Guild Wars 2

A long time ago I was a hardcore raider in WoW (vanilla, bc, & wrath) and have conquered server-first boss kills, etc. I’ve since then accumulated a lot more real–life responsibilities that limit my play-time and make my schedules unpredictable. I am unable and unwilling to make commitments to guilds and to raiding because I do not want to feel that pressure to have to log on, to have to do this, to have to do that. I can’t keep up with that type of gaming anymore even though that itch is still there, it’s just not possible.

Guild Wars 2 never had any type of hardcore commitment; there was no monthly subscription either so it was always pick-up and play when you wanted. The game was designed around that and that’s what always kept me coming back. It’s why I’ve had the game since pre-release and I purchased the $100 copy of HoT.

The thing is HoT has moved the game in a much different direction than what GW2 represented to me and was to me prior to the expansion.

GW2 was a game where I could do anything at pretty much any time and have it feel meaningful while not having to dedicate a huge chunk or time or make a major commitment.

I could level up an alternate character through zones, story, crafting, EotM, or use the tons of tomes and scrolls I have lying around OR a combination of all of that OR only one of them!

I could PvP, WvW, Dungeon, Fractal, Explore (JPs / Other Achievements), or even do some World Bosses if I was on at the right time, pretty much at any time I wanted to.
I could do this on any of my characters with any type of gear and mostly any type of build.

HoT has changed all of that.

I have about 800-900 hours on my warrior (who is my main) but then I also have an additional 800 hours spread out amongst my alts. I have an 80 of every class (except rev). A few of them I have leveled up through story and map completions, some through EotM (somewhat recently but before HoT) and then I have a necro I leveled up with scrolls/tomes. Most of these characters I don’t play often enough to give them more than one set of exotic gear. In fact, even my warrior only has one set of gear and its exotic with some ascended trinkets, amulets, etc. and Twilight (which I FINALLY made a few weeks prior to HoT).

My point is, I play every aspect of the game and on a wide array of characters because not only do I enjoy it but because GW2 supported it and made it possible.

However, with the implementation of raids, the design of the new zones, and the destruction of dungeons and WvW I feel like I cannot do these things the way I used to and how the game was prior to HoT.

The design decision to have map-wide meta events tied to specific timers is extremely frustrating for me. If I do not log in or am not in a zone at a certain time I am out of luck for the next few hours if I want to complete it. I understand that they did not want map-hopping like SW but then maybe having 4 zones in HoT ALL with meta events was not exactly a great design.

Don’t get into a dragon stand map within in the first 30 minutes of the timer good luck finding one. Nobody attempts DS with an hour or even 90 minutes left on the timer.

Get into a fresh AB? have fun waiting about an hour for that Meta and it’s even longer with VB.

Oh, you need to complete VB event chains but log in during night time? Well, sorry, you have to wait 45 minutes until they begin.

This also ties into adventures being constantly locked due to map times and event progression. Need gold for those mastery points? You must progress the specific event for it and hopefully you have enough time to hone your skill at it before it closes!

Wait, you mentioned all the HoT zones but left out TD. Well, TD ties into two issues I have.

One, Guild Wars 2 was always about play how you want but in order to complete the Meta in that zone you must be a zerk meta advocate and spec’d specifically for DPS. Condi builds, GTFO, you can’t dps fast enough and your CC’s end up breaking the bar making the Gerent move which results in a dps loss for everyone.

Two, ANet talks about how they want you to be able to play how you want but then create a DPS race at the same time as saying they’re moving away from the zerk meta end-game.

Something doesn’t add up.

(I actually do not have an issue with Gerent, but I feel its poor taste to say one thing and design the opposite and then having the completion required for some collections/masteries/etc. despite the way it alienates players.)

Not only that but then they go ahead and create raids – the opposite of playing how you want. Raids are a pretty exclusive thing and a great thing for highly organized and structured guilds and players with manageable schedules. However, if you have been playing GW for this long I don’t think raids were something you were missing because the game has never been about them or designed with them in mind.

GW2 was always about doing what you wanted when you wanted and how you wanted.

You want legendary armor? You HAVE TO raid, you have to conform, you have to designate time in your schedule and study/learn boss mechanics . You need to have ascended gear because the Devs said it’s been tuned for such so no guild or PuG is going to let you in without it.

There are ways to create challenging group content for organized guilds for more than 5 players. Look at TT and even look at Gerent.

Honestly, ANet has just completely changed directions with the game and I personally do not like it. If I wanted a cookie-cutter raid based game I would not be playing GW2 there’s a million other games out there that have that and have it implemented better and were built around it as one of their core pillars. Throwing a raid into a 3 year old game with no supporting features around it is just poor design.

If they wanted to cater to the hardcore progression player, well, you already have fractals, too bad they can’t seem to get that right either.

Too much time and effort and tuning and perfection is required to create unique meaningful and challenging raids. ANet doesn’t have those types of resources and almost no game company does, look at the MMO landscape these days, every game gets chewed up and spit out when they resort to raiding as end-game.

I just do not understand what ANet was thinking when they decided to go in this direction with HoT and with the game in general.

I am not complaining about the value of the game. I definitely have gotten my money’s worth and do not feel cheated. I willingly paid the money for it and would do-so again. However, I just do not agree with the direction I am more and more beginning to realize that the game is going and wanted to voice my opinion and that fact that I may not be supporting the company in the future.

It’s possible they’re trying to pick up the massive Wildstar crowd with HoT, it’s a courageous strategy I hope it works out for them.

New direction indeed worries me too.

GW2s style felt wonderful after spending so many years for raiding in MMOs. Never going to start again all that what raiding requires and causes to the game. I will keep on playing with my own style like I have done the past three years, but I really am afraid that the new style leads to direction where it is no longer possible.

You can still do everything you used to do! In fact with HoT you have even more things you can do on your time and when you want to do it.

Adding things for players who want them doesn’t take away from your experiences. Raid’s aren’t mandatory, they aren’t part of the main storyline (they are side stories), and some of the rewards are tradeable.

You said a lot of words but failed to convey what it is you are wanting? They gave more of the same stuff in the new maps you can do at your own pace (sans dungeons because they want to move away from them and Fractals is their new focus for 5-man content).

Paradox.1380:

You can still do everything you used to do!.

Uh, no you can’t.

Prior to HoT, one could chose to ignore LS1 and LS2. If that type of platform-skin-chasing-game-play was not what not you wished to do, it was entirely optional, and had no impact on those of us which focused on PvP and/or WvW for our end game content.

With the issue of LS3 (…I’m sorry, I mean HoT…) you must do the content to unlock a core mechanics (i.e. the Elite Trait line for your profession). This is an entirely different direction that the game has taken. And yet, you seem to just gloss over this fact….

Soon.5240:

Paradox.1380:

You can still do everything you used to do!.

Uh, no you can’t.

Prior to HoT, one could chose to ignore LS1 and LS2. If that type of platform-skin-chasing-game-play whas not what not you wished to do, it was entirely optional, and had no impact on those of us which focused on PvP and/or WvW for our end game content.

With the issue of LS3 (…I’m sorry, I mean HoT…) you must do the content to unlock a core mechanics (i.e. the Elite Trait line for your profession). This is an entirely different direction that the game has taken. And yet, you seem to just gloss over this fact….

None of those are necessary and you can use the Elite Spec in pvp without unlocking it in the game, and they gave WvW players a way to earn it exclusively in WvW.

Well, you don’t HAVE to be in the new zones, or do the raids … unless you desperately want the items you can get there that is.
I personally also do not like any of the new zones, it feels too much like you MUST be in a group, log in to that map’s TeamSpeak server or whatever somebody set up and grind out that meta event … just because you want to completely explore the map. That’s not how it went in the old maps, there you can do the (meta)events when you feel like it, or wander around to get 100% exploration.
So, figuring the new maps are not meant for me, I just continue with the activities I enjoyed in the older zones and never set foot in the new ones anymore. Because getting frustrated about yet another thing locked behind a meta-event, bugs or whatever is not why I play this game

Catering to only one playstyle has only one direction.
Down.
Straight Down.

@Soon
You might have forgotten (or were not around) when Anet introduced character advancement changes a while back that had a similar gated mechanic in core GW2. You had to go out into the world and fight a certain boss or do something to unlock a trait, or cough up the cash. Those lvl 80s grandfathered in were fortunate enough not to have to deal with that. So no, HoT is not the first attempt at this.

@Unholy
Time gated events were part of GW2 long before HoT. World bosses use to be random events until Anet decided to put them on a timer. Temple runs are still random, but are optional group content. Dynamic events, which are still plentiful in HoT and equally fun to do, can easily be done alone. Anet introduced new challenges with HoT, but much of their design principles are still the same. Twisted Marionette, Silverwastes, Battle for LA all had similar mechanics. Lanes, divided group content, different boss battles, etc.

I don’t do dungeons or fractals, nor will I do raids. However, I will not discount the groups of people out there that do enjoy that content. Raids to me are similar in principle to dungeons and fractals. Just with different name. If someone likes that kind of thing, kudos. I don’t PvP either, but I love WvW. Again, if people want to PvP, kudos to them. Go nuts, there’s enough content released by Anet to go around for everyone, though more so for PvE enthusiasts.

I am not worried about Anet’s direction. This is their game, their baby. They can do whatever they want with it. As long as their vision of entertainment aligns with my own, I will continue playing. If they do something I don’t like, I have a Steam library full of games just begging for my attention.

Unholy.1527:

Guild Wars 2 never had any type of hardcore commitment; there was no monthly subscription either so it was always pick-up and play when you wanted. The game was designed around that and that’s what always kept me coming back. It’s why I’ve had the game since pre-release and I purchased the $100 copy of HoT.

The thing is HoT has moved the game in a much different direction than what GW2 represented to me and was to me prior to the expansion.

Thanks for taking time to write this up.

I feel the same. I have played the GW2 for long time because of freedom to do what you like when you like. I really dislike HoT for all the timers, for all the stuff that are gated behind masteries, for very little freedom and lack of options.

@OP: I disagree that every raiding game gets chewed up and spit out, but I do agree that slapping raiding into a 3 year game – a game that was never designed for the tried-and-true raiding trinity design – is a bit messy, to say the least.

Paradox.1380:

You said a lot of words but failed to convey what it is you are wanting? They gave more of the same stuff in the new maps you can do at your own pace (sans dungeons because they want to move away from them and Fractals is their new focus for 5-man content).

Seems obvious to me that he likes the casual design of vanilla GW2 and is afraid that HoT is taking the game in a distinctly non-casual direction.

I dont know what your smoking they havnt changed a direction if anything they added more forks in those directions with the new raid stuff.

raids just adds more flavor for people who want to take that extra step and that extra challenge.

Goldrock.9076:

raids just adds more flavor for people who want to take that extra step and that extra challenge.

And the only way to get legendary armor. I hate raids since wow, I wont do ’em here, that means no way to have some new shiny armor skins coz some ppl are real fans of old and boring raid-oriented gameplay

Nate.8146:

@Soon
You might have forgotten (or were not around) when Anet introduced character advancement changes a while back that had a similar gated mechanic in core GW2.

Nope. 4,800 hours in the game, here. Been playing since the three-day head start.

Anet also CHANGED that foolish mistake, didn’t they…..

The Day I bought HOT-I was excited.
The Day I entered VB- I surprised to Fly.
The Day I entered AB-I was disappointing of I can’t fly over to mastery point w/o Gliding level.
The Day I entered TD- I got mad of looking for the “story/Sign Cutting”. If I didn’t check the information from google, probably I gonna try another 10 more times(dead-WP-dead-WP).

Is this the direction of HOT? What kind of design keeps player out of enjoying the fun on “Explore/Story”? Bring most player “Satisfy” or “frustration”, which is the priority, which is the right direction?

Well raids will only be an issue if we only get raids, or if majority of development resources go to raids, (or for lore-hounds if they gate major story points in Raids… but your mileage may vary there). So as long as there is a balance between hardcore raid content and casual content it should be fine

CureForLiving.5360:

Well raids will only be an issue if we only get raids, or if majority of development resources go to raids, (or for lore-hounds if they gate major story points in Raids… but your mileage may vary there). So as long as there is a balance between hardcore raid content and casual content it should be fine

Not much ‘casual’ content in HOT so far, most of it is long grinds of mainly group-centric content, time-limited on maps that at times are empty.

i thought gw2 was a different MMO from WOW. and Now Anet is going to that old direction again.

Vanilla GW2 had nothing to do after hitting 80. I like the direction.

I’m also very worried about the new direction. I enjoy the HoT content in how I play it, but the current Map Meta cycles are way too long to complete, and the content is way too pointless if you don’t intend to complete the metas, so you’re stuck doing them if you want to accomplish anything. They should make each meta cycle half or less the current time requirements, trimming events as necessary.

Also, if a “good map” can complete a task, while a “bad map” is more likely to fail it, then they need to give players better tools for arriving at “good maps” than they currently offer. LFG and “join on player” are not nearly good enough. Players should be able to select specific maps from a list, not get randomly assigned one.

And they definitely need to stop locking cool rewards behind things like raids. If raiders want to raid, let them raid. If players want legendary armor but have no interest in raiding, they shouldn’t be forced into raids to get it.

Ohoni.6057:

I’m also very worried about the new direction. I enjoy the HoT content in how I play it, but the current Map Meta cycles are way too long to complete, and the content is way too pointless if you don’t intend to complete the metas, so you’re stuck doing them if you want to accomplish anything. They should make each meta cycle half or less the current time requirements, trimming events as necessary.

Also, if a “good map” can complete a task, while a “bad map” is more likely to fail it, then they need to give players better tools for arriving at “good maps” than they currently offer. LFG and “join on player” are not nearly good enough. Players should be able to select specific maps from a list, not get randomly assigned one.

And they definitely need to stop locking cool rewards behind things like raids. If raiders want to raid, let them raid. If players want legendary armor but have no interest in raiding, they shouldn’t be forced into raids to get it.

I’ll disagree with you on having to play the full meta. I guess it depends on what you want from the game. If you want loot, then yeah you’d have to put time into it. But I don’t think that’s so much an issue of how long the meta is, so much as no matter what ANet did there would always be a minimum time commitment to get something out.
But I’ll agree that a better system for filling up maps is needed .
And then I’ll disagree with you on raid loot. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have raids have raid specific loot. Else what is the point?

It is a new direction and it’s one in which ANet seem to have lost sight of the moderate players who like to play lots of content at a moderate difficulty level. These are players who are reasonably equipped and have a reasonable level of skill but who are still a fair way off BIS and who may have no interest in getting there. Those players also need to be catered for in the expansion.

All this just to kill solo players?

Very well written and summarizes my exact feelings towards HoT too. I even have the time to do all these metas and raids if I wanted to but it is way too exhausting and stressful. I play video games to de-stress not adopt another job

Labjax.2465:

@OP: I disagree that every raiding game gets chewed up and spit out, but I do agree that slapping raiding into a 3 year game – a game that was never designed for the tried-and-true raiding trinity design – is a bit messy, to say the least.

Pretty much this. If I want raids I’ll go back to WoW, a game that was designed for raids and better raid content than anything GW2 can do with its current system.

Raids in GW2 were only added because players asked for challenging content, but the game was never designed for it. So you get this mishmash of ideas patched and stiched together to make it work somehow.

Usually when I like a game I always buy the expansion. So I bought Diablo II’s LOD, Eye of the North, Diablo III’s Reaper of Souls. I did not buy HoT. Why not? Because Anet changed the game mechanics.

Expansions are mostly tougher than the core game. So were LOD, EotN and Reaper of Souls tougher than the original games. Yet gameplay was the same: you could just move on and continue playing the way you used to do. But not with HoT. In their eagerness to follow the wishes for a tougher game Anet changed the game mechanics. HoT moved from a MMORPG towards a MMO Arcade game (no, don’t get me on definitions, this is just to picture the general situation).

Sure, there are peeps who love it. But basically this kind of gameplay has a different audience than rpg’s. Therefore, players may argue that you can play the maps, and even give good advice, but those who don’t like action games will not adapt.

Question is if Anet intended to change gameplay to renew the player base and focus on those who love action games, or not. Because if the answer is no, than something needs to happen fast to attract those who love traditional MMORPG game play and give them the confidence that Anet is there for them too. Not by making HoT easier (that would anger those who now love it). But by adding appealing content for this group of players. How, that is up to Anet.

Dis.1092:

Goldrock.9076:

raids just adds more flavor for people who want to take that extra step and that extra challenge.

And the only way to get legendary armor. I hate raids since wow, I wont do ’em here, that means no way to have some new shiny armor skins coz some ppl are real fans of old and boring raid-oriented gameplay

Yeah agree to that statement but so far from the raid here in gw2 its alot diffrent seems to play out ok imo.At least its jut 10 man stuff it would be diffrent if it was 20 or 40 man stuff.Im actually enjoying it. I cant speak for future ones though i guess we will see how it turns out.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

It’s possible they’re trying to pick up the massive Wildstar crowd with HoT, it’s a courageous strategy I hope it works out for them.

Well I laughed.

Well I truly love the HoT expansion, I do love the Gerent and the other metas too. I also enjoyed playing the first raid boss.

And yet I fully sign OP’s general notion that a design focus change is in the air and I too dislike the smell of it.

Also many inherently good features were/are suffering from inexplicably blatant implementation weaknesses…. → buggy end story mission, failure to properly reconnect to previous meta event instance (DS, TD anyone)… New Meta/Raid content but no proper staging lobby functionality like suitable lfg tool functionality (see also useless Guild Portals)… entirely bugged guild mission hiccough…. etc etc etc…

tldr: super good expansion release so far but: “shake head” why those obvious implementation deficiencies all across the board ?

I was considering replying elaborately and appeal to your common sense. I gave up halfway. You want Anet to cater to your needs only, and get mad when they also cater to other types of players. If you can’t see the selfishness in this, then any discussion on this topic is hopeless.

I could not agree more or say it any better. Your statement hits all the nails on the head about what’s wrong with ANet’s new direction.

I’m finishing a few things on my characters, and then moving on. The new zones just aren’t fun. It’s as if the designers of the karkarma island took over, failing to see how empty their creation is, and deciding the whole game had to be that way. They had little actual content for an expansion, so they filled it with grindy stuff.

I’d pay 50 bucks for an expansion meant for the non-hardcore. I regret paying that for an expansion designed like HoT.

I think this whole post has kinda gotten outa hand with armchair/back seating devs i havnt seen any official words saying they changed their design focus lol just a bunch of know alls speculating. Just chill and let it ride a bit before making a choices and eitherway not like we are PAYING monthly subs. So enjoy!

Unholy.1527:

A long time ago I was a hardcore raider in WoW (vanilla, bc, & wrath) and have conquered server-first boss kills, etc. I’ve since then accumulated a lot more real–life responsibilities that limit my play-time and make my schedules unpredictable. I am unable and unwilling to make commitments to guilds and to raiding because I do not want to feel that pressure to have to log on, to have to do this, to have to do that. I can’t keep up with that type of gaming anymore even though that itch is still there, it’s just not possible.

Guild Wars 2 never had any type of hardcore commitment; there was no monthly subscription either so it was always pick-up and play when you wanted. The game was designed around that and that’s what always kept me coming back. It’s why I’ve had the game since pre-release and I purchased the $100 copy of HoT.

The thing is HoT has moved the game in a much different direction than what GW2 represented to me and was to me prior to the expansion.

GW2 was a game where I could do anything at pretty much any time and have it feel meaningful while not having to dedicate a huge chunk or time or make a major commitment.

I could level up an alternate character through zones, story, crafting, EotM, or use the tons of tomes and scrolls I have lying around OR a combination of all of that OR only one of them!

I could PvP, WvW, Dungeon, Fractal, Explore (JPs / Other Achievements), or even do some World Bosses if I was on at the right time, pretty much at any time I wanted to.
I could do this on any of my characters with any type of gear and mostly any type of build.

HoT has changed all of that.

I have about 800-900 hours on my warrior (who is my main) but then I also have an additional 800 hours spread out amongst my alts. I have an 80 of every class (except rev). A few of them I have leveled up through story and map completions, some through EotM (somewhat recently but before HoT) and then I have a necro I leveled up with scrolls/tomes. Most of these characters I don’t play often enough to give them more than one set of exotic gear. In fact, even my warrior only has one set of gear and its exotic with some ascended trinkets, amulets, etc. and Twilight (which I FINALLY made a few weeks prior to HoT).

My point is, I play every aspect of the game and on a wide array of characters because not only do I enjoy it but because GW2 supported it and made it possible.

However, with the implementation of raids, the design of the new zones, and the destruction of dungeons and WvW I feel like I cannot do these things the way I used to and how the game was prior to HoT.

The design decision to have map-wide meta events tied to specific timers is extremely frustrating for me. If I do not log in or am not in a zone at a certain time I am out of luck for the next few hours if I want to complete it. I understand that they did not want map-hopping like SW but then maybe having 4 zones in HoT ALL with meta events was not exactly a great design.

Don’t get into a dragon stand map within in the first 30 minutes of the timer good luck finding one. Nobody attempts DS with an hour or even 90 minutes left on the timer.

Get into a fresh AB? have fun waiting about an hour for that Meta and it’s even longer with VB.

Oh, you need to complete VB event chains but log in during night time? Well, sorry, you have to wait 45 minutes until they begin.

This also ties into adventures being constantly locked due to map times and event progression. Need gold for those mastery points? You must progress the specific event for it and hopefully you have enough time to hone your skill at it before it closes!

Wait, you mentioned all the HoT zones but left out TD. Well, TD ties into two issues I have.

One, Guild Wars 2 was always about play how you want but in order to complete the Meta in that zone you must be a zerk meta advocate and spec’d specifically for DPS. Condi builds, GTFO, you can’t dps fast enough and your CC’s end up breaking the bar making the Gerent move which results in a dps loss for everyone.

Two, ANet talks about how they want you to be able to play how you want but then create a DPS race at the same time as saying they’re moving away from the zerk meta end-game.

Something doesn’t add up.

(I actually do not have an issue with Gerent, but I feel its poor taste to say one thing and design the opposite and then having the completion required for some collections/masteries/etc. despite the way it alienates players.)

Not only that but then they go ahead and create raids – the opposite of playing how you want. Raids are a pretty exclusive thing and a great thing for highly organized and structured guilds and players with manageable schedules. However, if you have been playing GW for this long I don’t think raids were something you were missing because the game has never been about them or designed with them in mind.

GW2 was always about doing what you wanted when you wanted and how you wanted.

You want legendary armor? You HAVE TO raid, you have to conform, you have to designate time in your schedule and study/learn boss mechanics . You need to have ascended gear because the Devs said it’s been tuned for such so no guild or PuG is going to let you in without it.

There are ways to create challenging group content for organized guilds for more than 5 players. Look at TT and even look at Gerent.

Honestly, ANet has just completely changed directions with the game and I personally do not like it. If I wanted a cookie-cutter raid based game I would not be playing GW2 there’s a million other games out there that have that and have it implemented better and were built around it as one of their core pillars. Throwing a raid into a 3 year old game with no supporting features around it is just poor design.

If they wanted to cater to the hardcore progression player, well, you already have fractals, too bad they can’t seem to get that right either.

Too much time and effort and tuning and perfection is required to create unique meaningful and challenging raids. ANet doesn’t have those types of resources and almost no game company does, look at the MMO landscape these days, every game gets chewed up and spit out when they resort to raiding as end-game.

I just do not understand what ANet was thinking when they decided to go in this direction with HoT and with the game in general.

I am not complaining about the value of the game. I definitely have gotten my money’s worth and do not feel cheated. I willingly paid the money for it and would do-so again. However, I just do not agree with the direction I am more and more beginning to realize that the game is going and wanted to voice my opinion and that fact that I may not be supporting the company in the future.

+ 1 + 1 + 1 + 1
I’m in the SAME situation as yours.
This is why I dislike HoT contents.

Thornum.8607:

I was considering replying elaborately and appeal to your common sense. I gave up halfway. You want Anet to cater to your needs only, and get mad when they also cater to other types of players. If you can’t see the selfishness in this, then any discussion on this topic is hopeless.

Nothing in this expansion is aimed at the vast population who buy gems and are looking for fun in limited playtime. Nothing. It’s full of grindy work. Work isn’t bad if it has a reasonable outcome. I work 60-80 hour weeks in real life at a stressful job that has good rewards. GW2 gives me little for time invested.

So why are some of us complaining in stead of leaving? We hope ANET brings this game back to its original and successful design.

Sytherek.7689:

I could not agree more or say it any better. Your statement hits all the nails on the head about what’s wrong with ANet’s new direction.

I’m finishing a few things on my characters, and then moving on. The new zones just aren’t fun. It’s as if the designers of the karkarma island took over, failing to see how empty their creation is, and deciding the whole game had to be that way. They had little actual content for an expansion, so they filled it with grindy stuff.

I’d pay 50 bucks for an expansion meant for the non-hardcore. I regret paying that for an expansion designed like HoT.

Today I finally GRINDED the story and I got stuck with the gliding not opening bug during the end-boss fight. GG !

Goldrock.9076:

I think this whole post has kinda gotten outa hand with armchair/back seating devs i havnt seen any official words saying they changed their design focus lol just a bunch of know alls speculating. Just chill and let it ride a bit before making a choices and eitherway not like we are PAYING monthly subs. So enjoy!

You’re right, we no have right to be critical, we’re not paying subs .. we’re just the ones who ALREADY PAID for HOT thinking it was an EXPANSION of the game we’d been playing for three years, nothing in the pre-release hype indicated it was a lurch backwards 20 years to 1990s group-or-die style gaming.

No, we have no right to complain, at all!

GW2 before HOT was largely a soloalbe game with group side-content, HOT is barely soloable exploration and almost entirely group-only main world content and now raids.

I’ll disagree with you on having to play the full meta. I guess it depends on what you want from the game. If you want loot, then yeah you’d have to put time into it. But I don’t think that’s so much an issue of how long the meta is, so much as no matter what ANet did there would always be a minimum time commitment to get something out.

There would always be the minimum, but the minimum should be under thirty minutes, ideally under ten. You should be able to get in, do a thing, and then leave when it’s done, and the loot tables all reset.

If you want to do three things in a row, then you get the rewards for three things, but if you only want to do one of those three things, then you get 100% of the reward for doing that thing, rather than only getting 10% of the reward and only getting the other 20% of the reward that event would entitle you to if you also complete the surrounding events.

Take the current VB meta. It’s currently a two hour cycle, 75 minutes of day, 45 minutes of night. Too much. Ideally it would cycle faster than that, but since they tied it to the day-night cycle of the game rather than just an internal loop, they should just compress the periods of activity.

Instead of having five meta stories that launch at dawn and you want to complete by dusk, sometimes taking most of those 75 minutes to complete, break it into two distinct time blocks, the “morning” missions and the “afternoon” missions, each chain designed to be completed in 30 minutes (meaning stream lining the number of enemy waves, the number of sub-events, etc.). Completing the morning missions would give you 100% of the meta reward you could achieve, and then your progress would reset at XX:35. Then you could do the Afternoon missions, or do anything else in the game, no difference in reward received.

The same would then apply to the Afternoon missions. Afternoon missions would be in no way dependent on morning missions, if all the morning missions failed, the afternoon ones would still start off from the same place. In some cases this might require an NPC push during the ten minute cap between them. The rewards would also be rebalanced a bit, so that you get slightly more reward for each sub-event, and slightly less for the meta chain.

Then night would fall, and night time would be completely distinct from the day time. Whether you completed all missions during the day or zero missions during the day, your personal reward scaling would reset at dusk, and the state of the world would be the same. Then there would be the defense phase, which lasts 20 minutes, but at the end of that, ALL night defense reward would be tallied, and you would start fresh for the “night boss” phase, which lasts the remaining 20 minutes.

A player who logs in to a fresh map 20 minutes before dawn would have exactly the same progress towards the boss phase rewards as someone who’d been there since dawn, and have exactly as much potential for reward in that boss phase as someone on a well established map (assuming that the map could be fully populated and organized in that time, which realistically is unlikely).

So basically, tighten it up. Make the meta durations shorter, don’t put so much emphasis on sticking with a single map for hours at a time. Focus the rewards more on what you contribute, not on what people on the other side of the map are up to.

Also, as a side change, if there is a participation track, don’t make it so that you have to wait until a given time to receive it. Let players “cash out” when they feel like it. Basically, in the current state, if you are on a VB map that gets T4, but you leave three minutes before dawn, you do not get the “end of night” reward bundle. This is silly. Instead, if you change maps for whatever reason, you should have the option of looting that reward, based on the earned level when you left. By that I mean, if you leave halfway through the boss defense phase, when the map is only at T2, then you could loot a T2 prize bundle, even though you didn’t stay the entire time. If you leave the map after the last boss is downed, but before dawn, then you’d get the full T4 bundle.

And then I’ll disagree with you on raid loot. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have raids have raid specific loot. Else what is the point?

If that attitude is true, then the point would be “none,” there would be no point to having raids and they absolutely should not have them at all. If, on the other hand, as some have asserted, there are people who actually enjoy raids, then that would be the reason for them, because people enjoy them. I can totally go either way, but what I cannot accept is the idea that enjoying raiding entitles anyone to a better class of loot.

Wallets are the power. Do you like a game/direction it goes? Then buy gems, support a game. You don’t like it? Stop spending money, play stuff that u like, and give “arcade MMO” lovers, a chance to support a game. Devs see only money flow’s.

Speaking up our concerns on a forum can be miss-fire."

Any way, try to have fun with stuff that you realy like:)

I’ll give you one thing, you waited a couple weeks and gave the game a chance before you came to the forums to complain. However, in the end the same response we gave to the day one whiners who didn’t even try fits here.

Raids are optional and we knew about them for quite some time. Since you are just in Exotics and still managed to have fun in all the vanilla content I really don’t see why suddenly Legendary armor becomes “mandatory” for you. I can’t comment further on Raids because I don’t Raid, am unlikely to ever try it, and it’s not targeted towards me. Furthermore I don’t feel challenged by the fact that there is a new mode of game play I will never take part in.

As for other forms of instanced group content having rewards nerfed that’s on the players not actually finding the content enjoyable if people no longer do regular dungeons.

Timed meta events exist in all zones (except for the starting zones now) and there are plenty of non-meta events going on in the new zones if you logged in at the wrong time. There are more meta events in the new zones and less non-meta I’ll give you that… but it is not like in Vanilla you could literally do whatever event you wanted at any time. I would definitely say that in general it could stand to be more rewarding. XP and loot should be added back to trash mobs… Arena.net should be less worried about people finding some way to exploit rewards.

Class traits and abilities used to be gated behind Hero Point Challenges and it should have never been changed. I’m not sorry it requires a bit of effort to unlock a new specialization which is supposed to be the equivalent of adding new levels to the game. Even now there could stand to be more ways to get Hero Points like through Achievements, Mastery levels, and maybe even Reward Tracks, however it should take time. And my mind is still boggled as to why people thought it would be instant or feel compelled to try and unlock them all on their dozen alts right away.

Add the adventures to the list of things that have time issues. These are fun little mini-games. Why can you only do them at a certain time in the meta chain? It is really frustrating. When I have a few minutes to kill or know I won’t be able to commit the full hour to a meta event, I would love to be able to do the adventures.

Hey Dulfy, why don’t you create an Adventures timer to complement your world boss timer?

wasnt it evident that this was the direction they wanted to go when they released Dry top and Silverwastes ?

but honestly what direction do you want to go ? back to big static maps like Lornar’s Pass ?

wasnt it evident that this was the direction they wanted to go when they released Dry top and Silverwastes ?

And one thought they would have learned from those maps, but instead they just doubled down on it.

but honestly what direction do you want to go ? back to big static maps like Lornar’s Pass ?

For the most part, yeah. Maps that you can take at your own pace, do things you want to do, not that are on their own schedule of meta-events. One map like that would eb fine, but all four is a bit much.

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

It’s possible they’re trying to pick up the massive Wildstar crowd with HoT, it’s a courageous strategy I hope it works out for them.

I don’t see how this will work. I heard that many people left wildstar because wildstar focuses on hardcore raid and the vast majority of the gamers do not have the time for raids. Creating raids to attract wildstar crowds probably wouldn’t work.

Only issue I have with ii now are that it’s day 2 of raids and already people are only looking for exp and asking you to show them your gear before you will even be considered, or even people not going to let you join them unless you have Legendary armour already.

I play with my friend, we have enjoyed the core game and also the expansion (Though short) and we have been able to play how we want and build our characters how we like, We intend to do all the content aside from pvp so this obviously means we will do raids but now you can’t just go in with anyone and find a good way to make your builds work together not have to change it not because the boss only takes conditions.

I do like that you need an actual tank in your party now and like the stand on the lightning spot or it goes off sort of things but as I have not the best of luck when it comes to getting decent item drops to turn into globs and money for me on it is a relatively slow trickle it will be a very long time before I attempt it again, if I even bother, it is starting to feel like when I played ff14 ARR where I had to grind and reach my caps for the week to be able to do the new content being released where it then turns what used to be fun into a choir.

I will at least do it one and hopefully then I will have a better opinion of the raid.

See you out their xD

MyriadStars.5679:

Cletus Van Damme.2795:

It’s possible they’re trying to pick up the massive Wildstar crowd with HoT, it’s a courageous strategy I hope it works out for them.

I don’t see how this will work. I heard that many people left wildstar because wildstar focuses on hardcore raid and the vast majority of the gamers do not have the time for raids. Creating raids to attract wildstar crowds probably wouldn’t work.

Fairly sure that was a joke… You know, massive, wildstar…

I am going to just copy what I have said in other threads of exactly the same theme:

I never realized how much of the PvE playerbase in this game wants it to be Skyrim instead of an MMO. Everyone here says “exploration/casual/at your own pace” as if that means anything more than pressing 1 as you watch Netflix and your map % goes up.

Everyone has that first game in a genre that they slowly realize isnt the genre for them. Fallout4 just came out for the people who want to wander around a world on EZ mode just to see some sights. Personally I love those games and put 60ish hours into Skyrim and the second Fallout4 goes on sale I will buy it and put 60ish hours into that game as well.
What those games do NOT have, however, is any reason to play them after you have seen the story. There is zero challenge, even on the highest difficulty, and once you have done some number of “oh look a cave.. oh wait its procedurally generated with 3 mobs and nothing here of value” you realize how shallow THOSE games are and quit.
I like that GW2 is semi-casual PvE, good sPvP and has a third game mode of WvW for when I get bored of the first two.

The masteries QQ is ridiculous. Would you rather go back to a leveling system where you can’t do content until you’re level X? The only difference between masteries and a traditional leveling system is that I can choose which zone’s masteries to focus on first rather than having to grind levels on all previous zones first.

@displacedTitan
The issue players have is that GW2 was advertised and designed as a casual game for over 3 years, that’s why a lot of the players started playing it. Changing the direction of where the game goes or changing the target audience would upset such players ofc.

Imagine if you bought a car advertised as a family car, you buy it to casually drive it to work, vacations, etc. Then after 3 years the manufacturer recalls your car and modifies it into a truck. You wouldn’t really like that, if you wanted a truck you would’ve bought a truck from the beginning, you just want a family car.