• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Guild Wars 2 - Heart of Thorns |OT| Welcome to the Jungle...

Status
Not open for further replies.
"The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible."

ಠ_ಠ

I kinda laughed at that; I'm pretty sure most people thought the expansion was rushed, lol. I only started recommending it after that super patch, lol.
 

Retro

Member
"The performance of HoT was not as expected. We learnt the lesson. A second expansion is in work and will be released as soon as possible."

Let's double down on bad decisions!

There's no way the community doesn't take the expansion announcement well. They're in an unfortunate situation where any time is too soon; the number of "we just paid for an expansion, and it was awful, and now you're coming to us hat in hand again for more?" comments will be through the roof. Pricing it at $50 again is going to stir up some crazy shit too.
 

Quenk

Member
Qpnt0vt.png


Such a satisfying message to see.
 
LkI99uA.jpg


It took our group a month to learn Matthias, but I'm glad we stuck with it. I'm so happy we have a group of people willing to wipe night after night, sometimes make backwards process, repair armor so many times, and still show up the next day.

Big image but fuck it. Big accomplishment.

We cleared the second wing in just over 2 months \o/ yaay

It took us just under 3 months to clear Spirit Vale so the timing was about right even though I wasn't expecting it AT ALL last night. We took 4 weeks on Sabetha too x_x I remember when we sucked at throwing sapper bombs so we'd wipe in 30 seconds every time, and now we clear her in one shot. :3 It definitely felt a little futile when we would regress. I am so, so happy that everyone wanted to keep coming back every night, even if we only had an hour to work at it. Everyone was willing to shuffle the comp around to see what worked best for the group as a whole and I am so thankful to know nice and fun people. Teamwork \o/ THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP <3

Neko Atsume da best

YAS best game. Ganache is a cheap bastard who only leaves 1 fish and needs to stop coming into my yard tho.
 

Zeroth

Member
I think the best part is that it never felt like we were doing a chore, even if we were wiping all night long. Theres a sense of progress and personal growth which makes me happy to have a group of friends to play with.
 

Quenk

Member
I think the best part is that it never felt like we were doing a chore, even if we were wiping all night long. Theres a sense of progress and personal growth which makes me happy to have a group of friends to play with.

The real chore was scheduling :V
 

Retro

Member
Something else from the Earnings Report:

The contribution of item sales to the total sales is much stronger than the box sales. The revenue will weaken over time. The second expansion should address this fact.

While I'm sure a not-insignificant chunk of those sales are whales, there's still something to be said for players buying things because they want to rather than because they have to. It seems obvious that players are more likely to spend real money on a game when they think they'll be playing it for a while (i.e. they'll invest in the game when they're invested in its future). Expansions create content droughts, though, which give players a reason to step away from the game for extended periods of time. Players who aren't playing regularly aren't invested in the long term and are thus less likely to buy gem store items, which this report shows can surpass gouging every player $50 just to keep up with everyone else every year or so.

Am I crazing for thinking gem store revenue wouldn't weaken so much if they gave players a reason to stick around, i.e. the Living World? To say nothing of the fact that selling the Living World chapters to lapsed players would be another source of gem store profits, especially if those chapters were consistently good enough to be worth buying ( which some of them have definitely not been, because people and resources were clearly being pulled away for HoT). There's also a lot of room for them to expand the Gem Store into new areas with things like player housing (the tools for which already exist in guild halls) and new cosmetic slots (adding something as simple as gliding to the game allowed them to start selling wings which I think we all can agree has made them a lot of money).

Or, you know, we can go 6 months to a year with nothing to do, bleeding players the whole time and making them wonder if it's worth dropping $50 to come back instead of asking themselves if they want to blow $10 every month or so all year long because they're already playing and plan to continue doing so.

Does that seem logical to anyone else or is it just me?
 

Anno

Member
I'm with ya Retro. Living World, even if it's just little stuff, is at least reason to pop in a bit every day. I do think they can do it with expansions too, though. Guess we'll just have to see what they've looked at and learned from HoT. Returning WvW to some prominence would help the game through content droughts a lot as well so I hope that's going decently for them.
 
I don't think a lot of people are going to disagree with you Retro =P I think we're all with you on that one. HoT was poorly executed and I hope they don't do something similar again, but I feel they could find a healthy balance between Living World and expansion content. There's not a lot of hype around frequent smaller updates. They need to find a balance between something to get the attention of new players and something to invest in their current fanbase.

I see *why* they wanted to do an expansion but they really did fumble through it. They could do better.

Well it took a damn long while, but I finally beat Vale Guardian! Onward to Gorseval.

Congrats!! :D
 

Retro

Member
I don't think a lot of people are going to disagree with you Retro =P I think we're all with you on that one.

It's not so much that I expect people to disagree with me, I'm just wondering if that makes sense to anyone else. Maintaining the players you have seems like it would be better in the long run than losing a ton of players and then trying to convince them all to come back with an expansion (only to have them all leave again after a month). There's a glut of games people can play instead, ones much more aggressive with their cash shops to boot.

Expansions generate hype and an influx of cash, but neither last very long and the cons definitely outweigh the pros, at least for me. Before HoT I was more than happy to drop cash for gems, but since it's release I've got no reason to since we're staring down the barrel of another 3-6 months with fuck all to do (presumably, with the expansion shortly after). What good are glider skins and permanent tools (items I've been more than happy to purchase in the past) when I'm not going to have any reason to play until the end of summer at the earliest? If the gem store is where the majority of their earnings come from, the expansion model seems counter-productive.
 
I just don't think ANet or NCsoft have a very strong understanding of the importance of maintaining a strong playerbase with general shows of goodwill. Then again, it seems every other MMO dev has forgotten, too, so maybe that's fine.
 

Retro

Member
Guildhall expansion is ready, somebody press the button.

Update complete, would have upgraded it earlier but Mrs. Retor has been under the weather so I've been taking care of her instead. It wasn't ready when I checked after last night's dungeons, I've been throwing my Exotic-tier luck in there when I get 'em so whoever threw the last items needed, good stuff. Looks like it was Jayemji and Sonicbug that dumped in the last of it.

Now might also be a good time to reset all of the decorations in the hall, since we have a lot of snow piles / super clouds floating around in places that are now unlocked by default. Anyone who's been throwing that stuff in there, speak up if you'd rather we didn't. Nobody really to visit the guild hall except to gather from the nodes (and that's not anyone's fault, that's just how they seem to have been designed), so the few people who are enjoying building JPs or whatever in there, I don't want to clear out all of your work.

I did have to clear out a few cloud piles though that were physically blocking the new bridges.

Edit: Elonian Leather, Mithril Ingots and the ever-needed Linseed Oil are about all we need to upgrade the workshop, which is keeping us from upgrading the gathering nodes to produce higher-tier materials / more hits per day. I know some people can't wait to get more Elder wood.
 

Retro

Member
So, I'm about to take the plunge and buy the Standard Edition - is there any kind of promo code/discount or is it the full $50?

Usually Green Man Gaming has it cheap, but I don't even see HoT in their system, strangely. Wherever you buy it though, make sure it's legit; a lot of accounts get shut down for buying illegitimate keys. If in doubt, go through ArenaNet directly.

Edit: http://www.dlgamer.us/download-guild_wars_2_heart_of_thorns-pc_games-p-29808.html appears to be $10 cheaper, and they're listed as an authorized retailer.
 
Something was causing my computer to crash when the game world would load up or I might be able to play 10-20 minutes before it would reboot my computer and continually reboot the rest of the night when trying to load back in. I seemingly got that fixed finally by removing all video drivers and reinstalling them. But now the game runs like absolute garbage. I was around 15-20 FPS all today doing the dailies. Anybody run into similar issues before? I was hitting a very solid 60 FPS prior.

Anyway, at least I was able to do all the dailies without it rebooting once. That's an improvement.

Edit: I reset my computer to see if that would fix the performance somehow. I load the game up and as soon as it loads into Verdant Brink (before it even shows up) it reboots my computer. So nope, not fixed yet. I just had a lucky streak doing the daily.
 
Something was causing my computer to crash when the game world would load up or I might be able to play 10-20 minutes before it would reboot my computer and continually reboot the rest of the night when trying to load back in. I seemingly got that fixed finally by removing all video drivers and reinstalling them. But now the game runs like absolute garbage. I was around 15-20 FPS all today doing the dailies. Anybody run into similar issues before? I was hitting a very solid 60 FPS prior.

Anyway, at least I was able to do all the dailies without it rebooting once. That's an improvement.

Edit: I reset my computer to see if that would fix the performance somehow. I load the game up and as soon as it loads into Verdant Brink (before it even shows up) it reboots my computer. So nope, not fixed yet. I just had a lucky streak doing the daily.

Some people had improvements by deleting the Local.dat file in the %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/ folder.
 
Some people had improvements by deleting the Local.dat file in the %appdata%/Guild Wars 2/ folder.

I'll give that a shot but at this point I'm pretty convinced my PSU is simply showing signs of failing which is causing the overall issues with it rebooting upon load. I've had the PSU for around five years now so it's put in a lot of work. I'll have to get a replacement to see if that's the fix.

But if the performance issues continue after fixing the rebooting I'll delete that file.
 

Spyware

Member
I'll give that a shot but at this point I'm pretty convinced my PSU is simply showing signs of failing which is causing the overall issues with it rebooting upon load. I've had the PSU for around five years now so it's put in a lot of work. I'll have to get a replacement to see if that's the fix.
Yeah my brother had the same issue in Black Desert Online and it was a failing PSU so that seems likely.
 
Yeah my brother had the same issue in Black Desert Online and it was a failing PSU so that seems likely.

Swapped out the power supply and it didn't reboot upon loading. I'm not going to play right now to make sure it lasts through an extended session but that's the first good sign. Then I loaded up Furmark which I've seen said online should be used to test things and last time any attempt would also reboot but this time it ran without a hitch. I'm pretty confident the power supply was the issue.

Glad to have it fixed. Ugh.
 

MattyG

Banned
I haven't played in like 6 months and my ranger (my main) is only in the 20s-30s. I'm debating between starting again with a different class or just trying to pick up the ranger again and power through to the endgame with my him. Hmm...

Eh, I think I'm just going to keep going as the ranger. I remember a lot of the areas I've already been to and it's not like there's complex story that I'm going to be lost on like in a single player RPG.
 
The Black Lion Trading Company has hired an aesthetician who allows players to preview new hairstyles, faces, and other appearance details without needing to own a Total Makeover Kit.

Took them long enough this feature is in GW1...
 

Boss Doggie

all my loli wolf companions are so moe
but I'm sick of bandits, and major events being in kryta

also finally nevermore quest done, but fucking amalgamated gemstones, oh boy, I wonder if it's more cost efficient to buy the cheapest component and mystic forge it (via 25 25 25 10), or buy the gemstone outright

and I can see why the legendary team was laid off, assuming they control any related legendary shtick - it's like they never thought of the event requirements and the amalgamated gemstone itself being a money sink

EDIT: holy shit why nerf shouts? PVP? Why not just nerf it in pvp? Sometimes this game makes me shake my head.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom