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Guild Wars 2 |OT3| Two Week Updates, One Box, Zero Subscriptions

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Lunar15

Member
Seeing screenshots for Thaumanova make me feel ambivalent. I bet it will be cool, but my mind still races about how cool and different abbadon could have been.
 

Vyrance

Member
It was something like 277,000 documents, so if it's about that size, you're getting the right thing.

Ok that sounds about right. Won't let me download it while I'm in-game though :( Guess I'll do it in a bit when I have to shower

And were you able to log-in on that downloader screen? If so, were you using your regular account name/pass or the ones specifically for this thing
 
I wonder if future Elder Dragon stories are going to be done through the living story or larger expansions. I like the living story stuff (or did last time I played, been way too busy the past few months), but I'd like to see some cooler story stuff happen. Or some more lore-heavy story stuff.

And the new Fractal stuff is really cool. I wish we got more updates like that. For updates with new dungeons, I'd love to see the fractal version of that new dungeon added immediately after that update ends
 

Aquila

Member
Just saw the list of fractal changes, seems pretty fair so far. I'm bummed that weapons aren't able to be purchased with relics/tokens but I didn't expect them to be in the first place. No documented changes to the dredge fractal yet...?
 

LiveSpartan235

Neo Member
Some info on the Cinematice Fractured Teaser trailer

https://forum-en.guildwars2.com/forum/game/gw2/Best-trailer-ever/first#post3227234
Thanks for the nice comments guys.

Here are some “behind the scenes” facts about this cinematic:

The cinematic was built as a prototype for the new video playback technology.

It was made over a year ago, and we planned to launch it with the original Fractal release. Unfortunately, the tech didn’t get implemented in time and we missed the release window. It was decided that we sit on the cinematic trailer until there was a big update to the Fractals.

The 3D character models are (pre)rendered in-engine with our model viewer and matched up with cameras in Maya and After Effects.

While I have special place in my heart for the original GW2 in-engine cinematics (such as the Dugneon Catacombs flashback…a cinematic that I reworked 4 times over the course of development) These new types of pre-rendered videos allow us to work faster, increase the quality, and they perform better on more peoples machines.

There are some pretty exciting cinematics coming in the future…I hope you guys will receive them as well as the Fractals piece.

Thanks again!
 
If you like the trailer than be happy because looks like they will be using same technology to make in-game cinematics in the future.

Beaten by the spartan!
 

Proven

Member
So, good news is that I finally got Mumble working on my computer again. Apparently I somehow corrupted the installation package. Then downloaded the install again and it corrupted again. And then again. But then I got one that worked!

Unfortunately the alpha test doesn't use Mumble...
 

Mxrz

Member
For the Edge of the Mists download, is the download pretty huge? I'm terrible with computer stuff. Also, when I *think* I'm downloading the client, I try to log into it while it's downloading but says I'm not recognized for a free trial or something, lol.

And YES! The infinite axe is here finally. I am complete! Also bought the Kasmeer staff skin lol.

It is around a 20gb download. Looks like its a completely different install of the game. The name of the dat makes me thinks it'll be another 20gb dl if we ever get to test something else. Thats a little clunky.

I'm all on board with the new fractal changes. Little wary over that new rune. Account-wide reward level is nice. A shot at fractal weapons at level 10 is great. I like a lot of those skins more than most legendaries, but never been too motivated to go past level 14 or so.

Guessing the Dredge Fractal wasn't changed any, and from the sound of things it'll be showing up even more. Hurrgh.
 

Proven

Member
So next update will have no meta-reward, or PvE content besides Fractals, right?

Who knows. It'd be nice to have a Living Story update without a meta-achievement for once, if only because it's different. It'd also remind people that they're not trying to force people into grinds with these releases.
 
Wont be able to try out the edge of the mists map today, but I look forward to seeing all your screenshots and joining you guys during the Thursday session.
 
The story so far:

iS6R9cD0SHbBd.jpg


And now you know!

(I know LS is controversial, but I'm damn glad I've been there for all of this. Especially Lost Shores, when the map was "settled".)
 

Mxrz

Member
Fractal update sounds good except....no changes on how you obtain the skins. Fucking hell Anet.

You can get them lower level, at least.

I always wanted to see the Charr Invasion fractal expanded. In a perfect world, they could've done it as a more WvW-flavored thing. Cap points, ramming the gates, spawning more charr, and all that. But that is probably too involved for something like a fractal.

Still it sure would be a cool thing to have in game. Playing a Charr in GW2 is sort of nothing like I imagined it would be back in GW1. The most popular charr, after all, is like a one-handed Teddy Bear. We've come along way since BBQ'ing Rurik's girlfriend.

* Anyone else trying the mist today? I don't want to be the only one.
 

Proven

Member
You can get them lower level, at least.

I always wanted to see the Charr Invasion fractal expanded. In a perfect world, they could've done it as a more WvW-flavored thing. Cap points, ramming the gates, spawning more charr, and all that. But that is probably too involved for something like a fractal.

Still it sure would be a cool thing to have in game. Playing a Charr in GW2 is sort of nothing like I imagined it would be back in GW1. The most popular charr, after all, is like a one-handed Teddy Bear. We've come along way since BBQ'ing Rurik's girlfriend.

* Anyone else trying the mist today? I don't want to be the only one.

I'll be in there. Taking care of some stuff before the play session right now.

Edit: I wonder how many people are going to end up choosing the wrong server...
I'm in right now, and will create a temp GAF group if there's no officer on soon.
 

Ashodin

Member
Fractal update sounds good except....no changes on how you obtain the skins. Fucking hell Anet.

pipe down son

Unfortunately the change doesn’t apply to items that have already been acquired. Ultimately that’s what I wanted but there was a pretty severe technical limitation on this, so we thought it would be better to make the newly items work this way rather than postpone the conversion any longer.
Also, at higher Fractal levels the weapon skins become more common, and also start dropping in a container that lets you pick the one you want.
 

Mxrz

Member
Yeah. I'm sort of surprised. Figured they would copy our stuff over. Gotta make the guild and everything by the looks of it.
 

Hawkian

The Cryptarch's Bane
Sadly a number of items in there are outdated and I can't edit it. I should make a followup post. Champion bags are a great consistent source of gold (crimzonflame, the answer you are looking for probably lies with the Frostgorge, Cursed Shore, or Queensdale champion farms), and while my advice on dungeons in that post actually is even more relevant now, the way you'd actually max out your earnings has changed.
I'm slightly relieved I didn't sign up. I've had a really rough 24 hours for
mental health reasons
and the e-mail change thing would have made things significantly worse.

Hope you folks have fun in the beta though, and I look forward to it rolling into production :)
I'm sorry to hear that, and here's hoping the 24 hours after and those to come are far better.
Awaiting Hawkian impressions
Taken together the changes are more than I had expected or hoped for. As an anniversary release for fractals I am personally thrilled, and I know that come the end of the month- I have a number of days off from work- I will be playing the shit out of them as I did last November.

However, and this bit is going to be tough to explain well...

There are a fair few tweaks included here that I've seen people repeatedly and specifically ask for, to which I told them they probably shouldn't get their hopes up- alongside some I wouldn't have even thought of that will improve the experience as well. Yet I know there will be new issues to be picked apart and new complaints to be voiced. (I say "I know there will" to be rhetorical; obviously this has already started.) It isn't that all or any of these complaints will be illegitimate or nonconstructive, but they are omnipresent and they are everywhere. Yesterday, I had the realization that quite literally the same debate was taking place here, on Reddit, and on the official forums simultaneously. This isn't remarkable except that it's a coincidence (you are of course free to interpret it as a sign of impending doom), but I just found it sort of personally exhausting.

I've long understood that this is just the way it will always be. No exceptions. There will not, ever, be a time at which "everything is good now" for every player, and even if that statement would one day hold true for the players saying it in the past, at that point there will be new players with brand new complaints.

But lately there's an odd effect. When something comes out that I really like, say the Tower or these announced Fractal updates, I feel myself kind of sigh in exasperation and brace myself for the new wave of problems people are going to have with it. I'm sure that seems nonsensical. It's just like even if I want to sort of keep to myself and be happy with what I'm getting there's an unavoidable element. Obviously this is just a personal "problem" and it's my fault for letting it affect my enjoyment; it's a necessary aspect of being part of any gaming community.

I'm just not really geared up for the whining metagame; I get nothing out of being around it and I'd like to shy away from it as much as possible from now on. I'm sure it's obnoxious to even bring up (hey! complaining about complaining!) but I promise this will be my only post on the topic. Obviously, there are certain aspects I literally can't avoid to be able to play the game, but I'll enjoy myself more (the only reason I play at all) if I participate less often in the rest. Sad as I will be to risk my unchallenged post count in this thread.

I've seen dozens of points made in the recent pages about this game's future, some of which I agree with completely, some of which I disagree with but respect, and some which I find to be wholly without merit. There would be no hope of addressing even half of them, but I keep coming back to one line of discussion.
I don't really care if the updates are free.
This "it's free so don't complain" schtick is asinine and needs to [stop] being [used] as an excuse.
From my perspective, this is complete and abject nonsense, and always will be. I don't even think of it in terms of you guys being wrong, and I can even see how the argument is logically sound from another viewpoint; it just doesn't apply to me. This is the difference between how you and I look at the game, and it is pretty wholly the difference. We will never see eye to eye on this and I have no illusions of convincing you.

However, I promise you that the degree to which you may not care whether or not the updates are free is exceeded by how much it matters to me. And as much as the "it's free so don't complain" shtick may be asinine to you, the idea that this concept is an "excuse" is equally ridiculous to me.

I gather that those with this mindset consider the differences between a subscription-based model and the one employed by Guild Wars 2 to be basically arbitrary. That's valid. But to me they are the ballgame. Everything from the upfront financial requirements to the nature of time invested to the legitimacy of consumer complaints are affected by this distinction.

And to me this distinction is simple, obvious and clear. Rather than paying for a product and then paying continuously to use it, I have payed for a product. So when I read something like:
don't use the free excuse like anet is doing us a favor. they are not.
Well, yes, that's accurate. They are definitely not doing us a favor. They are giving us what we paid for. Namely: a game, plus post-launch content. Just like any other game; way, way more than many other games.

I quickly get out of my depth when debating this, because the idea that there's more to it than that is so foreign to me that I have no real frame of reference.
GLopez12 said:
Whether they get revenue through a subscription, in-game store or mix of both is irrelevant in this sense.
It may appear wholly irrelevant to you, and for all we know it would have had little impact on the development team's approach to ongoing content. But you're skipping over the part where they got me as a paying customer in the first place.

I don't pay subscription fees for games. Ever. I can't do it. The prospect of paying subscription fees for games is so heinous to me that even typing the phrase "subscription fees for games" this many times makes me shudder involuntarily. I pay subscriptions for services that assist me in navigating my daily life in modern society, or for entertainment content that is literally not offered in any other form (sports TV programming). To me paying a monthly fee for a videogame would be like paying a monthly fee after buying a bike, a trip to Mexico, or an ice cream sundae (actually, more on that last one below).

So maybe very little would be different about the experience for you if they got the revenue from a subscription. But at the very least, GAF's Guild Wars 2 guild would have some other leader right now (if it still existed at all ;]). I suspect that for some of you this might well sound like a win-win scenario; to them I can offer only my apologies.

I have absolutely nothing against those who enjoy subscription-based games, and indeed I respect the ability. I just know myself, and it would not be good. You know how Guild Wars 2 is kind of a nightmare for people who are OCD about achievements and absolutely must check off every box? Well I don't have that problem. I couldn't possibly care less about nabbing everything and I'm usually halfway done or more by the time I look at a new Meta for the first time. But on the other hand, I am really big on the concept of value. I hate "ripoffs." A lot. And I know that I would absolutely have to play a certain amount every month to feel like I was "getting my money's worth" from a subscription game. In fact, I'm quite sure I would calculate what I felt was an acceptable monthly dollar-per-hour cost and ensure that I met that threshold every month and feel like I was wasting money if I didn't. It honestly wouldn't matter all that much what the subscription fee was; any amount would be enough to compel me to make sure I played even if I didn't want to. Honestly I'm uneasy even about paying for online gaming services a la consoles, but I justify this as being diffused over multiple months and game releases (if I don't play for a whole month no big deal because I'll play a bunch when a new game comes out).

Meanwhile Guild Wars 2 is one of the best values I've experienced in the history of entertainment. I mean I'm sorry if that sounds like too lavish praise to you. But I adhere universally to a simple formula for determining gaming value:
(sunk costs / hours of entertainment) = $ per hour of entertainment.

Total, so far I have spent $153.96 on Guild Wars 2. More than half of this was technically not cash, but stuff like gift cards received as presents or reward at work- found money spends sweeter- but I factor it in for these purposes nonetheless. Across all characters, I have played a little over 2300 hours so far. Subtracting 300 hours to account for time spent not having fun- I suspect the actual total to be far, far less than this, but just to be conservative- like bad-mood dungeon runs, getting disconnected in the middle of something, dealing with unpleasant players in-game, lost item hunt from F&F, etc... and we're at 2000 hours.

$153.96 / 2000 hrs = $0.08 per hour

Eight cents. This catapaults GW2 into the stratosphere of gaming value for me, blowing a bit past GW1 to sit somewhere alongside titles from my gaming lifespan like Twisted Metal 2, Starcraft, Pokémon Blue, Soul Calibur 2, Halo 2, Minecraft and Terraria. There are games I consider absolute masterpieces that will never approach this level of value.

Meanwhile the money I have spent beyond the cost of the game has had two purposes:
1) voluntary support- as a method of helping to financially incentivize the ongoing development of the game, at times of my choosing
2) specific reward- I spent real-world money to obtain something I specifically desired in-game, such as an item skin or convenience factor

The relevant ideas here being that my financial support was only obtained when I desired to give it rather than being a necessity for play, and that I chose the way my money was allocated for my own in-game reward.

Let us compare... at $15 a month, without having purchased any supplemental services or features for money, the equivalent subscription game would have thus cost me $210 (not including this month). Still, if I'd enjoyed 2000 hours, not at all a bad value- but I'd have not received any specific in-game rewards for that money nor tailored my spending to my desire to support the game.

And all of that value would still be obliterated by the "have to get my money's worth" bit for me.

So things get really bizarre when we start to insinuate that Guild Wars 2 is a poor value if you just factor in opportunity cost...
"Free" content is only free if you don't value your time.
I sense a pretty deep-seated philosophical disagreement here, one that probably extends beyond post-launch MMO support criticism. But to me the economic determination of opportunity cost takes place at the point of deciding to play a game I enjoy. I mean that's what I've elected to do with my time. Certainly this decision will not result in any kind of monetary return on investment, nor will I obtain any significant practical knowledge, benefit the lives of others, or secure or advance my social standing. What I'm actually doing is putting cool-looking digital stuff on my little 3D avatar, challenging my skills mechanically in a way that does not translate at all to anything in the real world, and sometimes hanging out with like-minded people. How much I enjoy any given experience certainly doesn't impact the sunk cost determination above, and only affects the overarching value of the game if I don't enjoy it at all but continue to do it anyway[/I, which is exceedingly rare for me.

I will concede that the content updates in question are technically not free, much as they may feel that way to me every two weeks. I paid for them when I bought the game. But deciding to partake in them by choosing to play GW2 and do Living Story if I so desire is not a notable opportunity cost for me in any sense.

It's like...
It's absolutely appropriate to "bitch" about the gaming equivalent of empty calories
Hah! That's exactly it. That's more or less exactly how I view these continuous releases: empty calories. I can see that to you this is universally a bad thing.

But I like empty calories.
Cake, cookies, sweets, candy, ice cream, soft drinks
Beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages
Yep. That's what playing Guild Wars 2 regularly is like for me- being served some new dessert or cocktail every two weeks. I don't like all flavors of ice cream equally; sometimes there's a bit of candy that is way too sweet. But hey now there's this slice of pie that I've never tried before!

Unlike the real-world counterparts I also don't have to keep paying more money to get more of them and they're also probably quite less detrimental to my health. Your point seems to be that they are devoid of nutritional value and thus worth complaining about regardless of cost, but doesn't it occur that people still enjoy consuming empty calories? They're delicious, even if not everybody likes soda, or Twizzlers, or Captain Morgan.

It makes sense to me that if you were asked to pay more money to get them, you would want them to be both "meatier" and more to your liking. But the idea that these releases which come whether you play, pay, or neither, structured the way they are, should necessarily be tailored to meet the specific demands of any individual player with a complaint is so backwards that it would in all likelihood end up actually ruining the game if embraced to its extremes.

Don't be surprised if and when you are given the opportunity to pay for the "nutritious meal" that seems to be the desired outcome of these complaints. In turn I won't be surprised at the new high reached in fever-pitch whining after that- because now you'll really have paid for it.

Anyway, my point is made. Sorry for being so long winded for the nth time, and to those that find my attitude toward the game obnoxious rest assured that this will be the last post of the sort that I make. I will still post reminders in here for Guild Events, relevant details for stuff like the EotM alpha testing, help with questions/gameplay tips, and the occasional screenshot. I'm sure you won't all too much miss the rest ;)
 

Moondrop

Banned
Twisted Metal 2

Hell yes, Twisted Metal! (that's all I took from your post :p)

While the sequel was likely the better game objectively, I have the most fond memories of the original. I still remember co-op fighting Minion on the rooftops. One time I got bugged as Spectre halfway off a ledge, so I kept targeting my friend with penetrating homing missiles; eventually he drove over the ledge trying to ram me off. Good times.
 

Ashodin

Member
What I expected from Hawkian
glass_of_water_350.jpg


What I got
NewYork1-e1302549646313.jpg


Not to belittle you or anything. Just representing what my expectations were on your post.

I'm not sure what provoked your thought-statement like that, but rest assured I believe it was the current state of talks in this thread. Sadly, I hope you aren't letting too much get to you, Hawkian, as you are one of the only ones I know that enjoy the game for what it is, a solid diversion to life's general proclivities.
 

nataku

Member
Does it actually work and teleport you to a group dungeon or whatever?

It's not like WoW, where you select a roll and queue up, then get auto teleported.

You'll see a list of possible groups with a description, and you hit join. Still gotta talk to people about what the group is for, and have to waypoint there yourself.
 
It is around a 20gb download. Looks like its a completely different install of the game. The name of the dat makes me thinks it'll be another 20gb dl if we ever get to test something else. Thats a little clunky.
Lol I don't even have enough hard drive space for that...I really should upgrade my SSD.
 

Ceres

Banned
Yeah, its a bit of a disaster. We have maybe 10 people on the entire map not grouped up and meanwhile BP has more than that just from one guild. I fear the last minute notice and early time caused a lot of issues.
Also, not all guilds were put into Round 1 of testing. So there's a Round 2 of other guilds and eventually there will be a larger test of everyone.
 

Proven

Member
A lot of stuff wasn't working, so today was kind of a wash. Just explore, see intent, catch a few bugs. There were a couple of fights, but there was only one really organized guild in force, so everyone else wiped to them.
 
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