Guild Wars 2

Started reading this with my crash-helmet on, expecting another one of “those” posts. Instead, ended up with +1. I’m still enjoying the game, and expect to for a long while, but… all of your points resonate to some extent. I do wish that you hadn’t, even calmly, trashed Robert Hrouda. In the end, it makes it personal and detracts from the thrust of your point, which I believe is:

Your dungeon content has no “middle ground” difficulty level for less skilled players.

Your point was made eloquently and bringing him in didn’t add anything to it.

JaironKalach.4938:

Started reading this with my crash-helmet on, expecting another one of “those” posts. Instead, ended up with +1. I’m still enjoying the game, and expect to for a long while, but… all of your points resonate to some extent. I do wish that you hadn’t, even calmly, trashed Robert Hrouda. In the end, it makes it personal and detracts from the thrust of your point, which I believe is:

Your dungeon content has no “middle ground” difficulty level for less skilled players.

Your point was made eloquently and bringing him in didn’t add anything to it.

That’s a fair point, and I did think long and hard about that aspect of the feedback. However, Robert has made it clear on many occasions that he fundamentally believes that dungeons should be very hard. I fundamentally believe that he’s wrong, and so do 500-ish other people that I’ve interacted with about the dungeon content over the past 6 months. I fundamentally believe that if you have only a “very hard” tier of dungeons, you exclude a huge portion of the audience that funds the game development.

If the dungeon design were more casual friendly, some how (perhaps by having multiple tiers of difficulty), then my casual guild would still be logging in at least once a week to play together by crawling a dungeon together. We’ve done that for years in other games. We’d still be logging in regularly, having fun together, and occasionally spending money on vanity items or gems to convert to gold to try some different gearing options, or whatever. For the long haul. But as it is now? There’s no reason to log in weekly and get together in GW2. We’re looking for other games to give us that excuse now. We’d LOVE to have a reason to keep logging in weekly to GW2, as a guild, and doing things together, but there is literally nothing left for us to do that’s interesting or engaging.

On the money problem, ever clear out your collectibles? I did last week, made over 20gold in minutes…

Amazing, the stuff you’ll find.

Huh, that’s actually a really good post and I agree with all of it. I mean, I don’t have the same problems, but I see those problems happening to people, and yes, I think 1 and 3 need something actually doing about them, and 2, well, it’s a tricky one, but I think we could do with seeing some alternate ways to get exotics. God help us if they make us get Ascended gear for slots beyond the current.

+1’ing too. I think you’re right on all three points. The only one I don’t really mind so much is #2: While I have never had more than 30 gold myself, I don’t find it such a constraint and I am able quite well to outfit my 80’s with enough variation in their gear. Not in full exotics, of course, but then I don’t think the game demands more than rares in most cases.

“2. Money is too tight and the economy is too expensive. I’ve invested more than 1000 total hours in the game and have 5 level 80 characters. I’ve -never- had more than 20 gold in reserve at any one time. I have no hope whatsoever of ever attaining a legendary weapon for any one character. The costs are just way too far out of reach. Outfitting a single character in full exo gear is just stupid expensive and I’ve always resorted to grinding slowly for yellows, breaking them down with BL Salvage kits for ectos, and regularly scouring Orr and FG for ori and ancient wood. It’s slow and time consuming. Ultimately, it has made it -impossible- for me to experiment with different builds and gearing combinations. I’ve had to make a decision every time: will this character be focused on WvW or on dungeons? I couldn’t try the same class in both environments because I couldn’t acquire the two sets of gear necessary to do so.”

Either you don’t know how to make gold or you’re spending it on something exorborant. 20g is paltry. Not to mention you don’t have to pay gold for exotics. You can get them for karma and dungeon tokens.

Even if they gave you more gold, they’d have to give everyone more gold. That increases inflation and you’re no better off. The purchasing power of 5g now would be less than 5g tomorrow.

And yes, the dungeon content is largely easy. There are easy paths, and there are challenging paths. What is easy to the majority of players will be hard for the bottom 5%, which you and your friends may be part of. I don’t see why Arenanet should cater to the minority. In an MMO, you can’t please everyone. Best to please the majority.

Luckily fractals is a step forward in this. They have lower lvl fractals that are relatively easy. If you are looking for a challenge, you move up in levels. If you can’t handle a lvl 30 fractal then you can’t. You don’t deserve to be rewarded as someone who is good enough to play in those levels.

Instead of the traditional 3-4 path per dungeon we have in game, I do hope they introduced a tiered system where you have easy-medium-hard choices. But of course, rewards must scale. If you can’t handle the hard option, then you should not be rewarded hard-related rewards.

Your post makes many good points, ESPECIALLY about dungeons.

Just a tip about making money: I’ve went from 0 to 44 gold in the bank this week. How? Wandering around normally, doing 3-4 events/day that give a boss chest and running through about 200 jewelery boxes. It’s seriously easy to make money once you stop spending it to level alts and crafting, and the jewelery boxes make karma actually useful for something.

A quick responce to each thing you said, while your entitled to your opinion i have a few thoughts i’d like to share.

1. A lot of people who had difficulty with the dungeons was not always simply due to the dungeon being “hard” as much as it was…peoples play style was forced to change. People are used to the trinity encounters, since it doesnt follow those rules it has a lot of “every man for themselves” encounters or “everyone do X at the same time” or something to that nature. I find a lot of encounters fun, theres a strategy, once you learn it you should be ok. But ya, they probably shoulda put in a tutorial dungeon that taught players how to shift into GW2 style of combat.

Money is too tight? Your post is mostly about legendarys. Legendarys are supposed to be rare huge investments. They are merely there so you have a long term goal, not something a casual is supposed to obtain over night or even in a few months. Think everquest epics (if you played everquest). Its mostly there to give the hardcore gamers something to do after they burned all the content, and to give casual something to think about for the months ahead…but there is always new gear coming out, so getting fixated on something you dont NEED to play the game is silly.

And guild challenges were geared towards large guilds, or to make small guilds band together. The game completely neglected large guilds outside WvW. I came over with a guild of 50ish. We had nothing to do together….we could split up into 10 groups of 5 and run dungeons…but thats not really a guild activity. Smaller guilds are not punished as much as large guilds by the lack of “raid” content. Even if you hate raids, some people want something to do with a large group of friends….It doesnt have to be a dungeon, just something to accomplish as a large group. Guild missions is there to help these large communitys of people do something, and thanks to the design you can easily team up with another guild (or even people who are in the zone of where the guild mission is) to accomplish them. Trust me, you announce your doing one…everyone wants to join in…its something different and fun to do.

The game has problems that drove off a lot of players, but non of the people in my 50 man guild left due to what your complaining about.

+1 here too. You are absolutely right. Particularly about the economy. One of the few fun things that you can do with your lvl 80 (if you don’t pvp, and I don’t) is to test out different builds/gear-combinations. As it is now, you just can’t because you just can’t afford it. You cannot even change your outfit/appearance in an affordable way; to do that you need to pay money (stones) every time you want a new style for your gear making it less appealing to do it on a daily basis.

Agree with everything you’ve said.

My guild of 20 is now a guild of 3/4…

If you don’t like dungeons, there is very little to no end game. I find myself waiting for hours at dragon spawn points so i can get some rares to make some money to save for a pre-cursor… which seems to go up in price every day – it is just ridiculous. Not even taking into account the loadstones i need to buy because they have a drop rate of 0.0001%. I have about 10 loadstones in approximately 1,100 hours of gameplay across my 4 level 80s…

Sometimes i feel the makers of this game are sitting back and laughing at us farming away for this stuff which never drops… oh but you can’t farm because of DR right? That’s another winning idea.

The dungeons are challenging, but most are do-able for experienced players – i completely agree with your comment on this regarding casual players however.

Dungeons are annoying as hell in this game… you know which game had great (raid) dungeons… EQ2. They were so challenging my guild worked for days/weeks on particular encounters… but they were fun and didn’t consist of red rings covering an entire room that 1 shot people (subject alpha i’m looking at you).

Avigrus.2871:

Agree with everything you’ve said.

My guild of 20 is now a guild of 3/4…

If you don’t like dungeons, there is very little to no end game. I find myself waiting for hours at dragon spawn points so i can get some rares to make some money to save for a pre-cursor… which seems to go up in price every day – it is just ridiculous. Not even taking into account the loadstones i need to buy because they have a drop rate of 0.0001%. I have about 10 loadstones in approximately 1,100 hours of gameplay across my 4 level 80s…

Sometimes i feel the makers of this game are sitting back and laughing at us farming away for this stuff which never drops… oh but you can’t farm because of DR right? That’s another winning idea.

The dungeons are challenging, but most are do-able for experienced players – i completely agree with your comment on this regarding casual players however.

Dungeons are annoying as hell in this game… you know which game had great (raid) dungeons… EQ2. They were so challenging my guild worked for days/weeks on particular encounters… but they were fun and didn’t consist of red rings covering an entire room that 1 shot people (subject alpha i’m looking at you).

I imagine your keeping your eye out for everquest next info too.

The patch info for the next patch suggests that they are looking to address the Guild Challenge issue, with so called “Bounty Hunt Training”, which looks to be a small-guild version of Bounty Hunts.

So that’s a good start. Legendaries are going to have a non-money way to obtain the precursors, sometime in the next few months probably, a form of scavenger hunt, so that may help with money issues.

With dungeons I think they need to label the paths rather than just expecting people to magically know (I mean, GW1 was a lot clearer than this on difficulty), and ensure there are easier paths. Vol is wrong to think the dungeons are only hard for the “bottom 5%”, that is because he is in the top 5% and thinks he’s more in the middle. Non-FotM dungeons are fairly tough, even knowing how GW2 plays, on average. FotM on the other hand is surprisingly gentle on the lower settings, and I think shows the devs have learned how to design dungeons for a broader section of players.

Unfortunately the recent AC revamp suggests the opposite – given it’s level, it should be a “training” or “tutorial” dungeon. It sure is not though!

Zinwrath.2049:

Avigrus.2871:

Agree with everything you’ve said.

My guild of 20 is now a guild of 3/4…

If you don’t like dungeons, there is very little to no end game. I find myself waiting for hours at dragon spawn points so i can get some rares to make some money to save for a pre-cursor… which seems to go up in price every day – it is just ridiculous. Not even taking into account the loadstones i need to buy because they have a drop rate of 0.0001%. I have about 10 loadstones in approximately 1,100 hours of gameplay across my 4 level 80s…

Sometimes i feel the makers of this game are sitting back and laughing at us farming away for this stuff which never drops… oh but you can’t farm because of DR right? That’s another winning idea.

The dungeons are challenging, but most are do-able for experienced players – i completely agree with your comment on this regarding casual players however.

Dungeons are annoying as hell in this game… you know which game had great (raid) dungeons… EQ2. They were so challenging my guild worked for days/weeks on particular encounters… but they were fun and didn’t consist of red rings covering an entire room that 1 shot people (subject alpha i’m looking at you).

I imagine your keeping your eye out for everquest next info too.

Indeed i am.

A few new MMOs coming out that i’m looking at… there’s a Dark Age of Camelot sequel of sorts.. that should be interesting since DAOC was one of my favourite games of all time.

Avigrus.2871:

A few new MMOs coming out that i’m looking at… there’s a Dark Age of Camelot sequel of sorts.. that should be interesting since DAOC was one of my favourite games of all time.

Whaaaaa? What’s this DAoC 2-type MMO called?

I mean, GW2 is the next-best-thing to DAoC for me, but if there is going to be something even closer…?

1 : If after multiple tries you still find one of the dungeons hard, maybe you should try a different approach.
And no, a pre resquisite to this isn’t to have a team of 5 level 80 consisting only of guardians, warriors and a mesmer in full exotics.

2 : I bring my characters wherever I want without too much problems. The only possible problem you could face in WvW might be having a full berserker gear.
As for traits, 3.50 silver isn’t that much (but I rarely change them because it annoys me to waste time switching back and forth).

As for money, well I don’t know, I run dungeons on the week ends and I have no money problems. And with the new chests, it’s even easier to gain money.

3 : 20 active players isn’t what I consider to be a guild incapable of doing guild bounties. However, since influence is gained by doing dungeons (which you don’t do) or doing a lot of WvW with at least another guild member (which you don’t seem to do) it seems logic that you do not have enough influence after 6 months to be able to participate in guild missions.
(I do however agree that the required influence is stupidly high and that you need to repeat guild bounties and treks etc to be able to unlock the last kind is also stupid).

If the “end game” content is too easy, a lot will be bored by it.
If it’s too rewarding, it won’t change a lot of things. (But some tasks need to be rewarded a little better, because it’s dumb to kill a champion and get even less money that if you had done another, shorter, event).
But restricting end game content to gaining influence and having to repeat something you don’t enjoy for weeks in order to be able to do something you want is a bad idea.

Eurhetemec.9052:

The patch info for the next patch suggests that they are looking to address the Guild Challenge issue, with so called “Bounty Hunt Training”, which looks to be a small-guild version of Bounty Hunts.

So that’s a good start. Legendaries are going to have a non-money way to obtain the precursors, sometime in the next few months probably, a form of scavenger hunt, so that may help with money issues.

With dungeons I think they need to label the paths rather than just expecting people to magically know (I mean, GW1 was a lot clearer than this on difficulty), and ensure there are easier paths. Vol is wrong to think the dungeons are only hard for the “bottom 5%”, that is because he is in the top 5% and thinks he’s more in the middle. Non-FotM dungeons are fairly tough, even knowing how GW2 plays, on average. FotM on the other hand is surprisingly gentle on the lower settings, and I think shows the devs have learned how to design dungeons for a broader section of players.

Unfortunately the recent AC revamp suggests the opposite – given it’s level, it should be a “training” or “tutorial” dungeon. It sure is not though!

Actually I’m hardly the hardcore dungeon player.
For me:
Easy: pre/post AC,CoF, <lvl 20 fractal
Medium: CM, lvl 20-lvl 24 fractal
Hard: Arah, +lvl 24 fractal

People think dungeons are tough cause they do it once and don’t bother doing it again with enough trials. Learn the boss fights, trait and skill appropriately and you’ll know the true difficult of the dungeon after a few successful completions.

I agree with almost everything you said. Regarding the economy, I think the problem is more the scarcity of resources than the amount of gold. You alluded to this in your post, but I want to be painfully clear.

Give people more gold chasing the same number of goods and the price will rise. The problems with the economy can only be solved by changing the drop rates.

+1
1- Dungeons do need a middle ground and rewards should be scaled to difficulty. I believe that the minute they nerf the ability to do speed runs in dungeons; you will see an outcry for this. I personally don’t have the time commitment for running a dungeon and I do not like speed runs. Clearing a dungeon should be about literally clearing a dungeon. So if they put in tiers it should satisfy all the types of players from casual —>hardcore

2- The economy is suffering from an influx of gold with no desirable gold sinks to take the gold back out. I have 3 level 80 characters, played since BW and have amassed 44G. Now I crafted two exotic sets but I still don’t have the ectos to make those full sets +trinkets. I feel your pain not being able to afford to re-spec your char for different purposes.

3-This one is obvious. I was in a medium sized guild that got axed in half. I still don’t know why. We started over and unless something happens in the next patch it will be at least a month or more to qualify for a mission. I donated 4G of that 44G to give us influence when we started over. Like I could afford it, but it was for a good cause.

And of the people I personally know that left GW2, they were hardcore PvPers. I personally can only handle WvW. I get too excited and began smashing buttons instead of thinking. Sorry for injecting my personal experience into each point, just thought it would help.

I’d love to see how those “casual” players play the game if they struggle with the difficulty of dungeons, an actually video about a “casual” trying to get through a dungeon like hotw. No offense but I still think that people use this whole “casual” argument because they want to run through every dungeon first try in 20minutes.

kokiman.2364:

I’d love to see how those “casual” players play the game if they struggle with the difficulty of dungeons, an actually video about a “casual” trying to get through a dungeon like hotw. The way some people describe them makes me think that they are physically disabled people with mental issues. No offense but I still think that people use this whole “casual” argument because they want to run through every dungeon first try in 20minutes.

I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘casual’ player, since I’ve been playing video games for almost 30 years and generally put at least 4 hours/weekday and 8-10 hours/weekend day in, though I wouldn’t say I’m hardcore either. That said, dungeon design rewards rote memorization, cheezing and cheating, not player skill. I can solo just about any champ in open world pve. I don’t expect my first time to take 20 minutes, but I would like my first time in a dungeon to not consist of an hour + of me res rushing(before) or battles where I’m dead, laying there and only a burden for the other 5 guys on the team. Especially with the no wp during combat change(meaning I can’t even learn how whatever downed me did it and how to avoid it, very bad design decision) I have no reason to even try to run dungeons, I’m just dead weight for any team while they vainly try to down the boss with only 4 players or res me.
Not to mention that the dungeon runs aren’t nearly as profitable as a few decent karma train runs, the gear is nothing special(I’m not into the dressup thing they have going) and the fact that I must play with other players, there’s no good reason for me, personally, to even attempt a dungeon.
I play the game to have fun, none of the experiences I’ve had in a dungeon in this game can be considered anything close to fun. The best, least foul adjective I can use to describe them is ‘frustrating’.

rizzo.1079:

kokiman.2364:

I’d love to see how those “casual” players play the game if they struggle with the difficulty of dungeons, an actually video about a “casual” trying to get through a dungeon like hotw. The way some people describe them makes me think that they are physically disabled people with mental issues. No offense but I still think that people use this whole “casual” argument because they want to run through every dungeon first try in 20minutes.

I wouldn’t consider myself a ‘casual’ player, since I’ve been playing video games for almost 30 years and generally put at least 4 hours/weekday and 8-10 hours/weekend day in, though I wouldn’t say I’m hardcore either. That said, dungeon design rewards rote memorization, cheezing and cheating, not player skill. I can solo just about any champ in open world pve. I don’t expect my first time to take 20 minutes, but I would like my first time in a dungeon to not consist of an hour + of me res rushing(before) or battles where I’m dead, laying there and only a burden for the other 5 guys on the team. Especially with the no wp during combat change I have no reason to even try to run dungeons, I’m just dead weight for any team while they vainly try to down the boss or res me.
Not to mention that the dungeon runs aren’t nearly as profitable as a few decent karma train runs, the gear is nothing special(I’m not into the dressup thing they have going) and the fact that I must play with other players, there’s no good reason for me, personally, to even attempt a dungeon.
I play the game to have fun, none of the experiences I’ve had in a dungeon in this game can be considered anything close to fun. The best, least foul adjective I can use to describe them is ‘frustrating’.

Yeah, those stupid online games that force you to do group content (dungeons) with groups.

And I got through all the dungeons without min-maxing, learning about the dungeon beforehand or cheating with a group of regular players.

kokiman.2364:

Yeah, those stupid online games that force you to do group content (dungeons) with groups.

And I got through all the dungeons without min-maxing, learning about the dungeon beforehand or cheating with a group of regular players.

Yeah I know, I’m a sp only game player but my friends convinced me to pick this up and there are some very enjoyable aspects to it. I wish there were some solo dungeons, I’m a pretty antisocial person. Not to mention I feel bad holding a team back when they can pick up someone that has the dungeon memorized already.

Oh so it wasn’t frustrating to you when, say, red circles that you can’t dodge all the way out of covered the floor and killed you, while the other guys knew they had to hide in a certain corner to dodge those circles? Then, since you were laying there dead and couldn’t res, you didn’t have a chance to learn what exactly the mob even did to you? You battled through all the mobs instead of running past them because you didn’t know you should skip them to make the run bearable?

Obviously, from the OP, I’m not the only one with this complaint either.

rizzo.1079:

kokiman.2364:

Yeah, those stupid online games that force you to do group content (dungeons) with groups.

And I got through all the dungeons without min-maxing, learning about the dungeon beforehand or cheating with a group of regular players.

Yeah I know, I’m a sp only game player but my friends convinced me to pick this up and there are some very enjoyable aspects to it. I wish there were some solo dungeons, I’m a pretty antisocial person. Not to mention I feel bad holding a team back when they can pick up someone that has the dungeon memorized already.

Oh so it wasn’t frustrating to you when, say, red circles that you can’t dodge all the way out of covered the floor and killed you, while the other guys knew they had to hide in a certain corner to dodge those circles? Then, since you were laying there dead and couldn’t res, you didn’t have a chance to learn what exactly the mob even did to you? You battled through all the mobs instead of running past them because you didn’t know you should skip them to make the run bearable?

Obviously, from the OP, I’m not the only one with this complaint either.

Meh… You’re welcome to join me on any runs. I don’t have any memorized, either. I imagine there are plenty others like me. :-)

JaironKalach.4938:

Meh… You’re welcome to join me on any runs. I don’t have any memorized, either. I imagine there are plenty others like me. :-)

That’s very nice of you, but it would not be fun for me and would be frustrating for you too. I’ll stick to the content that is fun, because there’s plenty of it. I just like to complain about the dungeons because they stick out like a sore thumb in PvE.

+1 EXCEPT for the Guild Missions/Challenges part. How can you have a casual guild and expect to be able to unlock and conquer the same content as a full-fledged guild? I myself have a small casual guild mostly made up of friends I know IRL, I don’t consider us a real guild at all. More like a few players who stick together and just bought a guild name to have a Guild bank.

X The Manimal.5293:

+1 EXCEPT for the Guild Missions/Challenges part. How can you have a casual guild and expect to be able to unlock and conquer the same content as a full-fledged guild? I myself have a small casual guild mostly made up of friends I know IRL, I don’t consider us a real guild at all. More like a few players who stick together and just bought a guild name to have a Guild bank.

To begin with there shouldn’t have been a big problem making smaller missions for smaller guilds with smaller rewards. I haven’t seen a single person in a small guild who wants the same rewards from small missions, just people tossing that straw man out. Even if it means that a 5 man guild can run one small mission a week and we each get one rare, I’d just be happy that we can do it.

rizzo.1079:

Oh so it wasn’t frustrating to you when, say, red circles that you can’t dodge all the way out of covered the floor and killed you, while the other guys knew they had to hide in a certain corner to dodge those circles?

Sounds like Subject Alpha or are you talking about the norn fractal? It doesn’t actually matter in both instances I went in with a fully inexperienced group and we got through. Stuff like noticing safespots or seeing how the damage of Alpha’s aoe is mostly donutshaped is something even the newest player can see.

rizzo.1079:

You battled through all the mobs instead of running past them because you didn’t know you should skip them to make the run bearable?

And I still kill all the mobs on my way to the end. I was never a huge fan of those speedrun groups, not in GW1 and not in GW2.

rizzo.1079:

X The Manimal.5293:

+1 EXCEPT for the Guild Missions/Challenges part. How can you have a casual guild and expect to be able to unlock and conquer the same content as a full-fledged guild? I myself have a small casual guild mostly made up of friends I know IRL, I don’t consider us a real guild at all. More like a few players who stick together and just bought a guild name to have a Guild bank.

To begin with there shouldn’t have been a big problem making smaller missions for smaller guilds with smaller rewards. I haven’t seen a single person in a small guild who wants the same rewards from small missions, just people tossing that straw man out. Even if it means that a 5 man guild can run one small mission a week and we each get one rare, I’d just be happy that we can do it.

Hmmm, I gotta say I agree. Still though, I figured (before the content released) that small guilds would not be able to unlock much. So I guess for me it’s not as much of a bummer lol.

X The Manimal.5293:

Hmmm, I gotta say I agree. Still though, I figured (before the content released) that small guilds would not be able to unlock much. So I guess for me it’s not as much of a bummer lol.

It’s not so much of “unlocks” or “doing the same thing as the big guilds.” The problem I have, related to this, is that there is no 2-3 player content beyond regular open world play.

Not to detract from a well thought out post, but:

1. Most dungeons have easier paths; and if you get stuck persistence pays off. Just last night we got the Path 2 double-spawn bug in AC as a couple of lowbies (lvls 40, 40, 65, 75, 80): we thought about our situation for a bit and came up with a plan that not only worked; but meant that we didn’t wipe, not even once. That run was far more rewarding than any AC run I have done; ever – because it was bloody hard, and we beat it. I am masochistic when it comes to RPGs though (hardcore FTW!). That sort of thing does detract from the ability to quickly grind something you are working toward – so I can sympathise there (I am of the mind “my legendary will happen when it happens, no rush”). The dungeons aren’t exactly ‘hard’, they just need practice (that is, apart from TA and CM – those dungeons aren’t enjoyable at all IMO).
2. Agreed. Cash is a bit scarce. However, if you want to try out builds I strongly recommend you visit the sPvP area. I frequent it even though I have probably only played 5 or 6 matches; just to test out my theorycraft. I also try out level 80 classes before levelling them in sPvP.
3. It looks like it might be fixed in the new patch.

Basically if I read between the lines it seems like players might want to sometimes do a bit of grind content (meaning predictable, reliable, mindless and has a fixed income per hour): which is lacking in GW2. The only problem is if you have something like that the farming bots will flood to it – the unpredictability in GW2 makes it a lot less lucrative to bot farm than, saw, WoW.

Don’t rush your Legendary – it is only marginally more powerful than exotics. They are also becoming a bit common (I see 2 or 3 every day on AG PvE); you might want to look into unique exotics instead. They are a lot cheaper, some of them have fancy effects and are quite scarce at the moment (at least on AG).

Also, don’t remember those boosters you get (for free): especially when levelling a character. They are a huge help. Take a look at your bank and make sure you don’t have any gathering dust.

Bah can’t get the nested quotes working right, screw it.

@OscarKitteh: Exactly, they’re frustrating until you have them memorized, then they’re ‘fun’ in that you know how to do them quick and profitably. To me that’s not fun.

Dungeons aren’t hard (well some paths but that’s another matter). It’s a question of experience. When I started out with dungeons as a new player, it was frustrating but after a while, you learn the mechanics and general tips and tricks for an area and they become a lot of fun. Just let your group know you’re new so they can warn you ahead of time if there’s something you should know, what to skip, what to dodge, etc. And yes, you will die, a lot, and make stupid mistakes but that’s part of learning.
My issue with dungeons is that the paths are very imbalanced. Some paths should be easier, and some should be more challenging but it shouldn’t be that one path is so challenging that no one does it and another so easy and fast that it’s a farm. It’s hard to get groups for the former and the latter becomes a chore.

I agree with all of the points that Shak made. +1

I don’t struggle with the money situation but I do see where the game could be more enjoyable if income were a little more prevalent and people could/would spend more freely.

I’m actually seeing an increase in activity but i do agree.

Eurhetemec.9052:

Avigrus.2871:

A few new MMOs coming out that i’m looking at… there’s a Dark Age of Camelot sequel of sorts.. that should be interesting since DAOC was one of my favourite games of all time.

Whaaaaa? What’s this DAoC 2-type MMO called?

I mean, GW2 is the next-best-thing to DAoC for me, but if there is going to be something even closer…?

It’s called Camelot Unchained… not sure of the details yet, but there’s some googling to be done.

OscarKitteh.7198:

Dungeons aren’t hard (well some paths but that’s another matter). It’s a question of experience.

Exactly, they don’t really come down to player skill – just experience. 1st time you do AC you will learn to evade the Spider Queen red circles, after many more runs you notice and learn the Spider Queen animation that precedes the red circles. Finally you learn that sometimes you just bring another character into the dungeon to deal with the Spider Queen (condition removal, guys). In saying that, I am admitting that the Spider Queen (and bugs) is by far the hardest boss in the dungeon – which is completely broken in concept.

It also helps to ask questions while in the party. GW2 players forum QQ like nothing I have ever seen before, but in-game they are ridiculously helpful and friendly.

Avigrus.2871:

Eurhetemec.9052:

Avigrus.2871:

A few new MMOs coming out that i’m looking at… there’s a Dark Age of Camelot sequel of sorts.. that should be interesting since DAOC was one of my favourite games of all time.

Whaaaaa? What’s this DAoC 2-type MMO called?

I mean, GW2 is the next-best-thing to DAoC for me, but if there is going to be something even closer…?

It’s called Camelot Unchained… not sure of the details yet, but there’s some googling to be done.

Right now it’s a kickstarter project. So there’s a fairly long way to wait on that one.

Well lets talke it point by point.

1. Story are the easily / mid ground your asking for as for explorable mode its made to be some what harder then story. These explorable mode dungeon are made to be dungeon + but not needed for the story line to get the full enrichment of the event.

2. Money is purely a player crated problem Anet can and has fixed the TP at times but they cant always do it. There are players taking advantages of high gold generators making the price of gold go down making it so that items have a higher prices. With the update some of the gold germination will be drooped it should some what help the price of items but ppl will still find way to make lots of gold very fast. So this is a problem that Anet nor any one could truly fix.

3. These evens are made to be long term my guild has run the first one a few times and we are going to just be unlocking the next one Monday. We are going the long way by not speeding up the rates of the upgrades its just simply not worth the rush.

After reading what you where saying i think the central ideal or your problem is the item grab. They added in items you want them but you want them now. GW2 is not that type of game there are items but they DO take a bit of time and you should never get every thing in the first week of them putting them out. It should take a month + to get some of the gear.

That your true problem your playing the game for the wrong reason please stop trying to play it like a WoW minded mmorpg.

A very constructive post, thanks. I have to agree with you on 1, 2, and 3. On the first point, I’ve been mentioning, as often as I can, the difficulty level of the game. I don’t know what they are thinking, but it’s not appropriate for an MMO. The 2/26 changes brought buffs to mobs and difficulty to an entry level dungeon. None of it was needed. Actually, none of it was appropriate as an MMO is not about crushing challenge in the open world or entry level dungeons. What I have witnessed as a result is player failure, over and over again. And here we have, not the kind of challenge, say, a Dark Souls offers where you can actually analyze your performance after an unsuccessful encounter. Here, it’s more like you are alive one second and dead the next. What are we supposed to say? YEAH!!! That was a challenging encounter! I believe hardmode content is valuable in an MMO. But, first figure out challenge. Take a week off and play Dark Souls exclusively. Then, come back and design some hardmode content. And, then put it outside of open world PvE.

+1

The dungeons in particular feel ‘off’ – there’s no real fun to be had in running them, and chipping away at tons of HP while running through the rotations and combo cd’s doesn’t cut it for me. I’m 650 hours or so in, nearly done with my fourth 80, and I really love a lot about this game.

I love difficult content, but I think what is lacking is extensive playtesting of the dungeons. I hope new instances will be more about tactics and teamwork, but in the meantime, I must admit that my play has dropped to an hour or so of the daily, the occasional frustrating PUG instance (since most of my guild has left too), and it makes me sad that GW2 seems to be stuck so close to being the ‘next step’ in MMO’s.

But -hey- the game is great as it is, and it’s a great frame on which to start building towards becoming the true classic it should be.

Most of my friends (and myself) banked on seeing real changes in the patches that were claimed to be changing things. (January and February)

These patches, in their eyes, were quite the let down after they were hyped up by the PR machine. I was already expected them to be a let down, so it didn’t bother me as much, I guess.

My friends list is now pretty kitten barren. Sucks.

1. I’ve heard of people struggling in dungeons, but I guess I just don’t understand. With a basic understanding of your class and how to dodge they are relatively simple. They are already borderline faceroll easy, with almost no tactics or mechanics required. As we move forward they should be adding more mechanics and requiring a greater knowledge of your class. Story modes are quite accessible to casual players as you seem to categorize yourself. That being said, I am certainly not against adding a middle tier for players who want to work up towards explorable modes. Though you shouldn’t expect to be awarded dungeon tokens for completing it.

2. Casual players really shouldn’t expect to get a legendary weapon. It is the singular goal in this game for the hard core players. I just finished my legendary weapon by only playing a single character for 700 hours with the sole goal of getting said weapon. That is the time and commitment it takes. That being said, outside of a legendary what do you need all this gold for? you can get full max stat gear for 20g which you said you have sitting in your bank already. You say you are poor, but I suspect you already have Orange gear and just want to go for the expensive skins, which again are cosmetic goals meant for serious players. You can make 5g/hr farming some events and about 5g worth of rares a day from a casual tour de world boss.

3. I would advise you to take a look at the march update page. They have just announced they are adding in a beginner tier to guild missions for smaller guilds to work on if they don’t have the organization and support of a full guild.

Think getting gear is rediculously easy, other than that I agree with you. Especially in the case of dungeons. Everyone is doing only CoF, the rest is probably too time consuming. Imo, AC Exp was too hard and I didnt try another dungeon to be honest (except GM & AC story). Why? Because every time I don’t feel like being stuck in a dungeon for hours. I don’t necessarly want easy, I want short. E.g., fractals take a lot of time. I like to do one fractal and watch TV or go out. But no, you have to sit and do 3, which is like 2hours or more.

I might as well point out the neccessity of a PTR server here… Again. Test builds etc…

kokiman.2364:

Yeah, those stupid online games that force you to do group content (dungeons) with groups.

Yeah, because people who prefer to play solo should be limited to the low budget crap solo games while the “internet kittenes” like you get the full buffet of an industry that knows where the most money comes from.

Really agree with the dungeons being over the top. I’m not opposed to difficulty, but when the boss has only 2 or 3 mechanics, and the real challenge is just staying alive while you whittle down the insanely large health pool, you’re going to either get boredom or frustration.

Which is exactly how I feel about most dungeon bosses. Either they’re boring, or stupidly frustrating (and by frustrating, I actually mean frustrating as opposed to challenging. Neither of which is “fun”.

I’m on board with the rest of the OP as well. Good post – very constructive.

Sad to say that most of my friends don’t play GW2 any more. It’s even more sad when you realize that we all met in Guild Wars, and played that for years.

Sorry, ArenaNet, you’ve tried to cater to too many different types of gamers here, and have largely alienated most types. This game isn’t for casuals, nor is it for hardcores. You’ve thrown out the best parts of Guild Wars, and replaced them with the most annoying parts of typical MMO’s.

When you try and please everyone, you’re actually going to please almost no-one.

Well it is kind of ironic that the ‘casual’ or what I call the working/have families/play in their limited spare time; are the ones who throw money at the gemstore more often, because they can afford to. Yet they are not really rewarded because of their limited time.
You can bark: do speed runs, mega boss runs by guesting, etc. And sure they are lucrative but not at all ‘my kind of fun’.
Should a game company cater to my kind of fun? Absolutely not. All types of play styles should be catered to.
And a 15min speed run is not challenging hard or fun. However a 15minute dungeon filled with challenging bosses and adds that use an intelligent/evolving form of AI could be all three. A short dungeon where everything has to be cleared and if you and your team don’t play ‘smart’ with concerted effort, you will die.
It doesn’t have to have high HP, insta-kills, or take hours to complete to be hard, challenging or fun.

Hopefully this was still enough ‘on’ topic.

the solution is NEVER to make the dungeons EASIER! the solution is to buff up the party.

for example….

allow more players to join the party and go into the dungeon (miore players, better chances).

make strong party buffs.

and a few other things, but thats it man. anything more than that and u ruin the game completely within that aspect.

I would be happy to bring your entire guild and all of your friends in any combination of your choosing, with me being the fifth member, and I guarantee that you will not fail a single dungeon run of any dungeon in the game assuming you can and will listen to my advice.

Dungeon content may be harder than other content, but currently it is a breeze and, on the contrary to your point, there is no truly difficult content for people like me. I would be happy to show you if you don’t believe me or think I’m trolling you or something. Seriously, contact me.