An Open Letter to ANet - Part 2

/signed x 9000
Those are exactly my thoughts about the game at the moment. Regina, you need to read this and then have the entire dev. team read it!

not to be rude or anything, but most probrably even if this gets read by anyone from anet, they will do nothing about it, maybe if this was bought to thier attention before they made the whole of GW 2, then it could easily be encoperated into thier ideas, but just a few months from lauch, i doubt they will make any further changes to the game, although u did have some good points, nice ot see someone else that cares how much this game is going downhill ish took ages to read and some bits irrelivant, but meh....lol

but to be honest the game is still about skill, except the fact that PvE does not anymore, but then by stopping people buying gold, it has reverted more to skill again, even if people do say ursan takes no skill, but we took the time to get the title. whereas PvP will always be dominated by the better players, with new teams always emerging, no one team stays up at the top for too long, rather than in Pve where the 3 richest players will always be that....yeah thats right mini scooby i mean u

/signed

I have a friend that works for Anet, Im going to forward this on to him.

When accounts were being hacked and rawr's got messed up, I called him up and he passed the info along.

Very well written Avarre, Thank you for taking the time to do this

as well I think that anyone who is willing to sign this, should also be willing to email one of the higer-ups at Anet, Id be great if a couple hundred emails quoting these articles came pouring in.

sounds good but will ANet read it

The post is really long.

/signed

I disagree about 99% of the OP.

1. GW is not meant to be a lifetime game.
It's a normal videogame like FEAR, Bioshock, Mass Effect and all other normal games.
After you've played for a while, you have experienced most of it's content, then it's done and you move to another game.

I have played 2500 hrs since May 2005, with an expense of less then 150€. It's like buying a normal game for 50€ and play it for more than 800 hours.
How many games on the market can offer this? Very very very few.

Compared to all those other games, GW offers a HUGE content, but despite huge, it can't be unlimited.
In my opinion, it offers even too much for it's price.

So, sooner or later, every player, even the so called "top players", will get bored and stop playing it, or play just occasionally, like every other game.

No one can ask to play GW for his/her whole life.
Avarre, accept this idea, and move on.


2. It's totally false that the "bad achievements" of GW1 will prevent customers to buy GW2.

This is a very naive way to try to attract the attention of the devs to your point of view and your vision of the game.
Both count less than zero.

GW2 devs know what they want to do.
Their success will depend on how good they are in programming videogames.
No one would have bet a dime about the success of their ideas for GW1.
After 3 years, they won over 99% of other games, selling far more than any forecast.

If GW2 will be a great game, it will sell like GW1 or even more.
If it will reveal to be crap like dozens and dozens of other games, it will have the same destiny as dozens and dozens of other crap games.

GW1 players are people, people grow up, maybe most of them will stop playing videogames because they start university, or job, or get married and so on.
So they won't buy GW2 in any case for several other reasons, whereas other people will buy it if good, and probably many younger people who never played or even heard about GW1.


In a Sardelac style, /notsigned to Avarre's open letter, basically 3600 words for another ursan rant, just expressed in a way to not appear blatantly an ursan rant.

You took the TIME. Not the skill. Time, not skill. Repeat after me few times. Took the time, not the skill.

Neverwinter Nights, Diablo and Diablo 2, GTA (Vice City and San Andreas - I still haven't finished either...), Oblivion. And that's just on my hard drive.

Well, I played GTA's and Oblivion for less than 800 hours, but I also payed less than 50 euro for each.

Lol wut? 5 mln in 3 years is 1 and 2/3 per year. Diablo 2 had 1 mln in 2 weeks.

Wow. Very nice.

QFT.

I was drawn to GW by the artful simplicity of play; sadly, that is now gone in a blizzard of mini-pets, consumables, and title-based skills.

Give us back the game we loved to play, ANet. please.

they could introduce a pvp mode for pve (without consumables and pve skills).
that would make it playable again.

until you tried to do anything outside of playing with guildies/friends...

5 pages and no response from A.net anything is better than nothing, and yet we have nothing for their response.

I have read every single post in this rather long thread, and agree with most if not all... things could be tweaked so that people don't think the OP is bashing Ursan's, but if you notice I think that was more of a name everyone is familiar with and how it has unbalanced game play *yes i am a ursan avoider* but there are other skills that are PvE only that can do exceptional damage that also falls into the "Ursan" image.

I have no problems with trying to ease the game play for the new players, but there are plenty of veteran players out there that all they do is take in new players into their guilds to show them the ropes, give them info on how to do missions/runs. Heck even to show them what types of builds are more effective in certain areas.
So I would rather not have the game become easy to cater to the New players, keep it the same difficulty. But that means the veterans that want to post that something sucks needs to actually step up the plate and help these new players so everyone doesn't have to suffer for imba's ... Just my two cents.

oh btw
/signed on some aspects both by the OP and by those that didn't agree but gave a good reason/list on why they feel so.

Read the whole post. Very thought out and well-grounded and I agree on most points. I've been mostly a PvE player for the 3 years I've played, but still have been hoping for a diverse, intelligent PvE content instead of cheating supermonsters so I totally see where you're coming from. Hopefully the powers that be read this too.

Nah, Mafia Cyborg, Whom so ever has move on from a game rarely returns.

I have so many RPG games on my shelf that will never get installed again! Its not a problem with Anet its the problem with people growing bored of the game.

what i meant is introduce a pvp mode to pve with better drops than normal mode. (even zkeys drops maybe)
so that ppl are incentivated in playin without consumales and retarded pve skills.

/unsigned
I would have to say the changes A-net have done have helped pve. Just like titles, the new character developement adds life to GW.

And i have to totally disagree with blaming the skill seperation for killing pvp. Pvp is dying because of the pvp community. If a new player want to HA, they can't because they will have no fame to get into groups. If a new guild wanted to gvg, they will lose in 5 mins becuase of the smurf guilds. I don't care what you say, playing again top 100 players is not fun.
I will have to say it was about time for the skill seperation. There are to many times that a skill is killed because of a exploit in pvp.

So you're suggesting a game mode for PvE that drops PvP rewards... Do I get 1pt of fame per monster I kill also?

/notsigned for that

I don't know how old you are, but I'll bet I have read many more books than you ever have, including the books you have mentioned. I know one thing that is true; If I had read the same book everyday for 3 years I would have started to find fault with it, some of it may be justified and some may not.
Now if I were to take a break between the reading of said book I am sure I would find it new and refreshing from a different point of view. Checkers is a game that has been around forever, it is simple to learn. I know that if I played it everyday I would come to hate it.

not true.
i quit pve once gwen came out cos pve skills and overpowered consumables..
now i just pvp.
i would go back to pve once logic and common sense returns .
a game where u eat cake and press 1skill to become stronger is not a game that can keep anyone with an IQ superior to 100 interested for long.

I'm going to have to agree full heartedly with these points. It truely represents what is actually going on in this thread. Especially the link provided.

==>> The Way Out.

nice try to "speak truth to power" Avarre. Thank you so much for investing the time to phrase the well reasoned criticism so eloquently.

As a veteran player I just know this will not have an impact on ANet's plans...

as a committed player I do hope however it does (even if no official response will ever be posted in here, they do read, they just can't admit misjudgements or behold apologize)

and as a competitive player all I have to say at this point is: It has been great while it lasted, BUT I am very doubtful GW2 will bring any of the uniqueness back.

and no, I am not willing to play yet another time > skillz WoW-Clone

/SIGNED

World Championships.

I'm 'just laughing at the hopeless madness of it all'

Post of the forum:
/Signed.

Avarre, excellent writing, top notch.

I will not be buying GW2 unless a friend, or someone whom I respect says it is worth it.

Your statement is now totally false.

I agree with the emerging consensus that this is an epic post, and I agree with most of the points in it.

Most importantly, I, too, have reached the point where I can no longer deny that the devs really don't know what they're doing. For a long while, their behavior of catering to PvP, at the expense of thoughtlessly decimating PvE (can you say Soul Reaping timer?), was totally misguided, and made the game worse at every update, but at least I could grasp the rationale behind it. These days, I can't tell what the hell they're thinking. The purposes behind the updates appear schizophrenic, at best, and their impact is scattered and contradictory.

I think Avarre is probably right that the reason for this is that the devs don't play their own game nearly enough, particularly PvE, and don't have the faintest clue which voices in the community are worth listening to.

The main result of my loss of faith in the devs knowing what they're doing is that I'm not going to be buying GW2. I've long since grown weary of having to engage in constant forum fighting to speak up for a PvE experience being ruined by Izzy and pals without even being aware that they're ruining it, and that's left me dubious on GW2 for quite some time now. But the now-incontrovertible revelation that the devs haven't a clue what they're doing with GW1 gives me much stronger reasons not to come back for GW2. First, since they haven't been able to identify what they got right with GW1 well enough to reliably do it again, or even to avoid breaking the best parts of their game, I really don't have any reason to believe that they'll get things right with GW2. Second, even if they do somehow get things right, I have no reason to believe that they won't mutilate it with updates, just like they did GW1.

Now, I did buy 3 GW1 sequels, didn't I, so why should anyone believe me when I say GW2 is not on my purchasing list? Because GW2 is not linked to GW1 in any meaningful way. The first big round of let's-ruin-the-game nerfs was sprung on me after I'd already pre-ordered Factions. I remember thinking to myself that I probably would not have bought it if I had known about that update beforehand. I went into NF and GWEN with serious reservations, because of the then-emerging pattern of PvP-oriented nerfs with total disregard for their collateral damage to PvE play. But I had beloved characters by then -- characters who deserved new adventures and new armor, even if a-net probably didn't deserve new money. Well, those characters are gone in GW2. Gone. All that connects the beloved characters keeping me in the game to GW2 is the totally underwhelming hall of monuments. That's not going to keep me around. With GW2, for the first time I'm making a buying decision (1) with some foreknowledge of a-net's modus operandi, and (2) without my beloved characters putting a thumb on the scale. I'm not buying GW2.

I should say that I'm not quite as far gone as Avarre. There are some changes to GW1 that could be made that would convince me that maybe there's some hope for the devs after all. (Hint: Start with Soul Reaping.) But, I'm not getting my hopes up that that's going to happen.

The one major point where I disagree with Avarre is on the PvE/PvP Split. PvP was going to die anyway. It could not be saved. The split was the best chance to save PvE. Of course, it looks right now like they're going to bugger that up too, but it was still the right decision. I agree with Avarre's vision of what PvE should have been -- no stat pumping on monsters, no population pumping on monsters, better monster AI, better monster builds, more opposing-PvP-team-like overall. And I also agree that a-net's failure to follow that vision of PvE was the "original sin" that made it impossible to do right by PvE or PvP without harming the other, and has ultimately brought us to this low point. But I think, given how irreversibly big that failure is, that the PvE/PvP Split was the best choices among a-net's available options.

For much the same reasons, I think that some limited degree of overpowered PvE-only skills is necessary. Just enough to counteract the stat-pumping, no more. It would be better to un-stat-pump the monsters and remove the overpowered PvE-only skills at the same time. But, since the stat-pumping is here to stay, the PvE-only skills that counteract it need to stay too.

B-E-A-Utiful.
/signed x infinity

/good post. I actually do agree with most of it. From a personal subjective viewpoint I don't care that much about over-powered skills that I don't use. However, those among other things have damaged the game as a whole, irreperably.

However, I also agree with this:

I've more or less ground to a halt with GW now, I mostly just do the odd bit here or there to stuff things in the HoM. But really, this game is winding down and it'll be time to move on soon. Having experienced AoC and watching how it shouldn't be done I'm hoping Arena.net will deliver the goods for GW2.

Vicious lies

But yeah, very solid post summing up the problems with the direction of GW non-pvp development. To those who are pointing out that the game has been out for awhile, has a one-time fee, online games die all the time, etc: direction matters greatly, when you're supposed to be showing the customer base a greater understanding of your game and good judgement in order to keep them marching with you into a sequel.

toasting in an epic bread
/signed

First wall of text that I truly enjoyed reading, you and sha should become journalists. Alot of this has been hinted at and thought of somewhere throughout these forums, excellent thread bringing it all together in a nice smooth post.

It makes me laugh how almost everybody who is supposedly "objecting" to the OP proceed to post an argument that completely misses the point of the OP.

Ok maybe so. I just can't think of a better post at the moment.

If this received any reply at all from Anet I'd be astounded.

Oh poor
GW2
Yeah yeah, we'll see what you do IF eventually GW2 will turn out to be a great game, and your friend will tell you how great it is and show you the game on their monitors playin like crazy, and you'll see the screenshots and reviews and all that stuff, I want to see you not buying it "because I have no faith in the devs bla bla bla" ... yes I want to see you LOL


Edited: I bolded the IF to clarify my idea ^^

+1 to your post, i spend my time on another mmo besides GW
And now i need a drink after reading all of Avarre's awsomeness

Great read, it will be interesting to see if ANET does respond.

I hope they won't, and use their time in a more productive way ...

I'm not sure why I'm being accused of being addicted to the game or in need of help when I left the last guild I was core in last October, and effectively stopped playing by January. At no point playing Guild Wars was it the only game I played or put effort into.

very well written. you should write a book :P

ya because you know it totally takes SOOOO LONG to type a reply. I'm sure if Regina or someone replied to this, it'd totally screw up Guild Wars 1 or 2 soooo much.

No.

Well I hope they do. It extensively covers the persistant problems this game has been getting which are right now practically unfixable unless they take a heavy change.

They should at least know why their game has gone downhill, and they should also understand that people care about the game.

If you ask me, they made a great game, and screwed it up.

There's serously no other thoughts that can come out of it for me.