Vyr.9387

So here we are, a breath away from a half-year of pleas, suggestions, and wonder, reminiscing of the good ol' times of freedom and joy to tinker and dance around with just slightly different shoes for each tune playing. An era I, personally, had no taste of, because I haven't played the original Guild Wars, and my exploration of the gorgeous world of Tyria started fairly recently.

As such, this _tabula rasa_ provided me with a somewhat unique perspective, compared to the people expecting the second game being precisely the first one and then some, and the people expecting absolutely nothing, thus unconditionally praising the brand new tab of the Hero panel.

The feature itself is not bad at all, especially in a vacuum of experience similar to mine.

I heartily enjoy the ability to swap between two configurations on the fly, and, contrary to seemingly popular opinion, even the fact the builds are **not** linked to equipment sets, e.g. with only two sets of weapons available per tab, there are times when, summing up the circumstances, the best approach is a glass cannon, boss-murdering build, with ranged, mobile weapon, which excludes both daggers and rifles from the boss-murdering gear, but pistols from the open world loadout are perfect.

Sure, one could say the creators weren't exactly (puts on sunglasses) _Delta_ winning hand (YYYEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH), but even Rome wasn't built in a day, hm?

But if Your own (would-be) inhabitants are pitching in to make their city as magnificent as possible voluntarily and free of charge...!

And yet...

Herein lies the corpse of the decaying horse we're trying to beat out this wondrous world, but You, dear whoever-is-in-charge-of-this-unholy-process-of-spitting-in-the-faces-of-their-customers - because nobody believes the developers themselves are this incompetent - keep showering with plot armor: defecating in Your own living room, so You can sell Your guests the opportunity to open the window.

What You apparently do not realize is that those guests aren't bound to Your couches. They can simply stand up and walk right away.

Which, looking at [NCSoft's earnings](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/97600/nc-soft-q4-earnings-report-gw2-25-decline-over-q3/p1), people kinda-sorta did.

I highly doubt it's simply because of the Krait Oil the "templates" turned out to be, but You know what they say about camels and straws.

What all of the consideration boils down to invokes the image of Renfri's favorite fencing stance in the recent adaptation of The Witcher, which in turn feels like the author's intent was to recreate a person holding a gun and a flashlight, stabilizing each hand against the other, forgetting the slight detail that a gun is a ranged weapon, and generally not meant to be fought with in melee, so no matter how cool it looks with a sword, presenting a vulnerable part of one's body on a silver platter is seldom a reasonable decision.

Only that, in Your case, You're proudly wielding a rocket launcher, and confidently firing it right through Your own forearm.

But it seems so out of place:

It feels like there are two people deciding on monetization of anything, who do not even know they're colleagues, or a single person with schizophrenia.

The Knife Tail Gang Bond was a marvelous idea, just as the Supply Drop Requisitions, and although I've no idea what the profits looked like, from psychological perspective - since business was always about screwing people over - they were brilliant: an obvious discount on the goods **and** providing an incentive to play more.

And then the other guy releases a complete travesty of a system, which is... where do I even start :D

-> marketed to veterans, then butchered up to the point it's not even possible to fathom a semblance of an idea of a dream of what the veterans would need

-> monetized to incomprehensible lengths with ridiculously inferior functionality

-> completely disregarding any input the players were asked for

-> not doing a single thing to remedy the situation - or even acknowledging something is actually amiss!

-> etc. (meaning THERE ARE 24 FREAKING PAGES of this, come on :X)

There is absolutely nothing bad about admitting You were wrong. Hell, the entire human race could benefit from the ability to understand the concept of being mistaken or changing one's mind with new evidence is not a sign of some arbitrary weakness, but the beautiful, beautiful process of learning.

What I genuinely cannot get, however, is why You're so impossibly sure You were born walking AND immune to being advised.

Why are You so hell-bent on limiting the creativity of the very people who literally are the reason You even exist?

Look at, say, this niche, unpopular, forgotten game called World of Warcraft. Can You fathom people even surviving through Vanilla and into The Burning Crusade without add-ons? Or the population back in the day being so absurdly monstrous as it was, if Blizzard was throwing logs underneath their own feet like You keep doing? Certainly, the game is possibly the biggest amalgam of everything good _somebody else came up with_, but if You want to merely grab some free cash, why bother with all the beauty Tyria has to offer? Why employ all these grand artists if all what You strive for is being renamed to EA.net (read: Electronic Activision dot net) - and You bet the "dot net" part hurts the most, because we all love**d** Blizzard - and sell the exact same Fifa to mentally-impaired people or abuse children with lootboxes over and over again?

Even in a more shameless example, take Bethesda and Skyrim.

To this day the game is alive thanks to nobody else but the players. Quite literally, too, because the anniversary edition was released with the same bugs as the original.

Which is to show that games aren't just a product You sell and be done with it, especially something like a MMORPG which needs to evolve and keep people interested for a long period of time, preferably 'till they or the games die.

Because a happy customer is a returning customer.

Or a desperate one, but, as noted before, You do not possess a monopoly on entertainment.

The feedback You've been given after and even before the release of this Buildshit was, and is still being, completely ignored.

If all people can listen to in this day and age is profit - and I'm quite sure You can look up my account and how trigger-happy I was about buying even remotely shiny stuff just to support a world as magnificent as Tyria is (and let me tell You - I didn't regret a single thing precisely because of that) - let's put the money where our mouths are, and see whether You will see a gem purchase from me ever again.

And You can be sure the world won't just wait for You to come to Your senses.

Yes, I'm pretty flared up, because I love Tyria. And it doesn't deserve this nonsense.

So here's a mirror allowing You to get an adequate response each time You decide to insult Your own fans.

Hells know I wasn't born with enough middle fingers for all the gaming industry.

P.S.:

I was looking at the Revert button and wondering: if the agreement with Delta was that Arc Templates will get shut down once You release Your own templates...

..._why_ was it shut down?

Item: **Shrine Guardian** jackal skin

Race: tested with **Human** (male and female), **Sylvari** (female)

Issue: player models appear inside the fox's body, not on top of the saddle; basic jackal and Branded jackal skins seem to be unaffected

First seen: after yesterday's initial build

[shrine Guardian Soulbeast 2.0 I](https://i.imgur.com/V09lKUs.jpg)

[shrine Guardian Soulbeast 2.0 II](https://i.imgur.com/zqwX0hM.jpg)

[basic Jackal](https://i.imgur.com/FCS5UlY.jpg)

[branded Jackal](https://i.imgur.com/VPAhOos.jpg)