Guild Wars 2

I’ve ran AC with a fresh pug group and it had a handful of low levels. We died a couple of times, but being the more experienced player in the group, I led them through, taught them the techniques and tricks to each fight before it starts. Kept their moral up etc. We managed to get through (despite half the group being dead during a boss fight). But point is, AC’s revamped mode was completely possible for casual players, provided that they aren’t going to give up and quit.

Being a casual gamer doesn’t mean things should be handed to you. Neither does it mean you have to study like crazy and watch youtube videos of the fights. Sure, you’ll die a couple of times and stuff, but that’s okay. The point is that you learn from encounters and improve. Who cares if you can’t do it in one go? Try it again…

Jski.6180:

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

lol, good job on the arrogance. You completely missed every point the OP made and then make arrogant (and completely wrong) assumptions about what kind of player he is. What’s particularly amusing is that your suggestions boil down to largely learning to play this game like a “WoW minded mmorpg” and you don’t even see that.

Drew.1865:

Reasons IMO:

1. Bad class imbalance. Balance of spvp and pve should b separate.

2. Condition damage is a useless stat in the state it’s in.

3. All content is a dps Zerg berserker gear only zergfest.

4. Boring combat system with supposedly bugged traits in some classes.

5. Wvw is totally pointless. You pay for repairs but are mostly getting a grey item toenail as loot or a few copper. The server that has the most players in the map always wins.

6. The dungeons are absolutely pointless and the bosses can 1 shot you and since the game uses a really bad combat system it makes the dungeons even more unfun. Sorry trinity is a much better system. Trinity is actually using a team of players where all members are important. Once you learned how to run past the trash in dungeons you could farm them and get tokens and almost always bad loot from them. Dungeon rewards are horrible.

7. No dungeon finder. Yes there is Lfg but it’s not ideal and every mmo should have the same features that other more successful game has on release.

8. The cash shop is horrible and there is nothing in it most players want. If the gems are what bring in the game’s revenue put the BEST and coolest cosmetic items in the shop. If players don’t like that then they should pay a sub. Sorry nothing in life is free.

9. The game’s rewards are horrible and make the replay of the content pointless. Why level an alt for no rewards (games combat system is bad so the cause it’s fun excuse doesn’t fix that for most players).

10. DR and the worst RNG. This game is basically a casino without slot machines or blackjack tables.

11. Until recently there was no reason to be in a guild and now the only reason is to do the guild missions and join a big guild. Anet offered nothing for small guilds. Main reason why my guild left the game.

12. The game community and forums are moderated very strictly but when many threads ask questions they mostly go unanswered.

13. Nerfs nerfs nerfs nerfs to loot and classes while buffing content.

14. Anet doesn’t use it’s own forum as the first place for news about the game.

15. End game is non existent and you can try to get a precursor for a legendary but the legendary requires gifts and those gifts require farming and grinding but they nerfed all the world drops so badly that by the time you might get something besides a porous bone you’ve been tagged by DR.

And the list goes on and on.

Pretty much. ANET doesn’t understand it’s playerbase. Take the recent changes to WvW. WvW was supposed to be organized large scale PvP and now they are making everything character bound. Last time I checked there was no “I” in team. Guess ANET never heard that quote before and they are catering to the selfish 1 character players who will stop at nothing to have an advantage over people in WvW. Honestly, how the hell does it effect you whether or not I play on my Engineer, Guardian, or Mesmer? If I just play with one of the those characters like you want me to you will be facing the same buffs? So why not make it account bound?

The really messed up part about all of this is that the people that pay these developers the most are the people that play alts. We pay for that expansion slot, we pay to to progress the characters faster (because lets be honest most WvW alts don’t give a flying – duck about the storyline-hell most WvW mains don’t give a crap about it.), we pay for the best gear so that our alts are geared properaly for WvW and then after all of that you spit on us and say……….oh I’m sorry, we want you to progress one character because that is the most rewarding when we are telling you NO IT IS NOT!

ANET how about you put a polling system on your forums so people can actually see what the community wants instead of yourselves. Most cheap kitten forums all have polls and this developer forum has nothing, but that’s right no intent on hearing from your playerbase.

Anet just broke the first law in game industry “human mind is in constant search for new content always” ,this is the engine that make us all play.Rewarding system is broken and game with such potential is dying at front of us.

Botary.6304:

Anet just broke the first law in game industry “human mind is in constant search for new content always” ,this is the engine that make us all play.Rewarding system is broken and game with such potential is dying at front of us.

Rewards aren’t content and being rewarding doesn’t actually mean rewards in a sense of items or gold.

GW2 was rushed out to release early by the way. This game needed at least another 2 years of development.

The biggest problem with MMO’s is the budget. Instead of building a small world and focusing on great gameplay systems; they instead spend 5 years all their money and resources on developing a huge open world and a personal story that the average gamer gets bored with in 30 days.

How do these developers expect to take some of World of Warcraft’s market share by making bigger open worlds and a personal story that nobody cares about is beyond me.

Eurhetemec.9052:

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.

Colin Johanson posted in January that they are not working on a scavenger hunt for anything to do with legendaries.

Just a quick update on where the whole scavenger hunt system stands since I know that’s a topic many of you have brought up recently. We’re not currently actively working on building any sort of legendary precursor scavenger hunt, this is something we want to do in the future and we’re in the midst of designing how this would function, but no one is actively building this feature

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Where-s-the-Scavenger-Hunt-post/first

Otherwise, nice post and points OP. +1

I was going to have a look at that wonderful video that got me so excited about GW2 again, but it’s gone. So, too, is the thread where people were talking about it.

http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

Odd…

I’m a hardcore player. Amazingly, since Fotm patch (like 4 patches ago?), there has been nothing that has affected me. Still sitting here with no new content to do especially since I’m excluded from guild contents as I refuse to join big phat zerg guilds.

WORLD VS. WORLD VS. WORLD!!!!

Chuo.4238:

I was going to have a look at that wonderful video that got me so excited about GW2 again, but it’s gone. So, too, is the thread where people were talking about it.

http://www.arena.net/blog/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto

Odd…

Odd indeed. Wouldn’t have expected it on ArenaNet’s youtube channel …

or the game’s website …

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/media/videos/#gw2-video-manifesto

or the transcript on the game’s Official Wiki.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ArenaNet%27s_MMO_Manifesto_trailer

It’s like they are trying to cover their tracks.

everytime i remember the manifesto video i get more and more kitten . Big lies.

I disagree with points 1 and 2 because it’s really subjective.

Point 3 is pretty clear, but then again, I think the point of guild missions was a reach goal you go for. Normally you expand guilds and invite more people in. If you don’t want to, then you can still get help from people around you. Of course, that can be quite hard to do but I think with the right type of character (personality), it can be achieved.

It’s unfortunate that you lost guild members over this, but the situation varies for everyone. Back then, large guilds weren’t that enticing. Now, they’re a bit more interesting to strive for. This sort of guild level system was in WoW, and it worked really well, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t here. It’s actually working pretty well, but like all systems, you’re going to get people who have small guilds that have trouble with these things. That’s expected if you guys ever played other MMOs where guilds are a major thing. Guilds got to expand, rank up and grow. If not, then you shouldn’t be expecting to do content made for large guilds. You could definitely wait for content that is geared towards small guilds though. Or just be smart about it and work with people outside your guild on achieving a mission.

kikittener.9578:

everytime i remember the manifesto video i get more and more kitten . Big lies.

I watched that one time over. It’s a manifesto, meaning, they’re goals and ideals the game devs work towards. As of today, they’re still keeping true to the manifesto, but people here pick out tiny little things and then blow it up and accuse them of changing it. Try not to pick out little details. Manifestos are vague for a good reason.

kikittener.9578:

everytime i remember the manifesto video i get more and more kitten . Big lies.

Except I don’t see the lies players are always crowing about.

Chuo.4238:

Personally, I want to see a bit more intelligence in dungeon bosses, not just a couple mechanics added to a giant health pool. Yawn.

This is what I want to see too. Then again, look at the majority of the people in this thread: “Dungeons too hard.” “I’m to broke in-game.” I honestly think they’d have an aneurism if they added more mechanics to deal with on top of everything else.

When I see the discussion about end-content I always miss something. You know what my end-content was in other MMO’s. One in particular. Getting rare pets (as ranger), getting (rare / special) mini’s, rare mounts and doing funcrafts (like an engineering craft) to get special items.

In GW2 all those thinks do not exist but I have fun in WvW and with the guild (Thnx for the guild-missions) but for people who do like those things and don’t like WvW or guild-stuff they miss a lot.

Special mini’s.. well farm farm farm gold and buy them, or get real money and buy them. A lot of people want to ‘farm’ for the mini (material) itself not for gold to buy the mini (material).

It’s not really a challenge because you can always buy them. Make it more fun to get a mini, make ‘quest’ (GW2 does not really has quest, but introducing some would not be bad) or special ways to get them. You might need to get materials from all over the world (because a quest sends you all over the world) to get your mini. Materials or mini’s you can not just buy because even if they are not account-bound because of the rareness they are extremely expensive.

Let rangers also catch more pets in a more generic way. Not just a list with pets you can walk to, pres f and you have it. A lot of PvE ranger mainly go ranger for the pet, not pure for there attacks. Make some pets hard to catch and because of the generic way people might even catch pets ArenaNet would not want them to catch. Well heey, a very rare pet. Thats for a lot of people end-content and a sport to get them.

Same for a fun craft. Armor and weapons.. well some people like crafting that but a lot don’t really mind the armor until they are 80 so they need to craft just to get to level 400 to be able to craft something interesting (what is kinda boring). If you have a fun craft then there is just a fun item to make every step. Make it harder of course by requiring recipes that are hard to get, or drop (rare) from a boss in a dungeon and so on. Also require material from other crafts to get those people to also want to do those other crafts (not only to get to 400).

For now we don’t have mounts but you understand you can do something similar there. There is a very very very big group for whom this is the end-content but that does not exist in GW2, Adding it would be a big step forwards.

Behellagh.1468:

kikittener.9578:

everytime i remember the manifesto video i get more and more kitten . Big lies.

Except I don’t see the lies players are always crowing about.

Are the colorblind unable to see certain colors or are people with ‘normal’ vision seeing colors that aren’t there?

The Manifesto was a sales pitch. Like any other sales pitch, it was designed to entice people to pay for a product. Like so many products, GW2 didn’t quite live up to the expectations fostered by the sales pitch. Does that make the Manifesto a deliberate misleading of potential buyers? Or was the intent to deliver what was advertised in the Manifesto genuine, but in the end the delivery proved to be impossible?

Only ArenaNet’s hairdressers know for sure. We, the customers, have nothing but the game as it was launched and the manner in which the game has continued to develop since that launch upon which to base our judgments.

Was Ascended Gear truly in the works before the game launched? Is there any mention of Ascended Gear prior to its unveiling in November? If Ascended Gear had been mentioned in the Manifesto, how would it have affected the launch of GW2?

Is the game currently losing players? I don’t know. All I know is, my Guild (comprised primarily of a small group of friends who have played various games together over the years, including the original Guild Wars) is now down to two active members. Why did the others leave? I don’t know that either, as I haven’t asked and they haven’t offered a reason (or just haven’t been around in a while).

But there’s probably still enough new players coming along to offset any attrition that may be occurring, at least for now.

The only thing making me want to quit right now is getting d/c’s from world bosses and getting nothing multiple times in a row. How that’s something that they think can wait and not get a hotfix is aggrevating.

Calae.1738:

GW2 was rushed out to release early by the way. This game needed at least another 2 years of development.

The biggest problem with MMO’s is the budget. Instead of building a small world and focusing on great gameplay systems; they instead spend 5 years all their money and resources on developing a huge open world and a personal story that the average gamer gets bored with in 30 days.

How do these developers expect to take some of World of Warcraft’s market share by making bigger open worlds and a personal story that nobody cares about is beyond me.

You indeed made some good points there.

I don’t have any use for 20 maps that get outdated and not worth revisiting once 80.
Anet can’t brag to have a large world because most of it becomes useless the moment you hit 80.
There are no good farms, no good rewards, no challenging mobs…

I think we should at least get the option to turn Hardmode on and revisit the world vs very hard mobs that yet give rewarding stuff.

Calae.1738:

GW2 was rushed out to release early by the way. This game needed at least another 2 years of development.

The biggest problem with MMO’s is the budget. Instead of building a small world and focusing on great gameplay systems; they instead spend 5 years all their money and resources on developing a huge open world and a personal story that the average gamer gets bored with in 30 days.

How do these developers expect to take some of World of Warcraft’s market share by making bigger open worlds and a personal story that nobody cares about is beyond me.

I have the strongest inclining that the big problem here was ANet were so heavily geared towards (and probably spent so much investment) re-inventing the wheel, and in turn they aren’t so much adding things that are tried and true ways of getting people to play or easier to implement/tweak/fix. They add stuff to try and “prove a point” that they can be different from all other generic MMO’s.

GW2 was never going to be a wow killer, but now it’s left in a very grey area. Not fair enough to casual’s, and doesn’t hold hardcore player’s interest enough.
Before you know it, NW2 and Wildstar will be out and both those audiences would have ventured further away from GW2.

ANet really need to step up their game, ask directly for feedback, answer them and then make changes accordingly – too often we get reports from people interviewing guys at ANet that ask us for questions. Never the devs directly – (yes, that means take your eye off metrics for a moment, they won’t disappear if you ask people for their opinion once in a while). Have frequent polls on forums, tell us what you learned from previous patches and what you are going to keep an eye on next to make sure people are happy (how often do you hear blog posts say “Everything was fine but we felt we wanted to do more” when it was blatant that the patch was limited, or buggy, or didn’t give many people access to it)

I agree with the OP. I just don’t think any game anywhere can do any better. The longest I have stuck with a game is 2 years. Those where games that had been out for several years and had several additions to content and a stable population. A-Net seems to be running from side to side in a small boat, creating waves but not really getting anywhere. I will keep playing the game, just no as much as before I had 4 level 80s which to me is completely natural.

Tachenon.5270:

.

Was Ascended Gear truly in the works before the game launched? Is there any mention of Ascended Gear prior to its unveiling in November? If Ascended Gear had been mentioned in the Manifesto, how would it have affected the launch of GW2?

It was never mentioned before the Lost Shores update was mentioned. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to a declining playerbase (normal after a couple months in any game) that backfired horribly, because they didn’t believe that all those people who didn’t want Ascended gear really meant it.

They were convinced, I believe, that the gear treadmill formula was something most players wanted.

I still think the playerbase now is bigger than it was before the November 15th patch. New people playing who came in with less preconceptions. So a bunch of people left, but a bunch of other people would have left without anything to do. It’s human nature.

Most of the young folk today need to be entertained. There’s a lot of entertainment things vying for their interest. I’m older and in the old days, if you liked a TV series, it was on once a week and you had to wait for it. You couldn’t watch the whole series at once. We had to make our own fun.

People like me find fun in games like this, apart from what the company gives me to do. It’s a great playground and I enjoy playing in it. For other people, and it’s not just younger people, they need to be provided with goals. And if you don’t provide that to them, with something shiny at the end, it doesn’t hold their attention.

I’m of the firm belief there are more players like that, than there are players like me. In which case, Anet made the right call, certainly at least from a business perspective.

I’m not so sure anyone with a huge investment in a business would have done anything else.

Tbh I’m going to be much more cautious when it comes to spending $ in an MMO. I feel completely had by ANET lack of interest in their community.

Goloith.6349:

Tbh I’m going to be much more cautious when it comes to spending $ in an MMO. I feel completely had by ANET lack of interest in their community.

Not sure why you feel that Anet has a lack of interest in their community. I can offer many many examples of how they gave the community what it asked for. Of course the community doesn’t speak with a single voice.

What you’re really saying here is that Anet doesn’t listen to the part of the community that agree with you. In case you haven’t noticed, the community is fractured. Some people wanted more things to grind for, some didn’t. Some people wanted higher stat items, some didn’t.

So how is it that you think that Anet isn’t involved with the community? I think they’re quite involved. It’s just that a portion of the community probably wants different things than you do.

The only reason gw2 is losing players is because whatever they do, people are just never satisfied…
They had to let go on alot things because people were complaining and now the other half of the players are complaining that it’s not there. Or the other way around.

People complain about ‘nothing to do’, so they add fractals with level progression & Ascended gear which takes time to get. So then people start complaining that it takes too long to get Ascended gear (when they dont even need it).
They’ve put legendaries in the game, for people who are willing to work for months to obtain one. Then people start complaining it’s too hard for them to get one…
People complain that content is ‘too hard’, so Arenanet makes it easier. Then the other half of the people start complaining that the game is too easy..

Now don’t get me wrong; I know that this is human nature and you can never satisfy everyone.
It’s just that the playerbase makes it really hard for Arenanet to do it right.

I wish Arenanet had just stuck to their guts. Kept the game as hard as it was in Beta. Kept the game about being fun, about exploring and enjoying the things you were doing, instead of powerleveling to 80 and getting to endgame.
It’s because they DO listen to the people here on the forums that they have changed so many things. They started out with the intention to change how MMO’s work, but it turned out they couldn’t, because people weren’t willing to adapt to it.

I like this game, and although it isn’t perfect, I think Arenanet did a good job. And it’s still a big step in the right direction for MMO’s. My compliments.

(I also hope arenanet realizes that while the unhappy people are complaining on the forums, a large proportion of the players are just ingame, enjoying themselves)

The only Complainers are GW1 people who wanted a new improved GW1. Those and WoW players who want vertical progression. Yup, that’s about it.

The only Complainers are GW1 people who wanted a new improved GW1. Those and WoW players who want vertical progression. Yup, that’s about it.

And those people don’t count for anything?

Totally agree op, the dungeons do not have a middle ground at all, while im sure the hardcore folks enjoy them, a large percentage do not, many ignore them others do them begrudgingly occasionally when forced.. very few actively enjoy them and the rewards do not equal the risks…

The economy is the worst i’ve ever witnessed in Any of the MMO’s i’ve played, its incredibly bad…Ascended gating far from helped..

Guild content is boring, yes i get to do it luckily but its once a week, takes hours, do anymore and you get zero rewards and then no one wants to do it…guild treks are pointless waste of effort..

Trajan.4953:

The only Complainers are GW1 people who wanted a new improved GW1. Those and WoW players who want vertical progression. Yup, that’s about it.

What’s funny about your statement is that these two groups of people, in theory, each want a completely different game from the other.

Regarding dungeon difficulty, I’d have to agree with the OP, in regard to the “stupid, senseless way [dungeons are] made difficult”. For example, fighting a mob with a challenging mechanics or AI is, in my opinion, interesting and fun. Fighting a mob (or groups of mobs) that repeatedly knock down, immobilize, and/or leash players just feels cheap. When I’ve burned all my stability skill cooldowns, and I still can’t get up off the floor to fight, it isn’t all that hard or difficult, it’s just frustrating. Getting one-shot into downed state and knocked across the room into a red AoE circle where I can’t rez myself and neither can anyone one else isn’t difficult. It’s just frustrating. And there’s far too much of that style of mechanic in GW2 dungeons, in my opinion.

In other games, I regularly played hard modes of dungeons, and liked them. It’s good fun to get the “A game” on, and go take on a real challenge. From time to time, though, I like to run more relaxed, less challenging dungeons, and that’s also fun. I think GW2 could benefit a lot from having a couple of tiers of difficulty in dungeons, with scaling rewards. I doubt I’m alone in that opinion.

And speaking of rewards, dungeon rewards are just pretty dismal. Yeah, I know it’s not just about the loot, but seriously — vendor trash (blues) for boss rewards? Meh. But I guess that’s where the game developers want it to be, as it’s pretty much a reflection of loot in general in this game. It’s pretty uninspiring.

So, we’ve got frustrating, tedious dungeon mechanics, plus poor loot. Is it any wonder that people run CoF1 over and over again, and stay away from so many other dungeons and paths?

I don’t think it’s too late for GW2, but it’s going to take some design overhaul to retain players.

Why do people still believe MMO developers are still trying to make a “WoW killer”?

WoW is simply too big, too ingrained to possibly “kill” with another MMO. WoW makes a lot of money, every year, and with that kind of war chest they can pay retailers so their game is always on the store shelf. They can pay for TV spots. They can advertise just like any other company with a product that brings in close to a billion dollars a year.

It’ll be like a new car company trying to compete with GM or Ford.

Any new MMO can’t challenge that. All any MMO can do in regards with WoW is to fight for those churning out of WoW until it’s next expansion and a subscription free model is the only way to go while B2P is the only way to pay off the development cost.

Stoneflesh.8634:

The only reason gw2 is losing players is because whatever they do, people are just never satisfied…

- I think this is quite negative outlook. Some changes are just controversial, but not every change has to be that way. For example, have you ever heard complaints about performance increases? Complaints about being clear what each skill and ability does? Complaints about fixing bugs and issues? Those are the updates that really improve software quality, and in the olden times these kind of updates were the main content of game patches.

I think for the dungeon problem there is an easy fix for that, Hardcore mode like they had in the first guild wars. Making it so that the difficulty of the dungeon goes up for those who want it. I also think that this should be more rewarding. And then for the more casual players make the dungeon difficulty easier but less rewarding (as in token amount).

More options for getting ascended gear would be nice. I think since fractals is where it started the higher lvls of fractals should drop the new items. Also should drop in Orr for those people who farm there a lot. They should be salvageable to.

And for the guild challenges the amount of influence needed should scale with the amount of people.

I want to echo OP’s voice in losing interest from a player’s perspective, and the bigger possibility of losing player player base with a two cents (well, short story) of mine.

Myself and two other close friends run a tiny guild, yes, just three of us. We all have family of our own, some with one child, some with two. We work standard 50hours week, so we’re your typical casual gamer and plays an hour or so on average on weekday. Perhaps 6-10hours during weekends. We have in our own ways purchase gems for our pleasure (at least $100 each), so no big problem there. We get it that with our play style, it’d take us some time to get anywhere. No issue there,totally enjoyed taking our time, enjoying the well crafted landscape.

But why, after playing since pre-release, there is this requirement to must have a team a of five to finish the last chapter of the story? It’s taken us six months to get there, and to be greeted by this requirement. Cruel is probably an understatement.

Cool to have dungeons or legendary weapons for those that like that type of stuff for endgame. For us, it’s a matter of playing another profession to enjoy the game. But eventually we’d hit the same problem—endgame chapter that has this group requirement. So what’s there for us to enjoy?

So here we are, six months later, four level 80s amongst the four of us, none of us completed our story. We tried with the three of us into Arah, needless to say we didn’t get far. Sure we can LFG, but being dungeon green and tight with time, hardly able to find a group we can join.

Sure we can play PvP, but maybe we don’t have that of interest? Sure we can play WvW, but we don’t have the luxury of time to sit and wait for a group.

I’am the most active player amongst our group. I have kitted out my level 80 with exotic. I have probably amass 40g in my bank. I am not aiming for legendary. I just want to have fun..the simplest of completing the game….but…WTF? (This echos the issue of big kitten health pool with one shot mechanism). Feels like Anet is telling us “we got some of your money and that’s good enough, you can go now.”

I’m fairly sure we are not of minority in comparison with dedicated players, but surely we are at least half of the player base? Just saying Anet, have a think about it.

I agree with the OP… I love guild wars… I see myself playing it for years to come but the dungeon difficulty is just too much. I’m an officer in a very active guild of 250+ and I feel like I’m pretty much the only one in the guild that runs dungeons daily. Win a very active guild of 250+ and I feel like I’m pretty much the only one in the guild that runs dungeons daily. t to bother learning it. We have a few people who run fractals but pretty much nobody besides me runs other dungeons. We’re a pretty big guild, we have a lot of skilled players, already completed T2 bounty (I know it’s not T6 but hey, that’s way more than most other guilds have), but the dungeon content still scares people away. I run CoF, AC and lately HotW more (a lot) and even I sometimes mess up. But how can you not? The spider queen covers the whole floor in poison, you can’t dodge that. Kholer shoots through walls with a 1-hit kill attack unless you’re pretty tanky. CoF, the crystals at the end are ridiculous, you get knocked down by the boss, next thing you know, you’re flopping all around the room by chain knockdown from crystals that you can’t dodge, then if you make it back up he hits you with his flamethrower that seems to have 99999 range. The Magg room on p2 is hard even for seasoned runners and almost impossible for a group of casual players that don’t have a full exo set.HotW lol, the guys in the begging just seem to auto kill 2 players at the start no matter what. I still don’t know how they do it cause that area is a mess. you pretty much die if the wolves see you. The ballista often chain knocks you all the way into the back of the tunnel. Dodge you say? Sure you can twice, but that won’t even take you half of the way there. The ballista often chain knocks you all the way into the back of the tunnel. boss you might as well set yourself up for a 30 min fight. None of these things are truly channeling. Some are just too hard, some are just tedious, and some are just unavoidable deaths often times. That’s not fun. A challenge isn’t a gimmick that auto kills you just because. CoF boss for example, get rid of those crystals, they don’t contribute anything to the encounter, they are just an annoying gimmick. Make the boss harder, make him have some attacks worth really dodging so you can’t just stand there 100b-ing him to death. I can see why my guild spreads out across the map and camps dragons. Please make it truly interesting, not just laborious and daunting. The difficulty means that nobody wants to run with new players which detracts even more from New players wanting to learn. Dungeons desperately need some casual content with casual rewards. Make it a 15 min run that’ll reward you with 25 silver that won’t require “4 zerk warriors and mesmer ping gear” group that’s changing but not too hard.I think you’ll see a big influx of players in dungeons!

Good luck anet, I still love the game though!

eXs.6210:

I agree with the OP… I love guild wars… I see myself playing it for years to come but the dungeon difficulty is just too much. I’m an officer in a very active guild of 250+ and I feel like I’m pretty much the only one in the guild that runs dungeons daily. Win a very active guild of 250+ and I feel like I’m pretty much the only one in the guild that runs dungeons daily. t to bother learning it. We have a few people who run fractals but pretty much nobody besides me runs other dungeons. ~

Good luck anet, I still love the game though!

I see the same in our guild. We have members who like to do dungeons but most people are not very interested in them. I think this is also because of what they have to offer. A lot of players don’t want to do the same content over and over again if there is nothing to gain from it. Well the tokens and the armor and the achievements but for the achievements you only have to do it once so that is is the question, are you interested in the armor? If not a big group of the players is not interested in the dungeon anymore. And then there is of course the people who like raids. They are also not interested.

So if it go’s about the dungeons (in my previous post I was talking about other things then dungeons) I think adding raid dungeons will help and adding other stuff to dungeons (and then we kinda go back to my previous post) like recipes for crafts, pets for rangers, mini’s, rare loot, town clothes and in the future maybe mounts and so on. Things for people to collect. Introduce the funcraft fishing and combine that with a dungeon. A specific drop can only be obtained by fishing in a specific dungeon. That will get a lot of the people that don’t do the dungeons now.

I agree on the dungeons topic. And it could be solved so easily by simply implementing an easy mode (less rewards), hard mode (more rewards) choice on the dungeon. They already have paths, and ANet could simply design the paths to do it (easier and harder paths). I believe this is already somehow implemented on the game, they should just make it clearer which path is easier and which is harder.

Maybe Im just burnout, but right now Im going through this….again. I started back in Beta, played for about one month after release, then hit the point of boredom, quitted till christmas. At that point I was just logging because the other game I was playing was off-line and it was a week off at work (Christmas and family wasnt around at the time). Proposed myself a goal, Bifrost. I ahve been playing 2-4 hours daily , doing objectives and farming all day yet Im nowhere near getting mine, have 71 cloves, one set of gear, gift of exploration and battle, and no more than 20 of each t6 mat……at this current date it would take me till next christmas to get all gifts, WITHOUT THE PRECURSOR which I see no sane way of getting it.

The game has pretty much boiled down to me camping dragons and doing continuos repetitions of CoF for tokens to buy exotic staves (which takes me about 4-5 days to buy one) and farm gold to buy all other stuff which i know I cant get, Like I said, Im starting to get burnout, and Im afraid I might have to quit this game again until the next time the cosmos aligns and the games Im playing are offline and I get another week off.

Everything i’ve read throughout this thread is true. All my casual playing friends RARELY log in, mostly due to the less than rewarding gameplay overall. It’s mostly an issue with the economy, but it’s also for the things mentioned in the OP.

There is definitely a nitch group still playing the game. People that really want to grind out legionaries (which BTW is the only end-game content). I think they are moving in the right direction with stuff like the super adventure box, so there is hope.

Interesting post and read (I did not read the 3 pages fo replies yet though).

However, I definitely disagree. My concern of this game is that it is too heavily geared towards casual play.

Dungeons are either extremely easy or extremely hard. So I agree that there is no middle ground on that. Fractals is definitely a better middle ground, and it is good that you can choose your own skill level with them.

Money? I used to find it hard to get, but now I always have gold to spare. I’ve thrown 60 gold at guild influence, just because I had no other use for it. I’ll be throwing another 20 gold soon enough.

Exotics were super easy to get. I get to level 80 and am ‘fully geared’ within hours. Frankly, this is one of my least favourite parts of this game, and what makes end-game boring. Luckily, they added Fractals and now I have pink rings to search for, but I really wish there was cool looking + better stats armor that was only attainable by dungeon runs (for PvE). Not a huge fan of the current dungeon armor skins.

It is hard for me to agree/disagree with your guild mission post. Personally I like the guild missions and our medium sized guild can do them OK. The only thing I do not like is the inherent nature to find the bounties before starting. I end up following a guy around for an hour while my guild finds the others (and has other guilds killing them as we find them). I’d prefer if the bounties were not on the map until the mission started.

Why I think ANet may lose active players? Lack of an end-game goal. For PvE players, there is little to work towards. There is no dungeon out of reach that I have to gear up to be able to get to.. Everything in the game is accessible and that means I can do what I want and be de done with it. I know it sounds weird. Again, luckily fractals has added something for me, I am working my way up. Soon enough I will have 6 pinks (i have 4 now, and 9 pristine relics), and then I will be bored again.

Anyone else get the impression, after reading the last few posts, that they tried to make a game that was suited for hardcores and casuals, and wound up with one that made neither happy?

Fortus.6175:

The game has pretty much boiled down to me camping dragons and doing continuos repetitions of CoF for tokens to buy exotic staves (which takes me about 4-5 days to buy one) and farm gold to buy all other stuff which i know I cant get, Like I said, Im starting to get burnout, and Im afraid I might have to quit this game again until the next time the cosmos aligns and the games Im playing are offline and I get another week off.

They way you’ve put it reads nice. But think about it. If they were to give players a legendary in about 3 months, what would players do next? Maybe you don’t get the weight of the word “legendary”. It really is something you were supposed to do in a very long time span. Setting this as your only objective will really burn you out, if you don’t enjoy the rest of the content.

My only big problem with this whole thing is RNG and “hope”. If the precursor was a 100% certain drop (bound on pickup) of something really hard you had to do, I wouldn’t mind. You would deserve your legendary and you would have to prepare yourself for it. Now, an extremely rare drop from a 2~3 hour wait boss has no merit at all, just boredom. I’d rather very much farm the gold to buy the precursor on the TP so at least I am enjoying the content while I do it.

What an awesome necro!

The brilliant thing about it – this is still the same situation as it was when the post was originally made.

Guild Wars 2 will constantly “lose” people. Happily, Guild Wars 2 will constantly “gain” people as well. Plus people who “left” will come back on a semi-periodic basis.

Kudos to Devata.6589 for the necro.

There is a problem when I have to choose whether I want to do something fun in game or something that makes gold.

Do I do WvW today, or waypoint around to bosses as the timer dictates?

Goloith.6349:

Tbh I’m going to be much more cautious when it comes to spending $ in an MMO. I feel completely had by ANET lack of interest in their community.

I agree with you. In my opinion it is quite apparent that their greed outweighed their desire to put out a polished game that stuck to their principals as laid out from GW1 and/or “The Manifesto”.

Chuo.4238:

Tachenon.5270:

.

Was Ascended Gear truly in the works before the game launched? Is there any mention of Ascended Gear prior to its unveiling in November? If Ascended Gear had been mentioned in the Manifesto, how would it have affected the launch of GW2?

It was never mentioned before the Lost Shores update was mentioned. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to a declining playerbase (normal after a couple months in any game) that backfired horribly, because they didn’t believe that all those people who didn’t want Ascended gear really meant it.

They were convinced, I believe, that the gear treadmill formula was something most players wanted.

Agreed. It seems to me that the declining player base may also be why the expansion was nixed to quickly. I doubt NCSoft wants to continue to fund an expansion for a game that failed to hold the attention of the majority of it’s original customer base.

clay.7849:

Chuo.4238:

Tachenon.5270:

.

Was Ascended Gear truly in the works before the game launched? Is there any mention of Ascended Gear prior to its unveiling in November? If Ascended Gear had been mentioned in the Manifesto, how would it have affected the launch of GW2?

It was never mentioned before the Lost Shores update was mentioned. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to a declining playerbase (normal after a couple months in any game) that backfired horribly, because they didn’t believe that all those people who didn’t want Ascended gear really meant it.

They were convinced, I believe, that the gear treadmill formula was something most players wanted.

Agreed. It seems to me that the declining player base may also be why the expansion was nixed to quickly. I doubt NCSoft wants to continue to fund an expansion for a game that failed to hold the attention of the majority of it’s original customer base.

There are so many assumptions here.

You do not know the gear treadmill is something most players do not want.
You do not know that adding it backfired.
You do not know that the attention of the majority of the original customer base has been lost.
You do not know that the player base is declining
You do not know that the expansion was nixed.

???? Please do not post speculation as fact.

Jemmi.6058:

clay.7849:

Chuo.4238:

Tachenon.5270:

.

Was Ascended Gear truly in the works before the game launched? Is there any mention of Ascended Gear prior to its unveiling in November? If Ascended Gear had been mentioned in the Manifesto, how would it have affected the launch of GW2?

It was never mentioned before the Lost Shores update was mentioned. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to a declining playerbase (normal after a couple months in any game) that backfired horribly, because they didn’t believe that all those people who didn’t want Ascended gear really meant it.

They were convinced, I believe, that the gear treadmill formula was something most players wanted.

Agreed. It seems to me that the declining player base may also be why the expansion was nixed to quickly. I doubt NCSoft wants to continue to fund an expansion for a game that failed to hold the attention of the majority of it’s original customer base.

There are so many assumptions here.

You do not know the gear treadmill is something most players do not want.
You do not know that adding it backfired.
You do not know that the attention of the majority of the original customer base has been lost.
You do not know that the player base is declining
You do not know that the expansion was nixed.

???? Please do not post speculation as fact.

When I said “It seems to me…” That was your cue that everything I said was my opinion.

Therefore, don’t try to challenge my opinion with your opinion. I did make assumptions that I believe to be true. It is my opinion they are true.

In addition to what I said before there is one other thing that is also a problem. ArenaNet said they where not going to make a farming game but in a way this is one of the most farming games I seen, or at least the most annoying way of farming.

It basically already came up in my example with the mini’s. The problem is that you can’t farm items in this game. You need to farm currency, being it tokens or money or laurels. That is one of the most boring ways of farming.

What most people prefer is farming for the item itself. If I want to get some specific item and I know it has an 1/10.000 drop-change from a mob and you place that mob a lot in one area then I can go there farming those mob for that item. But if I need 1000 gold then I need to go farm gold and thats just way more boring. The reason this has been done was just to prevent farming because “there are a lot of ways you can earn your item, you don;t have to farm for it” but of course it is still farming only in a less fun way. You don;t feel the joy when that thing finally drops but you feel the horror from farming for gold.