Guild Wars 2

Hello!

According to my daily log-in rewards, I’ve been playing for exactly a month now, an hour or two every day, some days long sessions. I finished the personal story for the main plot last night as well, and I’m moving on to the living world and HoT content. I thought I’d give some thoughts and suggestions about stuff as well as mention some bugs I’ve found.

Overall, I’ve found GW2 to be a pleasant and fresh experience, It’s been a long time since I played an MMO, and GW2 seems to do a lot of stuff right. I wouldn’t normally write a long deconstruction post with suggestions for something I wasn’t enjoying and having fun with, but I feel these comments may help improve the game for future players.

Please be advised that this post will contain quite a lot of spoilers about the story, so rather than excessive use of spoiler tags, please just avoid this thread if you care about plot spoilers.

STORY

On the whole, the personal story is pretty neat. My girlfriend and I have been playing through several characters and choosing different options to see how they vary. Many of the decisions you’re forced to make actually feel impactful and relevant. I also enjoy the manner and tone which NPCs speak to you once you reach the level 50+ personal quests, unlike many MMO games which make players feel like a faceless nobody, the story instances really make your character feel important, and also that they’ve earned the respect they command from other characters. This was particularly enjoyable when playing as the shortest Asura I could possibly make. Having people tell me “you’re an inspiration, I’m glad you’re here to keep us safe” when they’re a 9ft tall Norn, and I’m a 3ft tall tiny asura girl with a rifle is pretty funny, but also strangely empowering for a main character, something that many games lack.

I thought I’d drop some specific notes here about what might have been improved.

• Some of the story instances are a little bugged. My girlfriend chose “noble” for her human level 10 background, and in part of one of her quests the quest dialogue told her to talk to a specific person, but they just responded with a faceless NPC “hello” whenever she spoke to them. Only by walking right to the edge of the instance at the start, and then turning around did the quest update to suggest he actually needed to convey useful information.
• During the quest “victory or death” when you board the airship, all of the members of destiny’s reach dialogues are bugged, and the dialogue boxes close themselves quickly after you open them.
• After completing victory or death, the members of destiny’s reach still speak to you as if you haven’t completed the final objective, which is pretty funny, but maybe they should change their dialogue at that point.
• My first week was during Halloween, and the mad king was abound in Lion’s Arch. It’s worth noting that several of my quest markers spawned inside hay bales during that week and were a little difficult to spot. The collection radius was enough that none of them prevented me progressing, but you might want to consider checking all the quest marker spawn points when putting new stuff into LA.
• When you start your quest for a given set of 10 levels, the first part is usually to read a letter in your inventory. However, a quest marker spawns at the loacation you would then need to go to. Walking to that quest marker and standing on it doesn’t do anything until you read the letter, which is pretty confusing when you’re standing on a quest marker and nothing is happening.
• A very small number of the quest events seem to drag on interminably and left me wondering if the instance was bugged. There are a few “defend this camp against the risen” moments where you’re just standing there killing zombies for what seems like an eternity, and you’re just wondering if the game has broken. It might be worth adding a countdown timer to those things like with map events to let a player know how they’re doing. A good example would be on claw island, where you just sit in the middle of the base killing risen for about ten minutes where nothing seems to change.
• It would be really cool to be able to replay story quests from the journal menu, and look at how the other choices play out, or show them to friends, or just experience some of the more brilliant set pieces again.
• If you bounce around in the silverwastes for a few hours, you get six titles for it. Upon finishing the main story, You get awarded the title “champion of Orr” and also “Savior of Kryta” by various NPCs, and I really thought these would appear in my dropdown for selection, but sadly not. It seems kind of weak that you can get a title for shooting the Karka Queen once, but not for finishing the story. I’d suggest adding the titles that NPCs give you during the story to the list of available titles you can have for your character.

NEW PLAYER EXPERIENCE
As a new player, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how helpful players tend to be around the map. A few of my friends also had been playing for a long time, and they helped me out with a few questions, and showed me to some helpful resources on the web to find stuff out. It’s really cool that the /wiki command gives you a straight web-link to the thing you ask for too. The game seems to have plenty to see and do, and that’s rather nice. I think the community as a whole has recognised that the release of HoT has brought a bunch of new players in, and they’ve been quite patient with the change of pace.

Here are some things I think might improve the game for new players.

• It’s worth knowing about the existence of web-based boss timers for world bosses, as well as a few of the more helpful guides out there, and the wiki – there’s nothing in the game that really tells you about any of this stuff. I realise that you might not want to link to external resources, but you should at least tutorialise the wiki command for new players, it’s super handy.
• “Mad King Says” was an excellent introduction to the full range of emotes available. I feel that having a game of that running continually somewhere would be nice to teach people which emotes work. Maybe some kids in Lion’s Arch could play it on a regular basis?
• Fractals are pretty badly tutorialised, my new player experience of fractals was to enter one with no real idea of how it worked, to immediately sit through pages of abuse from the other players about how I shouldn’t be doing fractals unless I know exactly what to do. It could be worth adding in an NPC or character who more clearly explains the specific goals of each fractal on demand. It’s not really very encouraging to me to go and explore the other ones.
• WvW seems completely un-tutorialised. For example, I have no idea how to break into a fortified site, and there are no NPCs that I’ve found that explain it, and there are almost never any players in the WvW maps.
• I hit level 80 in my first week, just exploring the map, and it’s nice to progress fast. However the last 3 weeks of play have seen me gather a huge amount of experience points that have all gone into a mastery that I haven’t unlocked. My friends who are running the HoT content think that I’ll probably unlock the first mastery on each track when I play through the HoT missions, and that the rest of the xp I’ve earned is probably down the toilet… There’s a lot to do before you unlock masteries, especially if you want to play through the story in order. I’m told the early HoT content spoilers the LW2 content, so I haven’t gone to unlock masteries yet. My suggestion is that while unlocking masteries after 2 HoT quests made a lot of sense for established players, it’s a bit frustrating for new players who run through all the previous content before getting there. Instead, why not just unlock the mastery tracks if you own HoT and you get to level 80? I might have a better suggestion when I actually unlock the stuff and know how it works.
• As a new player, it seems kind of odd that the gem prices change around so much. It feels kind of bad when you buy 400 gems for 80 gold, and the price immediately drops to 70 gold. I think I’d prefer to work in a fixed price economy, but hey, I’ve not been playing too long.
• It sucks a little that Laurel vendors in town sell infusions for 5 laurels, when the WvW laurel vendor sells a strictly superior infusion for exactly the same price (+4 might vs +5 might and a bonus in WvW.) – The Laurel vendors in town feel like a con on that front, and while the difference is almost irrelevant, buying an infusion from them only to find that you can get a better one at the same price is kind of annoying. Laurles are pretty hard to come by.

BUGS and ABUSES

• The client crashes a lot on world bosses when the graphics are on maximum settings. I gather from map chat that this is a persistent and known issue, so I’ll leave it unless you want more info.
• I managed to despawn the wall blocking the entrance to the thaumanova reactor, but unfortunately I don’t know how. When I did so, I could fight the steam minotaur during the fire elemental pre-event. I did not have a key for the wall. Some experimentation with the fight suggests it’s possible to kill the minotaur solo (he’s not very tough) – which seems like a surefire way to annoy the pants of everyone else in that map instance. When I got him to 20% I let myself die, and waypointed out. After the FE fight, people could open the reactor as normal and he was just waiting for them from my activation (back to full health of course.). Suggestion: it might be worth just making that extra bit of the reactor something that opens up 2 minutes after the Fire Elemental dies – the reliance on someone having a key and choosing to use it does seem to cause some acrimony occasionally.
• I believe the Vinewraith meta-boss at the end of the Silverwastes chain is designed specifically so you can only battle one of (and get the reward for one of his three champions.) However, if you fight the beekeeper, and near the end of the fight drop engineer turrets, they’ll shoot and damage the second boss, and you’ll get event participation for fighting the second champion (usually bronze) – on top of the event for helping with your siege carrier in the bottom lane. The tracked debuff resets to its full time when the second champion is killed as well. This doesn’t seem like a huge abuse, but you might want to put an exception in there that destroys all the pets and turrets and so on that are left behind when you kick characters out of the boss chamber.
• Similarly, the three batteries and the Vigil Megalaser for Tequatl can all be defended during one section for event participation for each, so you’re encouraged to defend one until you’ve tagged enough for gold, then jump to the others and try to get event credit for them too. I feel like the event isn’t really intended to be played that way.
• Nothing seems to affect the Champion Beekeeper’s defiance bar, as far as I can tell.
• Shadow Behemoth’s meta event HUD never appears.
• Svannir Shaman’s meta event HUD often doesn’t appear when doing that event.
• In the first story dungeon, I managed to out-of bounds myself into a wall in the vampire’s boss chamber. I’ve also managed this in a few other places. You can usually fix it by waypointing, but it’s kind of annoying.
• Quite a lot of the scenery stops being solid if you climb far enough up it (for example, the trees above twilight arbour aren’t solid at all.) – I realise that in many of these places you’re not really meant to be climbing around up there, so it’s my own fault.
• On the other hand, In the Garden of Ilya there is a vista, which is high enough up that jumping off the platform will result in death. You could slowly climb back down the way you came up, but one object is within jump distance, and also tall enough that the fall to it would not kill you, and that’s the beautiful spherical-ish tent where Traherne meets you for the Ossuary of Unquiet Dead mission. Unfortunately, the top half of this tent isn’t solid, so the only quick way to jump down from the vista results in you faceplanting through a non-solid platform to your ignominious death.
• If you go to the Megadestroyer boss fight and stand where one of the three stabilisation devices appears, it appears on top of you, and you end up stuck inside it for the entirety of the stabilisation process. The camera goes a bit nuts too.
• Occasionally, (almost always after entering a chat message) my character gets physically stuck in the floor and can’t move at all. There’s always a disconcerting moment where I think I still have the chat dialogue open, then realise I don’t, then realise that I’m stuck in the floor. It’s always been fixed by using a personal displacement ability like overcharged shot or rocket boots so far though.
• During Halloween, there were times when the cauldron stopped spitting people out and everyone got stuck inside. Not sure what caused it, and it’s likely not going to be an issue for another year, so may not matter too much.

QUALITY OF LIFE, HUD and INTERFACE

• You should be able to hand event trophies to a karma vendor when you’ve finished their golden heart.
• It’s a bit irritating when you have an item that you can’t sell or salvage, most of these are story items or karma-purchases, but I tend to manage my inventory in bulk, and these items always annoy me a bit. It’d be nice to be able to salvage or sell these things even if the profit was tiny.
• Oh what I wouldn’t give for a hub where all the crafting stations and the bank, guild stuff, and BL trade house are all in a small circle. Rata Sum is the best I’ve found.
• It would be helpful if it was clear when you could no longer gain crafting experience from anything because your level was maximum. The maximum for different professions seems to be different.
• You really should be able to access your bank from the guild initiative NPC. I’m finding myself writing down a paper list of the items he needs for an upgrade, then walking to the bank and taking them out, then walking back to hand them in. He’s quite far from any bank NPC, and two loading screens away, so that’s kind of irritating.
• It’s a good thing that when there are lots of characters all together, the game only displays a certain number of character models, but it really should be the case that enemies, especially the one you are targetting should disappear last. I’ve found myself in situations where I’m fighting a world boss, and I can see several player characters around me, but the giant Jungle Wurm or the Megadestroyer is invisible… Excluding my own party members, I’m pretty certain I’ll always care about enemy models more than ally models.
• Players keep trying to buy items for guild upgrades from me that aren’t possible to sell on the Black Lion Trade House (silverwastes shovels are the most common one.) – to do this, they add you to the guild, you deposit the item into treasury, and then they mail you money for it. Given people are deliberately doing this kind of thing to circumnavigate the system, it might be worth making all guild-upgrade items available to sell on the trade house, or implementing some kind of dialogue where a guild can bank up money and declare certain items to be worth a certain amount for trading in. I’ve noted that a few guilds like to tell people they’ll buy items from them, and then not send any money.
• I know it’s not possible for the character models to mix-and-match different weights of armour, but I think it could be kind of cool to set my character’s wardrobe to “light” or “heavy” armour and reskin the whole set, defaulting each unskinned item to the basic starting skin until I spend transmutation charges to alter the look. I’m sad that I like the look of some of the other armour sets in different weight categories more than the stuff my character is wearing.
• There’s little to no incentive to spend any transmutation charges on changing your appearance until you have at least level 80 exotic gear that you’re keeping. While levelling you change your gear way too often for the system to be worth spending a charge on a change. I feel that when you transmute your characters equipment slots, rather than individual pieces of gear, so when you swap to a new helmet, you keep your transmutation look, and that might encourage people to experiment with the system before getting to the end of their character’s equipment cycle.
• Why can’t we dye aquabreathers? I managed to bug the game out briefly and dye one of my aquabreathers, but there’s no interface to do it in general.

COMMUNITY
All in all, people are generally very helpful and friendly, much more so than I’ve seen in other games, but there are a few things that crop up consistently that I feel annoyed by, and I have some suggestions for ways to improve the game, and some areas where I’m not sure what would be best to do. Here are some things I’ve seen people doing that are a bit irritating, that you might want to look into.

• A couple of times, if I mention that I’m a new player, people will invite me to join their guild. Twice I’ve accepted so far, and both occasions went exactly the same way:
  • First of all I was told that the guild was a relaxed casual “no strings attached” kind of affair, and a few people who were on regularly would offer me advice and help out with questions. It’s quite pleasant for the first few days in general.
  • Secondly, I’d find the people who I helped out would start asking for small things, 50s because they’d spent all their money and needed to use waypoints, a couple of items in the mail from the trade house because they needed them and were in an awkward place on the map and so on. I’d usually help out, and they’d promise to pay me back as soon as possible.
  • Thirdly, after about a week, one of the guild leaders starts sending me PMs demanding that I “pull my weight” and that they’re stripping “freeloaders” out of the guild, demands that I deposit significant quantities of gold into the guild account or they’ll remove me from the guild. Guilt-trip messages telling me that everyone else is putting their ‘fair share’ in and that I’m sponging off them.
• This is pretty much a standard confidence scam, you borrow a little from someone on the friendly grounds of returning it later, then later rather than paying it back, you start demanding larger sums against the threat of cutting off ties if they don’t pay up. I’m wondering in these cases if I should report the guild for scamming, but it’s a very difficult pattern to actually track and prove, especially as players can’t access their own message logs with another player from a week ago. Is there something players should be doing when people are acting this way?

• The typical approach for a guild rush appears to be “try and convince other guilds nearby to help you do the guild rush, then leave before helping them complete it also” – Several times now I’ve helped a guild finish a guild rush, and scored 2-3 points for them, and they’ve just snuck over the line to pass the event, and immediately all left the map upon completion. It seems to be common practice, and it sucks. I’d suggest either or both of:
  • All players who actually score a point in a guild rush get the full reward, whether they’re part of the activating guild or not.
  • Small guilds can “band together” to do guild quests and guild rushes together. A system for this might be (for example) a member of each participating guild joins the same party, and then a member of the party activates the quest or the guild rush on behalf of all the guilds in the party.
• I feel this would also let small guilds of personal work together to do some of the harder guild quests without having to go and recruit lots of people they’ve not met into the guild, and if your guild works with another guild several times, you can make friends in the game that way, and that would be nice.

• People keep posting plot spoilers in map chat. I don’t really want to disable map chat until I’ve played through the entirety of the story, but by this point I already know what’s going to happen, which sucks. No clue for what to do about this.
• Occasionally when doing an event, people will deliberately place down interact-able items on top of important things you have to interact with to do the event. One example I saw today during Taidha Covington was someone putting down a guild bonfire right on top of a set of the explosive kegs near the gate. Trying to pick up a keg caused the character to interact with the bonfire instead, and the player hadn’t set the bonfire to any specific buff, so every time a player went to pick up a keg, they instead got a dialogue saying “the player who made this bonfire needs to choose the buff first” – Suggest making placable items bottom of the priority list for interaction when next to game items.
• In a similar vein, Mesmers will often drop portals that deliberately take people who interact with them to stupid or suicidal places (the middle of the volcano, the claw of jormag’s feet, etc) – it seems a common and “fun” game to drop the exit portal, then run to a downed player, and then drop the entrance portal just as someone comes along to revive the downed player. No idea what to do about this.
• During world boss events, some players will die, then wait to be revived, and a lot of players will say in map chat that dead players should waypoint and run back to the fight. I don’t make any arguments about what acceptable behaviour is in these circumstances, but people tend to choose different methods, and chat often turns quite acrimonious during these boss events. In many world boss events, (especially golem MkII) it’s not feasible or possible to revive dead players because of the way the spreads their attacks, but I do want to revive downed players to get them back in the fight, however during a complex world boss fight, it can be quite difficult to know who you’re targeting or what their status is. Suggestions: 1: use the same icons for downed and dead players as the minimap does when floating above the downed player, rather than using the downed icon for dead players, this would make it easier to pick out downed players to help out in the middle of a fight. 2: If a dead and a downed player are in the same place, and you interact, prioritise members of your party first, and then downed players over dead players, rather than just picking one at random. 3: When you start reviving someone, make it clear on the HUD whether the person you’re reviving is downed or dead.
• It’s a slightly sorry state of affairs that world bosses have this epic set-piece and series of events around them, where NPCs are giving brave speeches to the characters to stand firm and defeat the great evil that threatens the world, and in return, the player characters stand there and blandly say “lfg”. World bosses have this as an endemic behaviour, the chat for the 15 minutes before any world boss is just filled with people looking for groups, and it kind of spoils the mood a little? I gather people do it because qualification for a loot drop is calculated of the party’s participation in killing the target, so if you’re in a party, you just need to tag an enemy one to guarantee being able to loot it if you’re in a big party throwing around lots of AOE. I’d suggest the following: 1) Alter the way the game calculates whether you qualify for loot so that being in a party doesn’t matter, and/or make it clear to the playerbase that this is the case. 2) When a world-boss meta event is active, automatically group people into invisible “parties” for the event, so players don’t feel a need to game the system every time a world boss happens. Again, make it clear that the game is doing this, so players actually understand what’s going on.
• In a similar vein, it might be nice to have an “in character” chat pane to go alongside “say” and “guild” and “map” and so on. I like to play and speak and act in-character in a roleplaying game (as that’s what playing a role means to me) – but you can’t really do it when 95% of the players in your chat pane want to spend it talking about loot drops and mechanics. It could be nice to have a dedicated channel for in-character conversation.
• The Silverwastes seems to contain a large population of players who find a nice safe place to AFK and then wait for the breach to happen (or occasionally use pets or turrets to tag enemies to ensure they get event participation for fort defenses.) It’s a little frustrating and demeaning to be in the map putting effort into the map meta when you can see people blatantly abusing the system. No idea what to do about this.
• In a similar vein, the Hidden-Depths minigame in the Silverwastes is almost entirely populated by players who rush to the middle and hide near the nightmare chest, whilst a few people actually play the game to try and improve the tier. It’s a lot of fun to play the game when there’s a bunch of other people taking part, and you’re trying to get enough points to win, but a lot of people just stand around doing nothing. It’s sad to see a neat feature included that people just ignore. I’d suggest any of the following to encourage people to take part in the game: 1) improve the loot from lesser pods, 2) make the event reward scale with score-contribution 3) Make the greater nightmare chest loot give a better reward if you collected pods during the three tiers.
• I’ve entered WvW a few times, and I thought it would be quite an exciting rolling experience with frantic battles everywhere, however it seems like a cold desolate wasteland. My experience has mostly been capturing a few points solo, and then occasionally I’ll find a guild of 5-10 people who all have top level legendary gear all show up at once, capture everything very quickly, and instantly kill anyone they come across. I’m not sure this is really the intended mode of the WvW map, and I’d like to see some incentives to get lots of players into the maps simultaneously to make for a more exciting game experience, perhaps picking a couple of set times each week where players are encouraged to all take part, and the rewards and impact of the game are raised during those periods? – Don’t really have any concrete suggestions to improve WvW, I don’t understand it very well.
• The noise the game makes when a player reads a tome of knowledge, or learns a recipe from a crafter is very loud compared to the rest of the game sound, and it’s a regular occurence that someone will go to a crafting vendor or the bank, and use 10-30 of these items all together in quick succession. As these are locations where you tend to stand around for a long time, managing your inventory, or crafting things, it’s quite irritating. Suggest toning the effect down when another player uses the effect.
• The game has reporting features for players who are being abusive or bad in various ways, but it doesn’t have any form of system where you can mark a player as being helpful or friendly or the like. When someone helps me out, I’d like to give them a little reward for being a good egg, but sending them game items or money always feels a kitteneap (and, as a new player, it’s pretty difficult to send anything meaningful to a veteran player decked out in legendary gear anyway.) – I’d like to be able to click in a dropdown for a player to say “this player is great! good work”, and if lots of players do that for someone, I think they should get a little reward for making the game a nicer place for everyone.

I probably forgot a lot of stuff. This is a bit stream of consciousness, so sorry about that, but please feel free to use any ideas or suggestions as you wish, and message me if you need any more detail about specific issues.

ahdok.8462:

• WvW seems completely un-tutorialised. For example, I have no idea how to break into a fortified site, and there are no NPCs that I’ve found that explain it, and there are almost never any players in the WvW maps.

WvW used to be busy, but with the changes that arrived with HoT, a lot of regular WvWers have stopped playing much. I’m hoping the game gets it all sorted, but until then it’s just too bad that new players like yourself haven’t had a chance to really see it like it’s intended to be.

ahdok.8462:

• Thirdly, after about a week, one of the guild leaders starts sending me PMs demanding that I “pull my weight” and that they’re stripping “freeloaders” out of the guild, demands that I deposit significant quantities of gold into the guild account or they’ll remove me from the guild. Guilt-trip messages telling me that everyone else is putting their ‘fair share’ in and that I’m sponging off them.

This is something else that has been made much, much worse by HoT. The expansion added guild halls to the game and the materials required for upgrading and the new scribing crafting profession are really intense. So some guilds have begun harrassing members to pony up lots of gold and mats so they can progress faster. Some have even gone so far as to “tax” its members, requiring a set amount of gold each week/month in order to remain in the guild.

Personally, I’d never stay in a guild where members are allowed to constantly beg for money or mats. This is simply bad behavior. And I’m not a big fan of taxation in guilds, either.

As a complete newcomer to this game, I play this game around a month. I have buy heart of thorns because I had in mind to discover more places, exploring the map, random events,..this stuff is for me the main fun. Before this game, I played f2p games which was in comparison with GW2 – hardcore grinders. So far the game offers to me a lot of fun, even if dungeons in this game, they are the worst which I had see in mmorpg’s.They should give newcomers free gold to visit this horror:d:d. Although to me it seems that GW2 is quite similar to Tera when it comes to longevity for ‘’pve people’’, when you explore the map,..it seems to be (fast) game over with GW2.

I think with experience and time, a lot of your opinions will change. Some of the things that concern you have solutions you just haven’t discovered, yet. Some of the things that concern you were changed to be that way due to popular demand. Some things that concern you have changed, and you have yet to experience the changes, (because you aren’t far enough along in the game).

I would be interested to see what a similar post would look like, addressing each of your points, a year from now. =)

Welcome to Tyria, and happy adventuring.

•Fractals are pretty badly tutorialised, my new player experience of fractals was to enter one with no real idea of how it worked, to immediately sit through pages of abuse from the other players about how I shouldn’t be doing fractals unless I know exactly what to do. It could be worth adding in an NPC or character who more clearly explains the specific goals of each fractal on demand. It’s not really very encouraging to me to go and explore the other ones.

this even for returning players. the elitism is strong in fractals as well. i thought about making a seperate guild just for things like this, to help new players in fractals. i know there are some but still.

LFG. A lot of people group up for bosses and big events due to crashing so if they crash they can get back into the fight.

Detailed feedback should always be welcome, and I like the way you’ve presented it — without histrionics. Thanks for taking the time.

A couple of FYI’s:

• Loot at world boss meta events is mostly via reward chests, so partying does little to nothing for loot. It’s more likely being used as a workaround for crash/DC issues. Being in a party is one of the priorities for map assignment, and you’re more likely to get back into that instance if you DC with some time left in the event.
• Gold to gem conversion rates are player driven. As the amount of gold in the exchange increases in relation to the amount of gems, it takes more gold to get gems. The rate has trended up in general, as more and more people acquire gold. It also goes up as new, desirable items are added to the gem store and can fluctuate down in the lulls between gem store updates.

IndigoSundown.5419:

• Loot at world boss meta events is mostly via reward chests, so partying does little to nothing for loot. It’s more likely being used as a workaround for crash/DC issues. Being in a party is one of the priorities for map assignment, and you’re more likely to get back into that instance if you DC with some time left in the event.

There’s also a belief among some in the community (true or not) that being in a party makes you more likely to get the chest than if you’re solo and happen to not do enough damage to register for participation.

ahdok.8462:

• Oh what I wouldn’t give for a hub where all the crafting stations and the bank, guild stuff, and BL trade house are all in a small circle. Rata Sum is the best I’ve found.

Rata Sum is pretty awesome for that. Ebonhawke is pretty good for it if you are doing a craft with a station at the end of the row near the TP.

But there are two places that exactly answer your need (unless you want to not have to move a step at all to get to things, and I’m not sure about the guild bank): the airship and the VIP area in the DR Pavilion. They each include portals to all the major cities (via the ship helmsman or via the big portal, respectively). The catch is you need a permanent pass to get to them, that pass is only rarely available in the store, and it must be held in the inventory of the character using it.

I believe there are also hubs in the WvW areas that you can access from anywhere just by toggling the WvW window, then return to exactly where you were in PvE by relogging to character screen. I’m not sure on the convenience they offer, though, in terms of running time between craft station and TP. Remember that any crafting station is also a bank, so given one of those you do not also need the bank NPC.

You’re willing to give a lot? You might be able to save up and buy a permanent TP express off the TP (they drop supremely rarely from Black Lion Chests). Then you can pop it in reach of a crafting station and not have to move at all.

- – - – - – -

That’s all in response to that one point. Your post as a whole is well considered and presented, though as another wrote you might have a different view of some of your suggestions in a year.

Very well put.

I like your idea for allowing players to, “report,” others for being helpful.

Good feedback, and post in general. Welcome to the forums.

I’m sorry you’ve had some bad experiences with guilds. I have been in a few proper guilds, and have been lucky I suppose, in that the guild leader/officers of all of them have been diligent, responsible and reasonable people who have worked hard to make their guilds a good community to be a part of. Anyone displaying undesirable behavior has been kept in check by these helpful individuals.

If you decide to try to find a new one, I’d recommend doing some research before joining a guild. I’d also recommended trying to find a larger, well established guild because many guild related activities require the resources and manpower of a lot of people and a certain modicum of organization to achieve. I’d recommend finding one that is most active in your timezone. Good luck!

ahdok.8462:

I believe there are also hubs in the WvW areas that you can access from anywhere just by toggling the WvW window, then return to exactly where you were in PvE by relogging to character screen.

I didn’t read this whole thread yet so I can’t say much about the topic yet, but I wanted to point out something about the quoted sentence. Actually, you don’t need to relog to character screen in order to return to PvE. In the WvW panel there is a button like “Leave WvW” (or something) at the bottom-right corner in the first tab. For any who missed that button, no worry, it wasn’t there since launch, it was added around one of those Feature Packs if I’m not mistaken.

Edit: fixed quotation.