Thursday November 13, 2008 - update notes

Not just a majority of customers but a large enough number of long-term customers that stick through a company through thick and thin. Microsoft is an exception because it was able to get into a position where it could dominate the market - Google is a similar case. Whereas Guild Wars is just one amongst many.

No, just annoyed that it's added more work than there was before. This update was supposed to be about reducing title grind...

For me, Grind = time, not the activity you're doing during that time. It still takes the same amount of time to max this title, so it's still just as grindy, without the obvious cash bonus of HFFF. I detest farming (primarily as it usually requires pugs, and pugs are fail ) so HFFF was a brilliant solution for cash to pay for other titles too.

If they wanted to make it unbottable, stopping the signposts from being next/previous target would have probably done that. Yes, it would have probably annoyed a lot of us HFFFers, since we used the post, but it would have been better than this... Hell, even introducing a slight random variable in the spawn points of the mobs would have axed most bots.

Basically, this is the way i see it :

The update was supposed to reduce grind, one of the so-called "solutions" is giving more rewards for playing the game normally.
That's a good concept, with good execution it could be great.

So what's the problem? only newer players, or players who would repeat the missions anyway, can enjoy this.
Players who already did the missions, possibly a few times, have to do them Again - they have to Grind , that's why the "solution" missed the entire point.
Not to mention there are lots of players in that group, possibly the majority.

The solution would be much better if it would be retroactive - but it's not, why?
They can't say they didn't track the achievements, we can see them on the map and on the titles.
The economy? Well, lets ignore the economy arguments for this one, lets say they were right... why didn't we at least get the faction/reputation points? that's the main thing we're missing here, the gold is secondary.

So please, those of you here who argue, can you please give me a good reason for this?

Well, about the books I think they should done it like in GW:EN.
If you have finished a mission without a book you should pay a small fee to record it in the book .

That's exactly what we're saying, the excuse is the gold reward... they could simply remove it, what we want is the faction/rep.

By the way, for those of you who'll probably say i am complaning because i am one of those who suffer from this screwup - It's true i am one of those, but i am really trying to make a fair review here.
Also, i am not asking for "extras" for being a veteran, i am asking for equal rewards, we should get the same rewards they're getting now.
They're getting it naturally, we have to grind.
Is being equal too much to ask?

The real fail here is that for a game which has minimal dev work happeneing (because the priority is GW2) they chose to waste that limited resource on these books. There are much better things they could have done, like the Rotscale update, maybe even ad a single new zone for us, or a handful of new quests, a weapons mod trader, make it so you don't have to zone around just to see a map etc. So many better things they could have dome with the dev resource but they chose these sucky books.

Yes, because it's not about veteran players vs newbies, it's about people who feel affected and people who don't. We've all completed Factions x times, but we are not all bitching about missing out on free books. Most of us are pretty happy to have received a very decent update!

If they did change the books to be retroactive then I wouldnt automatically have lots to turn in, maybe 3 or 4 NM and a HM at most.

However I do have 11 or so chars which have partially done both NM and HM and they cannot get a full book as and when I go back and play with them because I cannot fill in the books for missions I have done. I really don't want to spend half my time repeating all the missions I have done already so that I can get an equal reward, I just wanna get on and progress all my characters.

I think there were a couple of small points like this which turned a really great update into a good update

I would agree with you except for the fact that this update probably did little if anything for their revenue. This update was only for the benefit of the current players, and in reality I bet this update pissed a lot of players off that aren't posting here about it.

Besides, you actually think this update is fair and Anet's reasons for them are justified?

As a reminder, any posts that are insults to an individual or the community as a whole will be deleted. Please stay on topic and contributing.

I think one thing that sort of chaps the ass of some players is the fact that Anet, at least before this update, used to be fairly consistent with giving retroactive credit towards things if a significant change towards obtaining a particular goal is affected. Forgive me if I get some of these dates/times wrong, I haven't kept up on my chronological GW calendar as far as updates are concerned, but I'll try to remember as best as I can.

I remember once upon a time, back in the olden days, before Prophecies was officially known as Prophecies, one of the things I did in my spare time was take my characters thru each mission with the objective of obtaining both the mission and bonus, simply because they were there. When the title system went live (I can't remember if it was before or after Factions went live), magically, the 3 toons I knocked out the m&b with all had their protector title maxed. We didn't have to repeat the missions, we were credited for our accomplishments. If I remember correctly, we also received credit towards which parts of the map we had uncovered as well, so it was nice that we didn't have to re-explore stuff.

However, for the gladiator title, when that went live, all the previous 10 win streaks I had in RA weren't credited. Sure I thought 'bummer', but oh well, life goes on. I understood it would have been difficult to retroactively credit people on that one, since there wasn't a tracking system in place, unlike the m&b's. So I continued to do the occasional RA and I didn't worry about it too much. Now when they revamped the gladiator title to the 5 win and incrementation style of advancement, this time I was credited retroactively, my 27 odd glad points became 150ish or whatever it was, and I was appreciative of that (not that I'm seriously pursuing that title, but meh). In this case I didn't have to go and re-earn anything, cause the glad title was previously in place and Anet could use that to recalculate my points.

When they split up the skill hunter title, again, people retroactively got credit for that. They didn't have to go out an recapture all the skills when the titles split up amongst the campaigns. The people who had maxed that ended up with 3 complete title tracks for each continent and an additional legendary title track.

When hard mode went live in EOTN, my recollection of the details are a bit shaky here, but we were able to purchase pages for the books for the missions/dungeons that we had previously accomplished, another retroactive credit.

See the trend here? Anet had a reasonably decent track record of crediting accomplishments following a change to a title system, if there was a system in place for recording accomplishments previously. Its not about entitlements or deserving anything, it was about understanding that Anet had a certain way of doing business with respect to title changes. When they reneged or flip flopped or poo pooed or however you want to look at it with respect to the allegiance/reputation titles in this current update, its not that it left some players with a bitter taste, but questioning the decision along the lines of “umm... what's going on here?” and “that's not consistent with your other title changing updates, what gives?”

And with the people on this side of the fence having to continually combat trolls who vehemently defend the “Anet can do no wrong” position (I apologize, not all of you are trolls, and ty for your constructive criticism), well, I'll just say that you are wrong on that front. Anet does in fact make the occasional mistake, believe it or not, and albeit that this isn't a game breaking one, it does seem a little inconsistent with their track record, which is why people aren't just letting the issue die. And given the fact that Anet, at times, is receptive to feedback from the community, thus the continuing dialog on the matter in spite of the naysayers who would otherwise drown out the affected part of the community, minority or otherwise.

to be honest...
i dun think there is any way to truly make this update retroactive

sure u can see if someone has finished the missions once
but theres no way to track if they did them 5 or 6 times or over 30 or 40 times

could they not have at least made it retroactive for the 1st time over?
would that really hurt the game?

to those that have done the missions 50+times
its still unfair
but at least he gets sumptin, instead of absolutely nuthin


and there was a post a while back (p.26) to say that this update caters to -everyone-
no...it doesnt cater to everyone

why do u think many hb'ers get mad when we get supposed "pvp updates"?

There is a way, you just could've read at least last two pages.


If someone has Protector, give him option to refill one book.

If Guardian, two books.

/thread

thats not "truly retroactive" as i was tryin to mention
its jus compensation
since if someone has done the missions 50 times
shouldnt he get teh reward 50 times?

but i do think that ppl should get compensation for 1 book at least

I don't think anyone has done all missions on a character once he made the title.

I mean, for EVERY protector = 1 book, for every guardian 2 books. So if someone has 2 characters with Protector and one with a Guardian, it's

1+1+2 = 4 books.

Two Guardians, Two protectors:

2+2+1+1 = 6 books.

Like this. Because if someone has already a Guardian on his character and he did all the missions for nothing again... there is something wrong with him.

While I agree with the suggestion for this being retroactive - also keep in mind that to add a page into the book one doesn't need to obtain the bonus/masters.
Which means that if a player completed the game - they should have gotten a free filled book.

thinking about it more, is the 4k (or whatever low amount of gold) you get for turning in a complete book really worth my time? i'm not a title hunter and the introduction of these new books just hogs storage space (which, of course we need more of) and i have little to no motivation to beat the campaigns over again.

but mostly, the rewards given for the books is not proportional to the amount of time needed to fill them up.

I agree completely. And not just the for the gold reward. These books were supposed to provide alternatives for grind, but it seems to me that they are the most inefficient way to increase our titles (unlike in EotN where turning in HM books seems relatively efficient).

For example say I want to max my lightbringer/ss title. Am I going to turn in like 5 books or am I going to farm it? Five books doesn't seem like much, but Nightfall is so much longer than EotN...I can farm over 3000 LB points an hour, so unless I could somehow finish Nightfall in 3 hours or less I don't see how this reduces my grind. And as for Factions, I don't think I could stomach doing Factions 80 times or so to max my allegiance title.

Either give me some credit for previously beating the game (just rep, keep the gold), or allow me to forgo the gold/experience from turning in a book in exchange for more rep so that maybe it'll seem worth it.

I think the point of the books is to reward players for playing through the game instead of just straight grind. Before you would have to farm/grind for max title, there really wasn't other good options. Now you can play through Nightfall, achieve guardian of elona, vanquish Vabbi/Desolation, complete the Domain of Anguish, and then farm/grind the rest. The books aren't meant to be farmed, they're meant to be achieved through regular gameplay.

But I agree, we should be able to get credit for previously beating the missions already.

^^ but anet's one large oversight is that by now, they're not getting that many new players in their game, and the vast majority of the people playing are those who have already beaten the game. so when the rewards are so slim, there's little incentive to pick up the story missions again.

had they done this 3 years ago, everyone would be on board with it, but now, not so much.

The older players are still greatly benefiting from this. People still create new characters and play through the game, people still go through the game in HM to get guardian, people still vanquish.

Yes, it would have been absolutely amazing when Guild Wars came out, but it's still a great update now. It doesn't benefit anyone with protector/guardian/vanquisher titles (which sucks for them), but it benefits everyone else.

This is what I did. Already had 2 low level chars (para and ele) that i'm working through factions with.Grabbed Shiro's Return and went for it,the best part is pugs have largely returned and I get the benefit of cashing in books.

I take back my other comments in this thread (I think) i'm embracing the change and not seeing it as screwing older players.Changes that revived the game somewhat and added benefits are better than empty outposts and extremely boring HFFF

Less QQing on forums more killing imo

The update is great. The weekend was great.

Just by vanquishing Morostav Trail, DVDF was able to amass enough Kurzick faction to gain control of Eredon Terrace once the border shifted. Which I found weird since the alliance is not big and there are 50 people that play regularly. Morostav vanquish gives a bit over 30k faction for a vanquish of 40 minutes. My Kurzick title increased by 1 million over the course of this weekend. Great stuff.

Also, loving the account-wide Wisdom and TH. It feels great when you're able to ID stuff with a less-played character. And salvage items without destroying them. The only update better than this one was the Sorrow's Furnace one. Vgg aNet.

Great post Calista BlackBlood. This social dimension of games has always been part of all videogames but it's much stronger in online games/MMOs. As I said in the thread "the downfall of GW", the community can make the game "good" or "bad" for itself, and I surely hope that this renewed pugging phenomenon goes on for a little while (it'll fade, like all things). A few other updates of this quality during the next 6-12 months and the game should be back on its feet, sort of (WTB PvP update of this quality).

Oh, btw, "veteran" players also benefited with the TH/wisdom account-wide titles, the highest rewards for vanquishing/challenge&competitive&elite missions, increased faction caps, and all the little things that Linsey prepared for all of us with love.

New players have that too.

So. We have only TH/Wisdom, vanq/challenge/elite missions and increased faction caps.

New players have everything WE have + they don't have to repeat all missions again for 6th time to get a single reward.

Huh... LOTRO's entire new expansion or a few new numbers in Guild Wars as I replay it for the upteenth time?

<sarcasm>Tough decision.</sarcasm>

The rest of ya'll enjoy, though, if that's your thing.

If they are that bored why are they still playing?

Why do you think that they are still playing?

There are other things to do than just missions...

same reaction that there is to every major update like this.

the changes we've been asking for for years finally arrives and people can't even be happy that they changed what we wanted, and can only focus on this mentality: other people get more than me pouty pouty pout.

I'm sorry, but every word in that sentence just set off my BS detector. I'd like to hear a response from Linsey instead of the company puppet who's too lazy to do anything but update her personal blog.

Near everyone gets an instant 50k just for logging on. Not just the pro farmer types who can do that in an hour, but every single joe shmoe whining about the cost of 15k armor. That's a huge sudden cash influx that could cause a temporary inflation on the player market. I don't have the demographics to estimate how much of an impact, but it's a plausible concern.

Before some simpleton talks about Zaishen Keys from Xunlai, you can't sell them to merchants for 5k, and you mostly get brulees/firewines that conveniently sell for nothing. ZKeys were cleverly designed to redistribute money between players rather than introducing a new gold influx, which preserves existing prices. Even the best farming methods are still focused on procuring player-desired things instead of merching white junk.

Alternatively, maybe some people think that having to wait "for years" for a few numbers to change on a database table attached to a game most of us have already played through several times is unreasonable...

I wish they'd just cut the crap and open source the damn engine. It's been pretty clear since Reskin of the North that they have no intention to do anything worthwhile with this game anymore, and it sure would be nice if players could start making some actual content for it.

I mean... come on. You've got to be kidding me. They changed a couple of numbers on some database tables, slapped a few book sprites in the data files, and wrote a few new basic scripts for old missions using a game mechanic that was added in the BMP. This is the big bad update?

I can't believe anyone still falls for this crap. If you like it, fine, more power to you, but quit acting like they did anything significant here.

It is a great update. I am glad that they back date the factions to old players who had completed those missions but i think there is 1 problem, they suddenly dump all luxon and kurzick pts to the acc. And we have the decide which 1 to donate and the other faction will be wasted. Just my view.

Pfft.. that will happen. If you guys are going to qq, at least don't make such RIDICULOUS statements when you do. By the way, clearly you don't know what you are talking about when it comes to computer programing. You really think all these updates where just a flip of the switch?

Anyway, PUGs are definately up. People are playing. People have been wanting some of these titles account wide for a while.

No one should complain. Nothing in this update was determental. The only "bad" thing is that players get less free rewards then they were hoping on getting, which is just stupid greed rearing its ugly head. And I have yet to see the "mass complaining in game from veteran players" that some people in this thread predicted. Everybody I've talked to has loved this update. Oh well... only on guru.

If you're talking about the wisdom title track, it's nice but I doubt that people mind that much about it. We're talking about the books, where the time-period of COURSE affects its usefulness. If you've done the campaigns to death having a book isn't going to easily make you want to play again.

I think this post proves my point - the critics of the update critics are putting up pro-forma replies without reading the complaints of others.

What kind of ridiculous logic is that? So if ANet only ever update bugs and changes nothing about the game, no one can complain because it isn't "detrimental"? Ridiculous!

Yeah, for some of them it seems so and I agree that it's ugly. There are also a few others that want some love from Anet (even despite Linsey said she loves us ).

A-net didn't just update bugs. A-net didn't change "nothing" about the game. They changed PLENTY in this update.

And indeed, none of it is detrimental. After the update, people have the same as they had before or more, and there are great improvements to the game. Exactly as HawkofStorms said. Nothing wrong with his logic. Unlike your logic - you think we should complain, when there is nothing to complain about?

As he and MissPuddles said, there is simply nothing to complain about - only greedy people who got stuff for free, but still want more. And who don't want other people to get something now, that they didn't get before.

Answer from Linsey was exactly the same. It was copied in this thread some pages ago.

It does not prove it. Reading and understanding someones concerns does not mean that we have to accept and support them. I also do not agree with the logic "you are against our complaining because you do not understand/read/whatever". Please.... I can say you are complaining because you do not get arguments and you do not read them... This kind of reasoning goes nowhere I am afraid.

I do not think providing rewards to people who did something in the past is justified. I think it is asking for too much.

I will use example of projects. If there is a project which gives a given amount of money for its completion and this money is now increases. Does it mean that all the contractors who did the project in the past should get the difference?

If the contractor would like to receive this new higher reward he has to perform the project again. You may argue that the new contractor will get higher reward and it is not just... But surprisingly it is. That is how the business and economy works and how was working before and there is a reason it is this way. Old one can get reward as well if he wishes to and that to my opinion should suffice. In rl a firm which will have to pay something retroactively would be just killed by simple inflation or by wages increase.

Can you imagine what would happen to an university which increased money it gives to well performing students? Do you really think they should pay this additional money to all hard working students which were given money in the past? Isn't it normal that those things tend to increase with time?

If the retroactive rewards were added anywhere in the real economy we would have a serious financial crisis in a few days... That is why argument that it was bad for in game economy is understandable in this case. It is not only about too much gold inflow during the time where there is too much of it already. It is also about players who will expect retroactivity in all future changes as was shown by examples from EoTN.


so to list the problems/justification I see with it:
1. Too much gold inflow.
2. Creating expectations that all new stuff should be retroactive
3. No technical possibility to do it in a just way (why someone who did all the missions 60 times on one charr should get the same reward as the person who did it once) - leading to even more complaints and problems.
4. Everyone now gets the same reward if he/she attempts to do it. So everyone starts from the same point.
and so on and so on.

Believe me most of the people do understand why so many people do not like the lack of the rewards for things done before the update, we just think it is asking for too much and not necessary for the reasons mentioned above and not only for those.

Amazing in this discussion is that if anet did not introduce any book at all, there would be no issue. Did they gave us too much then?????

Yea I agree 100%. Almost everything out of Linsey and Regina on this matter has been logically shown to be false...which is why I am stunned they have so many apologists on this.

False, as was pointed out by several people such as Cluebag.

Almost everything previously has been retroactive, why shouldn't this be?

There is a perfect way as has been pointed out several times. Let people with the title turn in the book once or twice depending on the title. Simple, and we know Anet has the ability to do it. Also stop with the "oh people who did it 60 times" argument. We aren't talking about that exagerrated example because it is stupidly rare. But it is NOT stupidly rare to have the titles.

No...now everybody who has already spent craploads of time doing the missions get slapped in the face because people who have done none of the missions get the same rewards for less work.