Guild Wars 2

It bad enough that you introduced treadmill but you have to tie that treadmill to RNG at the same time. Have you not seen what happens to other games that have this mechanic? WoW used to, guess what, they got rid of it because ITS BAD. Its the worst way to do things. Get rid of it please, or you’ll be losing more than just GW1 fans.

Xpiher.5209:

It bad enough that you introduced treadmill but you have to tie that treadmill to RNG at the same time. Have you not seen what happens to other games that have this mechanic? WoW used to, guess what, they got rid of it because ITS BAD. Its the worst way to do things. Get rid of it please, or you’ll be losing more than just GW1 fans.

Wait, you mean it isn’t fun to grind the same mobs over and over again, never knowing when you’ll be able to reach your goal?

I was rationing off a monthly budget for gems for this game, but I don’t see that continuing. I pay to be entertained. The RNG is not entertainment to me.

If I wanted to gamble, I’d go to reno to play black jack and count cards, lol.

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

Its still RNG, I don’t care if drop rate gets better.

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

swell so I am forced to grind to get better drop rates.? This patch just gets better and better.

Columba.9730:

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

swell so I am forced to grind to get better drop rates.? This patch just gets better and better.

Yeah, you play the higher difficulty, you get higher drop rates. I agree that it’s a bit excessive having to do as many runs as you need to do to move between tiers, but it is what it is. You’ll probably make tons of money on the way up there. I made 30g going 1-20.

glad you enjoyed it. i hate the dungeons, and I wont ever do them now, knowing that I only have a chance at the item I must get.

If the items were tradeable, then you would still have a guaranteed way out if the RNG hated you: When you had enough coin to buy the item.
So you would have progress on every run. The RNG would just allow to suddenly jump ahead.

But with the essence being bind on pickup, you don’t make any noticable progress. You don’t know if you will get what you want this run, or 1,000 runs from now. Especially once you hit the highest FOTM level your gear allows you to.

Snoring Sleepwalker.9073:

If the items were tradeable, then you would still have a guaranteed way out if the RNG hated you: When you had enough coin to buy the item.
So you would have progress on every run. The RNG would just allow to suddenly jump ahead.

But with the essence being bind on pickup, you don’t make any noticable progress. You don’t know if you will get what you want this run, or 1,000 runs from now. Especially once you hit the highest FOTM level your gear allows you to.

Worst design decision ever.

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

Cool, so it only takes an estimated 7.5 hours of fractals to get out of the kitten drop rate? AWESOME!

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

so this will give players ever more reason to keep themselves segregated.

Its difficult to see this as a good thing.

Fritz.5026:

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

so this will give players ever more reason to keep themselves segregated.

Its difficult to see this as a good thing.

It won’t be that bad. Pugs are going to hit a brick wall with group coordination required, and be unable to progress past a certain point (21+). At this point, a lot of people will probably be more willing to do lower difficulty runs. The reward difference between 1-10 and 11-20 isn’t that big, although you can get ascended rings from your daily in 11-20. There is more loot and tokens in 11-20, but it requires a lot more effort than 1-10.

Wilky.7521:

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

Cool, so it only takes an estimated 7.5 hours of fractals to get out of the kitten drop rate? AWESOME!

Starting yesterday I’ve probably spent 10+ hours doing these, and finally got my first essence today. Word is better drops the higher you go, but honestly I don’t buy that. Add in the fact you need 250 of the tier 6 crafting mats for an item and I’m seriously not going to waste my time.

Starhawk.2958:

Starting yesterday I’ve probably spent 10+ hours doing these, and finally got my first essence today. Word is better drops the higher you go, but honestly I don’t buy that. Add in the fact you need 250 of the tier 6 crafting mats for an item and I’m seriously not going to waste my time.

How do you know that’s the only way to get Ascended back items? I’m pretty sure there will be a dungeon-only way of getting them, considering how hard it gets at higher levels. If I were to guess, you can probably dump some vials/globs + gift + exotic token item for one.

Pinch.4273:

Starhawk.2958:

Starting yesterday I’ve probably spent 10+ hours doing these, and finally got my first essence today. Word is better drops the higher you go, but honestly I don’t buy that. Add in the fact you need 250 of the tier 6 crafting mats for an item and I’m seriously not going to waste my time.

How do you know that’s the only way to get Ascended back items? I’m pretty sure there will be a dungeon-only way of getting them, considering how hard it gets at higher levels. If I were to guess, you can probably dump some vials/globs + gift + exotic token item for one.

I don’t know that’s the ‘only’ way to acquire the item but I also know that the recipe is posted on the wiki for several new pieces and I know what those recipes require. They may also drop from the higher tiers of FoM but I haven’t run across anyone that can confirm this, so for now it appears based on what’s been confirmed that some of the items that are new require a kitten ton of materials in the same fashion that Legendary items do, and are not worth the effort. (to me)

Here’s a link for those who are curious what the mats are: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Condensed_Mists_Essence

Pinch.4273:

Fritz.5026:

Pinch.4273:

The drop rates are better when you’re not playing at the first tier (1-10)

so this will give players ever more reason to keep themselves segregated.

Its difficult to see this as a good thing.

It won’t be that bad. Pugs are going to hit a brick wall with group coordination required, and be unable to progress past a certain point (21+). At this point, a lot of people will probably be more willing to do lower difficulty runs. The reward difference between 1-10 and 11-20 isn’t that big, although you can get ascended rings from your daily in 11-20. There is more loot and tokens in 11-20, but it requires a lot more effort than 1-10.

Dailies? You mean the bonus jade sea dungeon?

Starhawk.2958:

Pinch.4273:

Starhawk.2958:

Starting yesterday I’ve probably spent 10+ hours doing these, and finally got my first essence today. Word is better drops the higher you go, but honestly I don’t buy that. Add in the fact you need 250 of the tier 6 crafting mats for an item and I’m seriously not going to waste my time.

How do you know that’s the only way to get Ascended back items? I’m pretty sure there will be a dungeon-only way of getting them, considering how hard it gets at higher levels. If I were to guess, you can probably dump some vials/globs + gift + exotic token item for one.

I don’t know that’s the ‘only’ way to acquire the item but I also know that the recipe is posted on the wiki for several new pieces and I know what those recipes require. They may also drop from the higher tiers of FoM but I haven’t run across anyone that can confirm this, so for now it appears based on what’s been confirmed that some of the items that are new require a kitten ton of materials in the same fashion that Legendary items do, and are not worth the effort. (to me)

Here’s a link for those who are curious what the mats are: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vial_of_Condensed_Mists_Essence

Some of those recipies require 5 essences. WOW!!!

are these things tradable – the essences?

Columba.9730:

are these things tradable – the essences?

Nope. Pure design genius, right there.

Xpiher.5209:

Dailies? You mean the bonus jade sea dungeon?

Yes. The first time you kill Jade Maw each day, you get a bonus. The quality of this bonus scales with your difficulty tier. 1-10 gives tokens/money, 11-20 gives tokens and has a chance of giving ascended rings. 21-30 can give ascended rings with agony resist on them. I’m not sure on anything past that.

Nar.8327:

Columba.9730:

are these things tradable – the essences?

Nope. Pure design genius, right there.

LOL that just made my day. Remember when harvesting tool were soulbound? XD

Nar.8327:

Columba.9730:

are these things tradable – the essences?

Nope. Pure design genius, right there.

Swell. So to get the superior back items (much much better than current exotics), I must grind dungeons. man, this sucks.

Columba.9730:

Nar.8327:

Columba.9730:

are these things tradable – the essences?

Nope. Pure design genius, right there.

Swell. So to get the superior back items (much much better than current exotics), I must grind dungeons. man, this sucks.

Not only grind, you must grind AND get lucky with the RNG.

It’s Vasharti all over again. Except this time, there’s no way to get around it with loot rights.

Gotta admit I am really getting tired of the long grind this game has.
I really like Guild Wars 2 and I don’t mind grinding, but this amount of grind sucks IMO!

I was really looking forward to all the new things and new items you can get but the more I keep reading and seeing the more I really have no interest to log on!

And don’t take this as a “I want my items and I want them now”. But with my playtime I don’t want something to take almost 6 months to a 1 year to get! How is this fun?

RNG grinding is one of my most hated “features” of MMOs. Especially when the grind revolves around an upgrade item. When it comes to GW2, it feels like a step backwards in design.

If it’s any consolation, there is a pretty painless way to solo grind for the essence. Get your magic find gear and go into FotM. You need the swamp fractal, the one with all the traps. Now just continuously kill the mosquitoes, fireflies and spiders there. The respawn rate is pretty fast so you’re basically constantly moving, with very little downtime. I just did it for about an hour and it dropped from a firefly for me.

Now I need 60g+ for the 250 vials of powerful blood and about 10g for the ectos. Those are the bigger grind.

“Every time you finish a dungeon you get tokens you can trade in for reward items that you want, rather than having a small chance of getting it as a drop, because it’s more fun to always get rewarded for finishing with something you want to have!”

Looks like they nerfed “fun”. The people that will remain are those that want to “work”.

krookie.6378:

RNG grinding is one of my most hated “features” of MMOs. Especially when the grind revolves around an upgrade item. When it comes to GW2, it feels like a step backwards in design.

If it’s any consolation, there is a pretty painless way to solo grind for the essence. Get your magic find gear and go into FotM. You need the swamp fractal, the one with all the traps. Now just continuously kill the mosquitoes, fireflies and spiders there. The respawn rate is pretty fast so you’re basically constantly moving, with very little downtime. I just did it for about an hour and it dropped from a firefly for me.

Now I need 60g+ for the 250 vials of powerful blood and about 10g for the ectos. Those are the bigger grind.

Thanks. So you didn’t need to finish the kitten thing, and could you solo it? Second, can you recall the name?

They’re already losing more than just GW1 fans.

I’ve done the new instances now several times since yesterday and honestly see some issues. While it isn’t crazy difficult and it is “FUN” I can see plenty of people getting frustrated and bailing. Happened to me several times now with one run through the swamp a utter failure. Anger and bailing until we got tired of trying to get more people in. Swamp may be a rarity here, but the escavation one isn’t much grander, you know?

I’m at level 2 and I can only imagine how much more difficult it gets and what happens to those groups. You know what this reminds me of if truth be told? It reminds me of DaOC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion and the master level grind. 10 master levels each with rewarding a new skill. It was mandatory if you wanted to be doing any form of pvp realm vs. realm you had to have master levels.

Those with 10 master levels set the bar and it was night and day obvious those who had vs. thsoe who didn’t. Heck, we could pvp naked with master level 10 it was that ground breaking. Factor in artifacts and scroll farming it broke the game. Acended items are what, 2 right now? But they are adding weapons next because we already saw the legendary buff / reset before they patched it.

Drop rate, account bound, and gear grind not so great. I can honestly see a lot of people getting bored over the next 10 to 15 days and never logging back in. Those being who do environmental and WvWvW things

Columba.9730:

krookie.6378:

RNG grinding is one of my most hated “features” of MMOs. Especially when the grind revolves around an upgrade item. When it comes to GW2, it feels like a step backwards in design.

If it’s any consolation, there is a pretty painless way to solo grind for the essence. Get your magic find gear and go into FotM. You need the swamp fractal, the one with all the traps. Now just continuously kill the mosquitoes, fireflies and spiders there. The respawn rate is pretty fast so you’re basically constantly moving, with very little downtime. I just did it for about an hour and it dropped from a firefly for me.

Now I need 60g+ for the 250 vials of powerful blood and about 10g for the ectos. Those are the bigger grind.

Thanks. So you didn’t need to finish the kitten thing, and could you solo it? Second, can you recall the name?

I had no luck with FotM. I ran it a bunch of times and I’m still stuck on difficulty level 1 due to people leaving half way through. I pretty much gave up on it completely. Running it for over 2 hours just to have someone leave at the end sucks.

Anyway, I farmed the non elite mobs in the swamp fractal. That is the easiest one to farm as there are no elites, except for the champion drake and the Mossman but both of them can be easily avoided.

Just start where the 3 tree trunks are and just kill the mobs in a circle: spiders→mosquitoes→fireflies. There are 3 of each mob type and they respawn really fast, so by the time you killed the last firefly, the spiders are already respawned. Those are the only mobs that drop anything, so don’t waste you time with anything else. Spiders are the only hostile ones but all are pretty easy.

I’m not a fan of the rng drops, people in my group have gotten 1-2 vials each and a glob – I haven’t even gotten one yet and we are on difficulty 12.

krookie.6378:

Columba.9730:

krookie.6378:

RNG grinding is one of my most hated “features” of MMOs. Especially when the grind revolves around an upgrade item. When it comes to GW2, it feels like a step backwards in design.

If it’s any consolation, there is a pretty painless way to solo grind for the essence. Get your magic find gear and go into FotM. You need the swamp fractal, the one with all the traps. Now just continuously kill the mosquitoes, fireflies and spiders there. The respawn rate is pretty fast so you’re basically constantly moving, with very little downtime. I just did it for about an hour and it dropped from a firefly for me.

Now I need 60g+ for the 250 vials of powerful blood and about 10g for the ectos. Those are the bigger grind.

Thanks. So you didn’t need to finish the kitten thing, and could you solo it? Second, can you recall the name?

I had no luck with FotM. I ran it a bunch of times and I’m still stuck on difficulty level 1 due to people leaving half way through. I pretty much gave up on it completely. Running it for over 2 hours just to have someone leave at the end sucks.

Anyway, I farmed the non elite mobs in the swamp fractal. That is the easiest one to farm as there are no elites, except for the champion drake and the Mossman but both of them can be easily avoided.

Just start where the 3 tree trunks are and just kill the mobs in a circle: spiders->mosquitoes->fireflies. There are 3 of each mob type and they respawn really fast, so by the time you killed the last firefly, the spiders are already respawned. Those are the only mobs that drop anything, so don’t waste you time with anything else. Spiders are the only hostile ones but all are pretty easy.

thanks much. I will try it. could you solo it? was it named swamp somthing?

Not the whole fractal but the mobs I’m talking about can be soloed. They aren’t elite or veteran or anything like that.

Just make sure you reenter until you get to the swamp zone. I don’t remember the name but it’ll be a swamp and the NPC voice will say something about hating swamps.

krookie.6378:

Not the whole fractal but the mobs I’m talking about can be soloed. They aren’t elite or veteran or anything like that.

Just make sure you reenter until you get to the swamp zone. I don’t remember the name but it’ll be a swamp and the NPC voice will say something about hating swamps.

it’s called swampland and the mobs are on the perimeter where the quests start. thanks a bunch for this. I only have 30% magic find food so I hope it works.

swampman pops up, just run him off. watch for traps – bear traps and sticks with wire.

2+ hours no drop

This is the kind of complaint that should have died out with like Lineage2 and Maple Story. I thought Guild Wars 2 was supposed to be more advanced than that.

Anet really screwed the pooch with these changes.

Nar.8327:

Columba.9730:

Nar.8327:

Columba.9730:

are these things tradable – the essences?

Nope. Pure design genius, right there.

Swell. So to get the superior back items (much much better than current exotics), I must grind dungeons. man, this sucks.

Not only grind, you must grind AND get lucky with the RNG.

It’s Vasharti all over again. Except this time, there’s no way to get around it with loot rights.

What about when the dungeon DR kicks in? Or did they finally admit that was a stupid idea and dump it.

Columba.9730:

2+ hours no drop

Yea, the whole RNG approach to drops sucks. Especially for upgrades. I can deal with an RNG for mounts or minis or something cosmetic.

krookie.6378:

Columba.9730:

2+ hours no drop

Yea, the whole RNG approach to drops sucks. Especially for upgrades. I can deal with an RNG for mounts or minis or something cosmetic.

i will try again tonight. how much magic find did you have on when you got the drop and are you sure it was one of those mobs?

I think the worst part of fractals is that the level available is only as high as the person who’s progressed the least…. to me this is a surefire way to get people left behind.

If RNG is introduced, it is a Nexon influence. In Vindictus, boss drops, enhancing, enchanting items, and almost everything are controlled by RNG. On Vindictus, I have killed a boss 250+ times over a year and not have gotten the item needed from him to craft 1 piece of armor. And there are 7 pieces of armor for that set, so I need to somehow get 7 boss drops to complete the armor set.

There will be two paths to get the entire armor set. Either grind everyday for like 10+ hour for gold to purchase the boss drops or spend a ton of money on cash shop to trade for gold in game to purchase the boss drops. There are people who have spent $100+ on 1 piece of item and thousand of dollars to stay competitive on Vindictus. Also note that, since it’s RNG, spending $100 does not guarantee that you get the results you want. Players on Vindictus have spent hundreds of dollars to try to enhance/enchant a weapon and have the weapon break or not increase 1 level (failed like 10+ times in a row). I hope GW2 is not turning into that type of game but with this new gear treadmill and RNG (chest keys during halloween event), it may seem like this is the path GW2 has taken..

4 hours with 125% magic find in that spot. no essence. other good things though

Pinch.4273:

Xpiher.5209:

Dailies? You mean the bonus jade sea dungeon?

Yes. The first time you kill Jade Maw each day, you get a bonus. The quality of this bonus scales with your difficulty tier. 1-10 gives tokens/money, 11-20 gives tokens and has a chance of giving ascended rings. 21-30 can give ascended rings with agony resist on them. I’m not sure on anything past that.

your a little wrong, considering i got a ring in a level 10, with offensive slot.

karma.8763:

your a little wrong, considering i got a ring in a level 10, with offensive slot.

I meant the 20+ ones have agony resistance on them. I realize that what I wrote was wrong.

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

And from the recipes I have seen, you only need one essence to craft a Ascended item. You also get an ascended ring as a reward for beating level 10.

srsly. Just play the game and you will end up with what you need eventually. Every one I have been doing fractals with found in essence in the first 1-8 levels. But even if they didn’t find one until lvl 15, they still didn’t need it sooner than that because Agony isn’t a huge factor yet.

AcidicVision.5498:

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

But there is one very important difference: Essence is bind on pickup, everything else you mention is not. That means that for Essence you have to keep going till the RNG spits it out. For everything else, even if the RNG doesn’t spit out what you want, you are still making progress towards being able to buy the items on the trading post

Even if you don’t run the area the item drops you are still making progress towards being able to buy the items on the trading post by earning coin.

AcidicVision.5498:

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

And from the recipes I have seen, you only need one essence to craft a Ascended item. You also get an ascended ring as a reward for beating level 10.

srsly. Just play the game and you will end up with what you need eventually. Every one I have been doing fractals with found in essence in the first 1-8 levels. But even if they didn’t find one until lvl 15, they still didn’t need it sooner than that because Agony isn’t a huge factor yet.

“Time=Power” is bad MMO design. Things that can be purchased via the trading post aren’t so bad, since you can do fun things to get money. Still not great design, but some people are old-timey in their thinking.

ok, at 125%+ magic find, it took 5 hours of grinding mobs in swampland fractal for me to get the essence drop. fyi. i think that’s a bit excessive.

krookie.6378:

RNG grinding is one of my most hated “features” of MMOs. Especially when the grind revolves around an upgrade item. When it comes to GW2, it feels like a step backwards in design.

If it’s any consolation, there is a pretty painless way to solo grind for the essence. Get your magic find gear and go into FotM. You need the swamp fractal, the one with all the traps. Now just continuously kill the mosquitoes, fireflies and spiders there. The respawn rate is pretty fast so you’re basically constantly moving, with very little downtime. I just did it for about an hour and it dropped from a firefly for me.

Now I need 60g+ for the 250 vials of powerful blood and about 10g for the ectos. Those are the bigger grind.

You just screwed everything up by posting it on the forums. Expect that to be nerfed next week :lamo:

Bornthisway.4609:

They’re already losing more than just GW1 fans.

Called this when the update was announced.

Crapgame.6519:

I’ve done the new instances now several times since yesterday and honestly see some issues. While it isn’t crazy difficult and it is “FUN” I can see plenty of people getting frustrated and bailing. Happened to me several times now with one run through the swamp a utter failure. Anger and bailing until we got tired of trying to get more people in. Swamp may be a rarity here, but the escavation one isn’t much grander, you know?

All this means is that every group will require a mesmer. But the swamp really isn’t that hard. If you group can’t get through it then there are other issues.

I’m at level 2 and I can only imagine how much more difficult it gets and what happens to those groups. You know what this reminds me of if truth be told? It reminds me of DaOC’s Trials of Atlantis expansion and the master level grind. 10 master levels each with rewarding a new skill. It was mandatory if you wanted to be doing any form of pvp realm vs. realm you had to have master levels.

I don’t see it getting actually harder. All thats going to happen is that the runs are going to take more time. The reason I say that is because all reports say that the mechanics of the areas doesn’t change, only the amount of mobs, HP of bosses, and number of adds increases. Then throw on the Agony system and it turns into a “mitigate damage” rush. YAWN

Bruno Sardine.2907:

I think the worst part of fractals is that the level available is only as high as the person who’s progressed the least…. to me this is a surefire way to get people left behind.

Thats the point, because progress isn’t about “I finally did it,” but instead “I’m better than you.” And if you can skip levels, whats the point of having a leveling system in the first place?

Dude…everything is RNG. Ecto for crafting high level stuff comes from random rare drops, T6 mats come from random mob drops, even if you buy those things it was from stuff you sold and the most profitable were still chance drops.

And from the recipes I have seen, you only need one essence to craft a Ascended item. You also get an ascended ring as a reward for beating level 10.

srsly. Just play the game and you will end up with what you need eventually. Every one I have been doing fractals with found in essence in the first 1-8 levels. But even if they didn’t find one until lvl 15, they still didn’t need it sooner than that because Agony isn’t a huge factor yet.

Too bad its bind on acquire. I don’t care if you don’t need it until level 99. The point is RNG is bad game design.