Amendment to "GW2 vs FFXIV: Did Guild Wars 2 deserve more attention?"

[@brohogany9920]

Cool to see you address this stuff! Now you need to make a gw2 vs ffxiv vs wow vs bdo vs eso vs osrs video!

[@valgardgaming]

My only regret is not doing it sooner really, thankfully one of the commentors on the other video did give me that last push to actually properly do it instead of having it all in the comment section of the last video. As for the video idea, there'll 100% be more comparisons on the way although god knows how I'd manage to do all of those all at once haha

[@TinyTurtles13]

I didn’t see the other video, but this amendment video alone convinced me to follow. Your talking points are articulated very well and this video shows that you’re someone who admits when they are wrong about something. It’s good stuff! ^__^

[@DemethVLK]

I just love the fact that specs are so uncommon that a necromancer can support his allies with sand invocations and a thief can be a shadow mage healer

[@ArmageddonEvil]

Great job on your amendment video. :)

[@valgardgaming]

Thank you, been a long time coming and I reckon before I do the next comparison video with GW2 I'll need to jump into Fractals and some Raids specifically. Get more of a vibe for them, as I one of the commentors did rightly point out. Still, thank you for watching as always Armageddon!

[@kaelinvictus6039]

Everyone makes mistakes but not everyone is not willing to admit. E.g. some toxic dj content creator just shadow bans corrections and/or buries them with brix of negligence. I commend your honesty and effort to set things right.

[@prettyunicorn261]

Some other corrections on this video : Arenanet is owned by NCSOFT, just like Creative business unit 3 is owned by Square Enix Arenanet does not "frequently" run the return to events, they only did it once, and we do not know if its gonna be something that pops again in the future ! Voila, otherwise pretty good video, have fun !

[@doodoofish]

It’s ok to make mistakes. We all do. But it shows great characters to admit and correct them. Content creator Lazy Peon also made mistakes when reviewing GW2, later he realized many of his points are invalid and make another video to correct them. He was applauded for his honesty.

[@Master10k2]

Didn't mind the older video, but good job owning up to your mistakes.

[@Highstar25]

I recently returned to GW2, in which I had a highly invested account. The returning player experience was... well, somewhat saddening. Much of the content I wanted to play was not included in the price of entry for all the expansion packs and had to be separately purchased as living world episodes, as I was not present during their period of free availability. An ESO-like optional subscription to get access to the whole lot without dropping more money than the whole latest expansion would be appreciated, I think. In terms of fashion and skins (One of my favourite parts of any MMO), while the skin and dye application system is still excellent, there are very, VERY few skins to actually earn through gameplay, as the focus is very clearly on the gem store, which is exploding with £5 limited time (aka FOMO exploiting) purchases for amazing skins that rival legendaries (many of which you can also purchase with real money via the currency exchange system, significantly impacting their prestige). And while one used to be able to easily convert gold to gems to occasionally buy something on the gem store without real money, the gold/gem exchange rate has inflated to the degree that this is no longer practical, and it seems most currency conversions are now in the opposite direction, with many playing swiping their cards to get around enormous gold sinks like the 'mystic tribute' section of legendary crafting, which costs more gold every year thanks to further inflation on the required time-gated in-game resources (namely mystic coins). The mounts are truly excellent, but it is tragic that there are nine mounts in the game, and yet of those nine only a SINGLE one has a SINGLE skin that can be earned in-game. The rest are all gem store exclusives that are quite pricy compared to essential account services like bank tabs and character slots. Concerning some of the points raised in this video... tbh, fractals are a really poor replacement for dungeons to me. It's like getting a bunch of samples instead of a full course meal. And from a thematic point of view I much prefer when a dungeon is a real, significant place in the game world that impacts the lore and story (as they were in GW2's base game), as opposed to a mystical random combat portal to many alternate dimensions and timelines. Regarding gearing, raids and fractals do drop ascended items, but you get coffers containing a selectable ascended item with a pre-determined stat selection. In other words, unless you get very, very lucky, it's almost always faster to craft ascended gear (assuming you have the relevant crafting skill at all), which is an expensive, time-gated process, but at least will get you the stats you need for your build without being at the mercy of RNG. You CAN retroactively alter the stats on gear to get around this, but it's kind of a pain in the dick and requires many of the same resources you would have been expected to use to craft them anyway (spirit shards and a crafted inscription). You can also buy them from fractal vendors and such!... Using currency that most experienced players will recommend you save because by spending it on ascended stuff you're losing valuable components for legendaries in the long run.

[@TheSerenaD]

I totally agree that the living world season not included to the expansion is a hard pill to swallow, especially for new or returning players. Anet should be very upfront about the cost of it. I don't think Gw2 will ever go subscription, because it has already had a decade worth of loyal fan base built around a non-subscription model, adding it now would alienate a lot of its players. It would be like if FF14 decided to include a lot of cash shop items for convenience or fashion, or if Lost Ark lock some of its story behind subscriptions. There seems to be either misconception or some outdated information here. Gw2 does utilize some FOMO gemstore practices, and does have some skins in recent years that could be compared legendaries. However, the claim that "there are very, VERY few skins to actually earn through gameplay, as the focus is very clearly on the gem store," is false. In fact there are 75 complete in game skins sets (6 pieces head to toe for each of the 5 races), 67 which are in-game skins, and half are locked through collections and in game currencies that can't be bought. The left over majority are crafted or through minor RNG. This link will show you skins for human, and you can find out where you can find each set in-game: wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Human_female_light_armor . If you are referring to outfits then thats another system. You cannot mix and match outfits, and the dye channel on them are extremely limited. No outfits are taken seriously when talking about "Fashion Wars". "the gold/gem exchange rate has inflated to the degree that this is no longer practical, and it seems most currency conversions are now in the opposite direction" This is a misunderstanding about how the conversion works in the game. The gem system is player driven. Meaning if a lot of people are trading Gem to Gold, then Gold gets more expensive to be purchased. This also means that players can spend less Gold to convert to gems. And due to the inflation you mentioned, Gold is worth less than it did before. So, if adjusted for inflation, Gold has around the same purchasing power they used to have. "enormous gold sinks like the 'mystic tribute' section of legendary crafting, which costs more gold every year thanks to further inflation on the required time-gated in-game resources (namely mystic coins)" Mystic tribute dropped by about half the price because all trophies and mystic coin value dropped by half over the last year or two. Bifrost cost to craft is only 1.1k instead of 2k now. "dungeon is a real, significant place in the game world that impacts the lore and story (as they were in GW2's base game), as opposed to a mystical random combat portal to many alternate dimensions and timelines." Fractals have either a full complete story, or are connected to GW lore. Example would be Thaumanova, Aetherblade, Twilight Oasis, etc. But I do see your point about Dungeons being something to really bite into. Something most fractals don't offer. I would recommend you to try out raids, they are like dungeons. They all have lots of story, lots of fun enemies, and tons of great designs. All ascended items can be stat swapped extremely easily and cheap: wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stat_changing . The most meta stats are only 5 gold to swap. There are also multiple collection to unlock ascended gear for virtually no money at all: the Elite weapon collection. In raids and fractals you get their respective currencies that can buy ascended gear in any stat you want. Experienced players would recommend you to fully gear to ascended before tackling legendary. It cost 40-50 gold for ascended, but 500-2000g for legendary. I hope this has clarified some of the points. I do agree that there should be more earnable mount skins in game. Maybe include more new player friendly conveniences like bigger bags, and more stat selectable gear while leveling, remover level requirement for story steps, and much more.

[@Highstar25]

​@@TheSerenaD Some of the fractals do have lore significance, although since you're essentially just playing a 'what-if' scenario or guesting into the shoes of other characters, it's not particularly engaging to me. Dungeons were one of my favorite parts of the vanilla experience and fractals just don't hit the same fantasy (especially when they're all run with hyper-optimized or cheese strats). It seems I did misunderstand how the conversion rates are determined, but the end result is the same: farming gold for gems is now far less practical and time-efficient than just earning real-world money to exchange for it. The same is especially true for sellable legendaries. The time it takes to craft one from scratch is far more than earning the requisite amount of disposable income to purchase one with real money at even a minimum wage job (which works out great for anet). Thus the only legendaries that I actually view to have any prestige are the unsellable season 2 legendaries. There are indeed a lot of skins in the base games... but they're almost all total crap in comparison to the high-effort skins on the gem store. It's a similar issue to WoW's focus on the mount store resulting in high-effort store mounts with custom animations, particle effects and sounds while the actual in-game mounts, even those earned from the highest echelon of raiding, are lazy re-skins at worst and and re-used skeletons at best. Just looking at the gem store right now we see a new Shiro-themed backpack that is arguably cooler and shinier than the legendary back piece that takes months of constant effort to earn and costs a fiver, as well as a bunch of capes far cooler than the runescape-inferno-cape-looking-ass one you get for the enormous icebrood saga cape grind.

[@TheSerenaD]

@@Highstar25 If your are looking for meatier instanced content I do suggest raids as they have a lot of story tied to the progression. It doesn't have branching paths but the difficulty will make your first few clears a fun challenge. Gold-Gem conversion was always player driven. I personally never convert money to Gold, but the amount of buying power was always more efficient from money to gold. If you want to drop 150USD on a convenience item like legendary weapons, sure. It lets other players buy some nice gemstore items cheaper. Also you are forgetting about all 3 legendary armor sets, 3 legendary back pieces, and trinkets are non purchasable. All of which requires a great deal of playing the game that drastically outweighs the gold sink. So most legendaries carry the "prestige", just not the trade post ones. I don't know if its down to personal preference, or something else, but all 60+ armors on all races and genders from game looks like crap? Only 2 sets from the gemstore have particle effects. Whereas 12 from game have particles and animation, and plenty more have moving parts like the dungeon skins. It would be disingenuous to not acknowledge that some game armor rival gemstore in terms of effects. I personally don't like some of the bulky or risque ones, but I acknowledge some people might really like that design. Also legendary armor has a draw animation that changes depending on if you are in combat or not. Legendary trinkets have a combine effect which changes appearance depending how many you have toggled on. They might not suit your taste, but those are both things the cash shop can't offer. The great thing about the gemstore system is that I will never feel like I have to swipe a card to obtain ANYTHING from the gemstore. Not a single time. I know that all the items will return in 4-6 months, and after 7ish month they will appear in black lion statuette trade. Half the items will then reappear a year later with a 15-20% discount. Its almost like clockwork. Plus getting the new shiro backpiece is much faster than getting the legendary if you farm the gold. It will take you months to get the collection for the legendary backpiece, but about 4 hours of ingame farming. The meta rotation farm nets you 40 gold an hour, and you need 140gold for Shiro backpiece. Maybe you don't want to spend 4 hour on a skin, then you can spend money and let other players get a better conversion. I think its just allow a great degree of freedom. I actually took a look at WoW skins and I'm not impressed. They charge 20-30USD for skins that cannot be obtained ingame. I hope we can both agree that the option to buy ANY cash shop item with in--game currency is a great thing. If you see legendaries as "Cash shop with extra step" then by the same vein "Cash shop is just in-game currency with extra steps". Both exist and balance each other. Of course there are downsides to the GW2 gemstore, like how its attached to the Tradepost when you open the tab ( which isn't the case when you open with a trader). Some of the earlier mount skin was a gamble to get the one you wanted, Anet has fixed so you can obtain them through normal means a month after the outcry.

[@Highstar25]

​@@TheSerenaD I actually don't agree. Linking the in-game economy to the real one is almost always a huge mistake. It turns the haves and have-nots from real life into haves and have-nots in the fantasy world too. Maybe if the gem store only went in the gold-sink direction, but as a two-way street it just promotes whaling. About the only game that handled that well was Eve online, but that game was essentially an economy simulator anyway (and you could actually cash out). If the two weren't so inextricably linked there would be more reason for there to be an even number of store items and in-game rewards of the same calibre, and I think we would be seeing a lot more than one exclusive mount skin earned from in-game activities. I honestly think that GW2's shop is a lot more insidious than many realize: *it has alerts to notify you of items that are being put back into the 'disney vault' for another year, creating FOMO. *the game intentionally starts you out with very little bank space, nowhere near enough character slots to try every class and makes bags very expensive for new players, which pushes account services hard, especially when you start getting showered in extra zone currencies that for some reason are tallied as items instead of... currencies, and therefore take up a lot of room. *they sell permanent convenience items like infinite gathering tools that solve an annoying problem they created... Then create a new gatherable resource in the living world episodes and promptly sell a new set of infinite tools that gather the normal ores, wood and crops PLUS the new resource. *and perhaps most insidiously subtle of all, to open the trading post menu you have to navigate THROUGH the gem store, meaning that if you ever don't have enough gold for what you wanted from the trading post, the gem store is riiiiight there. It's no wonder they tried to go full loot boxes and gatcha until the community started practically sending death threats. One of the death-knells of WoW was the addition of the WoW token, which allowed a legal gold to real money conversion and hyperinflated the economy to absurd degrees to the point where average players couldn't even afford the base components for the legendaries that were essential for raiding in shadowlands from the auction house. The main issues with WoW's cash shop are the aforementioned delegation of visual effort being skewed in favor of the cash shop over the in-game rewards, as well as the absurdly high prices for basic services. When it comes to in-game stores the best one I've ever seen was the short-lived city of heroes cash shop, which actually offered MICRO-transactions, none of which were randomized. We're talking 60p for a skin and £2.50 for a new powerset. Unfortunately NCsoft shut that game down because, no joke, it was making more money than their newer MMOs despite being a decade old and the CEO thought it would be a good idea to axe their old games to try and force players to the newer ones. (incidentally this also was one of the reasons arenanet split off from NCsoft, as they saw the headman's axe coming for GW1 next).

[@francb1634]

"there are very, VERY few skins to actually earn through gameplay" This really isn't true at all.... there are tons of in-game skins and apearances, including a lot of prestige skins locked behind achievements.

[@OspreyRed]

You should link your original video in the description of this one

[@valgardgaming]

That is actually a very smart idea, and it's just been added. Thank you for pointing out a, in hindsight, pretty obvious miss on my part

[@OspreyRed]

@@valgardgaming Cool! If you didn't do this already, then you may also want to add a link in the description of the original to this one as well. You can add a note in the description, a pinned comment, or even add an annotated link (I think). Just a suggestion, because it can potentially help boost views for both and helps get the info out :D Big GW2 fan here! BTW I really appreciate your time going through and highlighting the game I love!

[@Jartist234]

GW2 wins. Nuff said

[@Eiswueste]

What kinda rubs me the wrong way about Guild Wars 2 is the lack of background lore. Especially concerning classes. When I still played WoW, I could easily immerse myself playing, for example, a paladin. I could go to important characters I still know from the warcraft 3 campaign. I could visit Uther's tomb, I could meet Tirion Fordring, I could be present at significant (for the world building and the story) events at light's hope chapel. There was the whole mystery of the Holy Light and its antagonist forces. Back in the day we even had class quests and in Legion we got an order hall, that screamed Paladin from every single pixel. In Guild Wars 2 I know I'm a Guardian, because my skills have a light blue flash to them. The official Wiki spits out exactly 2 lines of text under the chapter "lore" when I type in "Guardian", .75 of which tell me, that the tradition of the Guardians is kinda unimportant nowadays and so they just use their magic to fuck shit up. I dunno, dude...

[@pokeylope6108]

Lore of the classes are mostly in GW1. However some GW2 classes are hyrbids of gw1 classes.

[@adanos4]

gems to gold conversion is not worth it. The gold you get is not worth spending money on. When you get to level 80 you can have access to real gold-making zones which eliminates any need for buying gold. Furthermore you do not need much gold to properly gear yourself at level 80. Aka buy exotic named gear sets.

[@reflechant]

I got my first exotic gear set doing whole map META at Verdant Brink. Why would anyone buy it?

[@mmendes]

Fair. :)

[@ROCKNROLL947]

GW2 deserves more and FF14 deserves way less attention

[@prettyunicorn261]

No, they both deserve more, that's what would be a win for the MMO industry, and make both games better.

[@kaelinvictus6039]

It would be nice if the underrated game got more than the overrated wow clone.

[@prettyunicorn261]

@@twocatsyelling723 Wait what, its an MMO, a very niche industry, any attention to any MMO is good, idk why you're making things so deep in your head, no one cares about the popularity or viewership as long as more money pours into the industry, both games deserve more attention and that's a fact, as do every other MMO in my opinion, plus they're very good games so that's a huge bonus :)

[@reflechant]

Yeah, there is a lot of stuff in GW2 open world, you can do collections, explore, grind, etc. etc. But at some point it gets repetitive, you start to see patterns in NPC interactions which were jaw-dropping back in 2012 (children running in the city playing and voiced). It starts to feel like Westworld. You can only get this far with open world however well crafted - Ubisoft grinding franchises show it clearly.

[@hjvdb6829]

nice vid

[@MusPuiDiTe]

Well, anyone could miss things, no biggie: it's nice you took some time to rectify some things! Good job!