Guild Wars 2

Elyssandariel.2679:

For me, GW2 HAS lost it’s identity. This used to be a game to play when you wanted to, and put down when you wanted to, with no real consequences to your characters. If you wanted to take a month off, you could still go back and do all the stuff that you missed later. You didn’t need a certain gear. You didn’t need a certain weapon. If other people played longer, they’d just have more gold to play with.

NOW, you NEED ascended to do fractals. You cannot do upper level fractals without agony resistance, and that goes in ascended gear. In order to get ascended gear, you have to have a maxed out crafting on one or more category. You also need a ton of materials to make this gear, and some of the things you are crafting is time-gated to one a day, which will take a while, or is expensive to buy. Now there will be Legendary armor coming out, with better stats than ascended.

That doesn’t sound like the start of a gear treadmill to anyone else? Because it does to me. What happens when we’ve had Legendary out for a while and they require it somehow for some other game mode? And then once “everyone” has that, will they put something else out, that’s got more stats than Legendary armor, so the players have something else to reach for? I’m thinking they will. It hasn’t started with weapons yet, but it is a matter of time.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anything to work for ever, or that there shouldn’t be more challenging content! Far from it! When they first revamped Teq, it was simply to increase hitpoints so it was almost unkillable and then dusted off their hands like “Our job here is done!!” Teq is one of the most popular world bosses there is, along with Karka Queen. Player dissatisfaction was LOUD and CLEAR that just upping the hitpoints was not the way to go. The new Shatterer design is a lot better, and more in line with the “improvements” that should be made. Before the revamp, we stood on a hill in a group and just fired stuff at it. That was all.

HoT was a dramatic increase in skill needed. I still haven’t completed it all, because you need masteries and you have to kill things for masteries. Story is gated behind these masteries and if you don’t have them, you can’t do the story! I HATE STORY GATING!! I hate it with a passion! Story is what I enjoy most about this game, and they gated story behind not only masteries, but they did the lead-in to Living Story Season 3 behind raids! How many people knew what was going on in the story, without looking at you-tube? Be honest with yourselves. The majority of players did not know, because the lead-in story was gated behind raiding, which the majority of players do not do!

I am not saying to not have raids. I am not saying to not have challenging content. I am saying that this started as a more casual and relaxed atmosphere, and now it is turning into a grindfest, either for masteries, or for gear. Leveling is easy, thank goodness. The real grind begins at level 80 for most people!

TLDR: Yeah, GW2 has definitely lost it’s vision.

Did Anet change their stance on Legendary vs Ascended gear recently? I aek because they have stated for years now that Legendary will NOT have better stats than ascended. Legendary armor is essentially a matter of cosmetics. Cosmetic differences do not constitute the beginning of a gear treadmill.

That said, the addition of ascended tier is why I cut my spending on the game.

I am not sure. I had heard that Legendary would have better stats than ascended armor, probably on these forums somewhere. If this is wrong, then I apologize, and disregard that part of my post. The rest still stands, though. Story gating sucks, gating content behind hard to get gear sucks.

The community is more toxic now too. Someone in our group at Vinewrath told a new person asking for guidance “Google is your friend!” as if they were supposed to suddenly open google in the middle of the champion fight. A quick “Stand on the flowers when X happens” or whatever it was would have gone a long way. I would’ve told the new person but I couldn’t remember when to do it, it had been so long since I had done Vinewrath. NO ONE knew what to do, except a couple of people, and Vinewrath failed because they wouldn’t tell the rest what to do. When I said that we might have had a chance had someone rezzed the first few people that went down, so they could rez others, the response was “We can’t rez. Just stand where you’re supposed to.” Uhh…rezzing is pretty necessary at almost all world bosses, to complete it. Claw of Jormag, I’m looking at you. Most of what I do at world bosses is actually just running around rezzing people, unless I am down myself. There is just a very unhelpful and “every man for themselves!” vibe with some of the events sometimes and it didn’t used to be that way.

PVE is cooperative! No one is stealing anything from you if you help them back up!

EDIT: It isn’t better stats. But, you can change your stat combos, so this is what would make it more appealing to people! Sorry for the confusion! I knew that I had heard it would be “better” somehow.

elrin.4750:

I’m a new player, don’t have an 80 yet. Reading the forums and reddit it seems HoT is ‘L2P or GTFO’.

Still enjoying the core game, but not looking forward to HoT.

More the issue is that core open world is mostly fairly easy. There are a few spots you can over pull, but until you get to Orr, it just isn’t that hard. When the recommendation on gear is “within ten levels, maybe five for your weapon”, the game play isn’t really challenging.

HoT is a step up in difficulty level. Maybe if they revised core so people were keen on keeping gear up to date, and carefully pulling, more willing to use LFG, the difference wouldn’t be so noticeable.

Elyssandariel.2679:

For me, GW2 HAS lost it’s identity. This used to be a game to play when you wanted to, and put down when you wanted to, with no real consequences to your characters. If you wanted to take a month off, you could still go back and do all the stuff that you missed later. You didn’t need a certain gear. You didn’t need a certain weapon. If other people played longer, they’d just have more gold to play with.

NOW, you NEED ascended to do fractals. You cannot do upper level fractals without agony resistance, and that goes in ascended gear. In order to get ascended gear, you have to have a maxed out crafting on one or more category. You also need a ton of materials to make this gear, and some of the things you are crafting is time-gated to one a day, which will take a while, or is expensive to buy. Now there will be Legendary armor coming out, with better stats than ascended.

That doesn’t sound like the start of a gear treadmill to anyone else? Because it does to me. What happens when we’ve had Legendary out for a while and they require it somehow for some other game mode? And then once “everyone” has that, will they put something else out, that’s got more stats than Legendary armor, so the players have something else to reach for? I’m thinking they will. It hasn’t started with weapons yet, but it is a matter of time.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anything to work for ever, or that there shouldn’t be more challenging content! Far from it! When they first revamped Teq, it was simply to increase hitpoints so it was almost unkillable and then dusted off their hands like “Our job here is done!!” Teq is one of the most popular world bosses there is, along with Karka Queen. Player dissatisfaction was LOUD and CLEAR that just upping the hitpoints was not the way to go. The new Shatterer design is a lot better, and more in line with the “improvements” that should be made. Before the revamp, we stood on a hill in a group and just fired stuff at it. That was all.

HoT was a dramatic increase in skill needed. I still haven’t completed it all, because you need masteries and you have to kill things for masteries. Story is gated behind these masteries and if you don’t have them, you can’t do the story! I HATE STORY GATING!! I hate it with a passion! Story is what I enjoy most about this game, and they gated story behind not only masteries, but they did the lead-in to Living Story Season 3 behind raids! How many people knew what was going on in the story, without looking at you-tube? Be honest with yourselves. The majority of players did not know, because the lead-in story was gated behind raiding, which the majority of players do not do!

I am not saying to not have raids. I am not saying to not have challenging content. I am saying that this started as a more casual and relaxed atmosphere, and now it is turning into a grindfest, either for masteries, or for gear. Leveling is easy, thank goodness. The real grind begins at level 80 for most people!

TLDR: Yeah, GW2 has definitely lost it’s vision.

You needed ascended to do high level fractals before unless you relied on that exploit at Maw. AR is part of the progression for fractals. This hasn’t changed.

Legendary gear have the same stats as ascended gear. I’m fairly certain that you know this so I don’t know why you even brought it up.

Umm… people still stand on a hill and fire at Shatterer like before. Very little maps attempt to break the bar which is easy to do.

The skill level increase with HoT wasn’t dramatic unless you already found the skill level needed for core Tyria to be high. Enemies have mechanics which are fairly easy to learn.

The story isn’t gated by any masteries that are deep within any of the mastery lines. I think they are all the first tier ones except for needing updrafts. There are plenty of easy mastery points to unlock these and XP isn’t that difficult to get. An hour of the centaur farm provides enough XP for all of them.

The lead in to LS3 wasn’t locked behind the raid. If you had done the living story, you’d know this. Both episode 1 and 4 show that the raid story was just a side story. No more a requirement than Rogue One is for the first Star Wars.

JTGuevara.9018:

However, I always thought raids were a bad idea. There’s just no way anyone can expect to keep players if you make content for 1% of the playerbase. I’m not against group content, I’m against group content being accessible to the majority.

That’s the thing, raids have two key problems:

• The combat mechanics and design aren’t intended to work for 10 players tight-balanced content.
• GW2, on the PvE-side, is all about a rather casual way of playing a MMO. Not necessarily an easygoing one, but the HoT maps showed amiably well that you don’t need weak enemies to make something friendly to casual play. Raids are totally not the same type of gameplay, and just muddle the strengths of GW2 in this “please like your game”-desperate motion to appeal to everyone.
• Bonus! The combat balance is quite bad in GW2, which is mostly due to the slow speed at which balance updates happen. And when they happen they do very little, moving a few CDs around, merging and effect here or there, never doing any “big” reworks. This makes it very difficult to design tensely balanced content in the first place.

Overall, raids could work.

They just need to be designed for GW2. The ones we got feel more like something taken as directly from other MMOs as possible.

Elyssandariel.2679:

I am not sure. I had heard that Legendary would have better stats than ascended armor, probably on these forums somewhere. If this is wrong, then I apologize, and disregard that part of my post. The rest still stands, though. Story gating sucks, gating content behind hard to get gear sucks.

The community is more toxic now too. Someone in our group at Vinewrath told a new person asking for guidance “Google is your friend!” as if they were supposed to suddenly open google in the middle of the champion fight. A quick “Stand on the flowers when X happens” or whatever it was would have gone a long way. I would’ve told the new person but I couldn’t remember when to do it, it had been so long since I had done Vinewrath. NO ONE knew what to do, except a couple of people, and Vinewrath failed because they wouldn’t tell the rest what to do. When I said that we might have had a chance had someone rezzed the first few people that went down, so they could rez others, the response was “We can’t rez. Just stand where you’re supposed to.” Uhh…rezzing is pretty necessary at almost all world bosses, to complete it. Claw of Jormag, I’m looking at you. Most of what I do at world bosses is actually just running around rezzing people, unless I am down myself. There is just a very unhelpful and “every man for themselves!” vibe with some of the events sometimes and it didn’t used to be that way.

PVE is cooperative! No one is stealing anything from you if you help them back up!

EDIT: It isn’t better stats. But, you can change your stat combos, so this is what would make it more appealing to people! Sorry for the confusion! I knew that I had heard it would be “better” somehow.

Changing stats doesn’t matter as people can easily leave all instances (except for the story ones) to change characters/gear/whatever so long as they have an anchor to keep the instance open.

The community isn’t any more toxic than it has been in the past.

For rezzing, it’s not a core thing of world bosses. If they’re dead, they should WP. If they’re downed then you should revive them if it’s safe to do so. Some bosses have mechanics which make it unsafe to do during certain times such as at VW.

Elyssandariel.2679:

I am not sure. I had heard that Legendary would have better stats than ascended armor, probably on these forums somewhere. If this is wrong, then I apologize, and disregard that part of my post. The rest still stands, though. Story gating sucks, gating content behind hard to get gear sucks.

The community is more toxic now too. Someone in our group at Vinewrath told a new person asking for guidance “Google is your friend!” as if they were supposed to suddenly open google in the middle of the champion fight. A quick “Stand on the flowers when X happens” or whatever it was would have gone a long way. I would’ve told the new person but I couldn’t remember when to do it, it had been so long since I had done Vinewrath. NO ONE knew what to do, except a couple of people, and Vinewrath failed because they wouldn’t tell the rest what to do. When I said that we might have had a chance had someone rezzed the first few people that went down, so they could rez others, the response was “We can’t rez. Just stand where you’re supposed to.” Uhh…rezzing is pretty necessary at almost all world bosses, to complete it. Claw of Jormag, I’m looking at you. Most of what I do at world bosses is actually just running around rezzing people, unless I am down myself. There is just a very unhelpful and “every man for themselves!” vibe with some of the events sometimes and it didn’t used to be that way.

PVE is cooperative! No one is stealing anything from you if you help them back up!

EDIT: It isn’t better stats. But, you can change your stat combos, so this is what would make it more appealing to people! Sorry for the confusion! I knew that I had heard it would be “better” somehow.

No content, that I am aware of, is gated behind hard to get gear. Even fractals is playable without ascended (higher tiers are essentially the same content as lower, which is accessible without ascended).

Changeable stats, as is the case for legendary weapons, is largely useless due to the importance of, fairly expensive, sigils.

Elyssandariel.2679:

NOW, you NEED ascended to do fractals. You cannot do upper level fractals without agony resistance, and that goes in ascended gear. In order to get ascended gear, you have to have a maxed out crafting on one or more category. You also need a ton of materials to make this gear, and some of the things you are crafting is time-gated to one a day, which will take a while, or is expensive to buy. Now there will be Legendary armor coming out, with better stats than ascended.

Multiple fallacies here. You needed AR to do highest levels pre-HoT, you still don’t need AR to do the lower levels of fractals and legendary armor will have the same stats as ascended.

I don’t understand people complaining about how the game is no longer easy to come back to. I stopped playing originally about 6 months after release and just came back a few weeks ago. It took me about 3 weeks to get several different full lvl 80 exotic sets for different specs and almost a full set of ascended zerker gear(just missing some accessories) and a few ascended weapons. This stuff is not difficult to obtain.

There are not multiple fallacies there, or at least not blatant ones. I never said that HoT changed whether we needed ascended or not for fractals. Fractals were introduced at the same time that ascended armor was introduced. And yes, for high level fractals you NEED ascended gear with AR. Yes, there is tier 1 that you can do, but most people do higher level fractals for achievements and rewards. When they are not running fractals for dailies, a lot of the people in my guilds do upper level ones.

As for story, no, I haven’t finished it. I have time constraints in RL that don’t let me play as often as I’d like. I still have no idea what is going on and why it is happening, and I do not skip cutscenes, so, there’s something somewhere that I have missed.

EDIT: Yes, they are gating content, because if I could play in those higher level fractals without AR then I wouldn’t need Ascended Gear, would I? The fractals might be the same story, but the fact that you NEED a certain set of armor to play in these upper level fractals and it is not reliant on skill is worrying. What will they gate behind armor next, like I said before?

And if they are dead they should WP…….this is the kind of attitude I am talking about! This attitude never used to be around, and now its “You’re dead, WP.” Some people won’t even help downed players anymore, they let them die and tell them to WP. I am not saying rez them when it’s dangerous, but when you are able to, and you need people to help finish, making them run back from a WP is time consuming.

BUT to get the thread back on track, YES, I think that GW2 has definitely lost its identity over time. For multiple reasons. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely NOT the same game I bought when it was released, many, many moons ago.

Elyssandariel.2679:

There are not multiple fallacies there, or at least not blatant ones. I never said that HoT changed whether we needed ascended or not for fractals. And yes, for high level fractals you NEED ascended gear with AR. Yes, there is tier 1 that you can do, but most people do higher level fractals for achievements and rewards. When they are not running fractals for dailies, a lot of the people in my guilds do upper level ones.

As for story, no, I haven’t finished it. I have time constraints in RL that don’t let me play as often as I’d like. I still have no idea what is going on and why it is happening, and I do not skip cutscenes, so, there’s something somewhere that I have missed.

People choosing to do higher tier fractals for the challenge or the reward are not facing content gated by difficult to acquire gear as you claimed. Its the same Fractals, just, essentially, a different difficulty setting.

Elyssandariel.2679:

There are not multiple fallacies there, or at least not blatant ones. I never said that HoT changed whether we needed ascended or not for fractals. Fractals were introduced at the same time that ascended armor was introduced. And yes, for high level fractals you NEED ascended gear with AR. Yes, there is tier 1 that you can do, but most people do higher level fractals for achievements and rewards. When they are not running fractals for dailies, a lot of the people in my guilds do upper level ones.

As for story, no, I haven’t finished it. I have time constraints in RL that don’t let me play as often as I’d like. I still have no idea what is going on and why it is happening, and I do not skip cutscenes, so, there’s something somewhere that I have missed.

EDIT: Yes, they are gating content, because if I could play in those higher level fractals without AR then I wouldn’t need Ascended Gear, would I? The fractals might be the same story, but the fact that you NEED a certain set of armor to play in these upper level fractals and it is not reliant on skill is worrying. What will they gate behind armor next, like I said before?

And if they are dead they should WP…….this is the kind of attitude I am talking about! This attitude never used to be around, and now its “You’re dead, WP.” Some people won’t even help downed players anymore, they let them die and tell them to WP. I am not saying rez them when it’s dangerous, but when you are able to, and you need people to help finish, making them run back from a WP is time consuming.

BUT to get the thread back on track, YES, I think that GW2 has definitely lost its identity over time. For multiple reasons. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely NOT the same game I bought when it was released, many, many moons ago.

Fractals, with said gates, were introduced three months after the game launched. So unless you’re arguing the game lost it’s identity then (which would make this post relatively toothless), then what you’re saying doesn’t make sense to me.

This is gating has existed in one way or another even since launch when you had to level up between stories.

I remember playing this game, not being high enough level to do the next story and having to help some farmer in a field until I could get to the next story. This has been since launch.

I couldn’t beat Arah with a 15th level character either. It’s called progression.

If you’re arguing that the game changed when ascended stuff came in a few months after launch, I can agree with that. But that was three years ago.

This game hasn’t significantly changed since then.

Which meant it had 3 months of being one thing and 3.5 years of being another. The another IS the game’s identity.

In my opinion, it can almost all be linked back to how they have chosen to include raids in the game.

So, how did raids change the “identity” of the game? I admit they are only one small piece. They dont really detract from the development of other content. And, they are fairly well done (most of them).

The actual problem comes from the average players’ desire to experience the entire PVE picture – from the ambient creature sitting idly half way through a jumping puzzle to the last boss in the last raid wing.

A year and a half ago, players could experience every element of the PVE game without compromising how they played. Every profession, every build and every stat set was reasonably feasible in every part of the game. And, in the one area where more difficult content was being added (fractals), there was a scaling system.

Raids changed that. For the first time since launch, there was a part of the game that forced players to “optimize” their characters. There was no scaling or any real way for many players to retain their character’s identity and still have a reasonable chance at experiencing the content.

This single change has had huge repercussions in how players perceive the game and the direction it is now going. Now, the only players who get to experience it all are those who are willing to (at least partially) homogenize their builds, stat sets and playstyles.

And that is bad.

NOTE: I do not see challenging content or even raids as bad things in the game. It is definitely needed and fills a much needed niche. It is the lack of scaling (easy, hard mode) that creates this issue. Players who feel excluded from PVE content they perceive as endgame (especially when it relates to story) will grow (are growing and have grown) disillusioned with the game.

Sylent.3165:

I used to love this game with a passion up until hot release. The game went a completely different direction some loved some hated. Truth is we just need to wait for next expansion and see what we get. I just hope they stop wasting time on raids for such a small player base. Anyone who actually plays this game for raids is simply wrong because if you like raids you should be playing WoW or ff14. We need better content for people who left those games or don’t play those games to not have the companies dedication going three

Why should an MMO developer limit its outlook to one demographic? That’s almost always the death knell for an MMO. Why must every bit of content put out by ANet suit your preferences? Is there no room for something for everyone?

Finally, ANet puts out a lot of PvE content. Raids are a small part of that content. What about the non-raid PvE content does not suit you, and what would “…better content for people who left those games…” look like?

Elyssandariel.2679:

And if they are dead they should WP…….this is the kind of attitude I am talking about! This attitude never used to be around, and now its “You’re dead, WP.” Some people won’t even help downed players anymore, they let them die and tell them to WP. I am not saying rez them when it’s dangerous, but when you are able to, and you need people to help finish, making them run back from a WP is time consuming.

This is fundamentally incorrect. First off, this attitude naturally existed from the beginning because that is the toxic attitude that many bred way back in other MMOs and brought it here when they started playing. Not everyone is like this, naturally, but it was always there for the more “elite” players.

As for rezing, this is dependent on the situation. I will often heal defeated players if I fin them, and be healed by players should I die and wait around for a while. If I’m on a low-population map, or off the beaten path, then it’s entirely possible I’ll have to waypoint back to life, but several players are still willing to heal a body nearby so long as they aren’t clearly AFK or in a high-danger area.

I might agree that there has been a change, but I don’t think it’s necessarily as drastic as you think it is. It’s definitely not something I can put my finger on it, but there’s been a lot of subtle changes that could reflect the change you’re feeling now.

Elyssandariel.2679:

There are not multiple fallacies there, or at least not blatant ones. I never said that HoT changed whether we needed ascended or not for fractals. Fractals were introduced at the same time that ascended armor was introduced. And yes, for high level fractals you NEED ascended gear with AR. Yes, there is tier 1 that you can do, but most people do higher level fractals for achievements and rewards. When they are not running fractals for dailies, a lot of the people in my guilds do upper level ones.

As for story, no, I haven’t finished it. I have time constraints in RL that don’t let me play as often as I’d like. I still have no idea what is going on and why it is happening, and I do not skip cutscenes, so, there’s something somewhere that I have missed.

EDIT: Yes, they are gating content, because if I could play in those higher level fractals without AR then I wouldn’t need Ascended Gear, would I? The fractals might be the same story, but the fact that you NEED a certain set of armor to play in these upper level fractals and it is not reliant on skill is worrying. What will they gate behind armor next, like I said before?

And if they are dead they should WP…….this is the kind of attitude I am talking about! This attitude never used to be around, and now its “You’re dead, WP.” Some people won’t even help downed players anymore, they let them die and tell them to WP. I am not saying rez them when it’s dangerous, but when you are able to, and you need people to help finish, making them run back from a WP is time consuming.

BUT to get the thread back on track, YES, I think that GW2 has definitely lost its identity over time. For multiple reasons. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely NOT the same game I bought when it was released, many, many moons ago.

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

This existed during world bosses at the start of the game.

Ashen.2907:

Elyssandariel.2679:

For me, GW2 HAS lost it’s identity. This used to be a game to play when you wanted to, and put down when you wanted to, with no real consequences to your characters. If you wanted to take a month off, you could still go back and do all the stuff that you missed later. You didn’t need a certain gear. You didn’t need a certain weapon. If other people played longer, they’d just have more gold to play with.

NOW, you NEED ascended to do fractals. You cannot do upper level fractals without agony resistance, and that goes in ascended gear. In order to get ascended gear, you have to have a maxed out crafting on one or more category. You also need a ton of materials to make this gear, and some of the things you are crafting is time-gated to one a day, which will take a while, or is expensive to buy. Now there will be Legendary armor coming out, with better stats than ascended.

That doesn’t sound like the start of a gear treadmill to anyone else? Because it does to me. What happens when we’ve had Legendary out for a while and they require it somehow for some other game mode? And then once “everyone” has that, will they put something else out, that’s got more stats than Legendary armor, so the players have something else to reach for? I’m thinking they will. It hasn’t started with weapons yet, but it is a matter of time.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anything to work for ever, or that there shouldn’t be more challenging content! Far from it! When they first revamped Teq, it was simply to increase hitpoints so it was almost unkillable and then dusted off their hands like “Our job here is done!!” Teq is one of the most popular world bosses there is, along with Karka Queen. Player dissatisfaction was LOUD and CLEAR that just upping the hitpoints was not the way to go. The new Shatterer design is a lot better, and more in line with the “improvements” that should be made. Before the revamp, we stood on a hill in a group and just fired stuff at it. That was all.

HoT was a dramatic increase in skill needed. I still haven’t completed it all, because you need masteries and you have to kill things for masteries. Story is gated behind these masteries and if you don’t have them, you can’t do the story! I HATE STORY GATING!! I hate it with a passion! Story is what I enjoy most about this game, and they gated story behind not only masteries, but they did the lead-in to Living Story Season 3 behind raids! How many people knew what was going on in the story, without looking at you-tube? Be honest with yourselves. The majority of players did not know, because the lead-in story was gated behind raiding, which the majority of players do not do!

I am not saying to not have raids. I am not saying to not have challenging content. I am saying that this started as a more casual and relaxed atmosphere, and now it is turning into a grindfest, either for masteries, or for gear. Leveling is easy, thank goodness. The real grind begins at level 80 for most people!

TLDR: Yeah, GW2 has definitely lost it’s vision.

Did Anet change their stance on Legendary vs Ascended gear recently? I aek because they have stated for years now that Legendary will NOT have better stats than ascended. Legendary armor is essentially a matter of cosmetics. Cosmetic differences do not constitute the beginning of a gear treadmill.

That said, the addition of ascended tier is why I cut my spending on the game.

Pretty much yeah you never look at anything for face value and thus have to take in prefixes into consideration. A legendary can change into any prefix and that includes new ones. The legendary weapon is a straight up advantage when new prefixes are added. Ascended gear can be changed but it takes time and with roles the weapon must change as well. We don’t have templates but certain builds work better on certain raid bosses and thus changing things per boss/situation can be required.

Legend isn’t a stat increase but you are at a disadvantage without the legend. It’s a 1 to 1 comparison in which legends have the advantage but thing balance out when you compare the one legend to multiple easily swapped out ascended weapons.

A ranger/Druid swapping builds bewtween condi/heal is either going to need multiple ascended or a single legend with stat swap. We can no longer say that ascended/legends are 1to1 equal aside cosmetic differences.

Behellagh.1468:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

This existed during world bosses at the start of the game.

That’s because running back from a wp was quick and your wp wasn’t contested.

In HoT where travel times are worse and EPA are often contested your better off reviving that person. Not only will it takes ages for them to get back if they ran straight back to the event they’ve pulled half the map with them or arrived damaged by those mobs.

Completely different situation pre and post HoT thus revive the downed to have a smoother time in HoT

Behellagh.1468:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

This existed during world bosses at the start of the game.

Yep. I remember seeing this at Shatterer.

Doam.8305:

Behellagh.1468:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

This existed during world bosses at the start of the game.

That’s because running back from a wp was quick and your wp wasn’t contested.

In HoT where travel times are worse and EPA are often contested your better off reviving that person. Not only will it takes ages for them to get back if they ran straight back to the event they’ve pulled half the map with them or arrived damaged by those mobs.

Completely different situation pre and post HoT thus revive the downed to have a smoother time in HoT

Specifically where is it better to revive someone that is dead?

zoomborg.9462:

It’s funny how everyone says that a very small percentage of the playerbase raids. Just one look at the lfg and you will find that raids are the most popular thing after fractals and i’m not even talking about weekends. Rest is usually map metas, hot/sw/dt etc.

Not to mention the guild runs that dont appear on lfg….

People say that because of one simple fact: the people who actually run MMOs, and the MMOs that publish information that can be used to perform analysis over something close to the entire player base, consistently both tell us that five percent is probably an over-estimate of how many players actually raid.

This isn’t because we make things up, and it isn’t because we glance at LFG and make judgments, it’s because we actually listen to the people who are literally paid money to know the answers to these questions when they talk about it.

The revive complaints seem so far from what I experience. I almost never see anyone left laying there. It is pretty regular for me to try to revive someone only to get the message saying there are too many revivers. There have only been a couple situations where I have been left to die when I felt it was reasonable for people to revive me.

I’ve lost my way in the game. I like to have a goal or something to strive for but now all I feel like I’m doing is harvesting materials or wasting away in silver wastes. Just boring.

Solstace.2514:

I’ve lost my way in the game. I like to have a goal or something to strive for but now all I feel like I’m doing is harvesting materials or wasting away in silver wastes. Just boring.

Time to take a break. FWIW, this is a routine experience in every MMO, simply because there is no rate at which content can be released that will keep all the people entertained all of the time.

So, unless you love player-created challenges such as PvP, you hit a point where there isn’t more stuff to be done. (and even PvP has downtimes.)

You can see this in subscription numbers for wow that dip after each major and minor release, and then bounce when the next content comes out, for example.

The usual recommendation is to go do something else for a while. In GW2 terms, probably until the next living story release happens, or the next festival.

I don’t mind raid, but I DO mind when raid had become the main focus and we only get other stuff every 2-3 months rather than a few weeks.

I also mind some mini/skins, or even stories were locked for raid.

Did GW2 lose its identity?

Not all yet, no but it’s getting there with more and more things taken from every possible generic MMO – the raids.

GW2 had a potential to be greatest MMO on the market but devs threw out the window the base principle of GW2 in mind.
Things like dungeons – an easy way to form a small group to go up on adventure that take almost no time and are friendly even for most casual players ever, instead we got a relic stolen straight from WoW that has been used ine every crappy MMO ever made and is almost 15 years old solution to have people something to do with outdated mechanics – the raids.

Instead of having some clever enemies and content we have sponge enemies and the same recycled content.

WvW which was very innovatory, thanks to the CEO directives is a messed piece of crud that is worthless to play. There are no perspectives to it so it have recieved FUBAR status.

Personal story even though it wasn’t great is was uncut not like we have now, i’ve played it and was like wtf is this character, what is this ball, who is this mesmer and my favorite “What is your worst fear” asked by Pale Tree just to be fing cutout and never answered again.

I could go on and on with even more things, but still point is that GW2 is constantly moving, but in the wrong direction – direction of generic and outdated MMOs.
If this will continue there will be nothing uniqe about GW2 anymore.

Dungeons were never friendly for most casual players. Even before the LFG tool it was a crap shoot whether you get a group willing to teach or one that will scream at you and then kick because this wasn’t your 1000th time through rocking the current meta. Being in a friendly guild was the only way to have a friendly dungeon group. This now extends to fractals and raids.

I can agree only that this game has lost its “vision”, or identity as some would say.

GW2 used to be a Multi Character friendly Game, thats not about Gear grind to be competitive everywhere in the Game.
Now you need for Fractals, Raids and WvW to stay competitive and to be able to play that End Content at all, or you will most likely find no peole that are willing to take you with them, unless you are in an active Guild or you have the luck to find enough peopel by the LFG that share the same problem with you. Or are in general willing to help others.

Raids need a rework of their Game Design.
They have been designed from begin on like cheap wannabe Dungeons 2.0 due to the recruited person for them having now clues about it, what Raids actually are and him having had at that time only Dungeons in the game as a comparison of what he was recruited for to work on for just 10 people instead.
If that theory is right, then they should do their job at least right and implement into Raids as a simple solution like already suggested several times by several people a “Story Mode” to raids, just like simple Dungeons also have a Story and an Exploration Mode.
The exact same way can work raids.
Story Mode = Significantly decreased or No Rewards, just Story & Achievements
(Normal)Exploration Mode = No Story, Rewards & Achievements with no stupid DPS Pressure
Hard Mode = No Story, Increased Rewards, Time Trial Achievements & DPS Pressure.

Then we would have finally Dungeons again ..err Raids (sry) with Raids beign accessible for everyone, without that people with different interesnts get themself into interest conflicts due to one side wanting to do them only for story and achievement,s and the other elitist nature of the side wanting to do them mainly only for profits and rewards and that as fast as possible.

Shouldnt be really wished too much to make such a simple, but very effective fix to the game, that would make Raids as a Feature much better for simply EVERYONE.

Doam.8305:

Ashen.2907:

Elyssandariel.2679:

For me, GW2 HAS lost it’s identity. This used to be a game to play when you wanted to, and put down when you wanted to, with no real consequences to your characters. If you wanted to take a month off, you could still go back and do all the stuff that you missed later. You didn’t need a certain gear. You didn’t need a certain weapon. If other people played longer, they’d just have more gold to play with.

NOW, you NEED ascended to do fractals. You cannot do upper level fractals without agony resistance, and that goes in ascended gear. In order to get ascended gear, you have to have a maxed out crafting on one or more category. You also need a ton of materials to make this gear, and some of the things you are crafting is time-gated to one a day, which will take a while, or is expensive to buy. Now there will be Legendary armor coming out, with better stats than ascended.

That doesn’t sound like the start of a gear treadmill to anyone else? Because it does to me. What happens when we’ve had Legendary out for a while and they require it somehow for some other game mode? And then once “everyone” has that, will they put something else out, that’s got more stats than Legendary armor, so the players have something else to reach for? I’m thinking they will. It hasn’t started with weapons yet, but it is a matter of time.

I am not saying that we shouldn’t have anything to work for ever, or that there shouldn’t be more challenging content! Far from it! When they first revamped Teq, it was simply to increase hitpoints so it was almost unkillable and then dusted off their hands like “Our job here is done!!” Teq is one of the most popular world bosses there is, along with Karka Queen. Player dissatisfaction was LOUD and CLEAR that just upping the hitpoints was not the way to go. The new Shatterer design is a lot better, and more in line with the “improvements” that should be made. Before the revamp, we stood on a hill in a group and just fired stuff at it. That was all.

HoT was a dramatic increase in skill needed. I still haven’t completed it all, because you need masteries and you have to kill things for masteries. Story is gated behind these masteries and if you don’t have them, you can’t do the story! I HATE STORY GATING!! I hate it with a passion! Story is what I enjoy most about this game, and they gated story behind not only masteries, but they did the lead-in to Living Story Season 3 behind raids! How many people knew what was going on in the story, without looking at you-tube? Be honest with yourselves. The majority of players did not know, because the lead-in story was gated behind raiding, which the majority of players do not do!

I am not saying to not have raids. I am not saying to not have challenging content. I am saying that this started as a more casual and relaxed atmosphere, and now it is turning into a grindfest, either for masteries, or for gear. Leveling is easy, thank goodness. The real grind begins at level 80 for most people!

TLDR: Yeah, GW2 has definitely lost it’s vision.

Did Anet change their stance on Legendary vs Ascended gear recently? I aek because they have stated for years now that Legendary will NOT have better stats than ascended. Legendary armor is essentially a matter of cosmetics. Cosmetic differences do not constitute the beginning of a gear treadmill.

That said, the addition of ascended tier is why I cut my spending on the game.

Pretty much yeah you never look at anything for face value and thus have to take in prefixes into consideration. A legendary can change into any prefix and that includes new ones. The legendary weapon is a straight up advantage when new prefixes are added. Ascended gear can be changed but it takes time and with roles the weapon must change as well. We don’t have templates but certain builds work better on certain raid bosses and thus changing things per boss/situation can be required.

Legend isn’t a stat increase but you are at a disadvantage without the legend. It’s a 1 to 1 comparison in which legends have the advantage but thing balance out when you compare the one legend to multiple easily swapped out ascended weapons.

A ranger/Druid swapping builds bewtween condi/heal is either going to need multiple ascended or a single legend with stat swap. We can no longer say that ascended/legends are 1to1 equal aside cosmetic differences.

How effective is it for a character to switch from condi to heal stats on his armor and weapon prefixes without changing runes and sigils though?

They lost their way trying to create WoW Jr with worse dungeons while trying not to look like complete hacks. In doing so they broke every single game mode, and profession in the game.

There are great things about the game but I’ll never trust the label or those that sat in a room and said “wouldn’t this be a great change”.

In fact I’m so put out with the industry I hope open source offers more in the future.

Behellagh.1468:

Dungeons were never friendly for most casual players. Even before the LFG tool it was a crap shoot whether you get a group willing to teach or one that will scream at you and then kick because this wasn’t your 1000th time through rocking the current meta. Being in a friendly guild was the only way to have a friendly dungeon group. This now extends to fractals and raids.

Yes but at least it’s not that hard to learn, and there are some easy paths to get stuff.

Orpheal.8263:

I can agree only that this game has lost its “vision”, or identity as some would say.

GW2 used to be a Multi Character friendly Game, thats not about Gear grind to be competitive everywhere in the Game.
Now you need for Fractals, Raids and WvW to stay competitive and to be able to play that End Content at all, or you will most likely find no peole that are willing to take you with them, unless you are in an active Guild or you have the luck to find enough peopel by the LFG that share the same problem with you. Or are in general willing to help others.

Raids need a rework of their Game Design.
They have been designed from begin on like cheap wannabe Dungeons 2.0 due to the recruited person for them having now clues about it, what Raids actually are and him having had at that time only Dungeons in the game as a comparison of what he was recruited for to work on for just 10 people instead.
If that theory is right, then they should do their job at least right and implement into Raids as a simple solution like already suggested several times by several people a “Story Mode” to raids, just like simple Dungeons also have a Story and an Exploration Mode.
The exact same way can work raids.
Story Mode = Significantly decreased or No Rewards, just Story & Achievements
(Normal)Exploration Mode = No Story, Rewards & Achievements with no stupid DPS Pressure
Hard Mode = No Story, Increased Rewards, Time Trial Achievements & DPS Pressure.

Then we would have finally Dungeons again ..err Raids (sry) with Raids beign accessible for everyone, without that people with different interesnts get themself into interest conflicts due to one side wanting to do them only for story and achievement,s and the other elitist nature of the side wanting to do them mainly only for profits and rewards and that as fast as possible.

Shouldnt be really wished too much to make such a simple, but very effective fix to the game, that would make Raids as a Feature much better for simply EVERYONE.

Raid were meant to be challenging group content from the start. A story mode is unnecessary. This has been brought up almost daily in the raids subforum.

Ascended equipment is fairly easy to obtain. The bulk of the stat increase comes from trinkets and the backpacks which are even more incredibly accessible than before.

Weapons provide another 5%(?) increase which can be obtained randomly from fractals or by crafting. You can get cheaper versions if a few from the latest current event that let’s you change stats/types very cheaply. This of course requires crafting to get the initial weapon(s). All crafts can be gotten to 500 with 110G each or less. Definitely less depending on how patient you are.

Ascended armor provides only 2% boost with a little more if you use full infusions. It’s it’s the most expensive and yet most unnecessary ascended equipment provided you don’t do high tier fractals where you need the extra six AR slots.

On top of that, ascended equipment is account bound which makes it very multi character friendly. You can just swap them to another class assuming they are the same weight type (for armor) and stat combo.

Slowpokeking.8720:

I don’t mind raid, but I DO mind when raid had become the main focus and we only get other stuff every 2-3 months rather than a few weeks.

I also mind some mini/skins, or even stories were locked for raid.

Raid has not become the main focus. There are four raid wings since the start of HoT and there have been four episodes of the living world. Given that everything else in HoT/PvE was available at HoT’s launch and raids weren’t, given that there are also PvE festivals, new & revamped fractals, and current events and other things going, Raids are clearly not the major focus of releases. Take into account the fact that Raids also require far, far fewer resources, it should be clear that Raids get the smallest possible share of focus.

Every game mode has locked skins; I’m not sure why you think Raids shouldn’t get the same treatment.

Blaeys.3102:

In my opinion, it can almost all be linked back to how they have chosen to include raids in the game.

So, how did raids change the “identity” of the game? I admit they are only one small piece. They dont really detract from the development of other content. And, they are fairly well done (most of them).

The actual problem comes from the average players’ desire to experience the entire PVE picture – from the ambient creature sitting idly half way through a jumping puzzle to the last boss in the last raid wing.

A year and a half ago, players could experience every element of the PVE game without compromising how they played. Every profession, every build and every stat set was reasonably feasible in every part of the game. And, in the one area where more difficult content was being added (fractals), there was a scaling system.

Raids changed that. For the first time since launch, there was a part of the game that forced players to “optimize” their characters. There was no scaling or any real way for many players to retain their character’s identity and still have a reasonable chance at experiencing the content.

This single change has had huge repercussions in how players perceive the game and the direction it is now going. Now, the only players who get to experience it all are those who are willing to (at least partially) homogenize their builds, stat sets and playstyles.

And that is bad.

NOTE: I do not see challenging content or even raids as bad things in the game. It is definitely needed and fills a much needed niche. It is the lack of scaling (easy, hard mode) that creates this issue. Players who feel excluded from PVE content they perceive as endgame (especially when it relates to story) will grow (are growing and have grown) disillusioned with the game.

Nailed it, the only thing that’s missing is a mike drop.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Slowpokeking.8720:

I don’t mind raid, but I DO mind when raid had become the main focus and we only get other stuff every 2-3 months rather than a few weeks.

I also mind some mini/skins, or even stories were locked for raid.

Raid has not become the main focus. There are four raid wings since the start of HoT and there have been four episodes of the living world. Given that everything else in HoT/PvE was available at HoT’s launch and raids weren’t, given that there are also PvE festivals, new & revamped fractals, and current events and other things going, Raids are clearly not the major focus of releases. Take into account the fact that Raids also require far, far fewer resources, it should be clear that Raids get the smallest possible share of focus.

Every game mode has locked skins; I’m not sure why you think Raids shouldn’t get the same treatment.

One game mode should never have exclusive access to Legendary equipment.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Slowpokeking.8720:

I don’t mind raid, but I DO mind when raid had become the main focus and we only get other stuff every 2-3 months rather than a few weeks.

I also mind some mini/skins, or even stories were locked for raid.

Raid has not become the main focus. There are four raid wings since the start of HoT and there have been four episodes of the living world. Given that everything else in HoT/PvE was available at HoT’s launch and raids weren’t, given that there are also PvE festivals, new & revamped fractals, and current events and other things going, Raids are clearly not the major focus of releases. Take into account the fact that Raids also require far, far fewer resources, it should be clear that Raids get the smallest possible share of focus.

Every game mode has locked skins; I’m not sure why you think Raids shouldn’t get the same treatment.

One game mode should never have exclusive access to Legendary equipment.

Why?

Yes they have, alot of their original plans have been scraped and HoT seemed like an attempt to bring in main stream MMO gamers (games with dungeons, raids etc) but it drove alot of their fans away.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the next expansion went even further away from their original concept.

The game changed in one major way. I used to think the developers cared about WvW years ago. There might even be a few left who do, but either they aren’t given the time to do much with it or the higher ups said let it die. Otherwise, the game has had alterations of how the living story gets released, but it has had the living story releases on a semi regular basis for years. PVP gets some love with tournaments and trinkets. WvW gets the shaft.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

The game changed in one major way. I used to think the developers cared about WvW years ago. There might even be a few left who do, but either they aren’t given the time to do much with it or the higher ups said let it die. Otherwise, the game has had alterations of how the living story gets released, but it has had the living story releases on a semi regular basis for years. PVP gets some love with tournaments and trinkets. WvW gets the shaft.

That’s true. If ANet cared they would have made at least one new map after launch, put in reward tracks, added a separate section of WvW for overflow players, started balancing for WvW, held polls to ask for WvW players to vote on whether to try new things out and then added the items that were voter approved, and attempted to fix population problems by merging players from low population servers to higher population servers. Since they did none of this we can conclude that ANet is ignoring WvW and letting it die.

Behellagh.1468:

Being in a friendly guild was the only way to have a friendly dungeon group.

You obviously played a different game than i did. Any of my “casual run” lfgs for dungeons filled almost instantly, and i had trouble with pugs maybe one or two times (usually due to me forgetting to mention "no skipping " at the beginning).

Ayrilana.1396:

Raid were meant to be challenging group content from the start. A story mode is unnecessary. This has been brought up almost daily in the raids subforum.

By raiders – because it’s not useful for them.

Ayrilana.1396:

Ascended equipment is fairly easy to obtain.

That’s highly subjective. For some it’s easier, for others it isn’t. Just as there are people that consider legendaries to be cheap, and players that never had over 50g in their wallet.

Ayrilana.1396:

On top of that, ascended equipment is account bound which makes it very multi character friendly. You can just swap them to another class assuming they are the same weight type (for armor) and stat combo.

Which they rarely are. For example, my mesmer, necro and ele use different stat sets. So do my condi ranger, healer druid and thief. Only among heavy classes there’s more uniformity, and only because i don’t WvW on a more invested level.

Astralporing.1957:

Ayrilana.1396:

Raid were meant to be challenging group content from the start. A story mode is unnecessary. This has been brought up almost daily in the raids subforum.

By raiders – because it’s not useful for them.

Ayrilana.1396:

Ascended equipment is fairly easy to obtain.

That’s highly subjective. For some it’s easier, for others it isn’t. Just as there are people that consider legendaries to be cheap, and players that never had over 50g in their wallet.

Ayrilana.1396:

On top of that, ascended equipment is account bound which makes it very multi character friendly. You can just swap them to another class assuming they are the same weight type (for armor) and stat combo.

Which they rarely are. For example, my mesmer, necro and ele use different stat sets. So do my condi ranger, healer druid and thief. Only among heavy classes there’s more uniformity, and only because i don’t WvW on a more invested level.

A story mode (easy mode) was not intended for raids. This is explained in the dev post. Whether it’s useful for raiders or not doesn’t matter.

There is subjectivity to it but the difference is not in the thousands like legendaries. All trinkets can be farmed over several days or more depending on the number of characters. This includes backpacks. Weapons require crafting but you’re looking at about 110G per profession with potentially less if you use a booster and/or are patient. Gold is even more accessible now than it has been in the past so they can save up for the weapons. Armor is largely unnecessary except for like one exception so can be skipped.

And again, even though different classes can have different stat combos, ascended armor is largely unnecessary. The 2% DPS for power builds isn’t going to make or break a build for any content. The only impact a lack of ascended armor would have is on fractals and that’s because of the AR slots.

Ayrilana.1396:

Doam.8305:

Behellagh.1468:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

This existed during world bosses at the start of the game.

That’s because running back from a wp was quick and your wp wasn’t contested.

In HoT where travel times are worse and EPA are often contested your better off reviving that person. Not only will it takes ages for them to get back if they ran straight back to the event they’ve pulled half the map with them or arrived damaged by those mobs.

Completely different situation pre and post HoT thus revive the downed to have a smoother time in HoT

Specifically where is it better to revive someone that is dead?

Specifically?

How about everywhere that isn’t the later stages of the DS meta. This is an old topic debated at the launch of HoT and HoT isn’t core its a DPS loss in HoT maps to let someone Wp back. It’s rather basic that core maps have fewer mobs, less CC, and more WPs, in addition when a WP is contested another WP can be used to run back into the action easily. HoT maps have more mobs. more CC, fewer Wp’s, and a map design that is broken up into segments and narrow paths to support the vertical play style. VB is narrow mob packed hallways over cliff’s, AB is four sections around the central city and paths to their pylons, TD is the worse with multiple caverns, and DS is meta the WP’s don’t open for usage till the way is clear.

If your in core maps leave the dead they can WP in HoT maps you rez the dead the content is of a more difficult nature. Simply look around during HoT events and core events and you’ll see people rezzing people on HoT maps and people telling others to WP in core maps. As stated this is something people talked about during launch and simply how things are due to their design choices with HoT maps to argue now is a moot point considering the months since HoT’s been out and the situation the game is in currently as a result. Though these were more reddit based discussions since these boards are all rosy pep rally everything is perfect thus discussing anything is typically pointless since its just met with dismissive responses.

Dare I say it, anet lost their way when they turned their back on the manifesto.

Elyssandariel.2679:

There are not multiple fallacies there, or at least not blatant ones. I never said that HoT changed whether we needed ascended or not for fractals. Fractals were introduced at the same time that ascended armor was introduced. And yes, for high level fractals you NEED ascended gear with AR. Yes, there is tier 1 that you can do, but most people do higher level fractals for achievements and rewards. When they are not running fractals for dailies, a lot of the people in my guilds do upper level ones.

As for story, no, I haven’t finished it. I have time constraints in RL that don’t let me play as often as I’d like. I still have no idea what is going on and why it is happening, and I do not skip cutscenes, so, there’s something somewhere that I have missed.

EDIT: Yes, they are gating content, because if I could play in those higher level fractals without AR then I wouldn’t need Ascended Gear, would I? The fractals might be the same story, but the fact that you NEED a certain set of armor to play in these upper level fractals and it is not reliant on skill is worrying. What will they gate behind armor next, like I said before?

And if they are dead they should WP…….this is the kind of attitude I am talking about! This attitude never used to be around, and now its “You’re dead, WP.” Some people won’t even help downed players anymore, they let them die and tell them to WP. I am not saying rez them when it’s dangerous, but when you are able to, and you need people to help finish, making them run back from a WP is time consuming.

BUT to get the thread back on track, YES, I think that GW2 has definitely lost its identity over time. For multiple reasons. It’s still fun, but it’s definitely NOT the same game I bought when it was released, many, many moons ago.

Fractals, with said gates, were introduced three months after the game launched. So unless you’re arguing the game lost it’s identity then (which would make this post relatively toothless), then what you’re saying doesn’t make sense to me.

This is gating has existed in one way or another even since launch when you had to level up between stories.

I remember playing this game, not being high enough level to do the next story and having to help some farmer in a field until I could get to the next story. This has been since launch.

I couldn’t beat Arah with a 15th level character either. It’s called progression.

If you’re arguing that the game changed when ascended stuff came in a few months after launch, I can agree with that. But that was three years ago.

This game hasn’t significantly changed since then.

Which meant it had 3 months of being one thing and 3.5 years of being another. The another IS the game’s identity.

morrolan.9608:

Dare I say it, anet lost their way when they turned their back on the manifesto.

They didn’t. People just misinterpreted it into what they wanted and still do despite a more “recent” post from the one who said it.

Doam.8305:

Ayrilana.1396:

Doam.8305:

Behellagh.1468:

Ayrilana.1396:

It’s often a DPS loss to revive someone when they’re dead vs having them WP and run back. Especially if they’re one of the ones that can’t stay alive. There are also times where players should just WP regardless such as at the towers in DS.

This attitude existed well before HoT.

This existed during world bosses at the start of the game.

That’s because running back from a wp was quick and your wp wasn’t contested.

In HoT where travel times are worse and EPA are often contested your better off reviving that person. Not only will it takes ages for them to get back if they ran straight back to the event they’ve pulled half the map with them or arrived damaged by those mobs.

Completely different situation pre and post HoT thus revive the downed to have a smoother time in HoT

Specifically where is it better to revive someone that is dead?

Specifically?

How about everywhere that isn’t the later stages of the DS meta. This is an old topic debated at the launch of HoT and HoT isn’t core its a DPS loss in HoT maps to let someone Wp back. It’s rather basic that core maps have fewer mobs, less CC, and more WPs, in addition when a WP is contested another WP can be used to run back into the action easily. HoT maps have more mobs. more CC, fewer Wp’s, and a map design that is broken up into segments and narrow paths to support the vertical play style. VB is narrow mob packed hallways over cliff’s, AB is four sections around the central city and paths to their pylons, TD is the worse with multiple caverns, and DS is meta the WP’s don’t open for usage till the way is clear.

If your in core maps leave the dead they can WP in HoT maps you rez the dead the content is of a more difficult nature. Simply look around during HoT events and core events and you’ll see people rezzing people on HoT maps and people telling others to WP in core maps. As stated this is something people talked about during launch and simply how things are due to their design choices with HoT maps to argue now is a moot point considering the months since HoT’s been out and the situation the game is in currently as a result. Though these were more reddit based discussions since these boards are all rosy pep rally everything is perfect thus discussing anything is typically pointless since its just met with dismissive responses.

Yes, you know how the maps are structured. I asked for a specific example and you said everywhere but the last stages of DS. For all of the metas, which have time limits by the way, having people stop what they’re doing to revive the few that got themselves killed slows things down. Imagine if nobody WP’d for Gerent and had to be revived. How about the axemaster boss in VB? Should people stop to revive dead players and risk getting downed because they weren’t able to break its bar? The loss of a handful of players is nothing compared to the loss of those that have to stop what they’re doing. This was talked to death when Teq got revamped so check out that discussion for more info about this topic.

It’s been generally accepts to revive those that are downed and to have those dead to WP. If you believe this to not be the case with HoT, provide specific examples and math to prove otherwise like what was done in the discussions about this immediately after the Teq revamp.

Ayrilana.1396:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Slowpokeking.8720:

I don’t mind raid, but I DO mind when raid had become the main focus and we only get other stuff every 2-3 months rather than a few weeks.

I also mind some mini/skins, or even stories were locked for raid.

Raid has not become the main focus. There are four raid wings since the start of HoT and there have been four episodes of the living world. Given that everything else in HoT/PvE was available at HoT’s launch and raids weren’t, given that there are also PvE festivals, new & revamped fractals, and current events and other things going, Raids are clearly not the major focus of releases. Take into account the fact that Raids also require far, far fewer resources, it should be clear that Raids get the smallest possible share of focus.

Every game mode has locked skins; I’m not sure why you think Raids shouldn’t get the same treatment.

One game mode should never have exclusive access to Legendary equipment.

Why?

Eh, I think the question is probably, “why are raids the only mode with access to legendary armor?”

Even so, I don’t think anyone would argue that raids are the most challenging PvE content in the game now and I think everyone accepts that it probably ought to have ‘exclusive’ rewards appropriate to the difficulty. “Should” that exclusive reward be legendary armor? I dunno; I’m not bothered by it, even though I wouldn’t have made that choice if it were left up to me. It certainly has gotten more people to try raids than might have otherwise.

Regardless, I don’t think it’s anywhere near reasonable to even wonder if GW2 has lost its identity simply because of one controversial choice ANet made about raid rewards.

Behellagh.1468:

Dungeons were never friendly for most casual players. Even before the LFG tool it was a crap shoot whether you get a group willing to teach or one that will scream at you and then kick because this wasn’t your 1000th time through rocking the current meta. Being in a friendly guild was the only way to have a friendly dungeon group. This now extends to fractals and raids.

I’ve done dungeons many, many times with different classes, different builds and even with white/blue and green gear. Always with only 1 friend and 3 pugs.
Never done any of them as guild runs.
Never I was kicked or kick someone.
Never faced anykind of rage from anyone.

Guild became a requirement with introducion of raid. Never before it was required to do anything else except if you wanted to compete for the golden long johns. (speed running)

I would not complain about it if raid would be a good desing but it’s cheap and nothing more. Lame and annoying.

And if talking about guilds…. where are the new missions ? Same stuff for this long… I don’t even bother anymore, because why should i do the same thing for the 1000000th time?

Astralporing.1957:

Behellagh.1468:

Being in a friendly guild was the only way to have a friendly dungeon group.

You obviously played a different game than i did. Any of my “casual run” lfgs for dungeons filled almost instantly, and i had trouble with pugs maybe one or two times (usually due to me forgetting to mention "no skipping " at the beginning).

I always get a couple of “pros” who take over and kick everyone else including me and restock with their buds. Or they quit midway through and makes the dungeon impossible to complete because the group isn’t moving fast enough. They don’t care create their own LFG or care to read that the group is not speed running.