Guild Wars 2

I get it – the update wants to push Heart of Thorns, but why do I have to be punished to achieve this?

Level 80 booster – thanks to Scrolls of Experience and Tomes of Knowledge I used my two new character slots and boosted them to level 80 when HoT came out. All eleven of my characters are level 80 (2 boosted, 9 worked their way up from the bottom). I still have to use 3 slots for Tomes of Knowledge (2 at 250, 1 on its way up) and 3 slots for Experience scrolls (2 for boost to level 20 – that will not stack, 1 for boost to level 30) in my bank and now a slot with a level-80 boost in my inventory (do I get a 12th character slot or simply open it and be done with it?). While the thought is nice, the timing is awful – it should have come out when HoT was released – not six months after the fact. I am sure that this is useful for players new to the game who are eager to get right into the action before making sure they fully grasp what weapon combos and traits to use. After all, simply mashing the buttons gets the job done (sarcasm intended = si).

Dailies adjusted to push content in HoT. So, PvE dailies are adjusted to push players into HoT. Why did they not simply add a tab with HoT daily options like the tabs for PvP, WvW, and special events? I own HoT, and was disappointed to find that the new area caters to the concept of Jumping Puzzle the Game. But wait, before I can even attempt to play Jumping Puzzle the Game, I MUST gain levels of mastery in several areas to be able to move (gliding, mushrooms, etc.). Needless, to say I have not done a lot in HoT, but because I own it, the dailies now try to force me to go there. Also, has anyone else noticed that since the release of the update, there hasn’t been a gathering daily associated with the major cities? So much for using my home instance as a quick method of getting part of my dailies done. How foolish of me to purchase/acquire nodes via the Gem Store, Trading Post, and Living Story, much less to even think about utilizing them for that purpose (si). I understand dailies are optional, but they have been the main reason I try to play GW2 on a daily basis – I don’t always have a great amount of time to devote to the game, so being able to accomplish something relatively quickly was a nice way to keep my attention.

WvW – merging worlds is supposed to help. Now, I have to wait in line to get into WvW. Why would I waste my time doing that? I NEVER had to wait in line before – I guess my server was one of the lower tiers. Now when I do get in, it’s a zergfest – let’s just brute force this because that’s always enjoyable (si). Wait, there’s more – because my world is not the home world the only waypoints we get access to on the Borderlands maps are the three main ones – no access to the waypoints in the keeps [EDIT: I just played WvW and was able to use the waypoint at our controlled Center Keep, West Keep was in another world’s control – so no waypoint icon, East Keep was contested. So, apparently when I first tried after the reset there must have been server issues with keep waypoints, because I never saw any of the keeps’ waypoints icons during the entire time I spent there trying to get two WvW ranks for the daily. My apologies for jumping to the wrong conclusion]. Plus, the server is not constant, so I keep finding that I have lost contact with server and must restart and log back in, which puts me back on the PvE map and loses any distance I may have managed to cover from the SINGLE waypoint I have access to on the shared borderlands map. That will certainly encourage me to go WvW or even consider trying to get TWO ranks for a daily (si).

On the bright side, it seems they fixed the east and west keep waypoints so they are not contested unless some part of the keep is actually under attack. Adding the reward tracks to WvW also seems to be a good idea.

I have not ventured into PvP since the update. Changes in PvE and WvW have me concerned about what may have been done there.

Invisible Pete.7290:

Level 80 booster – thanks to Scrolls of Experience and Tomes of Knowledge I used my two new character slots and boosted them to level 80 when HoT came out. All eleven of my characters are level 80 (2 boosted, 9 worked their way up from the bottom). I still have to use 3 slots for Tomes of Knowledge (2 at 250, 1 on its way up) and 3 slots for Experience scrolls (2 for boost to level 20 – that will not stack, 1 for boost to level 30) in my bank and now a slot with a level-80 boost in my inventory (do I get a 12th character slot or simply open it and be done with it?). While the thought is nice, the timing is awful – it should have come out when HoT was released – not six months after the fact. I am sure that this is useful for players new to the game who are eager to get right into the action before making sure they fully grasp what weapon combos and traits to use. After all, simply mashing the buttons gets the job done (sarcasm intended = si).

You don’t have to use the booster if you don’t want to. And you’re free to use it on a Lv80 for the bonus items that go along with it. As it is, you could keep a slot free and use it for Key farming each week. Use 1 Experience scroll to reach 20 or 9 Tomes to level from 2-10 (or less if you do a city completion first for the transmutation charge) then do the PS quest and wait for next week. I think at Lv80 the tomes give a spirit shard as well, if you really have no other use for them.

Dailies adjusted to push content in HoT. So, PvE dailies are adjusted to push players into HoT. Why did they not simply add a tab with HoT daily options like the tabs for PvP, WvW, and special events? I own HoT, and was disappointed to find that the new area caters to the concept of Jumping Puzzle the Game. But wait, before I can even attempt to play Jumping Puzzle the Game, I MUST gain levels of mastery in several areas to be able to move (gliding, mushrooms, etc.). Needless, to say I have not done a lot in HoT, but because I own it, the dailies now try to force me to go there.

I agree. It would be nice to have them separated a bit. I haven’t run into any major issues myself because I have at least one character who has mapped most of HoT, but not having masteries in HoT maps certainly makes getting around quite frustrating and confusing indeed. Even with masteries, if you’re not familiar with the map you might spend a good bit of time running in circles unable to find the right path.

Also, has anyone else noticed that since the release of the update, there hasn’t been a gathering daily associated with the major cities? So much for using my home instance as a quick method of getting part of my dailies done. How foolish of me to purchase/acquire nodes via the Gem Store, Trading Post, and Living Story, much less to even think about utilizing them for that purpose (si).

I don’t understand why they’d require you to gather specifically from a main town. As far as I know the only source of gathering nodes are ones in your home instance (and now that I think about it, perhaps some Farming ones in Black Citadel?). However, I was under the impression that ‘Daily Krytan Lumberer’ for example, would work in the DR home instance. If this is the case (and wiki suggests it is) then the home instance nodes already work for this function.

I honestly can’t say I’ve ever seen a daily for gathering in a main city. The region a main city is found in sure but never a main city. Now gathering in your home instance of a city in the region specified for the daily did count toward it.

He is saying there hasn’t been a gathering daily since. Krytan you go to Divinity’s Reach home instance to do your daily. Ascalon to Black Citadel. Maguuma Jungle go to Rata Sum. These not coming up lessens the value of bought items.

Ah, I completely missed the ‘since the release of the update’ portion. That makes a lot of sense now. I didn’t even consider that they may have been removed from the rotation. It’s only been 3 days, so I’m hopeful that we’ll see them soon and that the Magus Falls dailies didn’t take many of their days.

Seems like there was a “Heart of Maguuma” (I think it was called) miner gathering daily in there, but no home instance there.
I do like having new dailies to do, but not necessarily at the expense of the old ones.

Id say in terms of feedback the patch has been a hit, miss, they got the concept of incentivising the grind right, and rewarding dungeons again was an absoleute plus.

Unfortunatley a spade is still a spade and grinding no matter how incentivised is not the answer to grinding, reducing the grind is, no matter how you cut that cookie.

The only “complain” about the update (aside from bugs they introduced) is the fact that Sand is still too hard to come by via average game play (or the costs are still to high, chose one). You need far too specialized tasks to gain Sand (two maps, a PvP track).

CMM.6712:

Seems like there was a “Heart of Maguuma” (I think it was called) miner gathering daily in there, but no home instance there.
I do like having new dailies to do, but not necessarily at the expense of the old ones.

But if you belong to a guild and they have a GH with the mat nodes, those do count. Did that last night.

I would like to be able to choose dailies as well. Not all of us who own HoT have had the time to fully explore it, making some content inaccessible (including, again, today). Some of us would also prefer to be able to do dailies with friends who don’t own HoT at all yet.

Behellagh.1468:

CMM.6712:

Seems like there was a “Heart of Maguuma” (I think it was called) miner gathering daily in there, but no home instance there.
I do like having new dailies to do, but not necessarily at the expense of the old ones.

But if you belong to a guild and they have a GH with the mat nodes, those do count. Did that last night.

Oh yeahhhh I forgot about that, thanks for the reminder!

IF you have a guild hall.

My guild is too small and too casual to acquire one – an issue we have had since HoT released. Another instance of feeling punished for trying to play GW2 our own way – how silly of us to want to do that!

We had a guild hall in GW1, and enjoyed being able to meet and socialize there; but apparently GW2 requires either a larger, active guild and/or specialized builds. It has been recommended that we employ mercenaries (i.e. pay other players to help us) to acquire a guild hall, but that kind of defeats our sense of ownership/accomplishment.

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on this topic!

I like the update. First, regardless of whether you liked any specific change, you can clearly see that they read the forum feedback and tried to address a lot of what folks (like myself) were complaining about. Even if they overlooked an area I care about or a change fell short, the mere fact that they are listening and trying to do something about it carries more weight for me than any specific change.

That said, I like most of the changes although I’ve yet to try them all out. Some, like the WvW paired servers one, I’m skeptical of but, while it took many years I’ve come to realize my initial assessment of something isn’t always right. Who knows, maybe it will turn out okay. Certainly worth a little experimentation, as long as they are willing to continue to make adjustments (as they seem to be).

Anyway, I saw the April update as a huge step in the right direction. I left GW2 after HoT for some months, quite determined to find something else to replace it (I didn’t but I sure tried) primarily because it did not seem like Anet was listening to any negative feedback about HoT. I came back, willing to try GW2 again in small doses but was not going to spend any money on it. With the announcement a while back of the April update, I was very encouraged but still not quite sure if GW2 was going to hold me indefinitely. With the magnitude of this patch and the attempt to address so many issues, color me completely happy again.

All I want out of a game is a base level of fun-per-hour playing it and a sense that the devs are trying to continue to make it fun, not just by dreaming stuff up in a vacuum but by listening and adapting to player feedback. The contrast to this, which you don’t have to look far across the spectrum to see, are games with terrible execution, or focused on extracting money from the players to the exclusion of all else or some combination of the two.

I am extremely happy with the update where it pertains to the rewards. I don’t like spending time doing arduous tasks for poor rewards.

But, I am quite disturbed with the amount of issues in events now. People I’m playing with have lag issues that make the events impossible to perform. It seems like the maps are overcrowded and graphical effects are too high even when one lowers them in their graphics options.

I feel as though we are all being packed like sardines in a can. Some people’s internet cannot handle Dragon Stand event, or Tarir event or WvW events since this latest update. It wasn’t a problem before, but it is a problem now.

Lag spikes and poor performance running the game since this patch is very noticeable whereas I’ve not seen it before quarterly update.

HoT is still to painful for dailies, especially solo, let alone progressing your character.
Spent over an hour doing the “soloing” daily event completion in HoT region, when on any other map, I could complete ALL PVE dailies in under an hour or quicker if zerg-fest was in motion. Had a hard time finding events in HoT….let alone finding a group large enough to complete the event.

IMHO Just not enough incentive (“fun-per-hour played” or in game rewards) to complete the HoT story line, or join in adventures in HoT.

For what it’s worth, I am probably the furthest into HoT than anybody else in our guild.

Agree with:
- the comment about completing the harvesting daily in a home instance lessening the value of purchasing the node.
- the comment about the lag spikes.
- the comment about ANET still progressing the development of the game being a good thing

Overall I rate this update as a “Meh”…..

farsight.8269:

HoT is still to painful for dailies, especially solo, let alone progressing your character.
Spent over an hour doing the “soloing” daily event completion in HoT region, when on any other map, I could complete ALL PVE dailies in under an hour or quicker if zerg-fest was in motion. Had a hard time finding events in HoT….let alone finding a group large enough to complete the event.

Well… I will confess that the HoT zone changes are part of the patch I have not sampled Like dungeons or fractals, I’m glad they exist, I will probably go back to them at some point.

However, right now, since they were a big part of the frustration that made me leave GW2, I have no great desire to rush back into them. Too many memories of missing the event clock or running around trying to find an active zone instance. I’m probably not the only one to feel that way. Maybe that’s why you’re still finding lower pop numbers there.

If they make it so that you don’t have to rely so much on zone taxi for a good zone instance, I might go back. Until then, I will only go back if I get bored with other options. Currently, I’m sPvPing and doing zone completion on my rev (mostly to get better at playing it). Once that tires, I will probably go back to WvW. HoT zones aren’t currently on my list but I’ll keep an eye on what people say about them after this and the next big patch.

After a few days I found another small thing that needs adjustment:
ANet added the WvW ranker achievement back into the daily rotation without giving us the option to buy WxP from Laurels (or get WxP potions -yet). While gaining two ranks with the help of stored or bought potions was fine when they still existed in game, the achievement feels out of proportion now, compared to others (especially since Capture Keep can not be done alone and Capture Tower is very risky alone).
Just compare that to harvesting, vista, participate in a PvP match etc.

Some decorations need further reductions, like statues that cost the equivalent of 3000 Badges of Honor.