Guild Wars 2

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

In fact the best way to get Exotic Gear was by doing dungeons, and those things were considered HARD by MMORPG standards.

Well, yeah… mostly because people tried doing them as the undergeared levels those dungeons were supposedly for, not at level 80. That lasted how long… two? three weeks?

Rather hard to do Arah without being level 80 and that was the hardest dungeon. Two-three weeks? Try a couple of months, if not more (especially for Arah P4).

there’s a difference between one dungeon being considered hard (and remember, that half the difficulty of the Arah p4 was a result of bugs), and all of them being hard.
Also, hard by mmo standards? Not even close.

You probably don’t remember…. but I do. I was there when the first groups tried to finish those dungeons, same as I’m there with groups finishing the raid. The “hard by MMORPG standards” was very common during the first few months.

That time is now…

Torolan.5816:

I am not a game designer, so I don´t know what would be a golden way for everyone. I was just trying to communicate why I think making abilities dependend from special gear and a set direction of numbers pressing(aka a rotation)is inherently wrong for me.

Why is it obvious that X, Y or Z should step up their game? Because you and some other people say so? Content was free for all until HoT, and in no instance you could earn anything substantial from a content that was restricted by the question if you had personal abilities and skills that was not accessible from other sources. Not in fractals, not in wvw or pvp, nowhere. Where is the logic in that if not just for the sake of forcing people to play raids? If the content was as challenging and rewarding by itself as you say, why put a reward behind it that is useful for anyone instead of massive amounts of gold, titles and skins? In my opinion, Anet knew that they would not get enough people to play them if they did not let any way point in that direction.

Please also note that I wrote free, not accessible. If I would put a single respirator inside a small rock patch in an active volcano that would force someone to walk through pyroclasmic smoke on te only bridge to the respirator, it would also be accessible for a chronical asthmatic, but still not free.

But maybe I am missing the logic here?
We are not at the olympics, and this is not even remotely a sport. There are no championships for raids either. Your reward would only be really unique if it would read something like that:
“This is the raid reward X. It was rewarded to Harper.4173 at the 22th december of 2015 after he finished the raid. He was the 27th person to beat it.”
If that is not the case, your reward is bound to be invalidated anyway as time goes on because more and more people will get an absolutely identical reward. so in my thinking, you´re not winning an olympic medal, but just a medal of good conduct that gets more common with every hour that passes. Aren´t we entering the treadmill here everyonew loathes, always on the hunt for the next unique gear?
Everything that protects your reward for now is that people will be getting it after you, until it is so common that nobody will notice it anymore. So your triumph is short lived.

Content wasn’t “free” – some of it was still skill-gated – few pug runs went well in Arah.

And yes you could earn gold elsewhere but real gold was earned in instanced content through skill – selling spots was even more profitable than speed runs and it took considerable skill to 3 man a level 50 fractal for example.

I agree that skin rarity disappears over time but still – having it rare for as long as possible matters. The extreme example you gave doesn’t invalidate my point.
It was cooler to have Twilight back in the day when you maybe encountered 1 or 2 other people with it per day ( say you played 8 hours) than it is today when it’s incredibly commonplace.

The triumph is short lived – but it depends if that “short” is a couple of months, a year or 2 years in length. That difference matters.

Also – what I wanted to say I stand by – Raids are difficult content and if people want the associated rewards they should step up their game. It’s as simple as that – the content was designed to be beaten and it was designed to be hard – so if people want the rewards instead of crying about it on the forums the best thing to do is to improve and beat the content.
It’s not me who’s saying so – it’s the developers through the way they made the content. They’re literally saying: get better at the game in order to get these rewards.

I think they made a topic on the forums where they said “we’ve started a bucket collection for your tears” or something like that. I think their statement is pretty clear.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

In fact the best way to get Exotic Gear was by doing dungeons, and those things were considered HARD by MMORPG standards.

Well, yeah… mostly because people tried doing them as the undergeared levels those dungeons were supposedly for, not at level 80. That lasted how long… two? three weeks?

Rather hard to do Arah without being level 80 and that was the hardest dungeon. Two-three weeks? Try a couple of months, if not more (especially for Arah P4).

there’s a difference between one dungeon being considered hard (and remember, that half the difficulty of the Arah p4 was a result of bugs), and all of them being hard.
Also, hard by mmo standards? Not even close.

Well MMO standards vary but I can tell you dungeons were hard for more than weeks. A few months in people were complaining about melee being suicide in most cases and honestly it took a pretty long kitten time before people figured out what and how to dodge – how to properly build up their class and how to play.

Yes dungeons were hard – and they stayed like that for a while – eventually as people improved it got easier – but it was more than a few weeks.

A few weeks after release the vast majority of players had not hit 80 yet – so how could dungeons have gotten easy then when most players weren’t even properly geared?

Harper.4173:

It’s not me who’s saying so – it’s the developers through the way they made the content. They’re literally saying: get better at the game in order to get these rewards.

I think they made a topic on the forums where they said “we’ve started a bucket collection for your tears” or something like that. I think their statement is pretty clear.

:-) That sounds incredibly unprofessional and juvenile. Link please?

How much content was “Free” and how much content was gated in a way that could be considered difficult by your standards, Harper? 90% easy to 10% hard maybe? How is the ratio for HoT? If it´s 50-50, you´re pretty generous in my mind.

I read this bucket for tears comment too and had a pretty good laugh about it. As a former Eve online player, I know this stuff pretty well.

I disagree with the intention of Anet to make players better at the game. I am indeed very sure that Anet does not give a flying squirrel about your, my or anyones ability to play the game. My guess is that they kind of knew that many people fled other games for GW2 to avoid raiding without the consequences of exclusive content and time commitment and had to put such a big carrot on the stick that people at least had to give it a try to justify implementing it in the next shareholder meeting. I don´t know any better than you in this case, though.

I also don´t know about your personal skill level, but I have seen enough zerker pros(which was the thing to do not so long ago) falling left and right on faceroll content because they just plain sucked at GW2 and just played the gear because some internet math geek said so. These guys won´t turn into superheroes over night, and viper and sinister also won´t save them from being subpar players skillwise.

Halandir.3609:

Harper.4173:

It’s not me who’s saying so – it’s the developers through the way they made the content. They’re literally saying: get better at the game in order to get these rewards.

I think they made a topic on the forums where they said “we’ve started a bucket collection for your tears” or something like that. I think their statement is pretty clear.

:-) That sounds incredibly unprofessional and juvenile. Link please?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/To-the-devs-How-many-buckets/first

I was unable to find the original thread because these forums are terrible when searching for something and as of right now I’ve manually gone through 80 pages of the dungeons subforum to no avail – might try more later.

The link above is a reference to that initial thread I mentioned with a dev response. So yes – you can easily deduce that the original post existed.

Also this: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/countdown-to-launch-raids/
“Crystal Reid has a message for would-be raiding champions: “We started a bucket collection for your tears.”

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

In fact the best way to get Exotic Gear was by doing dungeons, and those things were considered HARD by MMORPG standards.

Well, yeah… mostly because people tried doing them as the undergeared levels those dungeons were supposedly for, not at level 80. That lasted how long… two? three weeks?

Rather hard to do Arah without being level 80 and that was the hardest dungeon. Two-three weeks? Try a couple of months, if not more (especially for Arah P4).

there’s a difference between one dungeon being considered hard (and remember, that half the difficulty of the Arah p4 was a result of bugs), and all of them being hard.
Also, hard by mmo standards? Not even close.

You probably don’t remember…. but I do. I was there when the first groups tried to finish those dungeons, same as I’m there with groups finishing the raid. The “hard by MMORPG standards” was very common during the first few months.

I was there too. It was hard. But then, i was trying that first dungeon as level 46 in greens/blues, with a party that was even lower. And i had no idea what to do. Also, you must really don’t remember what was then really hard by mmo standards, because that wasn’kitten Not even close.
Granted, the dungeons were hard for a lot of people (and still are), because a majority of players in GW2 are at a really low skill level, but saying that they were hard by previous MMO standards is a joke.

I don’t know who promoted that it will be SPECIFICALLY CASUAL.
And for me it was the worst game phase until now. Since GW1 core, the game was nothing but nightmare for a lot of us, game has purpose now, before it was meaningless “your actions doesn’t matter festival”.

I agree some things are to grindy, but RAIDS are on SPOT, they should be repeatable, for 50% less reward then the first weekly kill. Other then that i don’t have a word to complain about, they are perfect challenging group content for my guild.

But i’m sad since we only have 3 hours of content per week, and then we are done.
Kind of disappointing.

I don’t want anet to go back, i just want them to put in more effort and less GEM store junk content that ruins the game.

How it ruins it? Yes they get some extra money, matter of fact, way to much for the effort they put in. Expansions cover full expenses and even more, GW2 CAN run without extra GEM store content, think of it as.. unique rewards! This would make game soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more rewarding, so much more enjoyable, and so much more feeling acomplished when you go around the world gather things that you desire the most! but what we do now? We go around to get EXP, KARMA, greens, blues and junk

Thx for reading, face it, it’s a fact.

Astralporing.1957:

I was there too. It was hard. But then, i was trying that first dungeon as level 46 in greens/blues, with a party that was even lower. And i had no idea what to do. Also, you must really don’t remember what was then really hard by mmo standards, because that wasn’kitten Not even close.
Granted, the dungeons were hard for a lot of people (and still are), because a majority of players in GW2 are at a really low skill level, but saying that they were hard by previous MMO standards is a joke.

Maybe the lower level dungeons were being done by undergeared and underleveled people but not the level 80 ones. Crucible of Eternity and Arah were probably been done in full exotics by the most experienced teams, and still failed. As for the difficulty, you say you were there but judging by what you post you weren’t in fact there. Guild Wars 2 dungeons were indeed hard by MMORPG dungeon standards, maybe you confused that with raids or something? Or you think that dungeons in other MMORPGs are so hard? Maybe you haven’t played many other MMORPGs if you think that.

Firelysm.8190:

I don’t know who promoted that it will be SPECIFICALLY CASUAL.
And for me it was the worst game phase until now. Since GW1 core, the game was nothing but nightmare for a lot of us, game has purpose now, before it was meaningless “your actions doesn’t matter festival”.

I agree some things are to grindy, but RAIDS are on SPOT, they should be repeatable, for 50% less reward then the first weekly kill. Other then that i don’t have a word to complain about, they are perfect challenging group content for my guild.

But i’m sad since we only have 3 hours of content per week, and then we are done.
Kind of disappointing.

I don’t want anet to go back, i just want them to put in more effort and less GEM store junk content that ruins the game.

How it ruins it? Yes they get some extra money, matter of fact, way to much for the effort they put in. Expansions cover full expenses and even more, GW2 CAN run without extra GEM store content, think of it as.. unique rewards! This would make game soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more rewarding, so much more enjoyable, and so much more feeling acomplished when you go around the world gather things that you desire the most! but what we do now? We go around to get EXP, KARMA, greens, blues and junk

Thx for reading, face it, it’s a fact.

Your actions still don´t matter as long as there is no hall of fame . You´re now doing hard content with people you did less hard before, just on the next higher level or organization, difficulty and numbers. Nothing has changed, you would maybe not even realize a change when dungeons had not been broken and exploitable from the start.

Treadmill all you want, your the Eternal title is devalued a little bit more while I type this, and it is further devalued while you maybe read this as more people have probably beaten the raid on both instances. Your comment about 3 hours of content only further suggest that I am right when I think that your sense of accomplisment in GW2 fully depends on raids and it´s features while invalidating everything anyone has achieved in GW2 in the same breath and was proud of.

Happy treadmilling I guess?

This game has a lot of options open to them for how they want to have fun. Why complain about an aspect of the game that you don’t want to play anyways? And if you are playing it, are you doing what is more useful for a developer? To state why you wholeheartedly believe there is a problem, how the problem is ruining the experience, what could be done to improve it, and have an open discussion about potential obstacles and unintended game mechanics/gameplay. Some people have already been doing that, to some degree, or even more so the entire degree. But because it’s not posted about on reddit, I wonder if it’s going on deaf ears.

Torolan.5816:

Treadmill all you want

You realise “the gear treadmill” hasn’t existed in GW2 for about 2 years now, Ascended is the top level of gear and will remain there for the foreseeable future. You can’t just take the word ‘treadmill’ from the phrase ‘the gear treadmill,’ think it means something negative you don’t understand and just use it as a point (this seems to have happened with the word ‘grind’ recently – people with no concept of the word just spam it because they know it means ‘something bad’ but without any of the justification required, I blame twitter..).

Raids have no treadmill and saying they do just shows how invalid your opinions are. What you want is Legendary Armour and you’re willing to throw ANY negatively charged words from gaming at Raids to bring them down so you can get access – your tactics are obvious and worthless to anyone with critical faculties.

ShelBlackblood.7826:

maddoctor.2738:

Only challenging part is the raid, is raiding 70-80% of the whole expansion?

Some HPs, general exploration while being constantly attacked – as I’ve heard – even more often than trash mobs did in the first Orr map versions (pre nerf) and very few WPs which punishes players for dying instead of helping. Also several places are locked behind meta events. I agree with you that it’s indeed arguable if this counts as “hardcore” content, but I wouldn’t call this design elements “casual” neither. Still, the open(!) world should at least be explorable for everyone, people shouldn’t be forced to cry for help in map chat or even pay for it on LFG. I have nothing against instanced hard content (call it raids, high level fractals, whatever) because people can avoid them since they won’t “have to” travel through them to get where they want. Map completion was never hardcore, not even when it still included WvW, everyone could do it before.

Please correct me if I’m wrong on some of these points, I don’t know if Anet patched this stuff during the last few weeks. I didn’t really read much here lately after the first month of ArenaNet’s legendary silence.

And about the maps, I don’t get the problem. You don’t have to play through the entire map sequence to fight the last battle, you can just port there like any world boss. You don’t have to be in that last fight either, nobody is forcing you to kill the Gerent, go on TD, play the game, then leave, you can play on the new maps just like any of the older ones.

It’s not about the last battle. It’s about exploring the map. Again, please correct me if the “event/time restricted areas / hero points” are still a thing or if they were patched to be always accessible. If you tell me I’m wrong, I’ll stop complaining here.

for that particular zone everything is available appart from those areas that are connected to the final battle.

I never denied that I want legendary armor and that I am not interested in raid content itself, I already stated it much more than once(just ask maddoctor^^) .
As you lobbied for raids, I lobby against them. Isn´t that one of the points of an official discussion forum, lobbying? This thread here suggests that GW2 is not casual friendly anymore, and I agree with that position and fix it mainly on raids.
That my reasoning is not supportive of your own position is of no concern for my personal opinion. I am rather glad that my lobbying is so obvious that nobody can suggest that I have shady motives. I am not a secret agent or something and I hope that my opinion has so many supporters that Anet is changing it´s business strategy over time back to my prefered type of gameplay, and I see no point in denying that.

I treadmilled, you treadmilled, everyone treadmilled in any MMO game they played. I don´t want to play a dictionary war with you. Maybe my definition is not what stands in websters or the duden or wherever, I glady give you that if you like.

Torolan.5816:

This thread here suggests that GW2 is not casual friendly anymore, and I agree with that position and fix it mainly on raids.

That anymore is what I completely disagree with. But I guess it’s very hard to come to an agreement when the word casual (and the phrase casual friendly by extension) have different meanings to different people.

Torolan.5816:

I treadmilled, you treadmilled, everyone treadmilled in any MMO game they played. I don´t want to play a dictionary war with you. Maybe my definition is not what stands in websters or the duden or wherever, I glady give you that if you like.

Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.

Dictionary wars is unnecessary, just showing you have no idea what you’re talking about and so your conclusions and desires for the future should be ignored – cause listening to clueless people is bad policy ^^

Coulter.2315:

Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.

We thought that once about Exotics too.

Astralporing.1957:

Coulter.2315:

Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.

We thought that once about Exotics too.

As much as I disliked the idea of Asc., I’ve come to accept that ANet did mess up with exotics. Not because there were people crying for new stuff to grind, but because Exotics did not create the kind of demand needed to make farming materials worthwhile. A very large part of the game’s rewards are crafting materials, or waste items that ANet hopes people will salvage to sell the crafting mats.

Many of those items are worth a lot more now than they were at launch. Sure, some of this is that there is more gold in the game. However, demand is demonstrably higher.

ANet needed something to fuel that demand. It’s a pity they didn’t do it with cosmetics, instead. However, it took them time to ramp up cosmetic production to the point that it comes close to meeting the demand for new stuff to “get.” Asc. bought them time to get the cosmetic endgame closer to being “enough.”

Don’t get me wrong, I still find Asc. crafting to be a monumental pain in the kitten. However, I believe it did what it was intended to do. Higher mat prices benefit a large segment of the player-base.

Astralporing.1957:

Coulter.2315:

Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.

We thought that once about Exotics too.

Not sure who ‘we’ is, but I don’t believe that’s the case. I never anticipated Exotic was going to stay THE top tier; I’m not sure why anyone would have gotten that idea from. In the early years of the game, obviously it was a little harder to get but that’s to be expected for almost anything when the game is in it’s nascent stage.

In addition, Exotic was just WAY too easy to make, even when it was top tier gear. Anet screwed up there because it simply wasn’t hard enough to make Exotic to pull on mats from the economy.

Granted, there are contradictions (like being able to buy a Legendary weapon off of the TP) but Exotic was just never that interesting, complex or hard to get to be top tier. Most likely, it was probably the average armor that ANet intended everyone to be able to get.

Coulter.2315:

Torolan.5816:

I treadmilled, you treadmilled, everyone treadmilled in any MMO game they played. I don´t want to play a dictionary war with you. Maybe my definition is not what stands in websters or the duden or wherever, I glady give you that if you like.

Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.

Dictionary wars is unnecessary, just showing you have no idea what you’re talking about and so your conclusions and desires for the future should be ignored – cause listening to clueless people is bad policy ^^

You are speculating that ascended will stay the best, and that was already invalidated with legendary armor up to a certain point. As you are fond of unveiling my schemes, I will gladly tell you another idea of mine: Ascended will not stay top armor stats forever.
Sounds strange in your ears, right? Because Colin or some other guy said so in the past that it would stay that way and it sounds stupid for you to make another tier because GW2 does not work that way. Right?
As you obviously know so much more about semantics and the gaming industry as a whole than me, you should know that the word of a CEO is completely worthless in regard of design for the future of a game or even a product. Money talks.

And to lend you a hand with the first counterargument that will probably spring into mind:
Legendary armor is superior to ascended despite it having the same stats as ascended. It does not matter if the superior part, change stats, is of no concern for you because it does not work out for you because you also need meta runes to succeed. It is not so significant that you can´t live without it of course. But the upgrade is without a doubt there.

Torolan.5816:

Coulter.2315:

Torolan.5816:

I treadmilled, you treadmilled, everyone treadmilled in any MMO game they played. I don´t want to play a dictionary war with you. Maybe my definition is not what stands in websters or the duden or wherever, I glady give you that if you like.

Actually treadmill is based on the rotation of new tiers of gear and content – describing how whenever you get to the end of a tier this new horizon of stuff to get to appears. This DOES NOT EXIST IN GW2, Ascended is the best tier and there won’t be more.

Dictionary wars is unnecessary, just showing you have no idea what you’re talking about and so your conclusions and desires for the future should be ignored – cause listening to clueless people is bad policy ^^

You are speculating that ascended will stay the best, and that was already invalidated with legendary armor up to a certain point. As you are fond of unveiling my schemes, I will gladly tell you another idea of mine: Ascended will not stay top armor stats forever.
Sounds strange in your ears, right? Because Colin or some other guy said so in the past that it would stay that way and it sounds stupid for you to make another tier because GW2 does not work that way. Right?
As you obviously know so much more about semantics and the gaming industry as a whole than me, you should know that the word of a CEO is completely worthless in regard of design for the future of a game or even a product. Money talks.

And to lend you a hand with the first counterargument that will probably spring into mind:
Legendary armor is superior to ascended despite it having the same stats as ascended. It does not matter if the superior part, change stats, is of no concern for you because it does not work out for you because you also need meta runes to succeed. It is not so significant that you can´t live without it of course. But the upgrade is without a doubt there.

Glad you completely agree with me (I’m not taking your guesses which contradict the only people who have genuine control over the game as anything serious – glad you don’t either).

Legendary Armour is not an extra tier of gear above Ascended.

Glad we had this talk.

Completely agree with the OP. I absolutely loved the original/core GW2, such fun and then HoT arrived and utterly shattered the fun part and made the game utterly frustrating for people with limited time and having to solo the content/story line. In fact, much of HoT is simply off-limits for me and if I could get my money back on this Xpac I would.

I can’t imagine what it will be like trying to progress through HoT once people move onto newer content. It’s very annoying that you cannot progress the story line without unlocking mastery skills which in turn requires hard to get XP. It’s a real shame that the game play has just gone.

With that said, I think visually HoT is stunning. It has a real sense of getting utterly lost in a deep jungle. It is often very difficult to get from A to B and there are many many places I have no idea how to reach. The music is also pretty cool and creates the appropriate atmosphere.

Finally, if your color blind it makes finding “things” on the map next to impossible in the Xpac. As such, it’s by luck that I end up where I need to be.

Coulter.2315:

Glad you completely agree with me (I’m not taking your guesses which contradict the only people who have genuine control over the game as anything serious – glad you don’t either).

Legendary Armour is not an extra tier of gear above Ascended.

Glad we had this talk.

At least people aren’t condescending here – Oh well…

Keep pushing your agenda, the rest of us will keep pushing ours no matter how much you disagree. We have all had a few chances to evaluate how straight and consistently the captain of this ship is plotting the course: Things may change yet again!

Our agendas are essentially irrelevant: Metrics decide the next move/change of course.
Until then I keep playing casually GW2-style: Log in, cash daily, log out, check forums, play something else…
I guess in 2-3 months my love for this game may be worn out to the point where I skip directly to: “something else” :-)

Thats not bad/wrong. If Anet makes more money from this change in course: Good for them, I had enough fun for my money but they won’t see any more of mine.
€10-15 a month goes a long way for casual entertainment on Steam…

BIGHARSHNESS.3510:

… The core game didn’t get more challanging, it’s still the same.

No, it got less rewarding, as in less loot.

Harper.4173:

So then how do you make content harder without it being harder?

It’s not “harder” that’s the problem. Or, at least not much more than a small part of it. It’s the walled-off, the gated, the impossible maps, extreme overage on events, etc.

Harder isn’t the problem. It’s PART of the problem. Put all those together and it becomes not a nice game any more.

Give us “hard mode”. Give us very difficult encounters, raids, and tougher dungeons. But, don’t make the storyline-required content nearly impossible to complete without jumping through the aforementioned issues.

Harper.4173:

And can you not accomplish something in GW2 in an hour?

False.

All you can accomplish in an hour is get roughly halfway through the first mastery, which is required before you can even move to the next step in the storyline.

maddoctor.2738:

Tell me please, as someone who didn’t buy HoT, did you have fun running Arah or high level Fractals?

No and no, at least not repeatedly.

I bought HoT, and honestly, I spent months looking forward to it, the first few days no regrets, but once the dust settled I lost my way. I wondered for weeks why I just didnt want to play any more, even though I love the gameplay and this thread has given me that answer. I can’t play as I want, as there is no reward in that.

Before I could log in even if I only had an hour, and lets say I was farming torward a legendary. I could get that through gold pretty much, so you can do whatever you like to get to your goal, farm SW, world bosses, dungeons (found them too toxic community wise), wvw or eotm.

With raids and the current open world pve, this is simply not possible. The worst part of the games community has monopoly on the new progression, I won’t even attempt raids for this very reason. Insults and kicking of someone because they made a mistake, insecure plebs blaming others just isn’t my thing. Why the stories and events have worked, is because they were open, anyone and everyone joined, and the more the merrier. The toxic tower worked because people helped as opposed to it becoming elitist and non-inclusive to less skilled or casual players.

There is no log in and progress any more. There is no option to play as you like, and to the devs, I certainly do not need to get better at your game, I more than meet the skill requirements.

Raids should of worked through a match making system, balancing classes and stat choices to the content, and the event should of looked something like the opening events when you start a new character. Instead, we get elite mobs with some half decent mechanics that are just dps races and damage avoidance. Its just dungeon bosses basically.

Then there is the issue with stats. I discovered in open pve a nice semi tank semi damage spec that allows me to survive a lot during events but be able to burst mobs down quite quick(though damage is not sustainable), this isn’t viable in raids. All the gear I spent months farming, and the legendary, is not viable because you are not picked for raids unless meta. I don’t totally blame others for that, as they just want to progress themselves.

Ascended gear was the start of the decay sadly, time gated gear is utterly the worst idea ever brought in to this game. Even the method to change stats if far too expensive to do regular enough that you can play freely. It made casual take a back seat, it made new players fall behind, and now that is magnified even more so.

The idea of raids was a good one, most of us want it, but it has been executed very very badly. If I wanted to play with elitists farming half easy bosses for gear, I would of subbed back to WoW. Go back to why GW2 was better, for the option to progress however you want, and remove the time gate from ascended or make it cheaper/free to change stats.

Bish.8627:

I wondered for weeks why I just didnt want to play any more, even though I love the gameplay and this thread has given me that answer. I can’t play as I want, as there is no reward in that.

This is basically the root of the issue and I think is what is missed by a lot of people. I love the new level design and think what they have done to innovate in the open world MMO space is amazing. The open world content is actually easier than Orr at release when we all had crap gear and packs of respawning mobs would chain CC you. What is different is now everything feels like it’s locked behind something else and you are not rewarded for just logging in and wandering around like you were in the base game.

The base game had a lot of challenging content in the form of jump puzzles, mini dungeons, world bosses and some world events. All of that content felt optional so they were mostly activities you did if you wanted to challenge yourself. You could always log in and find something interesting and set your own goals.

Now with collections and mastery points items and locations are locked behind very specific things. Here is some of the “challenging content” I am running into as a casual returning player.

1. Waiting 45 minutes for dragons stand to get going, trying to spam click join taxis and ending up with “world is full” with no way to get on another map for another 2 hours.
2. Getting DCed/crashing during a meta boss event and finding myself in a world with no progress.
3. Achievements that require events to fail in order to progress with no way to select a map thereby requiring begging other players to not complete a map.
4. Mastery points requiring gold medals in twitch based games with crappy camera angles.
5. A general push towards “event chains or bust” in relation to gaining experience needed for masteries which are needed for exploration.

Overall none of this would be as big of a deal if things were so much was not gated behind it all. In general my playstyle of logging on and exploring around makes me feel like I am not making progress and I feel much more pushed towards activities I don’t enjoy because if I don’t I won’t have a skill that lets me progress through some other area.

I’ve seen people in this thread saying things like “im casual and I play 8 hours a night” and “I’m casual and this is mandatory”.

Newsflash, you aren’t casual. You are playing the game A LOT. Hell, almost as much as I used to play when hardcore raiding in WoW.

And if you are setting yourself insanely high goals in insanely short timescales. Again, not casual. You can do these things, it will just take a kitten ton more time to do it.

I’m working for my nightfury and the winter backpack. I play 1-3 hours a day if I’m lucky. I know and accept I won’t have them “rightthekittennow”, but I will get them.

We really need a new name for people with this horrific entitlement. I suggest “slackcore”.

harcore for me is 12 hours min a week scheduled raiding or organised PVP, everything else is ‘casual’ and that includes highly skilled players, i.e skill is not a factor, its the absolute time committment for large periods of time.

Valentinus.3412:

I’ve seen people in this thread saying things like “im casual and I play 8 hours a night” and “I’m casual and this is mandatory”.

Newsflash, you aren’t casual. You are playing the game A LOT. Hell, almost as much as I used to play when hardcore raiding in WoW.

And if you are setting yourself insanely high goals in insanely short timescales. Again, not casual. You can do these things, it will just take a kitten ton more time to do it.

I’m working for my nightfury and the winter backpack. I play 1-3 hours a day if I’m lucky. I know and accept I won’t have them “rightthekittennow”, but I will get them.

We really need a new name for people with this horrific entitlement. I suggest “slackcore”.

Two points:

A. I don’t think you can find a post that says, “I’m a casual player, and I play 8 hours a night.” So this is a straw man argument at best. And even if you could…..

B. “Casual play” can also mean that you don’t like the need to LFG, join a Party, get on Team Speak or participate in coordinated Group events that require playing continuously for extended periods of time.

Casual play can mean that you can drop-in and drop-out of PvE, be afk to take care of family duties, get a snack, check on a football game, etc.

The HoT maps are not casual, if defined as such.

Edit: And, yes, I have 4,900 hours in the game and consider myself a “casual” player.

I agree casual can mean limited play time, but I would add that it also means low stress or playing as you like.

By this, with myself as an example, I like to just relax when I play. Dungeons and pvp stress me, so I prefer to follow a train, follow world boss timers, wvw or explore/level up. If I wanted to play something more intense, honestly I would play an FPS or go back to commanding in Planetside 2.

My point a few posts up, was that doing most of these, you could reach your goal at your own pace. Be it a new gear set with runes, a new skin, a legendary etc. With ascended gear its time gated and the new current game style, you must do events and other rewards are locked behind game styles, raids especially.

Seems to me casual for this game meant having easy access to all areas of the game and play them at your own pace, that meant even having access to the greatest rewards in the game, legendaries, with the only group requirement being dungeons. The expansion has officially taken GW2 off to a more restrictive path with raids and the new weapon/armor legendaries.

As for raids… WoW did it better.
WoW has improved and changed their raiding levels to cater to anyone playing their game, from casual raid finder 25man, normal flex 10-25, heroic flex 10-25, mythic 20.
If you’re going to copy WoW and bring raids, then do it properly, GW2 is still 6 years behind WoW in raiding, and probably will never get to WoW’s level of raiding.

If this is the path Anet wants to go down with the smaller raiding player base, hey it’s optional you don’t have to do it!
Start adding more grinding rewards like the bat shoulders, hey it’s optional you don’t have to do it! or the snow shoulders, hey it’s optional you don’t have to do it!
Then so be it, playing this game is optional too, and if you want to keep adding more optional stuff for people to skip, players are just going to go with the option to stop playing, cause what’s the point when you start stripping long term goals away from casuals?

The only thing that isn’t optional these days is the amount of rewards they strip out of the game to boost certain other parts of the game, seems its mandatory for the livelihood of the gem store.

I’ve already had my time and fun with raids in EQ and WoW, I didn’t come to GW2 for raids, I came for it’s WvW. After 3 years of having a casuals paradise for the entire game, I’m not surprised at the complaints about the change in direction with the expansion, nor will I be surprised when more players stop playing.

Everything is optional!
Everything is cool, when you’re part of the hardcore team!
Everything is optional! when we’re grinding for our dream!

We know everything is optional… including, to play, to stay in the game or to buy future expansions…

If they dont give me what i want, i have “a lot of optionts”, if you know what i mean…

And btw, anet has the option as well of make the game that i like or dont. all has been said, and the ball is in their roof.
We’ll see if HoT has been a success or what in a few days when sells are public.

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

And can you not accomplish something in GW2 in an hour?

False.

All you can accomplish in an hour is get roughly halfway through the first mastery, which is required before you can even move to the next step in the storyline.

Uh, then you are not ready for the expansion then.

In an hour I (and pretty much all of my guildies across two guilds) can

1. Complete 9 fractal for all fractal dailies
2. Or Complete Vale Guardian + Gorseval or Gorseval + Sabetha, some group can finish all 3 within the hour.
3. Or max out two tier 1 mastery tracks or a tier 2 mastery track
4. Or do two Vine wraths and subsequent events
5. Or do Tequatl
6. Or Finish a 1/4 of HoT storyline
7. the list goes on etc..

Maybe if you play casually then you shouldn’t expect to do what non-casuals can accomplish. It doesn’t matter which game, it doesn’t matter which meta. It’s the the game’s problem, looks like it’s personal problem on how to effectively handle time. Just don’t expect the game to hand you everything.

And the part that makes me the most unhappy about your post, baconofpigs, is that you are absolutely right with everything you say in it.

Efficiency is the key word here. But I make an educated guess here and say that the majority of people don´t want to play at the limit and be efficient. I want to be efficient in my job, not in my spare time. In my spare time, I want to have fun and relax.

I know this lifestyle probably is not modern when people in general are always available for their superiors, face book friends and live to work instead of working to live. But I like it my way.^^

And I think I agree with you. It’s efficiency that’s the key but relaxing can be incorporate. Being efficient doesn’t mean you have to stress out. If it isn’t fun for someone, that person should stop doing what he’s doing and re-evaluate the pros and the cons.

Let me describe what’s my typical day in Guild Wars 2.

1. 1 hour – pre-reset: figure out which daily is left to do, and finish it up.
2. half an hour pre-reset: ask in guild chat if guild fractal group is full while afk at sparkfly
3. Keep afk at sparkly til 3rd battery, read google news, tag the last battery, drop meteor shower on teq’s leg, get 2g and a chest
4. If guild group needs a person, join the group, otherwise LFG the 9 fractals – This takes approximately an hour
5. Fractal dailies done, gather flowers, log on all char gather flax seeds, gather guild node, gather home instance node – This should take an hour, while waiting for more guildies to log on, read some news, read some reddit, watch youtube.
6. Guild fractal group should be done, 10 people on ts, get ready for raid. I’m still watching youtube.
7. Beat raid, this should takes 2 – 2.5 hours if it’s progression day, 1 hour if it’s make up day for whoever needs whichever boss.
8. Finish wintersday daily, do 3 pvp matches, chat on ts, afk at SW
9. Log off

I don’t know but I consider myself a casual. Sure there are some part of my game time that requires maximum efficiency but for the most part, I just relax and afk a lot.

BaconofPigs.1683:

And I think I agree with you. It’s efficiency that’s the key but relaxing can be incorporate. Being efficient doesn’t mean you have to stress out. If it isn’t fun for someone, that person should stop doing what he’s doing and re-evaluate the pros and the cons.

Let me describe what’s my typical day in Guild Wars 2.

1. 1 hour – pre-reset: figure out which daily is left to do, and finish it up.
2. half an hour pre-reset: ask in guild chat if guild fractal group is full while afk at sparkfly
3. Keep afk at sparkly til 3rd battery, read google news, tag the last battery, drop meteor shower on teq’s leg, get 2g and a chest
4. If guild group needs a person, join the group, otherwise LFG the 9 fractals – This takes approximately an hour
5. Fractal dailies done, gather flowers, log on all char gather flax seeds, gather guild node, gather home instance node – This should take an hour, while waiting for more guildies to log on, read some news, read some reddit, watch youtube.
6. Guild fractal group should be done, 10 people on ts, get ready for raid. I’m still watching youtube.
7. Beat raid, this should takes 2 – 2.5 hours if it’s progression day, 1 hour if it’s make up day for whoever needs whichever boss.
8. Finish wintersday daily, do 3 pvp matches, chat on ts, afk at SW
9. Log off

I don’t know but I consider myself a casual. Sure there are some part of my game time that requires maximum efficiency but for the most part, I just relax and afk a lot.

Seriously, you keep a tighter schedule than I do at my job. If that works for you then great, but I never planned anything when I played as, to me, it is a game and not my job!

If that is what it takes now to get the “full experience” for some players I am glad I only do my 3 dailies and log out now (although I do plan them now so I can leave quicker).

edit: clarity

BaconofPigs.1683:

Uh, then you are not ready for the expansion then.

In an hour I (and pretty much all of my guildies across two guilds) can

1. Complete 9 fractal for all fractal dailies
2. Or Complete Vale Guardian + Gorseval or Gorseval + Sabetha, some group can finish all 3 within the hour.
3. Or max out two tier 1 mastery tracks or a tier 2 mastery track
4. Or do two Vine wraths and subsequent events
5. Or do Tequatl
6. Or Finish a 1/4 of HoT storyline
7. the list goes on etc..

Maybe if you play casually then you shouldn’t expect to do what non-casuals can accomplish. It doesn’t matter which game, it doesn’t matter which meta. It’s the the game’s problem, looks like it’s personal problem on how to effectively handle time. Just don’t expect the game to hand you everything.

Do you realize that NOTHING you mentioned has anything to do with the topic I was addressing? We’re talking about HoT masteries, and I was specifically saying you couldn’t get through half of the first HoT mastery in an hour, and you need that mastery in order to continue. Now, I may be wrong in my numbers, but it seems roughly correct.

You should try to have at least a passing understanding of the topic before replying.

legendary armor is superior to ascended,and the gear treadmill has started.anet lied and did infact invalidate all our hard worked for gear.

Daddicus.6128:

Harper.4173:

So then how do you make content harder without it being harder?

It’s not “harder” that’s the problem. Or, at least not much more than a small part of it. It’s the walled-off, the gated, the impossible maps, extreme overage on events, etc.

Harder isn’t the problem. It’s PART of the problem. Put all those together and it becomes not a nice game any more.

Give us “hard mode”. Give us very difficult encounters, raids, and tougher dungeons. But, don’t make the storyline-required content nearly impossible to complete without jumping through the aforementioned issues.

This is something I resonate with too – the HoT expansion didn’t make the game harder as in requiring you to get better skill-wise in order to complete – that’s a part of it but what I feel HoT did is make the game less accessible.

Some of that loss in accessibility you can compensate with skill( eg. you can solo a HP that’s designed to be a group event if you’re that good) but most things require large numbers of players or you’re not going to get them( map metas) and a lot of other things tie into those initial things that require players.

The reason a lot of this is gated is to make people play the content and not skip it.

HoT launched with very little content – so forcing players to do as much of that content as possible seems to be the way they’re going to “hide” the lack of content on launch.

Look at the main story being gated behind mastery tracks – it’s there to keep you from burning through the story in 3 hours.
Look at certain map completion items on some maps being gated behind the new movement mechanics – it’s there to keep you grinding out that XP.

HoT is about making players play the little content they delivered as much as possible because if it gave you freedom you’d do the content you enjoy and skip the one you don’t enjoy and you’d be off complaining there’s little content.
By forcing you to repeat content they’re making sure you’re too busy to complain or even “tricked” into thinking there’s more there.

Also – that’s still something for 1 hour. But I bet you you can get further than that if you have boosters ( hint hint gem store).

We used to be able to progress (slowly) towards any goal in whichever fashion we chose. This is no longer the case (with HoT expansion goals in mind). It’s really that simple!
I know a lot of people are fans of this new direction. That’s fine but please accept that your personal preference will not magically change mine.

Sure it would be easy to throw those €45 at HoT and (in my case) be bitter and disappointed about it, but why would I? My measly €’s will be better spent on indie dev’s that cater to my inefficient casual clowning about.

GW2 should be just fine as I am sure Anet will get massive income from this new crop of masterclass players.

Bish.8627:

There is no log in and progress any more. There is no option to play as you like, and to the devs, I certainly do not need to get better at your game, I more than meet the skill requirements.

And this my friend is where you’re wrong. You mention your build, you mention that you don’t run a meta comp – and I don’t blame you.

But don’t expect others to take you along if you’re not giving them 100% – and don’t brag about meeting skill requirements if you yourself mention you’re not doing Raids.

It’s more than just meeting skill requirements – it’s about being useful to your team – that means part skill part build part gear. You have to have all three.

This kind of “i’m already the end all be all – why can’t I have all the stuff” infuriates me.

Tommyknocker.6089:

BaconofPigs.1683:

And I think I agree with you. It’s efficiency that’s the key but relaxing can be incorporate. Being efficient doesn’t mean you have to stress out. If it isn’t fun for someone, that person should stop doing what he’s doing and re-evaluate the pros and the cons.

Let me describe what’s my typical day in Guild Wars 2.

1. 1 hour – pre-reset: figure out which daily is left to do, and finish it up.
2. half an hour pre-reset: ask in guild chat if guild fractal group is full while afk at sparkfly
3. Keep afk at sparkly til 3rd battery, read google news, tag the last battery, drop meteor shower on teq’s leg, get 2g and a chest
4. If guild group needs a person, join the group, otherwise LFG the 9 fractals – This takes approximately an hour
5. Fractal dailies done, gather flowers, log on all char gather flax seeds, gather guild node, gather home instance node – This should take an hour, while waiting for more guildies to log on, read some news, read some reddit, watch youtube.
6. Guild fractal group should be done, 10 people on ts, get ready for raid. I’m still watching youtube.
7. Beat raid, this should takes 2 – 2.5 hours if it’s progression day, 1 hour if it’s make up day for whoever needs whichever boss.
8. Finish wintersday daily, do 3 pvp matches, chat on ts, afk at SW
9. Log off

I don’t know but I consider myself a casual. Sure there are some part of my game time that requires maximum efficiency but for the most part, I just relax and afk a lot.

Seriously, you keep a tighter schedule than I do at my job. If that works for you then great, but I never planned anything when I played as, to me, it is a game and not my job!

If that is what it takes now to get the “full experience” for some players I am glad I only do my 3 dailies and log out now (although I do plan them now so I can leave quicker).

edit: clarity

I’m honestly surprised people are amazed that others run tight and efficient schedule-oriented play sessions and that works for them.

There’s a reason people who are goal oriented and do everything to win usually get stuff done faster and better.

The real problem here is people have to decide for themselves what they want to do – play at their own pace or set up and do it effectively – either way don’t expect the experience or rewards to be the same.

Harper.4173:

The real problem here is people have to decide for themselves what they want to do – play at their own pace or set up and do it effectively – either way don’t expect the experience or rewards to be the same.

The only problem/question here is: Will this changed/forced direction make more or less money for Anet.

scrumsome.7198:

Harper.4173:

The real problem here is people have to decide for themselves what they want to do – play at their own pace or set up and do it effectively – either way don’t expect the experience or rewards to be the same.

The only problem/question here is: Will this changed/forced direction make more or less money for Anet.

The answer is: at least for now they seem to think it will – let’s not forget they’re running a business and any decision of this magnitude probably received more than its fair share of research.

The game was hyper casual up until HoT – so obviously if HoT changed things they either weren’t making enough money or thought that this would be an opportunity to make more. The state of future expansions and LS S3 will give us more information on whether or not this move worked – but generally I believe it will be beneficial.

Raids weren’t a bad addition – with them in the game both the casuals and the hardcore now have content that caters to them – the only mixed bag are the new maps – that require a lot of players working together.

I don’t really understand the issue tbh. Fractals is made casual friendly and 90% of the content is still relaxed open world. The only thing that isn’t casual atm is a single raid instance. A SINGLE instance, is it really worth crying about so much? 0_o

cranos.5913:

I don’t really understand the issue tbh. Fractals is made casual friendly and 90% of the content is still relaxed open world. The only thing that isn’t casual atm is a single raid instance. A SINGLE instance, is it really worth crying about so much? 0_o

If you think this is about a single feature (raid) you will probably never understand the issues at all.
As for crying: Come on please – This is a game/entertainment… It may raise a brow/cause a smile here and there but tears? Most (grownups) reserve those kind of feelings for actual RL issues.