Xfiles conspiracy theory that they nerfed loot in november, all of the players who've been there since launch know it's happened, the only reason the whole community isn't complaining is due to fanboyism and people can get a few decent drops in dungeons still but even those boss chests have disappeared recently due to DR.
Let me just say, he's not just talking about precursors or legendaries you can't even gather 30 powerful bloods by killing the mobs bloods are supposed to fall off of anymore, Lost shores is now nerfed too. That's the concern and mentioning anything about it get infractions and bans they find ANY and ALL excuses to infract and delete your message even in the forum posts that are supposed to talk about DR and loot drops they do it. It's ridiculous.
OR they insult the players by saying that no loot dropping for them doesn't really happen, it's perceived or that it's an Xfiles conspiracy theory that they nerfed loot in november, all of the players who've been there since launch know it's happened, the only reason the whole community isn't complaining is due to fanboyism and people can get a few decent drops in dungeons still but even those boss chests have disappeared recently due to DR.
That's becafuse moderation is usually a shitty job and few of the involved people have the integrity and sense of justice to even try to create a good system. There are exceptions though and MMORPG forum is one of them from my experience.
Let me just say, he's not just talking about precursors or legendaries you can't even gather 30 powerful bloods by killing the mobs bloods are supposed to fall off of anymore, Lost shores is now nerfed too. That's the concern and mentioning anything about it get infractions and bans they find ANY and ALL excuses to infract and delete your message even in the forum posts that are supposed to talk about DR and loot drops they do it. It's ridiculous.
OR they insult the players by saying that no loot dropping for them doesn't really happen, it's perceived or that it's an Xfiles conspiracy theory that they nerfed loot in november, all of the players who've been there since launch know it's happened, the only reason the whole community isn't complaining is due to fanboyism and people can get a few decent drops in dungeons still but even those boss chests have disappeared recently due to DR.
That's becafuse moderation is usually a shitty job and few of the involved people have the integrity and sense of justice to even try to create a good system. There are exceptions though and MMORPG forum is one of them from my experience.
What's sad is the Liaison and a developer in the thread I'm linking below are the ones who've insulted the players about the loot drops. We're not so distracted that we don't notice when we don't get loot, seriously, no one is so distracted in a game with shinies that they don't notice when they don't get the drops they were getting before.
What frightens me is this. Supposedly their programs that collect data don't show any percentage of the population:
Having PermaDR across the account of all characters
receiving DR too early (every 8th kill)
lower drop rates on items
DR causing chests to disappear in dungeons and dragon events post large boss fights
lower salvage rates of Globs of Ecto
All easily visible to the players but we're supposed to believe them when they say they don't see anything at all. riiiiight.
That thread btw is the second one to reach over 1200 posts since November, they closed the last one.
I AM a player I've been playing since BWE2 and I used to be a fanboy, but I can tell you the OP absolutely correct, there's something seriously wrong with their management personel.
Originally posted by Eir_S I have no problem with diminishing returns, especially after the 50th time seeing someone I know is an 80 farming the troll or the boar in Queensdale, or Maw in Wayfarer. I mean, come on...
Why cant i farm? Why cant i grind?
devs these days preach 'flexibility' but i cant use bread and butter tactics anymore?
you can grind all you want. The problem is when someone chooses to grind, and then QQ on every forum or every other game chat that X game sux because its a grind fest. If you choose to grind, thats your preference, not the only thing the game has to offer.
Since the first original GW , Anet always took measures against farming
Doing some research instead of hype always helps (you save time and money)
Anet will constantly nerf or strenghten certain classes , hate them as much as you like but in that department theyre very good
...also called balance
seems your issue is you cant have the walk in the park
I was citing items I've seen in the forum boards for the most part. If I wanted the walk in the park I'd be playing panda game on WOW. Actually - I am fairly bored with GW2 at the moment. The dungeons are not hard the 100th time you run them, and wvwvw is the same every single week.
The one issue I do have is with farming/loot tables. The intent here appears to be to provide a massive time sink versus any interesting content or encounter. If you have been in Orr recently you will know what I mean - large #s in the loot corridor and a few DEs close to it - rest of the zone is pretty empty. It gets boring.
1. Those are ArenaNet's forums, they can ban you for posting on a Tuesday. Official game forums are either a cesspool of critism, or complete fanboyism. There are no inbetweens. If you are looking for actual data besides whether the servers are up or down on an official forum, you are wasting your time.
2. Why are you complaining about gear? Gear is the least important part. All dungeons, story, and exploration can be done with found and quest drops. PvP is normalized gear. All grinding is for cosmetic crap that doesn't effect gameplay in the least.
Point 1 - quite correct. My experience is mods can be over zealous or more accomodating, and in Gw2 I believe its the former.
Point 2 - yes again. When you run out of content, having done all the dungeons and jumping puzzles and have 5 crafts at 400 etc. there is not much left by cosmetics. So its a choice between swinging an ugly weapon or using something that at least looks cool. Legendaries fall into that same category - one reason I don't care if I ever get one. I went for easier items - Vision of the Mists, Corrupted Greatbow etc. - nice looks, a lot less grind.
Oh noes another GW2 bashing thread. The IDC (intentional disinformation campaign) rolls on.
Moderation always involves censorship if the ideas are reduntant, flame-bait or left to no constructive discussion. Saying a game is bad as "fact" with no room to discuss isn't appropriate for a forum. It's better suited for Twitter, not a forum.
I truly think some people are shocked that an MMO finally has a strong community and following this far after launch. To combat it, a constant barrage of threads are heaved at it in an attempt to shake it out of it's place in MMO history. Lumping it with shrinking games and other financial failures cannot stop the momentum this game has garnered. While it's far from perfect, it's certainly not the blight on the MMOsphere that so many posters here seem to want to label it.
In spite of the concerted IDC, the game is gaining in popularity.
You miss the point - purposfully I believe. The General Discussion group should be for just that, yet if anyone posts something that calls out a specific feature, issue, problem, concern etc. more often than not the post disappears quickly. Some threads do get merged, but that is a minority because some concepts expressed in forums simply disappear and are not represented in any merged thread that can be located.
Concurrently - you have people posting inane things like a recent post about a bow that supposedly shoots rainbow unicorns (wtf?) and these live a happy unproductive life in the general discussion folder despite the fact the entire thread is garbage.
Originally posted by Eir_S I have no problem with diminishing returns, especially after the 50th time seeing someone I know is an 80 farming the troll or the boar in Queensdale, or Maw in Wayfarer. I mean, come on...
Why cant i farm? Why cant i grind?
devs these days preach 'flexibility' but i cant use bread and butter tactics anymore?
Maybe you can. I haven't heard from anyone (apart from OP), including the players I mentioned, that they were ever getting less loot... perhaps these diminishing returns aren't that diminishing. Still, if they do work the way they're intended, I think they're in effect to keep people doing things outside of starter areas.
Do they even work?
DR is a huge problem I can't even spend more than 20 mins killing mobs in any zone in the game before my drops stop altogether and then I have to wait 1.5 -2 hrs before I can play for another 20mins.
I almost died when I saw this thread was still up. Apparently the mods missed this one. This one shows part of the problem as I too used to get random loot from things like Doe and Mosquitoes instead of where the loot should come from, before my permaDR finally set in that is.
I bought the game for what I thought was World class server vs server warfare.
It turned out Arenanet thought WvW was just a 2 week 24/7 pvp match with the most points winning the match.Ever seen a war decided on a 2 week point total ? You will with this farce.
And crafting turned the game into an asian type grind fest trying to get random drops for hours !!
No constructive dialogue can be had on game forums without forum mods infracting posters, banning posters, and deleting threads.
Players, in general, have a right to be concerned. Anet's commitments (implied or explicit) have been falling like a house of cards since their acquisition.
No grind? Gone - its all grind at level 80 now.
No gear treadmill? - Gone ever since ascended gear was introduced (FotM gear which is now going to be made available in world for daily "laurels" etc
Good wvwvw system? Gone - the wvwvw has been so impacted by flaws in the game engine (culling and rendering issues) that its become a joke when you "fight" invisible mobs. Also - the free server transfers allowed until recently have made some servers ghost towns as players have fled to what are considered "the best" wvwvw servers.
Quality? Gone - bugs that were reported in Beta are still in-game and new bugs are added every release.
Commitments? Don't believe it. Players complained about elite, veteran, champion mobs because they were dropping NO loot or inferior loot yet require a group (or a high DPS solo toon with time to kill) to take down. Anet said they would adjust the loot drops - never happened. Players complained about the drop rate for "lodestones" - something needed by the hundreds for various recipies. Anet said they would fix the drop rate, rolled out a fix that actually corrected this, then rolled it back saying lodestone drops were increased too much and this was impacting the economy. So we are back to where we started on that issue.
Diminishing Returns - farm an area too long and the good drops disappear. You must change zones and "work off" your DR time. This was supposedly done to combat bots. Problem - bots are largely gone now but the DR code remains. Problem - there is no CD timer or other indicator in-game for a player to tell when they have "worked off" their DR and thus its all guess work (assumption is an hour is needed). Problem - high level crafting mats only drop in high level zones, so when DR kicks in just what the hell are you supposed to do? Go to a lowbie zone to farm mats you do not need? And these high level mats are needed in the hundreds to work towards a "legendary" so really this is just a very annoying time sink foisted on the players.
New Content - every piece of new content added to-date has been a cluster. Massive lag, one time events that players miss when the game server lags out and DCs them, event timing for 1-time events that are not repetable and not conducive to all players in game etc. Its a joke really. Which is probably why Anet MISSED their delivery date for the February content release.
Pre-cursors. Needed by anyone who wants a legendary. Bugs and exploits allowed some to get these easily (such as the final Karka event where it was raining precursors for a small time window) while others can only sit and stew as the prices for these on trading post have gone up hundreds of gold month over month due to near impossibility of getting one.
When any issue, concern, question is posed around all of these game issues (and others) in forums the mods react like flies on crap and BAM - infractions, bans, deletions etc.
Very similar to what happened on The Secret World forum boards before that game imploded and went B2P.
Having been a player since pre-release -3 and having logged over 1000 in-game hrs (3 80s plus several other toons in development) I have seen the game decline first hand, have seen servers become ghost towns, and have seen the forum mods transform into hitler jugend. So beware - this game is begining to circle the drain and only fanbois are welcome on Gw2 forum.
Your concerns are just your concerns, most people dont concern themselves with your concerns, because those are preety much non issues.
Oh, and by your definition every MMO out there has this huge issues. Yet some games are still played a lot (WoW, GW2, EvE) so i would say that in some games issues are indeed true and is some they are just overexaggeration like your post.
No gear treadmill? - Gone ever since ascended gear was introduced (FotM gear which is now going to be made available in world for daily "laurels" etc
Commitments? Don't believe it. Players complained about elite, veteran, champion mobs because they were dropping NO loot or inferior loot yet require a group (or a high DPS solo toon with time to kill) to take down. Anet said they would adjust the loot drops - never happened. Players complained about the drop rate for "lodestones" - something needed by the hundreds for various recipies. Anet said they would fix the drop rate, rolled out a fix that actually corrected this, then rolled it back saying lodestone drops were increased too much and this was impacting the economy. So we are back to where we started on that issue.
Diminishing Returns - farm an area too long and the good drops disappear. You must change zones and "work off" your DR time. This was supposedly done to combat bots. Problem - bots are largely gone now but the DR code remains. Problem - there is no CD timer or other indicator in-game for a player to tell when they have "worked off" their DR and thus its all guess work (assumption is an hour is needed). Problem - high level crafting mats only drop in high level zones, so when DR kicks in just what the hell are you supposed to do? Go to a lowbie zone to farm mats you do not need? And these high level mats are needed in the hundreds to work towards a "legendary" so really this is just a very annoying time sink foisted on the players..
I am by no means a huge fan of GW2, but couldn't help but notice.........
So you want a game with no grind or gear treadmill where you can grind mobs for superior loot or farm for good drops, like some sort of treadmill to get increasingly better items?
Couldn't help but notice that you mistook Grind with Farm. there's a huge difference between spending 1 hour farming the items you need to craft armor weapons upgrades in two days and grinding for 16 months to get the items you need from vendors or relying on RNG. That's the difference.
The first month I made it to 80 and thank goddess they hadn't turned DR on by then or I would never have geared my two level 80s when i did.
I mistook nothing. The guys central point is contradictory.
"I don't want a gear treadmill, but I demand the ability to constantly upgrade my stuff."
That seems to be what he is saying, and I think it is hypocritical.
I won't get bogged down in a semantics argument over the definition of what 'grind' truly means.
Originally posted by Eir_S I have no problem with diminishing returns, especially after the 50th time seeing someone I know is an 80 farming the troll or the boar in Queensdale, or Maw in Wayfarer. I mean, come on...
Why cant i farm? Why cant i grind?
devs these days preach 'flexibility' but i cant use bread and butter tactics anymore?
Maybe you can. I haven't heard from anyone (apart from OP), including the players I mentioned, that they were ever getting less loot... perhaps these diminishing returns aren't that diminishing. Still, if they do work the way they're intended, I think they're in effect to keep people doing things outside of starter areas.
Do they even work?
DR is a huge problem I can't even spend more than 20 mins killing mobs in any zone in the game before my drops stop altogether and then I have to wait 1.5 -2 hrs before I can play for another 20mins.
Bullshit ....if you choose to have an opinion so be it ....if you choose to post an actual lie like you are trying to do here with fabricated story of DR rates you'll get called on it
No constructive dialogue can be had on game forums without forum mods infracting posters, banning posters, and deleting threads.
I have never heard of any other company doing this before. I'm glad you brought this to our attention..........
/chuckle
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I mistook nothing. The guys central point is contradictory.
"I don't want a gear treadmill, but I demand the ability to constantly upgrade my stuff."
That seems to be what he is saying, and I think it is hypocritical.
I won't get bogged down in a semantics argument over the definition of what 'grind' truly means.
Yah, apparently leveling is a grind, but OTOH he QQes about DR kickibg in too quickly (right) and you need lot of stuff for legendary (apparently its not grind)
I could dissent his whole post, but it isnt worth the time.
No constructive dialogue can be had on game forums without forum mods infracting posters, banning posters, and deleting threads.
Players, in general, have a right to be concerned. Anet's commitments (implied or explicit) have been falling like a house of cards since their acquisition.
No grind? Gone - its all grind at level 80 now.
No gear treadmill? - Gone ever since ascended gear was introduced (FotM gear which is now going to be made available in world for daily "laurels" etc
Good wvwvw system? Gone - the wvwvw has been so impacted by flaws in the game engine (culling and rendering issues) that its become a joke when you "fight" invisible mobs. Also - the free server transfers allowed until recently have made some servers ghost towns as players have fled to what are considered "the best" wvwvw servers.
Quality? Gone - bugs that were reported in Beta are still in-game and new bugs are added every release.
Commitments? Don't believe it. Players complained about elite, veteran, champion mobs because they were dropping NO loot or inferior loot yet require a group (or a high DPS solo toon with time to kill) to take down. Anet said they would adjust the loot drops - never happened. Players complained about the drop rate for "lodestones" - something needed by the hundreds for various recipies. Anet said they would fix the drop rate, rolled out a fix that actually corrected this, then rolled it back saying lodestone drops were increased too much and this was impacting the economy. So we are back to where we started on that issue.
Diminishing Returns - farm an area too long and the good drops disappear. You must change zones and "work off" your DR time. This was supposedly done to combat bots. Problem - bots are largely gone now but the DR code remains. Problem - there is no CD timer or other indicator in-game for a player to tell when they have "worked off" their DR and thus its all guess work (assumption is an hour is needed). Problem - high level crafting mats only drop in high level zones, so when DR kicks in just what the hell are you supposed to do? Go to a lowbie zone to farm mats you do not need? And these high level mats are needed in the hundreds to work towards a "legendary" so really this is just a very annoying time sink foisted on the players.
New Content - every piece of new content added to-date has been a cluster. Massive lag, one time events that players miss when the game server lags out and DCs them, event timing for 1-time events that are not repetable and not conducive to all players in game etc. Its a joke really. Which is probably why Anet MISSED their delivery date for the February content release.
Pre-cursors. Needed by anyone who wants a legendary. Bugs and exploits allowed some to get these easily (such as the final Karka event where it was raining precursors for a small time window) while others can only sit and stew as the prices for these on trading post have gone up hundreds of gold month over month due to near impossibility of getting one.
When any issue, concern, question is posed around all of these game issues (and others) in forums the mods react like flies on crap and BAM - infractions, bans, deletions etc.
Very similar to what happened on The Secret World forum boards before that game imploded and went B2P.
Having been a player since pre-release -3 and having logged over 1000 in-game hrs (3 80s plus several other toons in development) I have seen the game decline first hand, have seen servers become ghost towns, and have seen the forum mods transform into hitler jugend. So beware - this game is begining to circle the drain and only fanbois are welcome on Gw2 forum.
If that was your post that got you your infraction... I think i can see how. seeing as you offer no real feedback and only rather acid complaints.
Comments
Lol, ArenaNet has a far better rep then almost every other MMO dev out there so I would say even mentioning that disgrace of a game in this thread doesn't amount to anything. Hell, WarZ can't compare to anything...that company and game are probably one of the worst examples of pathetic game development in history. ArenaNet's mistakes are more on the line of Blizzards. Blizzard is much more known for promising things they can't deliver on though.
Eh... sorry have to disagree in some part. A bit over-exagerated with issues that every game has (bugs and the likes) and the grind concept works for gear as well as leveling so its kind of silly to mark them both. Still I digress as that isn't the main idea of your thread.
I agree with your forum censoring. Its pretty blatent that Anet is attempting to do this, which to be 'fair' plenty of other companies do the same though ANet is definently on the harsher side of this. You can usually tell quite quickly when a majority of posative and often pointless threads exist while those entailing issues are quickly deleted and taken away. Its propeganda and it exists on virtually any official forum with GW2 having one of the more 'harsh' ones around.
The thing is they SHOULD allow these threads to appear and they SHOULD address them first hand rather then try to 'push the dust off in the corner'. Its better to allow people to state problems and push you will fix them rather then to leave them concealed away as if ignorance is bliss. ANet to me at launch (though it has gotten a little better) has seemed to demonstrait a very direct 'tone' about them with the 'we know best' approach which personally to me was quite strong and really bothered me a lot. Don't get me wrong, Apple does exactly the same thing and they have success, but its really not a great quality to have when it involves a game which revolves around a player having to spend time within a game, particularly with a lot of competition and far more advanced areas to deal with then simply the Operating System of a phone. While they have been addressing it a little, they still could use a bit more and by far censoring the forums should be cut out.
Theres a big difference between closing a thread blatently for spam and ripping it down to increase a posative outlook on a game. Chances are if you use the 'spam' excuse on a negative thread yet you can see a dozen pointless posative threads about the same deal, you can tell pretty easily that its not being very fairly monitored. Its not exactly 'reliable' to find any site that would so easily give negative and posative input a chance, but some sites just go a bit to far on one side and I do feel GW2 forums from my observation and words I've heard from others seem to be to far on one side.
Oh noes another GW2 bashing thread. The IDC (intentional disinformation campaign) rolls on.
Moderation always involves censorship if the ideas are reduntant, flame-bait or left to no constructive discussion. Saying a game is bad as "fact" with no room to discuss isn't appropriate for a forum. It's better suited for Twitter, not a forum.
I truly think some people are shocked that an MMO finally has a strong community and following this far after launch. To combat it, a constant barrage of threads are heaved at it in an attempt to shake it out of it's place in MMO history. Lumping it with shrinking games and other financial failures cannot stop the momentum this game has garnered. While it's far from perfect, it's certainly not the blight on the MMOsphere that so many posters here seem to want to label it.
In spite of the concerted IDC, the game is gaining in popularity.
If in 1982 we played with the current mentality, we would have burned down all the pac man games since the red ghost was clearly OP. Instead we just got better at the game.
The problem with farming is that some areas will naturally give better rewards than others. Furthermore, players will figure out which areas those are, and if there's no anti-farming code in place, players will farm them endlessly.
That means that everyone else either has to endlessly loop a tiny subset of the game's content or else gain loot at a slower rate because they're not farming. Either option is terrible game design.
Even with properly implemented (which is hard to do, by the way) diminishing returns on loot, you can farm one area endlessly if you want. It's just that you won't get greater rewards than players who are going out and playing the game to have fun. And you shouldn't.
I am having a love hate relationship with GW2 as of late. So much of it I really love but so much of the game is broken to me. Dungeons are not broken to be because of loot but because of how the community plays them. Every team has everyone running from boss to boss not playing the game. And its ANets fault and they are more focused on fixing loot then the game. This saddens me.
A game I love has become to fustrating to play. Sad thing is I think GW2 needs a major overhaul to fix it.
Absolutely true. There's still some people who just don't want to accept that they have terrible management over there at Arenanet and they don't want people who are pointing out these very honest reviews of what's actually happening in the game.
There are three things that are missing from your list tho.
1: permaDR, hundreds of people have reported having permaDR on their account across all characters since November but they say they love us farmers on reddit.
2: just after the annoucnement by Jon Peters that they love legit farmer players they nerf the loot on the only dragon event left that was dropping anything so now all you will get are worthless items barely worth over a silver each. No one buys that crap on the TP.
3: instead of doing what we suggested they do with the T6 materials because T6 materials are so extremely rare one can't find them anymore in the open world or you get hit with DR before you can get a stack of 20, or you have to get bags that drop random loot often the items you AREN'T looking for mostly T5 not T6 (These bags have a double randomness, they randomly drop, and then their loot is random when you open them so it's like a double lottery.) Instead of adding T6 materials to the laurel system like they should so people can actually GET the powerful blood they need, they make two more random loot boxes! One for laurels from the vendor in towns and one for karma a the entrance camp to the most dangerous places in Orr.
smdh.
what makes things worse imo is that they STILL have 2 people working on the class balance. seriously? 2 people. engineers have 1 new bug every week.....wth.
You know I was really hard on EA (SWTOR) for not learning a single thing from mmo history when they developed their game but they had an excuse they actually never made an mmo before, Arenanet doesn't have that excuse. There is absolutely NO excuse for using DR or for not hiring enough programmers to offset the number of bugs you have floating in your game Anet, absolutely none!
Anet has stated they have no intentions of introducing a new gear type in 2013. They are going to continue to expand on Ascended. Whether this remains for 2014, who knows.
And they are working to address culling. They've recently introduced a patch (in the January update) that does deal with culling a little bit. Culling still exists though. It's either you have culling, or you literally won't be able to move due to the lag. I still remember the pre-optimized WvW in beta. My computer hated me when you had 100-200 people in one area fighting, with siege blasts constantly going off. Right now, Anet has it loading in low-rez models until the client can manage to render the full-res character model. In fights where there are large amounts of people, yes there will still be culling. Also, remember this, large amounts of people disappearing != culling. Mesmers have a skill that allows them to turn large numbers of people invisible.
...There are always bugs. There are less bugs now than on launch. And of course bugs are introduced with each release. They are releasing new content and features. Population does affect some bugs believe it or not. Everything could be working on small scale, but as soon as they release it to the masses, everything just breaks apart. This is just the natural process of MMOs. Anyone who expects any release to go smoothly with zero problems should not be playing MMOs. Heck, even WoW still has problems with patch releases and expansion releases. If you want zero bugs when a new content patch is released, you are in the wrong genre bud. MMOs are an entirely different beast from your single player games.
I'll trust Anet when it comes to the in game economy over the players. I don't think ArenaNet ever promises to "fix" something unless it's actually broken. They might look into it, and reevaluate whether the numbers are good where they are at or not.
ArenaNet has stated that there is no such thing as diminishing returns in the game. However, it has been confirmed since before launch that the frequency of reward is correlates with your level and the zone you are in. The greater the level difference between the zone you are in and your actually level, the less fequently you will be reward. This has been known since before launch. Otherwise it's just random chance. Could it be that some rare things are actually just that, rare? Everyone being able to get it a rare object after 3 kills can't exactly be considered rare, can it?
Now... I might be mistaken, but is it not still February? Last time I checked, we still have 20 days left of February. They never said a specific date in February, just that there would be an update in February...
* Pre-cursors: Last time I checked, Legendary weapons were suppose to be very difficult to get. They aren't suppose to be something you get overnight, or even with a week worth of work. Yes, some people get lucky. Some people are there at the right place at the right time. So what? That's life. They are suppose to take months to get for the average user. There are some who will get it in a matter of weeks, just as there will be some where it'll take years to get legendary gear.
ArenaNet stated that their forums would be HEAVILY moderated before they even released them. They don't want the cesspool other game forums turn into. Consider moving to a less moderated community if you want less moderation. However, ArenaNet doesn't just get rid of criticism. If yoru critcism is constructive, and is not a repost, then it won't be deleted. If you go in there "x sucks," or "this system is horrible," it'll probably be deleted.
And FYI, an infraction != something bad. It's more of something used to let you know that there was some moderation done, such as moving your thread, or closing your thread because it's a duplicate.
I am legitimately curious what people posted when they come to other forums saying they were suspended from GW2 forums. I guarantee you that 99% of the time that it was not for no reason. Most of the time I think people are use to not having to censor themselves on other forums, and they post on GW2 forums as they would post on other forums. Yes, you can't call someone an idiot, stupid, etc..
I've seen plenty of people who post legitimate suggestions or concerns. But these are posts that are respectful and constructive.
Couldn't help but notice that you mistook Grind with Farm. there's a huge difference between spending 1 hour farming the items you need to craft armor weapons upgrades in two days and grinding for 16 months to get the items you need from vendors or relying on RNG. That's the difference.
The first month I made it to 80 and thank goddess they hadn't turned DR on by then or I would never have geared my two level 80s when i did.
Let me just say, he's not just talking about precursors or legendaries you can't even gather 30 powerful bloods by killing the mobs bloods are supposed to fall off of anymore to make a single set of exotic armor, Lost shores is now nerfed too. That's the concern and mentioning anything about it get infractions and bans they find ANY and ALL excuses to infract and delete your message even in the forum posts that are supposed to talk about DR and loot drops they do it. It's ridiculous.
OR they insult the players by saying that no loot dropping for them doesn't really happen, it's perceived or that it's an Xfiles conspiracy theory that they nerfed loot in november, all of the players who've been there since launch know it's happened, the only reason the whole community isn't complaining is due to fanboyism and people can get a few decent drops in dungeons still but even those boss chests have disappeared recently due to DR.
That's becafuse moderation is usually a shitty job and few of the involved people have the integrity and sense of justice to even try to create a good system. There are exceptions though and MMORPG forum is one of them from my experience.
What's sad is the Liaison and a developer in the thread I'm linking below are the ones who've insulted the players about the loot drops. We're not so distracted that we don't notice when we don't get loot, seriously, no one is so distracted in a game with shinies that they don't notice when they don't get the drops they were getting before.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Share-your-data-about-perceived-strange-drop-behavior-here/first
"perceived"
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Share-your-data-about-perceived-strange-drop-behavior-here
"x-files level conspiracy"
What frightens me is this. Supposedly their programs that collect data don't show any percentage of the population:
Having PermaDR across the account of all characters
receiving DR too early (every 8th kill)
lower drop rates on items
DR causing chests to disappear in dungeons and dragon events post large boss fights
lower salvage rates of Globs of Ecto
All easily visible to the players but we're supposed to believe them when they say they don't see anything at all. riiiiight.
That thread btw is the second one to reach over 1200 posts since November, they closed the last one.
I AM a player I've been playing since BWE2 and I used to be a fanboy, but I can tell you the OP absolutely correct, there's something seriously wrong with their management personel.
you can grind all you want. The problem is when someone chooses to grind, and then QQ on every forum or every other game chat that X game sux because its a grind fest. If you choose to grind, thats your preference, not the only thing the game has to offer.
I was citing items I've seen in the forum boards for the most part. If I wanted the walk in the park I'd be playing panda game on WOW. Actually - I am fairly bored with GW2 at the moment. The dungeons are not hard the 100th time you run them, and wvwvw is the same every single week.
The one issue I do have is with farming/loot tables. The intent here appears to be to provide a massive time sink versus any interesting content or encounter. If you have been in Orr recently you will know what I mean - large #s in the loot corridor and a few DEs close to it - rest of the zone is pretty empty. It gets boring.
Point 1 - quite correct. My experience is mods can be over zealous or more accomodating, and in Gw2 I believe its the former.
Point 2 - yes again. When you run out of content, having done all the dungeons and jumping puzzles and have 5 crafts at 400 etc. there is not much left by cosmetics. So its a choice between swinging an ugly weapon or using something that at least looks cool. Legendaries fall into that same category - one reason I don't care if I ever get one. I went for easier items - Vision of the Mists, Corrupted Greatbow etc. - nice looks, a lot less grind.
You miss the point - purposfully I believe. The General Discussion group should be for just that, yet if anyone posts something that calls out a specific feature, issue, problem, concern etc. more often than not the post disappears quickly. Some threads do get merged, but that is a minority because some concepts expressed in forums simply disappear and are not represented in any merged thread that can be located.
Concurrently - you have people posting inane things like a recent post about a bow that supposedly shoots rainbow unicorns (wtf?) and these live a happy unproductive life in the general discussion folder despite the fact the entire thread is garbage.
DR is a huge problem I can't even spend more than 20 mins killing mobs in any zone in the game before my drops stop altogether and then I have to wait 1.5 -2 hrs before I can play for another 20mins.
https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Where-Chickens-Drop-better-Loot-Than-Dragons
I almost died when I saw this thread was still up. Apparently the mods missed this one. This one shows part of the problem as I too used to get random loot from things like Doe and Mosquitoes instead of where the loot should come from, before my permaDR finally set in that is.
I bought the game for what I thought was World class server vs server warfare.
It turned out Arenanet thought WvW was just a 2 week 24/7 pvp match with the most points winning the match.Ever seen a war decided on a 2 week point total ? You will with this farce.
And crafting turned the game into an asian type grind fest trying to get random drops for hours !!
Such idiocy is why I refuse to play the game.
Your concerns are just your concerns, most people dont concern themselves with your concerns, because those are preety much non issues.
Oh, and by your definition every MMO out there has this huge issues. Yet some games are still played a lot (WoW, GW2, EvE) so i would say that in some games issues are indeed true and is some they are just overexaggeration like your post.
I mistook nothing. The guys central point is contradictory.
"I don't want a gear treadmill, but I demand the ability to constantly upgrade my stuff."
That seems to be what he is saying, and I think it is hypocritical.
I won't get bogged down in a semantics argument over the definition of what 'grind' truly means.
Bullshit ....if you choose to have an opinion so be it ....if you choose to post an actual lie like you are trying to do here with fabricated story of DR rates you'll get called on it
/chuckle
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Yah, apparently leveling is a grind, but OTOH he QQes about DR kickibg in too quickly (right) and you need lot of stuff for legendary (apparently its not grind)
I could dissent his whole post, but it isnt worth the time.
If that was your post that got you your infraction... I think i can see how. seeing as you offer no real feedback and only rather acid complaints.
This have been a good conversation