Guild Wars 2

OP, I hear what you’re saying and you have some great points. I think the impact of the recent additions to the game is impacting everyone and the way they approach the game.

The sad thing is that much of what the game has to offer will be pushed aside to make time for the new gear progression. Jumping puzzles, vistas, exploration and even dynamic events could suffer. Even if you’re not driven by gear grinds and just like tooling around leveling new professions your game could be effected without a critical mass of other players out in the open world rendering some of the best dynamic events unplayable.

Some people just can’t help themselves when they see the carrot on a stick they are compelled to chase it even if they would rather be doing something else they get driven by the carrot.

I have to admit I’m that guy I see the victory condition and I need to obtain it. That’s one of the main reasons I found GW2 refreshing, I felt free of the completion to just have fun…..or more correctly I did feel free.

Personally I would prefer a title, or even tiers of titles for this dungeon, since I already have enough skins that I am working towards.

But seriously, yeah I would probably do the dungeon more if it wouldn’t handicap you with superior stats, and that would be some nice alternative way of getting skins that are a little more exciting sounding than simply “farm x gold”.

And yes, I very much enjoyed the dungeon. Although the prospect of a gear treadmill has me playing less and less, and will lead to me leaving the game if it gets bad (thinking once most exotic slots are outclassed by Ascended)… I will be going through this dungeon for the fun of it.

That golum rave party, easy jumping in the middle of dungeons? Amazing. I haven’t gotten to play through the Charr invasion of Ascalon part of it yet, but it looks pretty awesome. Trying to keep those fires active to keep you warm in the middle of that harsh winter section of the dungeon??… well I’m the kind of guy that puts hypothermia mods into Skyrim, so of course I loved that.

It is sad that Anet’s incentives they are giving us will make many people hate that dungeon (no matter how good something is, there is a limit to how much you want to play through it, and turning it into work/grinding is a sure way to rune the fun). But I will have my fun with it for now.

Sion.1653:

Good post, good thoughts. (but the misplaced apostrophe in the title drives me nuts… =P)

Luckily they aren’t re-prioritizing your time (I totally agree with your viewpoint on this matter) all at once, full-blown. They’ve only introduced a couple new items, meaning the grind for gear will be gradual, as items are released, rather than all the items being available now. That’s at least a bright side to a rather dim prospect.

Woe to the player that joins once the full Ascended set is out.

See, that’s what gets me. I don’t look forwards to the time when people no longer want to run normal dungeons because they don’t give fractals.

I don’t have a craving for this gear, but I do now wish to avoid contact with all other players. I don’t want to try to find teams because I don’t have gear and now I know I never will. I sure don’t want to jump in WvW and fight alongside or against people who will always outgear me.

I was already on the less social side of things for an MMO player, now I never want to interact with other players ever again.

I had a similar response to OP. With me, I feel it in my gut. I’ve invested a lot into GW2, and felt I would be in it for the long haul. I loved the manifesto and general design philosophy. They seem to have decided to take the game in a new direction, so I think the title is apt. At any rate, I won’t be going in that direction myself. I want to find the game GW2 says it was going to be.

Demarc.4906:

Irnhide.3428:

If they put in a “LFR” system and a way to see peoples gear i’m kinda happy with it.

Being serious too.

Indeed your entitled to your opinion and it seems that the Devs view of the future is more inline with your’s than mine. Thats fine and I’m happy that you like the new features and direction that the game is taking.

A question to you though,

Were you aware of the pre-release statements made by the company? Can you at least appreciate why those of us who seen those statements are a little irritated at the new direction the game is taking?

It’s great for you that the game is progressing in a direction that you like, however for those of us who took A-net at thier word, this about turn leaves us feeling kinda bitter

ignore that troll hes knows everyone here wants the opposite of what he keeps saying he want so hes trolling. Making false progression and then screwing people out of groups because they are a few pieces behind due to “gear checks” is what killed WoW for many people when they could no longer gear up due to “you need better gear then this place will drop to come” This game wasnt designed to be like that, maxing out your gear was suposta come fast and naturally, then it was up to the team and player skill to fill in the rest.

It coulda benefitted from that for sure, Rewards are always cool and fun. TBH though i wasnt even thinking of the rewards i was having so much fun just playing the dungeons. With that said, after i run them a dozen times i may not feel the same way, but so far having a huge blast.

You guys dont make sense. I mean, you talk about how awesome this dungeon is, how fun it can be. You more then likely will play it many, many, many times. You say oh god how i wish it was just cosmetic upgrades, but instead its cosmetic AND stat boost.

I ask this…what does it matter what it drops? Your going to be running these dungeons over and over again because you like it, and you have fun with it.

You all seem to over dramatize the minor stat boosts like its the end of the world. If its a fun game, its a fun game. Period.

I would love new skills, new looks, and i actually liked how the new dungeon worked by ever increasing in difficulty. The issue is that it creates a gear treadmill and will hurt the casual gamer far more now. This will also make more players to have elitist mentalities and it was already showing after a few hours of releasing the new patch. I was refused out of two different groups because I play a necro. I know necro is buggy and such. Ive run most explore modes in the game, i have 5 sets of exotic gear, and i know how to dodge. What more do you want from a a player besides his best?

They should have just slotted the infusion on already exotic gear and kept legendary weapons to have the same stats of exotic weapons.

Demarc.4906:

Irnhide.3428:

If they put in a “LFR” system and a way to see peoples gear i’m kinda happy with it.

Being serious too.

Indeed your entitled to your opinion and it seems that the Devs view of the future is more inline with your’s than mine. Thats fine and I’m happy that you like the new features and direction that the game is taking.

A question to you though,

Were you aware of the pre-release statements made by the company? Can you at least appreciate why those of us who seen those statements are a little irritated at the new direction the game is taking?

It’s great for you that the game is progressing in a direction that you like, however for those of us who took A-net at thier word, this about turn leaves us feeling kinda bitter

And your entitled to your opinion…no where did he say he didnt appreciate why you didnt like it. He just said he liked it… no point trying to paint other peoples posts as abbrasive or insist anyone whos happy with the game’s state is an insult to your feelings. And smileys after a negative comment is sorta passive aggressive

Tbh, while i didnt fully read the wall of txt that the op wrote. I have probably 100+ problems and things i’d like to see implemented. But as for what i’m seeing so far with this change after trying the dungeon and some of the content (especially the amazing new spvp map and tournies etc) i’m feeling a lot better and confident about a game that i had pretty much thrown in the towel on a week ago and just assumed i wasnt the target audience. But…now i dont think so anymore.

Since I never played it and never will now, I couldn’t say.

Doesn’t the gear treadmill defeat the point of the increased difficulty by reducing the difficulty again when you get the better gear ?

It’s brand new so yes, people are enjoying it. Doesn’t mean people want to do it 1000 times to get enough bits to buy gear. And doesn’t mean the next “fun” thing that comes out people want to do that 1000 times to get new gear either.

Why should people do the old dungeons now? No fancy gear there. Why should people even really bother with the new zone? Get your ascended gear and wait for the next new thing to get ascended 2.0 gear or take your fancy ascended gear and go crush people in wvw with your superior stats.

That is why people are saying they wish it was just cosmetic.

Zinwrath.2049:

Demarc.4906:

Irnhide.3428:

If they put in a “LFR” system and a way to see peoples gear i’m kinda happy with it.

Being serious too.

Indeed your entitled to your opinion and it seems that the Devs view of the future is more inline with your’s than mine. Thats fine and I’m happy that you like the new features and direction that the game is taking.

A question to you though,

Were you aware of the pre-release statements made by the company? Can you at least appreciate why those of us who seen those statements are a little irritated at the new direction the game is taking?

It’s great for you that the game is progressing in a direction that you like, however for those of us who took A-net at thier word, this about turn leaves us feeling kinda bitter

And your entitled to your opinion…no where did he say he didnt appreciate why you didnt like it. He just said he liked it… no point trying to paint other peoples posts as abbrasive or insist anyone whos happy with the game’s state is an insult to your feelings. And smileys after a negative comment is sorta passive aggressive

Tbh, while i didnt fully read the wall of txt that the op wrote. I have probably 100+ problems and things i’d like to see implemented. But as for what i’m seeing so far with this change after trying the dungeon and some of the content (especially the amazing new spvp map and tournies etc) i’m feeling a lot better and confident about a game that i had pretty much thrown in the towel on a week ago and just assumed i wasnt the target audience. But…now i dont think so anymore.

I am the OP btw.

Not sure where your reading in that I am painting his post as abrasive, I simply asked a question. As for my feelings being hurt, are you sure you actually read the post? I specifically said that the devs and his views seemed more inline and that I was happy the game was moving in a direction that actually pleased him. How you can read that as I have hurt feelings is beyond me. There was no sarcasm in my reply I assure you.

As for the negative comment, I simply outlined my feelings in a simple sentence, i did not expect him to agree with them or indeed try to force them on him, simply asked if he could see it from my point of view. I can clearly see it from his as I outlined in my post. The game is moving in a direction he likes and thats great for him, not so much for me but thats just the way the cookie crumbles.

The game apparently is moving in a direction you like, the reason alot of us are upset if because its a departure from all of the previous statements the Dev team made about the game pre-purchase. Many people never really followed the game pre-release and have no clue as the the direction the Dev team lead us to believe they were taking, for those people the new changes wont be a shock since they had no pre-conceived notion of how the game would develop, that was my only reason for asking the question, to discover if that was indeed the position of the poster, not to try and undermine any opinions he holds.

Maby you should just read posts and try not to read-into them your own perceived bias?

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Doesn’t the gear treadmill defeat the point of the increased difficulty by reducing the difficulty again when you get the better gear ?

That’s the really sad thing about it. Initially I was very excited about the idea of a dungeon that increases in difficulty the further you go. I assumed it was just going to be a more boring method of numbers getting bigger, rather than more challenging/interesting combat, but still thought that would be an option. I don’t have to repeat how disheartened I was when I found it that “difficulty” just meant stat inflation.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

Maybe it would have been fun if it was just cosmetic upgrades, maybe not. I’m not in a good enough mood to tell.

But what I am certain of is that, if it wasn’t fun, GW2 still would be because I could play something that is fun.

This is my major gripe with FotM. I feel the dev’s are dictating how I play by adding this new carrot. I’d have run the dungeon for cosmetic items as I wanted to. Could have been alot, could have been every now and then based on how fun it was. However I could have still pottered around in all other aspects of the game without being concerned that I was sliding down the power curve. Thats not the case with this dungeon, now you have to run it to get the best gear forcing you do it over and over. Rather than doing it because I enjoy it, or setting a goal of running it a few times for x-skin, you now how to run it to stay current on the gear treadmill, which makes it unfun from the outset.

It’s a great dungeon and mode. I agree that I don’t need the lure of extra stats to run it. I just wanted better loot and the new loot tables and drop rates are much improved. So not only do I enjoy the dungeons, the rewards I get are productive or profitable for the development of my character and my time. If I was earning my way towards armor with prestige rather than stats, I’d be happy as well. It’s not so much the numbers that people care about but the rarity.

I agree with the OP. FoTM would have been fun with just a cosmetic grind. Or a grind for items that can only be used in FoTM.

The max stats should have been left at exotics. Infusions should have been dungeon only (if it’s not already, I don’t know).

I think the people who want “vertical progression” actually want recognition for the time and effort they put in.

To appease that, the devs should have made leaderboards or titles based on people’s “fractral number”. The title could be something like “fractral runner <insert fractral number here>”. That, and them getting stronger and stronger via fractral-dungeon only infusions.

This game has been in a steady decline since the first month after launch. This patch will not kill the game.

infact today has been the busiest ive seen the game since launch. If people really were so against the patch they wouldn’t have even bothered to login. Nor would they be raving about fractals…. it really was a great idea, and they gave something to work towards… which to be frank the game needed, its the reason why people were leaving in the first place ZERO PLAYER PROGRESSION.

So I guess what I am saying is stop complaining, if you don’t like it you don’t have to play. If you just can’t bring yourself to stop playing well then it must not be all that bad.

If the game dies well guess it was a bad choice. Stop trying to read the future.

The dungeons themselves are actual very good designed content. I bet a lot of work went into that and everyone appreciates that. Even the weapons and backslot item art is a nice addition.
The ascended stuffs stats and grind requirement though… anyone with a spreadsheet can do that in 5 minutes.

The halloween event had NO stat increase and had MORE people logged in during the event then this did.

So obviously that means this event failed right?

Love the logic.

laggy annoying and buggy. i can’t believe i have to do this hundreds of times.

Yes, we super hardcore players know that the only mode of player progression is to grind an instance repeatedly for a chance to gain a statistical advantage over noob casuals. They and those PvP baddies deserve to get discriminated in PvE slaughtered in WvW.

Who cares about useless and trivial things like developing play skills and mastering content in an equal environment where your play skills determine the outcome?

at best average 10 minute runs.
Each run average 10 fractals.
Total fractals needed for 1 item ~2500
250Total FoTM runs per each piece of gear.

total time spent running the new dungeon. 40+ in game hours. This is a LOW number and for only the FIRST level (blue) of the items.
LOL

Ostra.3927:

at best average 10 minute runs.
Each run average 10 fractals.
Total fractals needed for 1 item ~2500
250Total FoTM runs per each piece of gear.

total time spent running the new dungeon. 40+ in game hours. This is a LOW number and for only the FIRST level (blue) of the items.
LOL

Sucks to be you guys.

Any MMO could literally say that they were implementing a dungeon with living poop-enemies where you had a 0.001% chance of obtaining the best loot in the game from the poop-boss, or any other imaginable detestable system with a reasonably sized content patch and would see a TEMPORARY increase in players checking it out. This is accompanied by an amplifying illusion created by CONCENTRATING the existing the players around the new content (i.e. everybody is hanging out in LA and going to the new dungeon instead of being spread out through the usual content).

Initial bursts of population for a game release, content update, or expansion are meaningless. Temporary increases tell you absolutely nothing about whether this is a good decision beyond the very short term.

People are not trying to read the future. They are voicing their opinions so that ANET can read them.

Personally, I’m hoping the Ascended gear just drops from Fractals.

As for the other dungeons. AC is a pinata filled with coins.

TA has a chance of throwing large sums of money at your feet.

CoF has reallllly popular gear it seems.

Can’t speak on the others, though I’ve heard CoE isn’t friendly to anyone.

They are a buggy mess.

Mastoras.9680:

You guys dont make sense. I mean, you talk about how awesome this dungeon is, how fun it can be. You more then likely will play it many, many, many times. You say oh god how i wish it was just cosmetic upgrades, but instead its cosmetic AND stat boost.

I ask this…what does it matter what it drops? Your going to be running these dungeons over and over again because you like it, and you have fun with it.

You all seem to over dramatize the minor stat boosts like its the end of the world. If its a fun game, its a fun game. Period.

The people mad about the stat boosts are the ones who don’t enjoy dungeons, and they won’t be running it. The people in this thread are just saying that the dungeon is fun without having the increased stats, implying Anet could have made people who enjoy running dungeons happy as well as those who don’t at the same time.

worse than trials of atlantis in daoc.

Zinebot.4250:

Yes, we super hardcore players know that the only mode of player progression is to grind an instance repeatedly for a chance to gain a statistical advantage over noob casuals. They and those PvP baddies deserve to get discriminated in PvE slaughtered in WvW.

Who cares about useless and trivial things like developing play skills and mastering content in an equal environment where your play skills determine the outcome?

Thats what Spvp is for.

Sorry to say.

Best dungeon in the game so far – so much fun!

I’m up to level 4 difficulty and still haven’t seen everything and the fractals themselves have randomness born into them.

I have to agree, ANet really delivered on this – fun, challenging & gorgeous!

Waffler.1257:

Mastoras.9680:

You guys dont make sense. I mean, you talk about how awesome this dungeon is, how fun it can be. You more then likely will play it many, many, many times. You say oh god how i wish it was just cosmetic upgrades, but instead its cosmetic AND stat boost.

I ask this…what does it matter what it drops? Your going to be running these dungeons over and over again because you like it, and you have fun with it.

You all seem to over dramatize the minor stat boosts like its the end of the world. If its a fun game, its a fun game. Period.

The people mad about the stat boosts are the ones who don’t enjoy dungeons, and they won’t be running it. The people in this thread are just saying that the dungeon is fun without having the increased stats, implying Anet could have made people who enjoy running dungeons happy as well as those who don’t at the same time.

So can’t you enjoy the dungeon and ignore the loot.
And the people who don’t enjoy the dungeon get the loot.
And you guys can give us your loot too?

I think that would solve everyone’s issue right there.

Agreed. Enjoying it throughly with friends. lvl 6 so far.

I am going to have to agree with this as well. I have only been able to do the Dredge and the one with the robots before people leave, though.

Agreed. This is a good example of how dungeons should be designed. Lower levels very easy to pug and has engaging mechanics to the fights. Harder levels are expected to be more challenging.

Im less pissed off at anet now for messing up the PvP balancing now.

i hate the dungeons. horrible design.

Namu.5712:

This game has been in a steady decline since the first month after launch. This patch will not kill the game.

infact today has been the busiest ive seen the game since launch. If people really were so against the patch they wouldn’t have even bothered to login. Nor would they be raving about fractals…. it really was a great idea, and they gave something to work towards… which to be frank the game needed, its the reason why people were leaving in the first place ZERO PLAYER PROGRESSION.

So I guess what I am saying is stop complaining, if you don’t like it you don’t have to play. If you just can’t bring yourself to stop playing well then it must not be all that bad.

If the game dies well guess it was a bad choice. Stop trying to read the future.

After your 200th run of the same dungeon come tell me again how much fun you are having.

Namu.5712:

This game has been in a steady decline since the first month after launch. This patch will not kill the game.

infact today has been the busiest ive seen the game since launch. If people really were so against the patch they wouldn’t have even bothered to login. Nor would they be raving about fractals…. it really was a great idea, and they gave something to work towards… which to be frank the game needed, its the reason why people were leaving in the first place ZERO PLAYER PROGRESSION.

So I guess what I am saying is stop complaining, if you don’t like it you don’t have to play. If you just can’t bring yourself to stop playing well then it must not be all that bad.

If the game dies well guess it was a bad choice. Stop trying to read the future.

People who lesrned to only enjoy games with vertical progression were leaving, because this was not meant to be a game for them.
On the other hand, people who did not enjoy gear treadmill were happy and not only stayed, but were bringing friends in.

Now , you have a game that’s just like all the others on the market, but with much more limited support.
In two weeks, you’ll have all the Ascended gear inmplemented with this patch and best Infusions after running the same dungeon xxx times and lets see then how great the game will be.

This sums up my experience with the patch so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=E-QTWo7e9Hs

We were told before this event that there would be “many pages of patch notes”, but the end result is still missing dozens (possibly hundreds) of changes.

It’s fine to have a “condensed” version with only the things you consider more important, but why not also have a version listing all the changes made to the game?

Here are a few things I noticed within 15 minutes of playing the game after the patch:

• Fine transmutation stones are finally called “Fine Transmutation Stones”. The item name had been misspelled as “Transmuation” since beta. Four months to fix a typo doesn’t exactly suggest an efficient QA pipeline, but I guess better late than never.

• The Twilight Arbor light armour set now has floppy sleeves. It had always annoyed me how they looked like rigid blades; this makes my necromancer look 300% better.

• The APC in path 3 of Sorrow’s Embrace has a different collision box, that makes it harder for players to stand on top of it. No idea if the spawning bug in path 1 was fixed, though, since it’s not on the notes (but neither is this, so clearly dungeon updates didn’t make it into the notes).

• New UI elements, such as the BLTC warning about items / money ready for pickup, the dungeon “ready check” dialog box, etc..

Has anyone else noticed any other obvious and / or important changes & bug fixes not mentioned in the patch notes?

Since apparently this is the feedback thread I’ll post my opinion on this thing here.

Grab a cup of coffee and start reading: 200 pages, 10k posts, 112k views. Think it says a lot.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Thoughts-on-Ascended-Gear-Merged-threads/page/1

Here is my feedback: Delete this entire patch from the game.

This patch is literally GW2 committing suicide. I honestly don’t know how ANet could do this. If the game needs a sub fee I’ll pay it. I always knew that being F2P would kill this game.

Since the other thread is evidently not going to be read by ArenaNet or at least not responded to, I’ll sum up my issue with the ascended items again here.

They take too much time. It doesn’t matter how many ways there are to get them, if they all take the same excessive amount of time, I’ll never be able to get them. Or, it will take so long to get them that I’ll be so far behind financially compared to players that grind them fast that I’ll never be able to afford anything nice.

If you don’t have gear that matches everyone else’s in PVE, you earn less from events than the players you are working with that do have it, while they earn more.

Over time, this means prices on the TP on any nice item climb to sell to the wealthier players with Ascended gear. They don’t just get ascended gear or the skin associated with what they grind for. They get every nice thing in the game.

So, unless you grind, you’re not only stuck with second rate stats, but garbage skins, dyes, minis and whatever else.

There were already a set of specific things that hardcore grinders were going to achieve that I wouldn’t. Adding some more would have been fine. But making it so that pretty much everything nice will be out of my reach isn’t acceptable to me. I want be able to get the same amount of nice things for my characters as I could before the addition of ascended items with the same amount of time invested. If I choose to compete in WvWvW later, I want to be able to be on an equal footing. And even if I don’t decide to play WvWvW, on principle, those players that do and don’t have the time to grind hardcore shouldn’t be at a disadvantage either. That was what we were told leading up to this. Honor your word.

If you want any more of my money, this needs to be addressed in a way that protects those of us with limited time in regard to economics and accessibility and enjoyability of content for the PVE players and in regard to economics and competitive balance for the WvWvW players.

Its not just that this patch was a massive failure, disregard the failed ascension stuff ect., but since that patch about 20% of the community can’t play because of crashes and freezes. I freeze every 2 minutes, I can’t even get to warp a single time or finish 1 mob or whatever.

I’m sick of it. I can only really play on weekends and they give us this stupid patch. Now I can’t play this game anymore unless they fix it, and other can’t either.
The rest of the GW1 community will end up quitting (as I will do today, im going back to gw1), and the small wow part will go back to wow aswell.

I favor of this glorious game, DELETE this patch, never make it happen, apologize, people are happy.

Waffler.1257:

Mastoras.9680:

You guys dont make sense. I mean, you talk about how awesome this dungeon is, how fun it can be. You more then likely will play it many, many, many times. You say oh god how i wish it was just cosmetic upgrades, but instead its cosmetic AND stat boost.

I ask this…what does it matter what it drops? Your going to be running these dungeons over and over again because you like it, and you have fun with it.

You all seem to over dramatize the minor stat boosts like its the end of the world. If its a fun game, its a fun game. Period.

The people mad about the stat boosts are the ones who don’t enjoy dungeons, and they won’t be running it. The people in this thread are just saying that the dungeon is fun without having the increased stats, implying Anet could have made people who enjoy running dungeons happy as well as those who don’t at the same time.

Really no… i enjoy dungeon.. but i dont want to be forced to do the same thing again and again and againg to remain competitive. And even if they add this new gear to crafting or WvW badges, this change nothing, because when the farmers ones, return to ask new gear again, simply the cycles repeat. again, and again and again…

Its worse then be killed with a spoon

Right, so apparently the 200 page Ascended Item thread full of negative feedback is now just a discussion thread. That’s handy.

Here’s my feedback:

Ascended gear as a new tier and agony/infusion set two different, horrible precedents. We already don’t have enough resources being devoted to the horizontal progression at 80 (where are the new armor sets for the new dungeon? Why couldn’t the new looking exotic weapons be purchased with fractal tokens? Where are the cosmetic armor/weapons in the empty, empty store for us to throw money at?), splitting further developer resources up with vertical progression is ridiculous and a reversal of the promises we’ve gotten over the past 5 years about the nature of this game. And all it accomplishes is to introduce the specter of power creep (this is an important video and explains exactly why bigger numbers =/= good design for the WoW players who take gear progression as a necessity beyond debate).

Agony/infusion is mechanically almost identical to dread/radiance from lotro, and raises the immediate specter of infusion-gated content and gear checks; we can see all the bosses in the new dungeon without Ascended items with luck and patience, but the jury is still out on whether we can acquire all of the new weapon skins, which would just be the first step down a dark road. LotRO already made that mistake. It was costly for their bottom line and a huge blow to the goodwill of their fanbase, and eventually, they realized that, and tried to take it back, well after the damage was done.

Specific to the Lost Shores weekend event:

- The initial invasion was cool, but an awful lagfest. You guys should really have made LA spawn more overflows with lower caps or something, because as it was it was nearly unplayable.

- The investigation missions bugging out was unfortunate. Was it really necessary to have NPCs that you need to talk to and then beat up in circumstances that were going to be bum-rushed by dozens of players, considering how frequently and completely this has bugged out skill points of a similar nature for the past three months? Moreover, why couldn’t they be instanced like personal story quests or mini dungeons? I know you guys like to foster group play, but it really kills the feeling of an “investigation” when you just need to go to the general area and look for the 20 players standing around spamming turrets and AoEs.

- The consortium chests having a guaranteed skin drop is a step in the right direction. But seriously, just put those types of skins into the gem store as direct buy options. Or just put BoP only versions available for direct purchase alongside the chests that have a chance of dropping trade-able skins. Many of us would love to purchase functional skins for our characters, but think gambling is stupid. I have no interest in touching the things and will be looking up the skins online and buying any skins I actually want through the trading post.

- The karka are cool, and Levvi giving them the scientific name “leviathanis carcinus” was a nice touch. The first thing I thought when I saw them was that they were a cousin of the leviathan mobs from Factions. The loot bags in dungeons are also a nice touch.

My feedback… very simple.

1) The live event sucked. Sorry to be a bit harsh with words but that’s the truth. Lag all over the place, and I don’t mean graphic lag because of a crappy computer, but obviously server side lag, like abilities taking 10+ seconds to fire after the key press.

2) The scavenge hunt style “quest lines” are still wacky, bugged NPCs or events make it impossible to continue… ANet has to seriously improve there. What about a test server like all other games have? Granted, it removes some “surprise” factor, but everything will be on web sites a couple of hours after released anyway.

3) The new dungeon is fantastic. We had several groups running it in my guild, and all had a blast. That’s how to design a dungeon with fun and interesting encounters in GW2.

4) There was absolutely no need for the “ascended” gear with better stats. The dungeon is fun, there’s no need for a gear carrot to run it, except of course new cosmetic appearances.

I’m looking forward to see the new island soon.