GW's future....

Originally Posted by TrooBloo

Think the most important problem is... as the world gets bigger, players will be spread too thin
there won't be enough people to do missions, enter 12v12 with and thats when we'll see a lot of quitting

Originally Posted by TrooBloo

As far as i'm concerned PvE is total crap, if you like role playing that's fine.. but GW doesn't offer much in that vein
But i see GW as a Pvp only game, the pve to me is just a bonus if you want to play it
therefore, i find that complaining about the pve element is like me complaining there isn't enough "story" in games like counterstrike etc


Think the most important problem is... as the world gets bigger, players will be spread too thin
there won't be enough people to do missions, enter 12v12 with and thats when we'll see a lot of quitting

Originally Posted by felinette

And whoever said if you sneeze and move a cm you aggro several mobs, amen. Mobs seem to come out of nowhere. Not only that, but if you run away and then return, they come after you well before they're in your aggro zone. That little lesson in the monastery where Ng talks about your gray circle being your danger zone: bullshit. It's practically the entire freaking minimap now, and it makes it all feel like a grind.

Originally Posted by Mimi Miyagi

I'm going to preface this post by stating this is all opinion. You may not like it, you may not agree with it, but I feel it needs to be said.

All of you know that ANet's business model for GW has been "no subscription fees", substituting semi-annual releases of new "chapters" to generate a revenue stream.

The problem inherent with this business model is that as a development company, they must provide enough adequate content for the consumers to justify the cost, especially when ANet has decided to price the chapters as A List titles ($49.95US retail).

If ANet wants to release a top priced "chapter" every six months - they will need to make sure their customers are getting their money's worth.

Seriously, does Factions measure up? If Factions is skating on thin ice content wise, do you think that future chapters will be worse?

Take a look at Factions as it stands right now. What did we get?

Two new professions (chapter one had 6)
New continent (chapter one was at least twice as big with 2x the missions)
New skills (I'll get to this in a minute)
New armor, artwork, etc (money sinks basically)
New content for PvP (guild halls, etc) but those items are available to chapter one owners as well, it's nothing more than a patch upgrade of features.
New concepts of Alliances and Faction which I'll also get to in more depth later.

I'll leave the new professions alone, that's very subjective, some people like them (I don't) but that's not really the issue, except for one consideration...we're not going to get two new professions with every chapter, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel with the two they introduced now.

The core problem with GW (As I've stated before in other threads) is the combination of balance, level restrictions, and restricted base design. At some point, ANet simply will run out of different ways of combining conditions, damage, energy cost, duration, speed, hex, curse, whatever. There are just so many ways you can deal out the same amount of damage before it becomes just the same thing, different name. We've already reached that point - why does the Ranger have two skills (Penetrating Attack and Sundering Attack) that do exactly the same thing, cost exactly the same energy, the only difference is the artwork of the skill? How many different ways can you set someone on fire as an elementalist? How many different 5 energy healing skills do you really need?

The game itself has a very limited set of conditions, for example. Dazed, Weakness, Blind, Poisoned, Crippled and Bleeding. Because of balance, any new skill introduced must fit within the framework of GW's current design simply because old players that don't buy the new chapters still need to be balanced with new ones.

The same goes for weapons. A Max damage bow is a max damage bow, from chapter one to chapter one hundred. There are a very limited # of mods (Sundering, Zealous, etc), and we've basically already seen just about every combination in all of the different green items. Even, in some cases, we haven't, at some point we will. It's just simple logic. ANet again can't change this due to balance between chapters.

The customer base isn't helping either. They go absolutely apeshit over idiotic toys, spending 100s of platinum for vanity items, when items that actually HELP you play the game better are worth almost nothing, with very few exceptions. The game is barbie fashion designer.

Then there is the alliance/factions idea. As predicted, 99% of the guilds will be locked out of certain content simply because they are not members of a particular alliance or guild. This will never change. The rich get richer.

Already it costs over 1.7 MILLION Faction to "own" a town (House Zu Helter), and the game has been out a week.

What I continually see is ANet consistently underestimating their customers ability to find a way to screw over their fellow players, or find exploits, or devise ways using certain skills/items/runes/armors to have an advantage over others. Factions is no different.

And the PvP content - I'm not impressed at all. We've got a 12v12 that really isn't all that fun, and to make things worse, players dropping left and right when the going gets rough. It can take 10-15 minutes to even enter the mission, as the countdown timer just sits there and recycles over and over - all to gain what, 500 faction on average? Fort Aspenwood is even worse - random 8v8? RA was bad enough in Chapter 1, hey, here's an idea, let's make it 100% more lame by doubling the team size. Apparently everyone feels the same way because Ft Aspenwood is a ghost town. The HA folks got zilch for new maps or game types. Guilds got 4 new maps, which are beautiful (well, two of them are) but again, it's a free patch upgrade, you don't need to buy factions to get it.

As far as the new PvE content - I finished it in 3 days, using mostly PUGs and Henchies, with occasional guild help. The fact we have to go BUY most of the skills is stupid. Yet another money sink. Since there aren't really any missions to gain new skills, the quests themselves are almost exclusively fedex quests to gain exp and skill points. I hate to break it to ANet, but my Ranger already has unlocked all of the Ranger skills and I have over 50 skill points just sitting there. I don't NEED skill points. I don't need experience points.

And ANet learned their lesson with runners. Still think after encountering all of the locked gates in Factions that ANet loved the booming running economy that ruined Chapter 1? I don't care what they "said" - the proof is in the pudding, isn't it? Good thing too, if they allowed people to actually run in this game they would be even more dissapointed with how small the actual continent is.

So, when chapter 3 comes out in October or November, just what is ANet going to include in it to justify 50 bucks more? We already paid that for 1/2 the content of chapter one. As time goes on, there just won't be anything more they can add that is just rehashing the same old junk with new skins. We've already seen this with Factions, and I predict it will just get worse as time goes on.