Guild Wars 2

Devata.6589:

My point there was more that they got that part completely wrong. What should be instanced is not. Every map is instance so no open world but there are no raid instances.

I don’t mind the maps being instanced. It doesn’t bother me, like I’m sure it does for typical MMO players who aren’t used to having such between zones. This is very typical GW, and for me not an issue. This is still an ‘open’ persistent world though, especially in comparison to GW1; however, this isn’t WoW, or Rift, or SWtoR and that’s fine. Different games do it different ways.

Just because they do it different, does not make it “wrong.” Do they have some issues with their choice at times? Yeah, but that’s bound to happen. They are just kinks in the road that need ironing out. Do they always get it right when they try to fix it necessarily? Hehe, no, but they at least try. No one gets it perfect the first time, or the second even.

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

Daily Laurels.
Daily World Bosses
Daily Dungeons
Daily Crafting

When do I get to play the way I want to play?
GW2 is just not very fun anymore and feels like chores to do before mom gets home and gives you heck.
There is very little engaging content that is “fun”. I enjoyed almost 10k hours of GW1 but at about 1500 hrs in GW2 I find myself logging in less and less.
I am pretty sure that I am not alone in feeling that way as well

Imagi.4561:

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

Jumping puzzles are magnificent. Best part of this game aswell. Just think about all those incredible experiences. <3

Apart from that… a lot of this game is rather annoying. Dungeons are an endless repetition, after doing them 100+ times you get reaaaally bored. Dynamic events don’t have any real impact on the world and reward players badly. Champions are a zerg-fest, not an unique boss fight. WvW is a zergfest aswell, no tactics. Personal story is cliché and bland. The gear system… is rather useless; needing different armour sets for different builds? That’s just bad managing. Also ascended gear is a totally unecessary addition. Structured PvP has no progression. So overall PvP is rather disappointing. Living story has no impact and feels like filler (carrot/stick) content. Achievements are numbers without a meaning.

The lore however (that is, the racial backgrounds and world) is incredible and unique!
The combat is one of the smoothest in any game I played.
The classes, especially engineer, are unique and feel useful.
The fact you don’t need specific healers is also very nice, but it’s sad that the pure damage output is stronger than any other build.

Galen Grey.4709:

TooBz.3065:

Wildstar works as a decent counter example to me because if they do what they say, the gear system will have more of what I don’t like about gw2 than gw2; however, I still prefer it and will probably play it.

Why? because I know what I’m getting into. If I play WS I will never create more than 1 character. I will pick a class / race / etc. and stick with that 1 toon for as long as I play the game.

Here, by the time VP was introduced I already had a number of different characters and was attached to each of them.

I think even the ascended grind is manageable iff I had only 1 character 1 played.

are you really sure? I mean the same reason to create an alt exist in WS as well. In WS you’ll never have BiS… so if you’re not happy with having 2nd best in Gw2, how can you be sure you will be happy in WS? I mean okey, I did say the gear system will have more stuff you dont like then gear system in Gw2 but still prefer it, thats a bit confusing can you perhaps share your thoughts on that one… You think you will be happy with it or simply perhaps find the ways to acquire gear more fun.. what makes something worst a better option?

This is so out of context. You’ll never have BiS? You’re kinda just throwing that around like it’s proven fact, when it’s not. Do they keep raising the roof? Yes. Does that mean BiS doesn’t exist? Not at all. People raiding heroics in WoW right now are getting Best in slot gear. When the next expansion comes out will it still be best in slot? No. Does that mean it isn’t best in slot right now? Not at all. They don’t just add a new tier without letting anyone know well in advance, which you are trying to make it sound like suddenly your armor isn’t the best in the game tomorrow. If it were truly like that, no one would ever strive for it.

Also, you’re going down a slippery slope because all it takes to void your entire argument is ArenaNet EVER adding another tier. Ever…in the entire lifespan.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Devata.6589:

My point there was more that they got that part completely wrong. What should be instanced is not. Every map is instance so no open world but there are no raid instances.

I don’t mind the maps being instanced. It doesn’t bother me, like I’m sure it does for typical MMO players who aren’t used to having such between zones. This is very typical GW, and for me not an issue. This is still an ‘open’ persistent world though, especially in comparison to GW1; however, this isn’t WoW, or Rift, or SWtoR and that’s fine. Different games do it different ways.

Just because they do it different, does not make it “wrong.” Do they have some issues with their choice at times? Yeah, but that’s bound to happen. They are just kinks in the road that need ironing out. Do they always get it right when they try to fix it necessarily? Hehe, no, but they at least try. No one gets it perfect the first time, or the second even.

I know it is more GW like or well ArenaNet like. Just as all the invisible walls. I hate those thinks. You know why I never played GW1 back in the day after trying it for 10 minutes. Because of the instance based nature of it and because I was walking against an invisible wall 10 min into the game. It was then that I said to my friend.. no this is nothing for me lets go do our homework. Yeah I still remember that, I was at his place for homework and we had talked (at school) about how I did like WoW but not the P2P model however he had something that (and I agree on that part) had a great payment-model. That was GW1.

That maps are instanced didn’t bother me as much as what was in GW1 (obviously else I would have never both the game) but since then I did see more negative side effects that come with it that I have come to dislike. Like overflows and no real bing stretched almost empty landscape like savanna that I love so much. Mounds are also becoming a problem with instanced maps, all the square maps, loading screens and it just takes away part of the immersion.

The fact that if you are in a party and somebody else is in another map his icon is black is something that even gives you more the feeling of being in an instance instead of being in big open (MMORPG) world.

If you would ask me.. what is the biggest mistake Anet had made in this game (before launch at least). It would be this single thing and not because it is what bugs me the most. Because I don’t like it however there are far bigger issue’s. It’s the fact that all those other thinks can easily be fixed but this is so deep in the core that it is not very likely they would ever change this. And I really do not see 1 advantage of it. It’s imho just something that does not fits in this time of age.

Galen Grey.4709:

exploration, jumping puzzles and vistas might be inconsequential nonsense to you, its definitely not content that doesnt exist. Like I said, if you decided to skip content you’re entirely free to do so but if you’re accusing Anet of not creating not much content because you skipped most of it then you’re not being honest.

But it’s not content. It’s fluff. I’ve seen achievements that are more worthy of being called “content” than that.

“Content” is going on an epic quest to slay a bunch of baddies, listening to the story that unfolds, and receiving a reward. Placing a marker slightly out of the way on a featureless grey mountain and giving ten “achievement points” for reaching it isn’t “content”.

There’s plenty enough “achievements” in this game. But it’s no substitute for fun or things to do.

Galen Grey.4709:

Down leveling works and all content can be done when down leveled just fine

Not even. You’re still severely overpowered (or underpowered on lower levels) for content to be even remotely fair, and rewards are deliberate unfair from the get-go. If scaling worked properly, you’d be fighting in a 20 level zone as if it were an 80 level zone – same amount of challenge, same amount of reward. But it’s not true.

Down-leveling “sort of” works. It feigns being useful. It’s not.

Galen Grey.4709:

If people didnt care about jumping puzzle SAB wouldnt be the huge success it is since the whole mini game is one giant jumping puzzle. The clock tower was another fan favorite and received lots of praise on the forum.

I don’t know where were you for clock tower release, everyone and every thread I’ve ever seen hated it (as did I).

It’s a fallacy to assume people do content because they enjoy it. Do you think anyone enjoys grind? No. People do it because it’s rewarding. Because they think those rewards will one day allow them to play the game the way they want, to enjoy it the way they want.

People do this kind of content because there’s an achievement point or a reward attached. It’s silly motivation… but it’s all there is.

Because there’s just not enough fun content in this game to do.

Galen Grey.4709:

So what you’re saying is what? that you enjoy nothing Gw2 has to offer?

Not really. I enjoyed some of my time with it. You can have a bit of fun here.

It’s just not the kind of fun that warrants spending a hundred hours on. The “stuff to do” end way too quick, and what’s left is often little more than unrewarding slog.

That’s the real problem, I think. Shortly after release, people didn’t hesitate to point it out either.

Galen Grey.4709:

Because if once you reached max level like you said you went back to try and enjoy the rest of the open world and you couldnt even stick a whole hour it also means you didnt enjoy the previous 80 hours or so it took to get to max level.

No. It’s just that almost everything was already done by that point. Like in an ordinary single-player RPG.

Sure not “everything” everything, but once you’ve freed one or two tiny villages from centaurs – and by “freed” I mean "stand in place for five minutes killing everything that comes near – you’re not terribly motivated to do it another two hundred times.

It can be neat in places. Some fun, even. It can be enjoyable.

But it’s incredibly underwhelming, nevermind that a game that asks you to come back to it should offer more than any ordinary RPG – and GW2 only barely does that, too.

Galen Grey.4709:

Also I beg to differ. WoW most certainly doesnt do open world exploration and playing better.

And yet I’ve had more fun exploring it.

WoW actually has interesting locations to look at, interesting things to find on your own. The lands are different, the locations are imaginative. You can go out your way in a desert and find an oasis, you can scale an uneventful cliff and find a dark mob-infested passage that leads to a secret complex staffed by a big baddie. You can swim out of your way and run into half-buried ruins infested by you don’t even know what.

WoW doesn’t do dynamic leveling or hidden zones and such to support exploration, but it offers actual incentive to do so: it offers an interesting place to be in, and interesting places to see.

WoW runs out of stuff to see eventually, I bet (never paid for a subscription), but in doing so it puts GW2 to shame. Once you’ve seen one featureless Moa-infested green plains, you’ve seen them all. And there’s not even that many.

Part of the problem is that Arena.net tried to introduce a different way of playing MMOs to an audience that had grown accustomed to a certain way of doing things.

Players quickly grinding through lower level content and squatting in the highest level zones is HARDLY unique to GW2. Go to ANY MMO and you’ll see the same thing. Players have been conditioned to “grind through, hit endgame, and the game REALLY starts.”

Now, the question I have repeatedly had for Arena.net is… “So?” They had a laundry list of problems about traditional MMOs that I’m not convinced are really problems.

For example, they didn’t want people to choose a race based on racial skills, so they made those racial skills considerably weaker. But… how is that a problem to begin with? Ironically, it didn’t even solve the supposed problem… a good many people still chose their race for trivial reasons.

It’s the same sort of thing here. Why are instanced “raids” and a traditional “endgame” a problem? Don’t tell me “because it demands vertical progression.” It only demands such progression if you create a system that requires increasing stats.

I like that they are STARTING to create content that requires more coordination to complete… even though I still don’t get why it has to be “5-man” or “open world.” Why is 10 or 20 player instanced content this terrible thing that must be avoided at all costs?

They don’t want mounts for… reasons. Apparently they do… something bad. So? Why are they a problem? Is the waypoint gold sink REALLY that big? Who cares that you’d give something that gives, I dunno… 50% increased movement speed?

It’s these sort of things that, while not gamebreaking for me, still make me wonder how they are really problems to begin with.

chemiclord.3978:

Part of the problem is that Arena.net tried to introduce a different way of playing MMOs to an audience that had grown accustomed to a certain way of doing things.

Players quickly grinding through lower level content and squatting in the highest level zones is HARDLY unique to GW2. Go to ANY MMO and you’ll see the same thing. Players have been conditioned to “grind through, hit endgame, and the game REALLY starts.”

Now, the question I have repeatedly had for Arena.net is… “So?” They had a laundry list of problems about traditional MMOs that I’m not convinced are really problems.

For example, they didn’t want people to choose a race based on racial skills, so they made those racial skills considerably weaker. But… how is that a problem to begin with? Ironically, it didn’t even solve the supposed problem to begin with… a good many people still chose their race for trivial reasons.

It’s the same sort of thing here. Why are instanced “raids” and a traditional “endgame” a problem? Don’t tell me “because it demands vertical progression.” It only demands such progression if you create a system that requires increasing stats.

I like that they are STARTING to create content that requires more coordination to complete… even though I still don’t get why it has to be “5-man” or “open world.” Why is 10 or 20 player instanced content this terrible thing that must be avoided at all costs?

They don’t want mounts for… reasons. Apparently they do… something bad. So? Why are they a problem? Is the waypoint gold sink REALLY that big? Who cares that you’d give something that gives, I dunno… 50% increased movement speed?

It’s these sort of things that, while not gamebreaking for me, still make me wonder how they are really problems to begin with.

Because WoW?

I agree chemic, I really don’t get why they can’t create raids for 10-15 players in instances. A lot of people immediately assume that a raid = vertical progression and that couldn’t possibly be any further from the truth. It depends on how the system is implemented. To be fair it probably would be vertical considering the path ANet is going down.

Personally I’d just like some challenging content that doesn’t bring me down to 10FPS and depend on 100 other people just to down one boss within a certain time limit.

On the matter of leveling, I never expected it to take so long in GW2. In GW1 you got max level in a day or less if you knew what you were doing. (I can do it in a few hours)

But yeah, it was expected that people would still blow through the levels and be expecting some end game. Instead of adding sufficient end game they put in a bunch more grind and fractals is all we’ve got this entire time. We just now got the first revamped open world boss and people already abandoning it due to its requirements.

Pretty lame. GW2 dungeons are about the same as WoW heroic 5 mans… not even close to an end game, those are just for grinding lootz and everyone knows it. I can just imagine a 10man raid with liadri difficulty – hell yes. Guarantee that keeps the hardcores busy for a long time if it has a lot of bosses, since 90% of the time on difficult content you are learning the fight and refining your skills for it.

This game hasn’t seen anything like that yet but it would require a save and lockout(debatable) feature, where you down the first boss and can leave the instance saving that bosses defeat – so you can come back later and progress to the next boss.

You know, real pve progression.

Mathias.9657:

We just now got the first revamped open world boss and people already abandoning it due to its requirements.

They’re abandoning it because of the way it was implemented. As a LS element. People got their wings, and now they don’t care to work with each other anymore for it.

That’s the main problem here. Even when implementing 10/25 raids, people on GW2 just don’t know how to work with each other. It’s not the players fault really. It’s the way the game was introduced and how it’s implemented.

When you can jump in on anyone’s business without even a hello or anything, it promote a mentality such as this.

Hopefully, if ANet ever decides to throw raids into the game, they’ll add more things like Teq revamped to get people to actually work together for a bit without being kittens.

I mean… I get what they wanted to do. And sure, it’d be wonderful if players WOULD spread out and explore rather than power through and camp.

But that’s simply NOT what MMO players do… and they never really have. Expecting them to do differently in this case was fairly foolish. They were going to race to 80, hit Orr, see one dungeon… be told to look back, and then they were going to say, “kitten that.”

TooBz.3065:

Also, on a related note: talking about the grind, GW2 is designed around the TP. The idea is that you don’t have to do stuff you don’t like, you do the stuff you do like and get what you need from the TP. This is fine in theory, however, ANet rewards boring things.

That is until the introduction of ascended weapons, where that idea is thrown out the window.

chemiclord.3978:

I mean… I get what they wanted to do. And sure, it’d be wonderful if players WOULD spread out and explore rather than power through and camp.

But that’s simply NOT what MMO players do… and they never really have. Expecting them to do differently in this case was fairly foolish. They were going to race to 80, hit Orr, see one dungeon… be told to look back, and then they were going to say, “kitten that.”

Wrong. WoW crownd never does that because they have been conditioned for YEARS not to do that, even 1 WoW dev recently whined about it, hell what did he expect.

And GW2 wasnt really aimed at WoW crowd (you know, we are completely different line that they threw out that much) until 2 months in. Now its pretty much kitten WoW with most of bad parts and very few good ones.

I guess at least WoW crowd will have fun…for a short while…until next WoW clone/WoW expansion releases.

TooBz.3065:

Of course I’m not sure. It’s speculation. But as a min max kind of guy, I tend to look at systems and decide how to get the most out of it.

Thing is in both games you have to adoubt. As a min maxer who looks and the system and decides how to get the most out it in WS you’ll have to come to terms you need to be very very lucky to hit your desired outcome and its nearly impossible to hit it on all gear parts you’ll need. You will see the optimum combination but you know you will likely never have it. Every 6 months the same cycle will repeat.

In Gw2 it isnt really that different, I mean if you’re okey with the fact you can not min max your char in WS, why can you do the same in Gw2 and be okey with the notion that you cannot min max all Alts? At least in an enjoyable manner? Is it really that different?

I think the problem here is not accepting that long term goals are long term goals. And this is a wide spread problem. Looking at crafting materials and how prices sky rocketed. A couple of days ago with lvl 80 4 characters you could harvest 144 ancient logs minimum. Each o those logs was selling at 7s thats like 9g. If you know where they are and you dont even need to find that out there are websites that tell you thats a 30 minute job. There I assume are being used to level up crafting to 500. For a single Exotic weapon (going with staff for example) you need 27 of them. So 30 mins of gathering gets you all the wood you need for 5. I believe you need 20 in total so 2hrs over 4 days will set you up with all you need. Yet people are paying 36g to get that done quickly. 36g ! which going with champion farming will take going with your maximum 6 hrs of farming to avoid 2 hrs of gathering! just so you dont wait 3 extra days which you will have to anyway since some of the crafting is time gated.

People just feel like rushing way too much!
Though gathers I guess are really grateful.

But back on subject.. farming was never meant to be the way Anet wanted people to play. But farmers will be farmers and no matter what you do you will always get that little content thats more profitable then anything else. I dont think Anet made champions profitable cause they wanted people to just play that and nothing else. They did them most profitable cause it was the best way to get people to spread out and bring some life into the world again.

Its true TP is meant to allow you to convert one type of game play into another, and its a great idea no doubt still its not the only option.

KingClash.3186:

Chaotic Storm.2815:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Anet are fools for turning GW2 into a traditional MMO. It just means that when the next newer, and thus inevitably shinier, MMO comes out, people will leave in droves because there’d be nothing unique about GW2.

sad part is there already a number of players eyeing several MMO releases this year. Myself I got my eyes on Wildstar.

From what I saw on Wildstar at PAX it looks pretty good, too bad it’s another NCsoft funded game. They haven’t decided their payment method afaik but if it’s FTP/BTP we all know where the production value will go giving what happened to the Guild Wars franchise.

they did decided their business model, its Subscription based but you can pay for the subscription using in game money like Plex in EvE… Ie Some player can buy what they call a Cred which is 30 days subscription and sell it on the Trading post for in game money. So A player who wants to play for free if s/he can afford it can then buy that Cred from the Trading post and use it to get 1 month subscription using nothing but ingame money.

Sirendor.1394:

Imagi.4561:

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

Jumping puzzles are magnificent. Best part of this game aswell. Just think about all those incredible experiences. <3

Apart from that… a lot of this game is rather annoying. Dungeons are an endless repetition, after doing them 100+ times you get reaaaally bored. Dynamic events don’t have any real impact on the world and reward players badly. Champions are a zerg-fest, not an unique boss fight. WvW is a zergfest aswell, no tactics. Personal story is cliché and bland. The gear system… is rather useless; needing different armour sets for different builds? That’s just bad managing. Also ascended gear is a totally unecessary addition. Structured PvP has no progression. So overall PvP is rather disappointing. Living story has no impact and feels like filler (carrot/stick) content. Achievements are numbers without a meaning.

The lore however (that is, the racial backgrounds and world) is incredible and unique!
The combat is one of the smoothest in any game I played.
The classes, especially engineer, are unique and feel useful.
The fact you don’t need specific healers is also very nice, but it’s sad that the pure damage output is stronger than any other build.

I’m sure you would get mired of anything after doing it 100+ times. The dungeons for me are the best dungeons I’ve experienced in a MMO, because it’s like they took the legendary dungeons of DDO and made them better (ie not the same puzzles over and over again).

There isn’t supposed to be any progress in sPvP, it was intended that way. Do you play DotA for ‘progress’?

Smith.1826:

Its hard to say, I personally been playing over 1100 hours and didnt do everything yet but of course i repeated a lot of stuff to (ran dungeons multiple times, did some DE more then once, did some fractals etc…) snip..

Ohh but it does and a lot. In most MMOs once you get at max level all you get to do is repeat the same content which generally is dungeons / raid. In some of them its all about repeating the same handful of content multiple times per day. Are you telling me thats the same thing you get in Gw2 where sure you still have to repeat content but today I can do jumping puzzle X Y and Z, tomorrow do events in Zone A and the day after that do WvW…. and potentially not repeat a single thing twice for at least half a year and all of this not counting with having totally fresh things to do every 2 weeks! Its not the same thing by far, it definitely isnt for me though I cannot speak for everyone.

As for variety in the content itself, Dynamic Events is the best attempt I’ve seen so far in any mmo. Its not perfect, it will not feel fresh as in what new content feels fresh not by far. But though it doesnt happen often sometimes failure / success in event chains will have you experiences part of the event which is totally new. Much more common then that is doing events with a different number of people thus having those events scale in a different way resulting in few/more mobs as well as different tier of mobs if it scales enough. Even if the chain plays out the same success / failure as last time and the event doesnt scale because everything is dynamic, npcs are running around and mobs engage with them as well it will never play out the same way exactly every time. Some times mobs end up piling up around npcs as they’re killing them ending up with you having to take more then 1 group at once. Sometimes the opposite happens giving you an easier time. Its not fresh as in new fresh for sure but its better then what every other MMO does which is giving the same exactly experience each time you repeat the same content either.

If you have to start crafting from scratch then yes its definitely going to take a very long time, but guess what thats by design! they said it since day 1. Ascended gear is mean to be something that takes between exotic (a couple of days) and legendary (a year?) to make.. hence that it takes months is not surprising neither a problem since its optional. As for repetition of leveling up crafting. If you gather the mats yourself the fact each mat tier is in multiple zones means you can choose zones you havent played in months to harvest. If you buy the mats even better you can choose to play any content you want.

The problem you’re talking about is because people cant accept that a medium term goal is a medium term goal. If they choose to buy mats from TP they cant accept the fact this is a medium term goal hence it will take months to accomplish, they have to buy everything needed as quickly as possible and hence they ignore the fact they can play anywhere in the game and just farm the most profitable content possible for weeks until they get all thats needed. Are you surprised that if you play the game in the opposite way it was designed to play it will not be as fun as if you play it in the way it was intended to be played? Freedom of choice doesnt mean every one of those choices is equally pleasurable.

Imagi.4561:

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

me three

dcypher.2590:

This is so out of context. You’ll never have BiS? You’re kinda just throwing that around like it’s proven fact, when it’s not. Do they keep raising the roof? Yes. Does that mean BiS doesn’t exist? Not at all. People raiding heroics in WoW right now are getting Best in slot gear. When the next expansion comes out will it still be best in slot? No. Does that mean it isn’t best in slot right now? Not at all. They don’t just add a new tier without letting anyone know well in advance, which you are trying to make it sound like suddenly your armor isn’t the best in the game tomorrow. If it were truly like that, no one would ever strive for it.

Also, you’re going down a slippery slope because all it takes to void your entire argument is ArenaNet EVER adding another tier. Ever…in the entire lifespan.

No I am not, even developers stated in forms you that you can never have best in slot in WS.

I am afraid it is a fact. but not for the reason you think I mean it. Why is it a fact? best gear drops from raids. It has 2 different set of stats. 1 set is fixed stats given by the developers when they create the gear itself, the 2nd set of stats comes from chips socketed in the gear and the stats on those chips is randomly generated at the time of the drop. On a single piece of armor there are 2 types of chips, some are fixed others are replaceable. So to get BiS there are 3 things that need to happen.

1. You need to get a drop of the type you need that has the fix stats you need.
2. you need to own the replaceable chips that are of the type you need.
3. the fixed chips need to have the stats you need.

That has to happen for every single gear piece which is statistically impossible to happen.

You will likely get the gear with the fix stats you want if you work hard at it. From the other gear you get while trying to get the gear with the fix stats you want its very likely you’re going to get chips with stats you want. But the chances of getting the fixed stats you need with the fixed chips having the stats you need as well is very unlikely and essentially impossible to have happen for every single gear piece.

So when I say in WS you can never have BiS I am not saying because the next time they raise the gear tier it will stop being BiS, the game is actually designed in such a way that it will not be possible to get BiS only get as close to it as possible.

@Draco

It is still content, content you dont like but content none the less. Like I said and like others told you some people enjoy that content more then the content you think is real content.

I’ll give you that, yes difficulty is a problem in Gw2 I agree. Most of it is way to easy. However that level 20 zone was just as easy when you were level 20. Luckly things are getting better in that regard.

Ohh No I assure you plenty of people love the Clocktower.. very quick search:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/halloween/Clocktower-I-ll-miss-you
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/halloween/Halloween-appreciation-thread-Merged
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-miss-the-Mad-King-JP

Like everything some love it some hate it

Well I’ve never seen people grind moas in Queensdale because well no one grinds stuff for profit when there is none to be had. The original SAB that was super popular didn’t give any monetary rewards you could only get to buy skins that were account bound. Sure some might have done that for the skins but then you can read the forums to see how much people loved at least the first SAB release.

Well no game is for everyone, Gw2 is more aimed at casual play then it is at hardcore play and if thats not something you enjoy it will be problematic no doubt.

Well I only played WoW at launch and there really wasnt much of anything outside the beaten path, maybe that has changed since. I hope so, exploration is cool.But anyway how does gw2 not do at least what you’re saying WoW does? I mean the most easy to find secret in Gw2 is Saul D’alessio’s tomb. That is you find out its Saul D’alessio’s tomb if you find the secret since its actually marked martyr’s tomb on the map. Right next to the tomb there is a statue to dwyna. If you light the candle and kneel an avatar of dwyna will appear to you. It will explain the tomb belongs to Saul and that it is guard by the same confessor who used to guard it in life but he’s gone so obsessed that his obsession poured over the other ghosts making them go mad with rage. You can then go to the tomb again and summon the confessor, have a little mini boss fight and if you win you get a chest + the ghosts become friendly. so that one “hidden” event (its really one of the easiest ones to find) rewards you not just with loot, but also with lore and it makes your life easier to explore the rest of the tomb complex. If you didnt play Gw1, Saul D’alessio was a major character in the lore, he founded the white mantle which are an interesting faction, very colourful

Galen Grey.4709:

It is still content, content you dont like but content none the less.

Achievements are as much content as moldy pizza is a delicacy.

Galen Grey.4709:

Like I said and like others told you some people enjoy that content more then the content you think is real content.

Actually they were talking about jumping puzzles; I didn’t say they weren’t content, I said they sucked. So these are “content” alright. Chasing a bunch of points on the map, however, isn’t.

Galen Grey.4709:

Ohh No I assure you plenty of people love the Clocktower..

Alright, I see.

Nevertheless, it was horrible.

Galen Grey.4709:

Well no game is for everyone, Gw2 is more aimed at casual play then it is at hardcore play and if thats not something you enjoy it will be problematic no doubt.

I think I wrote a lengthy post two pages ago to the effect that it’s the other way around; that playing “casually”, albeit the game makes a lot of effort to enable it, is a major PITA and is really only done against the game itself.

Galen Grey.4709:

I hope so, exploration is cool.But anyway how does gw2 not do at least what you’re saying WoW does?

Its world is bland, generic, lacks attention to detail, consistency, immersion or balance.

WoW may have terrible writing or poor design choices, but it’s a fun place to be. Consequently, it’s a fun place to explore – to explore you need to be interested in what you may find and, equally importantly, you need something to find.

You can say it’s up to taste, and that’s true. The same is true of every bad book and terrible movie – but their quality is still a measured value.

Oh and, the tomb example is actually pretty good. I didn’t find it that entertaining myself when I’ve been there, lacks attachment or progression, but it’s a start. Off the top of my head, I don’t remember a single such encounter that was memorable to me. WoW technically doesn’t have anything like it (for what I know), yet I don’t have the fingers to recount the fun little discoveries I’ve run into during my short trial.

@Draco
Hey dont cheat, I didnt say Achievements you did, I mentioned JP, Mini games, vistas etc..

I agree chasing a bunch of point on the map isnt content and it isnt meant to be content it just meant to steer the players in the right direction. For example The marytr tomb is a point of interest, in itself it isnt content but the secret event and lore behind it is.

It isnt the other way round I assure everything is designed in a way that it can be acheived casually. The problem is it is also designed to take a long time to get and people cant accept that so they turn it into a hardcore grind fest to get it done much quicker. That alone however doesnt mean the game is aimed at hardcores.

Are we sure we’re even talking about the same game now? I mean you can accuse gw2 of many things but bland, generic and lacking attention to detail as well as immersion is surely not one of them!

I mean seriously take queensdale for example. (the same can be said for other zones) the zone has a theme, bandits are trying to cause a famine and control the food supply. That can be seen everywhere. They’re trying to poison the water supply, they assault the windmill to steal the supplies stored in the basemen, they try to take over the fields and the lifestock, they try to stop help coming from divinity’s reach etc… That’s consistency … If the water gets poisoned basically on the other side of the map people get sick, you can see them throwing up, the wells have this green glow coming out, irrigation system starts spewing green water instead of clear water. In most MMOs you’re just told hey the water is poisoned go deal with it, here you get 1/4 the zone effected, npcs will tell you they’re not feeling well if you talk to them as far as outside divinity’s reach gates themselves while the water is poison… how can you call that a lack of attention to detail or lacking immersion? its actually the opposite this is the MMO with the biggest attention to detail and effort of immersion I have ever seen and I played a lot of MMOs. Even trivial things like whiny sound a wheel does while turning, its randomized and changed so it doesnt whine the same way or in a pattern revolution after revolution. seriously I have no idea what exactly you find bland and lacking in detail!

Its exploration, you’re meant to enjoy finding it first and foremost the more hidden the better however if you dont enjoy jumping puzzles it maybe tricky since many secrets are hidden behind jumping puzzles. Going with that specific case, its the lore and the story. Saul was one of my favorite characters in Gw1 especially after playing his story in the mission bonus pack so you can imagine how rewarding is to find out an unmarked tomb actually belongs to him. thats the way its meant to be rewarding.

Extra long grinds with cherry on top are not casual nor aimed at casuals, no matter how anyone wants to spin it.

In fact, thats one of hardcore only perk, and existed only because of – tada – hardcores.

Galen Grey.4709:

Smith.1826:

Its hard to say, I personally been playing over 1100 hours and didnt do everything yet but of course i repeated a lot of stuff to (ran dungeons multiple times, did some DE more then once, did some fractals etc…) snip..

Ohh but it does and a lot. In most MMOs once you get at max level all you get to do is repeat the same content which generally is dungeons / raid.

I’d say you’re not being fair to “most MMOs”, least of all WoW. I last played it during Cataclysm, and there was plenty I could do in the order I choose. Still wanted me to replay it all, of course, but it wasn’t just “dungeons and raids”.

As for variety in the content itself, Dynamic Events is the best attempt I’ve seen so far in any mmo…

I had a lot of fun with them as well, but a lot of the variety in them (be the result of a “failed” event or not) was overshadowed by the glaringly easy difficulty.

If you have to start crafting from scratch then yes its definitely going to take a very long time, but guess what thats by design!

Thats fine. I don’t mind when a reward takes awhile, because I could usually give less of a kitten about them. I only mind when it’s stapled onto content I exhausted six months ago, content that’s well over a year old.

The problem you’re talking about is because people cant accept that a medium term goal is a medium term goal. If they choose to buy mats from TP they cant accept the fact this is a medium term goal hence it will take months to accomplish, they have to buy everything needed as quickly as possible and hence they ignore the fact they can play anywhere in the game and just farm the most profitable content possible for weeks until they get all thats needed. Are you surprised that if you play the game in the opposite way it was designed to play it will not be as fun as if you play it in the way it was intended to be played? Freedom of choice doesnt mean every one of those choices is equally pleasurable.

Honestly am not sure what you’re talking about here. What part of my post triggered this?

Galen Grey.4709:

Hey dont cheat, I didnt say Achievements you did, I mentioned JP, Mini games, vistas etc..

Actually we were talking about truly inconsequential stuff like vistas, points of interest, easter eggs, odd NPCs, doing random tasks for APs… hence why I likened it all to being little more than achievements.

More important than that is the issue of extremely repetitive content. You can have a thousand cookie-cutter “events” in the game, but it contributes no more than a single one would. Once you’ve done it once, you’ve done it a thousand times.

Mini-games are one of the best types of content, by the way.

Galen Grey.4709:

It isnt the other way round I assure everything is designed in a way that it can be acheived casually.

Intended, maybe. The implementation doesn’t work out in practice.

Galen Grey.4709:

The problem is it is also designed to take a long time to get and people cant accept that so they turn it into a hardcore grind fest to get it done much quicker.

So the game was designed to be even more grindy than it is now… That’s just great…

Galen Grey.4709:

Are we sure we’re even talking about the same game now? I mean you can accuse gw2 of many things but bland, generic and lacking attention to detail as well as immersion is surely not one of them!

Honestly it’s the main of them. If there was one word to describe GW2, it would be “……”

Galen Grey.4709:

I mean seriously take queensdale for example.

Ordinary green plains.

Actually one of the more vivid zones in the game, considering most other are brownish-green plains. We even have a giant kitten ext to Divinity’s Reach, which is an actual landmark. Those are pretty rare in GW2.

Bandits are ordinary trash mobs. Their presence exists, but it’s not felt, and it leaves no marks and no impression on the player. In fact it’s a huge immersion breaker because – seriously – people just don’t friggin’ work that way. Had bandits been a giant brainwashed cult to throw their lives away for the sake of committing acts of terrorism or a small band of ostracized and desperate misfits (for example), it’d at least be a start in being somewhat memorable.

It’s just so amazingly droll and unimaginative, and it’s not much in terms of detail when all details are the same. Yet again, WoW does all that and much, much more, much better.

Galen Grey.4709:

Even trivial things like whiny sound a wheel does while turning, its randomized and changed

Haha. Yes, and yet a swing of your sword or a shot of your bow always sounds the same…

Sound design 101: pitch and sample variation for oft-used actions unless implementing gameplay-relevant clues.

Galen Grey.4709:

Its exploration, you’re meant to enjoy finding it first and foremost

To enjoy exploration, you need a world you’re motivated to know more about. If the world is bland and boring and you have no attachment to it and it looks all the same everywhere you go, exploration is a non-starter.

Galen Grey.4709:

Saul was one of my favorite characters in Gw1 especially after playing his story in the mission bonus pack so you can imagine how rewarding is to find out an unmarked tomb actually belongs to him.

Exactly. This is good motivation coupled with good reward for your effort.

GW2 has a severe lack of these moments.

Guild Wars 2

A game with a Casual difficulty level. Most of the game is trash mobs.

But introduces a hardcore grind for its latest tier of rewards. Ascended weapons are the biggest grind I have ever seen.

Who is this game aimed at then? The casual player doesn’t want to grind for the Ascended rewards. The hard core player finds the combat (the core of the game) trivial and unexciting.

It appeals to no group in particular.

Galen Grey.4709:

Its hard to say, I personally been playing over 1100 hours and didnt do everything yet but of course i repeated a lot of stuff to (ran dungeons multiple times, did some DE more then once, did some fractals etc…) At the very start when events happened way too often before of too many people in the same zone it took me a bout 20 hours to finish of a zone with practically no repeat of content.

Thanks to Smith for understanding my point.
After about the first 3 zones, you’ve effectively seen all of the mechanics in the open world (especially the mob fighting mechanics).
It was okay on the first run (the honey moon period, so to speak), but running an alt made it all too painfully obvious how much is essentially a copy and paste from zone to zone. Heck, even within the same zone, content is repeated.
Unfortunately, it’s a case of “once you see it, you can’t unsee it”.
And no, please don’t argue with “other games do that too, so it’s ok”, as that’s just excusing poor design.

Galen Grey.4709:

The original SAB that was super popular didn’t give any monetary rewards you could only get to buy skins that were account bound. Sure some might have done that for the skins but then you can read the forums to see how much people loved at least the first SAB release.

It didn’t have monetary rewards, but there was another desired item: obsidian shards.
(But FYI, I did enjoy SAB1, SAB2 not so much.)

Use your google skills to find out where I got this quote from.

Later in the day I casually asked the founder/president if we had any analytics about how many people were playing. Well collecting that kind of data seems to be really fun for him as far as I can tell, so we ended up working together to gather that information for a while. That was nice, except for finding out what I suspected based on my forum experience: the numbers are pretty dismal (Compared to the exceptional numbers of the first SAB) right now. I really hope that this patch will bring people back, but without the old reward schedule I don’t think it will happen.

There were a few other issues that came with SAB 2, but being farmable played a major role in it’s popularity, metric-wise.

Smith.1826:

Galen Grey.4709:

Smith.1826:

Its hard to say, I personally been playing over 1100 hours and didnt do everything yet but of course i repeated a lot of stuff to (ran dungeons multiple times, did some DE more then once, did some fractals etc…) snip..

Ohh but it does and a lot. In most MMOs once you get at max level all you get to do is repeat the same content which generally is dungeons / raid.

I’d say you’re not being fair to “most MMOs”, least of all WoW. I last played it during Cataclysm, and there was plenty I could do in the order I choose. Still wanted me to replay it all, of course, but it wasn’t just “dungeons and raids”.

As for variety in the content itself, Dynamic Events is the best attempt I’ve seen so far in any mmo…

I had a lot of fun with them as well, but a lot of the variety in them (be the result of a “failed” event or not) was overshadowed by the glaringly easy difficulty.

If you have to start crafting from scratch then yes its definitely going to take a very long time, but guess what thats by design!

Thats fine. I don’t mind when a reward takes awhile, because I could usually give less of a kitten about them. I only mind when it’s stapled onto content I exhausted six months ago, content that’s well over a year old.

The problem you’re talking about is because people cant accept that a medium term goal is a medium term goal. If they choose to buy mats from TP they cant accept the fact this is a medium term goal hence it will take months to accomplish, they have to buy everything needed as quickly as possible and hence they ignore the fact they can play anywhere in the game and just farm the most profitable content possible for weeks until they get all thats needed. Are you surprised that if you play the game in the opposite way it was designed to play it will not be as fun as if you play it in the way it was intended to be played? Freedom of choice doesnt mean every one of those choices is equally pleasurable.

Honestly am not sure what you’re talking about here. What part of my post triggered this?

fair enough, I havent played wow in years so tell me if I were a max level character who finished everything released so far what options do I get with regards to content to play?

yes that the game is too easy I agree, it needs to be harder.

Would you rather its tied exclusively to new content you now have to repeat for months? If I have to repeat stuff personally I am happier to have as big of a choice of stuff to repeat as possible. New stuff is boring to repeat just as much as old stuff is. If I have to repeat say repeat a dungeon 25 times I’d rather do that by given the choice of repeating any path in any dungeon then have a new dungeon released like say MF and be told to repeat that 25 times because at least to me repeating the same dungeon 25 times is way more boring then repeating all the old paths of the old dungeons once for example.

This one

“The newest, and perhaps more prevalent, example is the path to an ascended weapon. If a player has no interest in weaponsmithing nor has much gold, they’re potentially looking at a very long road in acquiring one. In addition, much of the current game’s content is well over a year old, so there are people out there who see that the only way to acquire these new pieces of gear is to play through content that they’ve exhausted awhile ago.”

Relentliss.2170:

It appeals to no group in particular.

Also known in the industry as “conflicting design”. Usually that happens when multiple people work on the same task without over-reaching supervision (either in form of person or an idea).

And, uh, yeah. That’s a pretty big problem. Shame, considering one of the big promises of GW2 was to have both kinds of content for both kinds of players, and everything in between.

@draco

cookie-cutter events in what sense? They all got their own little stories that are completely different from each other. Sure at their core they’re all the same like every other quest in every other game you can think off because at the end of the day you can only either kill stuff, interact with things or go some place.

the amount of time it takes to complete a task doesnt have anything to do with whether its grindy or not. What makes a task grindy or not is what you’re required to do, during that time.

Ordinary green plains? again sure we’re talking about the same game because for starters Gw2 is split into 5 regions, you got the snowy shiverpeaks which are white not plain green, Ascalon .. deserty rocky yellowish, Magumma jungle, Swampy, greenish foresty region, Orr, yellow&greeny misty wastland.. Kryta is the only region that is mostly green plains and not even all of it as you got the watery and hilly bloodtide coast and the brownish Harathi Hinterlands as well.

how is it not felt? there is even a chance the first thing you get to see after leaving Divinity’s reach is the bridge you have to pass from blockaded by bandits if you run into that event. Again never mind them poisoning the NPCs through the water supply or taking over the farm on the other side of the hill. As for immersion what is it that bandits don’t do? be organized and act like a militia launching attacks that sort of thing? because if so its not only realistic and not only it happened in history but there is ever a term for it… social banditry

Yeah because in the first zone you get to experiance in wow you’re already have to face so many much more interesting foes then bandits like say earth elementals, harpies, Creatures from the underworld, giant worms, world bosses… ohh wait thats the same map in WoW in your first zone all you get to face are some little animals and a few regular members of your opposition race. How is gw2 the one with most underwhelming encounters exactly?

Well how about the pistol that has the casing doing different sounds based on the type of ground you’re standing. If the sword and bow do exactly the same sounds the only sword i use is the great sword on my mesmer and its not exactly used as a regular sword so…

Well if you dont like the game you dont like the game, to me and I imagine a lot others the world is not blant its beautiful and there is a lot of interesting lore to keep us interested. As for all looking the same everywhere thats very interesting to say considering a lot of reviews praised Gw2 for taking the time to create unique stuff everywhere and avoid the copy paste so many other mmos use. I mean seriously look at this screenshot:
http://ywm8.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/queensdalefight2.jpg

Its just a bunch of plants that got no importance what so ever, yet there are 43 plants showing in that screen shot and not one is like an other, and not just simple resizing and rotation but also shape, density, some have flowers others not, etc.. yet you say it all looks the same.

BlueZone.4236:

Galen Grey.4709:

Its hard to say, I personally been playing over 1100 hours and didnt do everything yet but of course i repeated a lot of stuff to (ran dungeons multiple times, did some DE more then once, did some fractals etc…) At the very start when events happened way too often before of too many people in the same zone it took me a bout 20 hours to finish of a zone with practically no repeat of content.

Thanks to Smith for understanding my point.
After about the first 3 zones, you’ve effectively seen all of the mechanics in the open world (especially the mob fighting mechanics).
It was okay on the first run (the honey moon period, so to speak), but running an alt made it all too painfully obvious how much is essentially a copy and paste from zone to zone. Heck, even within the same zone, content is repeated.
Unfortunately, it’s a case of “once you see it, you can’t unsee it”.
And no, please don’t argue with “other games do that too, so it’s ok”, as that’s just excusing poor design.

Galen Grey.4709:

The original SAB that was super popular didn’t give any monetary rewards you could only get to buy skins that were account bound. Sure some might have done that for the skins but then you can read the forums to see how much people loved at least the first SAB release.

It didn’t have monetary rewards, but there was another desired item: obsidian shards.
(But FYI, I did enjoy SAB1, SAB2 not so much.)

Use your google skills to find out where I got this quote from.

Later in the day I casually asked the founder/president if we had any analytics about how many people were playing. Well collecting that kind of data seems to be really fun for him as far as I can tell, so we ended up working together to gather that information for a while. That was nice, except for finding out what I suspected based on my forum experience: the numbers are pretty dismal (Compared to the exceptional numbers of the first SAB) right now. I really hope that this patch will bring people back, but without the old reward schedule I don’t think it will happen.

There were a few other issues that came with SAB 2, but being farmable played a major role in it’s popularity, metric-wise.

But seriously I am not exactly sure what you people are expecting. Can you give an example of what game has this exciting questing thats all new and fresh no matter how much you play it? cause I dont know every game you’re going to learn the combat system in the first few hours you play it and every quest will get you to the same things over and over again. The only difference between one quest and another is the story. If you dont care about every game is gonna feel repetitive.

I know for sure people found sab valuable for obsidian shard acquisition cause there were threads asking why it wasnt included for world 2 but I do not believe that people didnt enjoy sab but rathered farmed it just to get obsidian shards

I dont even need to use google since i followed the thread where Josh posted that. I personally enjoyed World 2 but I understand what people were complaining about, I personally think world 2 would have been perfect if each zone was split into 2 giving a total of 6 zones for the world because as it was each zone felt way too long true.

Galen Grey.4709:

Imagi.4561:

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

me three

Four

Xae Isareth.1364:

Sirendor.1394:

Imagi.4561:

Draco.2806:

Galen Grey.4709:

which other MMOs had JPs? None

Well thank god for that. They’re horrible.

Without reading the entire third+ page of back-and-forth arguing, I’d like to chime in here and say that I love the jumping puzzles. They’re fun, and I’ve never felt more accomplished in a game than I did when I reached the top of the Mad King’s Clocktower last year. I hope they bring it back again.

Jumping puzzles are magnificent. Best part of this game aswell. Just think about all those incredible experiences. <3

Apart from that… a lot of this game is rather annoying. Dungeons are an endless repetition, after doing them 100+ times you get reaaaally bored. Dynamic events don’t have any real impact on the world and reward players badly. Champions are a zerg-fest, not an unique boss fight. WvW is a zergfest aswell, no tactics. Personal story is cliché and bland. The gear system… is rather useless; needing different armour sets for different builds? That’s just bad managing. Also ascended gear is a totally unecessary addition. Structured PvP has no progression. So overall PvP is rather disappointing. Living story has no impact and feels like filler (carrot/stick) content. Achievements are numbers without a meaning.

The lore however (that is, the racial backgrounds and world) is incredible and unique!
The combat is one of the smoothest in any game I played.
The classes, especially engineer, are unique and feel useful.
The fact you don’t need specific healers is also very nice, but it’s sad that the pure damage output is stronger than any other build.

I’m sure you would get mired of anything after doing it 100+ times. The dungeons for me are the best dungeons I’ve experienced in a MMO, because it’s like they took the legendary dungeons of DDO and made them better (ie not the same puzzles over and over again).

There isn’t supposed to be any progress in sPvP, it was intended that way. Do you play DotA for ‘progress’?

Sure dungeons in this game were really good, but there are waaay to few. In the – what is it – 1 year and 2 months this game has been out, how come we didn’t get any new dungeons (apart from living story ones, that disappeared after 2 weeks)?

SPvP: it’s just not worth playing at all. And I don’t play DotA, LoL and various similar games for the same reason.

I think the title of this thread would be more accurate in the past tense.

Galen Grey.4709:

fair enough, I havent played wow in years so tell me if I were a max level character who finished everything released so far what options do I get with regards to content to play?

Eh, a WoW vs. GW2 discussion? I don’t think anyone would benefit from that, and I’m sure there are tons of other places to do so. I’m just saying to be fair to it: look into what content it can provide before stating as such.

Would you rather its tied exclusively to new content you now have to repeat for months?

New content has a much better chance at being interesting rather than content thats had the fun played out of it. So I could certainly imagine myself spending more time with the new. I just don’t like having to repeat content when it doesn’t add anything to the gameplay. Plus I already did that with TA, once is more than enough, thank you very much.

This one

Right, I was pointing out how getting an ascended weapon can be considered less fun and more grindy: How could I get one without having to touch stale content? I’d sure like to have BiS gear, but it’s not fun to get, and with being this far into the game I’d think that’d be understandable.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

How ANet measures fun/success:

-No one does the ruins in borderlands
-So they introduce a daily to capture 5 of them, 2 weeks since the patch that brought them in.

What a joke.

heheh because you know by adding it as a daily it sudden comes 10X more amazing then it was before.

Galen Grey.4709:

BlueZone.4236:

Galen Grey.4709:

Its hard to say, I personally been playing over 1100 hours and didnt do everything yet but of course i repeated a lot of stuff to (ran dungeons multiple times, did some DE more then once, did some fractals etc…) At the very start when events happened way too often before of too many people in the same zone it took me a bout 20 hours to finish of a zone with practically no repeat of content.

Thanks to Smith for understanding my point.
After about the first 3 zones, you’ve effectively seen all of the mechanics in the open world (especially the mob fighting mechanics).
It was okay on the first run (the honey moon period, so to speak), but running an alt made it all too painfully obvious how much is essentially a copy and paste from zone to zone. Heck, even within the same zone, content is repeated.
Unfortunately, it’s a case of “once you see it, you can’t unsee it”.
And no, please don’t argue with “other games do that too, so it’s ok”, as that’s just excusing poor design.

Galen Grey.4709:

The original SAB that was super popular didn’t give any monetary rewards you could only get to buy skins that were account bound. Sure some might have done that for the skins but then you can read the forums to see how much people loved at least the first SAB release.

It didn’t have monetary rewards, but there was another desired item: obsidian shards.
(But FYI, I did enjoy SAB1, SAB2 not so much.)

Use your google skills to find out where I got this quote from.

Later in the day I casually asked the founder/president if we had any analytics about how many people were playing. Well collecting that kind of data seems to be really fun for him as far as I can tell, so we ended up working together to gather that information for a while. That was nice, except for finding out what I suspected based on my forum experience: the numbers are pretty dismal (Compared to the exceptional numbers of the first SAB) right now. I really hope that this patch will bring people back, but without the old reward schedule I don’t think it will happen.

There were a few other issues that came with SAB 2, but being farmable played a major role in it’s popularity, metric-wise.

But seriously I am not exactly sure what you people are expecting. Can you give an example of what game has this exciting questing thats all new and fresh no matter how much you play it? cause I dont know every game you’re going to learn the combat system in the first few hours you play it and every quest will get you to the same things over and over again. The only difference between one quest and another is the story. If you dont care about every game is gonna feel repetitive.

I know for sure people found sab valuable for obsidian shard acquisition cause there were threads asking why it wasnt included for world 2 but I do not believe that people didnt enjoy sab but rathered farmed it just to get obsidian shards

I dont even need to use google since i followed the thread where Josh posted that. I personally enjoyed World 2 but I understand what people were complaining about, I personally think world 2 would have been perfect if each zone was split into 2 giving a total of 6 zones for the world because as it was each zone felt way too long true.

I’m not expecting it to be fresh and new every single time.
No, I don’t have an clear answer, but clearly ANet doesn’t either since they haven’t got an answer to “Can we make something so much fun you might want to play it multiple times because it’s fun, rather than making you do it because the game says you have to?”
Remember who’s the game designer. It’s not my job.
You’re right that the story behind each DE helps make them feel unique. But the story behind each DE is largely forgettable, mainly because of the fact many start without you (or possibly because whoever started the event gave up on finishing the event). I rarely encounter an event from start to finish because they’re all in progress, so why should I care at that point?
The “personal” story is probably the most interesting “quest” since it’s supposed to be personal (let’s ignore the whole “it’s Trahearne’s story” aspect), but I don’t intend to level another alt (1 alt is enough for me) to get through it all due to grinding to access the entire story.

Regarding SAB, yes some people did enjoy it, yet I agree with Josh’s conclusion that without the old reward schedule he wouldn’t get back players.

Wow, I read what Colin said. And it is AMAZING to me how they completely made a 180 from that. This was the funniest. He is doing the OPPOSITE of what he said.

You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

Xcom.1926:

Wow, I read what Colin said. And it is AMAZING to me how they completely made a 180 from that. This was the funniest. He is doing the OPPOSITE of what he said.

You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

“loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item” that part is not in there.. However it would be much more fun if it is. But in multiple aspects they are indeed doing the opposite.

For example they say they want people do do thinks because it’s fun nod because the games tels you to do it. (non literal quote). What does Anet, if people don’t do some thinks they put it in a daily achievement. Thats a real example of something thats the opposite of what they said and personally on a level that I never saw in another game. In another game they try to make it fun or rewarding here they put it in the daily. As if they see that nobody does it and then go like.. this is really fun just put it in the daily and then they see.

At the same time I do feel for some of the developers. See what they put borderlands. People put time into that and now nobody is interested in it. Even worse, Anet put it in the daily to get people to do it. Meanwhile many players would prefer to have the lake back. And thats not the designers their fault but the person who came up with that idea.

WvW is kinda fun but could be great. You should be able to claim land with your guild, build castles fight for other land and so on.

Xcom.1926:

Wow, I read what Colin said. And it is AMAZING to me how they completely made a 180 from that. This was the funniest. He is doing the OPPOSITE of what he said.

You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level, loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end, raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play, thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support, the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn, etc.

• “You get leveling systems that take insane amounts of grind to gain a level”… It takes a few days to get to 80 and xp is rewarded in various ways. It’s still that way since release. Furthermore new zones via the living story don’t require you to be lv.80 since you’ll get bumped to the level of the zone in the week of release. There has been no maximal level increase since release. I say: awesome Anet!

• “loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end”… I actually wish this were the case, but Anet stayed to this statement.

• “raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play”… well you don’t have to organize still since the whole server participates in the Tequatl/world boss encounters. If Tequatl would be instanced, then yes – Anet would have gone against their statement. As these encounters are open world and everyone can participate and leave at it’s own schedule, it’s exactly as stated.

• “thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support”… There’s no such thing in the game. No reputation system which need you to grind the same enemies. Quite the opposite: daily achievements give you a lot of different options how to complete these. Daily quests aren’t in either, you aren’t funneled to specific events for the event-daily, for example. You have a number of zones to choose from.

• “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol. I guess you haven’t played any other mmos before. Also you don’t have to do the same raid over and over again to have a small droprate of that BIS item (or tons of runs of that dungeon to get the tokens). Also these raids require 9 or 24 people with the same schedule as you, so solo-players / player who enjoy small groups won’t see best in slot items at all. GW2 gives you a big variety of ways to earn ascended items.

Ascended items are nothing else than best in slot gear, something that was insanely hard to achieve in other games. Tiny droprates locked in the hardest raid.

So I really can’t see where you find that 180 from what they stated. Please enlighten me.

“raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play”

Yeah also that is one that would be great if it was in there. For multiple thinks it is like what they said and was indeed good they did the opposite and for the the thinks they said but was not so good they did not change is.

“thousands of wash/repeat item-collection or kill-mob quests or dailies with flavor text support” You really wanna day that this is not in because you have a little choice for your dailies? I am sorry but if something is very much in this game it is this.

People are doing there daily achievements, daily boss kills and events are mainly kill-mob quest.

How? Simple, ArenaNet measures success by the amount of cash on their pockets.

They measure their success through the cash shop.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• “loot drop systems that require doing a dungeon with a tiny chance the item you want can drop at the end”… I actually wish this were the case, but Anet stayed to this statement.

Tequatl disagrees with you.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• “raid systems that need huge numbers of people online simultaneously to organize and play”… well you don’t have to organize still since the whole server participates in the Tequatl/world boss encounters. If Tequatl would be instanced, then yes – Anet would have gone against their statement. As these encounters are open world and everyone can participate and leave at it’s own schedule, it’s exactly as stated.

Sorry but the fact that its open world doesn’t take away form the fact that it is exactly how he described and the other boss encounters are probably going to be changed similarly.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol.

To get 1 item, yeah it is crazy, in most western mmos you should be able to get almost fully geared in a new tier in that timeframe.

morrolan.9608:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol.

To get 1 item, yeah it is crazy, in most western mmos you should be able to get almost fully geared in a new tier in that timeframe.

just a tiny exaple:

BIS item in WoW: http://www.wowdb.com/items/105349-bracers-of-the-pristine-purifier#contained-in-object

3.4% droprate in a endgame raid

Yeah I’m sure you have this in a few tries. Do you want more of those exaples?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

morrolan.9608:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol.

To get 1 item, yeah it is crazy, in most western mmos you should be able to get almost fully geared in a new tier in that timeframe.

just a tiny exaple:

BIS item in WoW: http://www.wowdb.com/items/105349-bracers-of-the-pristine-purifier#contained-in-object

3.4% droprate in a endgame raid

Yeah I’m sure you have this in a few tries. Do you want more of those exaples?

The question is how much does it difference from the SiS?
3,4% drop-range. That means that after doing it 8 times the change for it to drop is > 25%.

And the change that it has dropped is bigger then the change that is did not drop when doing it 15 times.

It would not be great if you would HAVE to do that for your whole armor set and it makes a big difference for SiS but if SiS will work as well then this is a fair way for those people who really want BiS so they have something to work for.

Compare that some some items in GW2. Some items required to make something are harder to get that your WoW BiS item and then you need 100 of them. Buying is a option but less fun.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

• “the best stat gear requiring crazy amounts of time to earn,”… it takes about 2-3 weeks to get a best in slot item. Yeah… crazy amounts of time, lol. I guess you haven’t played any other mmos before. Also you don’t have to do the same raid over and over again to have a small droprate of that BIS item (or tons of runs of that dungeon to get the tokens). Also these raids require 9 or 24 people with the same schedule as you, so solo-players / player who enjoy small groups won’t see best in slot items at all. GW2 gives you a big variety of ways to earn ascended items.

What utter nonsense. I have played plenty of MMOs before, and 2-3 weeks is a long time to get an item in any MMO.

It is amusing to me that people actually think they fulfilled the “Is it Fun” and the “Manifesto”, they did nothing of that sort, they did a total 180. I have to facepalm everytime someone tries to explain why they actually fulfilled their promises.

They are not building their game around “fun” anymore, they are building their game around what they said “subscription” games do. And that is grinds, time sinks, gated content and all of that type of content they criticized.

darkace.8925:

stuff

This is how they measure success….

Relentliss.2170:

Guild Wars 2

A game with a Casual difficulty level. Most of the game is trash mobs.

But introduces a hardcore grind for its latest tier of rewards. Ascended weapons are the biggest grind I have ever seen.

Who is this game aimed at then? The casual player doesn’t want to grind for the Ascended rewards. The hard core player finds the combat (the core of the game) trivial and unexciting.

It appeals to no group in particular.

First of all, what’s hardcore? I’ve always considered RuneScape to be a ‘hardcore’ game because of how hardcore you needed to be patient to get anything of value in that game. Nothing was actually difficult. You need to define hardcore.