Guild Wars 2

Test.8734:

Windsagio.1340:

I still don’t get these threads ><

What’s the goal exactly?

To give ArenaNet feedback so they can improve the game.

What is there not to get? People are allowed to have an opinion different from yours and to express it, for the good of the game.

I’m gonna have to disagree with half of that. Of course everyones entitled to their opinions (People like to pretend folks don’t think that), but the hater thread is a longstanding tradition on the GW2 forum and they long ago lost any pretense of being anything else.

There are constructive criticism threads of course, it’s a matter of tone. You learn to smell ’em a mile away.

Windsagio.1340:

Test.8734:

Windsagio.1340:

I still don’t get these threads ><

What’s the goal exactly?

To give ArenaNet feedback so they can improve the game.

What is there not to get? People are allowed to have an opinion different from yours and to express it, for the good of the game.

I’m gonna have to disagree with half of that. Of course everyones entitled to their opinions (People like to pretend folks don’t think that), but the hater thread is a longstanding tradition on the GW2 forum and they long ago lost any pretense of being anything else.

There are constructive criticism threads of course, it’s a matter of tone. You learn to smell ’em a mile away.

OP was actually quite constructive in his post, and there wasn’t actually much of this hate you speak of. How the thread goes after that…well, This is the GW2 community. They can turn any thread into a hate filled wasteland, which you yourself are contributing to by not posting anything constructive.

Yes his obviously and totally true story about how they couldn’t beat Kholer without stacking was totally constructive. You’re right!

More directly, he’s complaining about things that exist in the current game which we either have no idea about whether they’re being addressed in the expansion, or about things we know are getting addressed at least somewhat in the expansion (and the patches coming up with it).

The post sums up to "I’m not hype for the expansion because stacking and meta also worldbosses that haven’t been revamped (ignoring those that have)’

Gibson.4036:

Wreave.2138:

Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sugar in a sugartart.

MMOs are time consumers. That’s their primary feature, and its there by necessity. People play MMOs to kill time. But, psychologically they want a reason to play, i.e. there has to be something that draws them to play. Hence, there has to be something that gives them a reason to play a lot — hence… grinds.

I was going to respond to this, but Test covered it really well above.

Just because MMOs are traditionally about setting up huge time-sinks so people can treat them as a second job doesn’t mean that have to be designed that way. Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

As it is, the status quo is slowly bleeding out.

Also I would like to see some more “challenging” content. And no, one world boss and old fractals aren’t enough.

Windsagio.1340:

Yes his obviously and totally true story about how they couldn’t beat Kholer without stacking was totally constructive. You’re right!

More directly, he’s complaining about things that exist in the current game which we either have no idea about whether they’re being addressed in the expansion, or about things we know are getting addressed at least somewhat in the expansion (and the patches coming up with it).

The post sums up to "I’m not hype for the expansion because stacking and meta also worldbosses that haven’t been revamped (ignoring those that have)’

Believe me or not, Idc tbh.

Anyway, I list all the reasons why I’m not, personally, hyped for the expansion. The issue isn’t that these issues are in the game, it’s that, for me, these issues haven’t really ever been addressed. It’s that “grind” has been the definition of GW2. It’s that, 2 years after release, dungeons are still buggy and exploited. It’s that, 2 years after release, they haven’t really done anything to improve the game all that much.

The living story, so far, has been one grind leading to another grind. It’s one chest train to another, one event to another, one static world boss (yes, SOME have been improved, but shatterer is still beaten because he’s apparently Zoolander and can’t turn right…) after another. It’s the vast quantity of completely useless skills (guardian spirit weapons?! HAHAHAHAAH!) that are still around.

Yea, the expansion COULD improve all of these things, but I, personally, haven’t seen anything that really indicates that HoT won’t turn into a 1 trait/skill setup event grind with static bosses that are negated by balling up in a corner rather than actually fighting them. I’m glad that GW2 tried to be different and “challenge the fundamentals” of MMO’s, but so far their falling into the worst aspects of MMO’s and their failure to do anything to really fix them is why I’m not hyped. I made this thread in the hope that, if by some miracle, a developer reads it and realizes that “Grind Wars 2: Heart of Stacking” doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as they might think it does, at least not to me.

I enjoy GW2, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think it could be a LOT better.

^ Basically this ^

Also what I fear with specs is how the old weapons will be handled.
So far anet said nothing about that and I could imagine if the weapon skills stay the same that certain weapons will always be better in one of the two specs. Meaning using that weapon in the other spec is a mistake.

Or generally that one spec is better than the other.
Imagine you have a character that could swap between a necro and an ele. Why should you ever use the necro?

I hope you know what I’m meaning with that.

Neox.3497:

^ Basically this ^

Also what I fear with specs is how the old weapons will be handled.
So far anet said nothing about that and I could imagine if the weapon skills stay the same that certain weapons will always be better in one of the two specs. Meaning using that weapon in the other spec is a mistake.

Or generally that one spec is better than the other.
Imagine you have a character that could swap between a necro and an ele. Why should you ever use the necro?

I hope you know what I’m meaning with that.

I keep all my 80s up to date, dunno maybe it’s that player-based focus on efficiency over fun.

edit: visual aid

http://www.newmexico.811magazines.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/kelly_pogo_earthday.png

I do see positives in the addition of a Legendary quest line and T6 map rewards rather than an all-out grind as it currently sits. I also see positives in terms of traits to give new life to all classes. There seems to additionally be new viability given to conditions with the ability to track more stacks. Lastly there is the mention of some much hinted at but as yet not revealed new form of group content, as well as an additional battleground.

There are positives being touted, it simply remains to be seen how they are implemented. My biggest hope is that what is revealed takes end game away from the grindfest that it currently is. Meaningful questing and content going forward for level 80 content.

My last hope is for the OP’s and others’ wish: bosses with random attack tables, and most importantly, attack tables that don’t follow the usual MMO trend of favoring ranged over melee. Keep all players on their toes and keep the fights interesting. The hints at what’s coming with HoT and recent Dev responses as to what they want for the player experience at least offer some hope for where the game is headed.

Windsagio.1340:

I still don’t get these threads ><

What’s the goal exactly?

I’d say that one of the goals is to decrease efficiency of hype as a marketing strategy. It is very annoying and is a sign of untalanted manager(s) and/or devs irresponsibility – they didn’t even tell year of release.

To be fair; Guild Wars 2 has a good combat engine , and a great dodge roll mechanic . The game-play is fun , and easily breaks the common slow and methodical feel of most mmorpgs (( cough aion cough)). However there are allot of issues that are not addressed and probably never will be addressed . Clipping of armor on the chaar , and norn is one such issue. The norn racial elites being USELESS in their entirety, hell the chaar are again in the same boat here . Certain traits are useless as all hell (( necromancers spiteful spirit which was hella cool in gw1 )) among other things . Truthfully i feel its come down to more of their broken promises rather than the game itself; They swore up and down it would be new and different from current games. And in reality its Tera , with aions grind and a little bit of base elements from World of warcraft slammed into one game which just breeds disappointment from a title with so much potential . Its a good game and i feel it will remain a good game; But end game content is lacking and after three years they have provided nothing impressive for me as a gamer. There is no Immersion in the game once so ever , which is lore breaking and utterly taking away from the Supposed RPG elements of the game. Fixes for this is enriching the story-line, and making the dragons feel more like a threat . Zaithan felt like a side note to the drama of the world; Which still felt less important than traherns monlouges . Gameplay changes i agree with what has been said here, and i feel its all positive criticism . So A-Net , please listen to us; We just want this game to become all that it possibly can be .

Badwolf.9725:

Second, the “meta” builds. I totally understand them. As a game that was touted as getting rid of the “trinity”, all I can see is that they ended up removing 2 of the 3 pillars in that trinity. It’s all about DPS. If you aren’t 100% dps, your doing it wrong. To make matters worse, this meta has made classes like necromancer almost useless by design and yet there has been no effort put into making a necro relevant outside of WvW zergs.

I agree with your points. They were well thought out and constructive. Wanted to touch on the meta. Anet moved away from the trinity, but didn’t replace it with anything viable. I didn’t realize how “off” the system was until I made a Necromancer. I can’t tell you how many dungeon parties kicked me upon joining because of my class. It got so bad I started entering the instance before starting a group.

Hopefully condition builds can finally take the forefront.

I agree with the OP that these are fundamental issues at the core of the game that still are not addressed. They focused so much dev into living stories that they forgot about revamping the dungeons. Speed run, glitch, exploit your way through the difficult or annoying ones. The easy ones are very faceroll and quick. World bosses are HP meat sacks. There isnt a ton of viable build diversit.y Sure, go support…but really does the team need it outside of tequatl or WvW? No. You can have entire teams of DPS clear every dungeon with ease.

I for one am happy Arenanet is making an expansion, and hopefully they tone it down with the LS stuff in favor of supporting the expansion. However, for me, Im battling with the sad fact that the GW2 boat might have passed people like me, who played since closed betas and got so disgruntled during the LS focused years and ultimately left. Im grappling with whether or not to play the game ever again.

Gibson.4036:

Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

And this mmo will die in 1-2 months. For mmo to exist you need grinding or constant flow of new content. Like a whole wowlike expansion every month.

My friends and I run dungeons without skipping or stacking. It is much more fun. If you are doing it for the rewards, then stacking and skipping are a must, but there is nothing stopping you from doing them other ways.

As to Kholar, we defeated him without stacking, and it ended up with me soloing the last 20% of his health with my ranger and its bear. It was a very tough and slow fight, but it was fun and the sense of achievement was satisfying.

Anet has given you things to do. It is up to you how you tackle those things and how you go about enjoying them. If you don’t enjoy stacking, don’t stack. If you cannot do dungeons without stacking, practice and try different tactics until you can. We have not failed to finish a non-stack/skip dungeon run yet. We have had to restart a few at times, but most of the time we only need to regroup and rethink an encounter while in the dungeon, and we get through it.

Personally I find stacking your way through dungeons very dull, and sometimes too easy. Which is ok if you only want the loot and gold. But if you want to be entertained, do it another way.

MaXi.3642:

sadly, you’ve just summed up why I left GW2 long time ago and played only new living world as I was interested in the story direction… I’ve returned on the expansion announce, but as the hype slowly fades out and new information aren’t coming fast enough, I’m again realizing all the problems which made me leave…

The last sentence…kind of why I haven’t installed GW2 again. I keep thinking about the first 3 months of release and how unbelievably amazing it was, how soaked into the world I was, how new and fresh the entire concept was.

At least to me, little by little Arenanet chipped away at that vision, their own vision, with fractals, ascended gear, and finally Living Story.

So while I get giddy about the 3 days that I took off from work for launch, being a little noob in the world, I then fast forward 1-2 years and think about what the game is now:

Champ trains
Everyone has a legendary
Crummy Living Story releases (my opinion)
Ascended Gear
All my friends stopped playing or moved off server

Theres no “wonder” left in the game.

Test.8734:

Nanashi.6297:

Sadly trying to change the game won’t have any success. Save yourself the time and look for a better alternative.

Years ago, soon after release, a lot of grinders came to the forum and said, “we don’t have anything to grind for – because legendary weapons are not enough – and we will leave if ArenaNet doesn’t release something for us!”.

And then we got Fractals, which are almost the definition of grind, and ascended gear, which is massively grindy even by ArenaNet’s own definition of the word.

So yep, if you think offering feedback to ArenaNet won’t change the game, you are factually wrong. I wish ArenaNet wouldn’t listen, since then they wouldn’t have made many of the mistakes that plague GW2.

Arenanet said, in their AMA shortly after fractals were released if you remember, that Fractals and Ascended gear were planned all along, but never made it into release.

Ive always asked the question, which arenanet doesn’t have the stones to answer:

If Fractals and thus ascended gear were planned all along, how come we didnt know about it until the week that fractals and ascended gear came to us? If Exotic gear was never going to be the maximum tier of gear, why did you let GW2 gamers believe it was, grind out their exotic sets only to be out done, even in the slightest way, by ascended gear 3 months later? How come no player knew about this?

It was planned, and purposefully never communicated…or not planned and was a knee-jerk reaction to a very small minority of players clamoring for grind.

That was the first straw for me…and they never have addressed this. Ever. (Not to my knowledge, but I haven’t been following GW2 closely for the last 6 months or so).

Behavior and decision making like this, i.e. possibly flat out lying to us, put a bad taste in my mouth and is the reason why I dont and havent trusted Arenanet’s word ever since.

cesmode.4257:

Ascended Gear

Can someone tell me why ascended gear is a bad thing?

Vissarion.6509:

some things though i noticed are that the core problem doesn’t come from the players, but from the design of things.

I will apologize if anyone has already brought up this point, but I could only get half way through this thread before being fed up with people’s undue criticism of the Anet Developers. I am curious how many people who troll these forums have a minimum of a bachelors in computer science or any relevant experience with video game design. It’s really kitten easy to snipe from the bushes and complain about AI when you have no real idea of how it works, or the challenges of designing a boss that cannot be exploited that is not broken.

The problem is not the developers, IT IS THE PLAYER AND THEIR HUMAN NATURE. If I paint a picture, someone is going to find a flaw with it, If I write a story, someone is going to poke kitten in the plot, if I code a creature in a video game that has realistic restraints on it’s capabilities to make it beatable…some kitten is going to abuse that restraint or find one scenario that I didn’t code for and abuse it.

It’s not as if I can’t enter a dungeon and see what the developers planned for each encounter, when we choose to stack we are actively circumventing the mechanics. It is highly unlikely that people who do this really believe that is what the developers wanted, so why would anyone complain as if it is the developers fault for player behavior. If you want to truly run a dungeon (no stacking/ no skipping) get a group of friends together or include it in the description in lfg.

I appreciate that these forums are a place for feedback for the players, but unless you lead with " I have a degree in Computer Science from X university with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence or video game design" you really don’t have a legitimate position to criticize the boss ai of this game.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

cesmode.4257:

Ascended Gear

Can someone tell me why ascended gear is a bad thing?

The first bad thing about ascended gear was that everyone in the game assumed exotic was the max tier. Even though ascended is not needed for most of the content, people still like to have BiS items. I play a game called warframe.. I can get away with the basic guns in that game, as can anyone. But no one does. They want the BiS gear that they can get. So the issue here is that everyone assumed exotic was the max tier and not 3 months later, that was changed. Without warning. Without notice.

The second bad thing was that Arenanet says it was always planned…If it was planned, you could have told the community before launch so we wouldnt get all upset and 2 years of crying would have been avoided. Simple solution. Its so simple that to lose sight of such a simple solution tells me that they are lying and it was a knee jerk reaction.

Crey.5263:

Vissarion.6509:

some things though i noticed are that the core problem doesn’t come from the players, but from the design of things.

I will apologize if anyone has already brought up this point, but I could only get half way through this thread before being fed up with people’s undue criticism of the Anet Developers. I am curious how many people who troll these forums have a minimum of a bachelors in computer science or any relevant experience with video game design. It’s really kitten easy to snipe from the bushes and complain about AI when you have no real idea of how it works, or the challenges of designing a boss that cannot be exploited that is not broken.

The problem is not the developers, IT IS THE PLAYER AND THEIR HUMAN NATURE. If I paint a picture, someone is going to find a flaw with it, If I write a story, someone is going to poke kitten in the plot, if I code a creature in a video game that has realistic restraints on it’s capabilities to make it beatable…some kitten is going to abuse that restraint or find one scenario that I didn’t code for and abuse it.

It’s not as if I can’t enter a dungeon and see what the developers planned for each encounter, when we choose to stack we are actively circumventing the mechanics. It is highly unlikely that people who do this really believe that is what the developers wanted, so why would anyone complain as if it is the developers fault for player behavior. If you want to truly run a dungeon (no stacking/ no skipping) get a group of friends together or include it in the description in lfg.

I appreciate that these forums are a place for feedback for the players, but unless you lead with " I have a degree in Computer Science from X university with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence or video game design" you really don’t have a legitimate position to criticize the boss ai of this game.

“That car is not safe to drive!”
“Well unless you have a degree in mechanical engineering, you can’t criticize it!”

Other MMOs seem to tackle the issue just fine. Why should we hold Anet to a different standard? That’s our position, as consumers. Wether you feel it’s legitimate because people don’t get four year degrees every time they want to criticize something is kind of irrelevant.

Badwolf.9725:

First, dungeons.

Second, the “meta” builds.

Third, world bosses.

Fourth, “stack here”.

1) They learned from their errors in designing the dungeons in Vanilla GW2. If you think they’ll make the same mistake twice, you’re very wrong. They’ve said time upon time they won’t focus on current dungeons, which are doing fine, but will focus time and effort in new content (like the Aetherpath dungeon path).

2) Necromancers have their use in some niches. Also, specialisations were made specifically to give current professions a new use in other niches or other parts of the game. I can assure you that the necro greatsword spec will be a heavy DPS-dealing spec, to make up for their lack of it.

3) Same point as number 1. They learned out of this. Thinking the bosses in the Maguuma will be the same as vanilla bosses is just stupid. I don’t even understand how you think they’ll make the same bosses as now, after looking at their latest bosses like teq and the wurm…

4) Stacking is an issue? What the hell are you even talking about?

To me, this thread is just a series of uneducated guesses at the expansion. You have no knowledge of what will be appearing other than some random guesses. They obviously won’t make the same issues that exist in the current game, and if you think they will then you should start reading their blogs.

cesmode.4257:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

cesmode.4257:

Ascended Gear

Can someone tell me why ascended gear is a bad thing?

The first bad thing about ascended gear was that everyone in the game assumed exotic was the max tier. Even though ascended is not needed for most of the content, people still like to have BiS items. I play a game called warframe.. I can get away with the basic guns in that game, as can anyone. But no one does. They want the BiS gear that they can get. So the issue here is that everyone assumed exotic was the max tier and not 3 months later, that was changed. Without warning. Without notice.

The second bad thing was that Arenanet says it was always planned…If it was planned, you could have told the community before launch so we wouldnt get all upset and 2 years of crying would have been avoided. Simple solution. Its so simple that to lose sight of such a simple solution tells me that they are lying and it was a knee jerk reaction.

It seems you have a problem with the way ArenaNet is communicating with their customers, and not with the existence of ascended gear. I don’t know anyone ingame who complains about ascended gear, and how it suddenly became the best gear in the game. Especially because it isn’t needed for most of the content. I don’t see the problem here.

ArenaNet is known for not telling a lot of information in advance, they choose to notify the community about content when they are sure it’s good to go and are entirely happy with it. Ascended gear was planned from the start, but I’m not surprised they didn’t talk about it before they were satisfied about the way of implementation. As said, it seems you have a problem with their way of communicating to the customers. And because you don’t like it, you feel the need to accuse them of lying.

cesmode.4257:

So while I get giddy about the 3 days that I took off from work for launch, being a little noob in the world, I then fast forward 1-2 years and think about what the game is now:

Champ trains
Everyone has a legendary
Crummy Living Story releases (my opinion)
Ascended Gear
All my friends stopped playing or moved off server

Theres no “wonder” left in the game.

What’s your issue with the Legendaries? That’s been one MMO staple that it isn’t bad that will be rectified with the new addition of the Legendary quests: all players having access to their own top tier, well-designed item. I don’t get why players think it’s more fun when MMOs emulate real life and only the special few get an item. I got a few of said items in my former MMO, and it didn’t exactly seem fun that some players would never get them no matter what they did.

With the new system there will still be a big chunk of time involved both in the quests and in gathering the mats even with the new map rewards. There will also be additional Legendaries available. I understand some of your other points, but I don’t see the number of players who have the best looking weapons in the game being detrimental to the community in any way, but I may have missed what you were hinting at.

Derigar.7810:

Badwolf.9725:

First, dungeons.

Second, the “meta” builds.

Third, world bosses.

Fourth, “stack here”.

1) They learned from their errors in designing the dungeons in Vanilla GW2. If you think they’ll make the same mistake twice, you’re very wrong. They’ve said time upon time they won’t focus on current dungeons, which are doing fine, but will focus time and effort in new content (like the Aetherpath dungeon path).

2) Necromancers have their use in some niches. Also, specialisations were made specifically to give current professions a new use in other niches or other parts of the game. I can assure you that the necro greatsword spec will be a heavy DPS-dealing spec, to make up for their lack of it.

3) Same point as number 1. They learned out of this. Thinking the bosses in the Maguuma will be the same as vanilla bosses is just stupid. I don’t even understand how you think they’ll make the same bosses as now, after looking at their latest bosses like teq and the wurm…

4) Stacking is an issue? What the hell are you even talking about?

To me, this thread is just a series of uneducated guesses at the expansion. You have no knowledge of what will be appearing other than some random guesses. They obviously won’t make the same issues that exist in the current game, and if you think they will then you should start reading their blogs.

1) Ok, so, assuming your right, I can expect them to abandon any future content they add instead of fixing it? AC, the first thing players can run, is still a joke. Dungeons are all exploited, bugged, tons of content skipped and the moment you suggest NOT exploiting broken mechanics, you can expect to be kicked out of the group or laughed at. When the expansion releases, I can expect 90% BS mechanics and the other 10% i have to pay extra for to be halfway decent?

2) ‘Use in niche" is great…if only anyone cared about those niches… As it stands, Necromancer has been fubar since release and there has been no real attempt to fix it. At best, with HoT I can expect to see every Necro running the one GS build. Also, considering how few kittens the devs gave in the last 2 years, assuming they still have an underpowered necro class, I can expect another 2 years of underpowered necros. The devs made it rather clear they give 0 kittens about an entire class, and I don’t see why they would start now.

3) Again, 90% of the content will be terrible, bland, and boring static fights and then I can choose to pay extra for good content? I don’t see the developer’s abandoning their old content as a good thing I guess, and I don’t see how that is a good model for the future of their game.

4) Stacking is an issue when it becomes, basically, every fight. WvW, stack here. Dungeons, stack here. World bosses….stack here…. Stack here? Stack here! Stack there? No, Stack THERE! There? THERE!!!!

It’s not that they can’t fix these things in HoT, it’s that their handling of vanilla GW2 doesn’t, imo, bode well for their future content. You said yourself, they’ve basically abandoned the old dungeons in favour of adding in new selling points, so what happens when they inevitably mess up on the new content? Another 2 years of mediocre content in the hopes that I can pay extra for another set of content they can abandon? It’s not guessing that the way they handled vanilla content (turning it into a giant grind and exploited material) is somewhat telling of their mindset going into HoT. Look at SW, the first little glimpse into the expansion is nothing more than an event grind with a mediocre boss. SW is nothing more than “run in a circle, do event, do another event, repeat circle” and THAT is all I’ve seen the devs do so far, they are stuck in a rut and haven’t really shown that they can get out of it. That’s why I’m not hyped, because the devs haven’t shown that they can’t fall into those pitfalls again and again and again…

Gibson.4036:

Wreave.2138:

Complaining about grinding in an MMO is like complaining about sugar in a sugartart.

MMOs are time consumers. That’s their primary feature, and its there by necessity. People play MMOs to kill time. But, psychologically they want a reason to play, i.e. there has to be something that draws them to play. Hence, there has to be something that gives them a reason to play a lot — hence… grinds.

I was going to respond to this, but Test covered it really well above.

Just because MMOs are traditionally about setting up huge time-sinks so people can treat them as a second job doesn’t mean that have to be designed that way. Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

As it is, the status quo is slowly bleeding out.

What I find interesting is the sheer number of people who actually mistakenly think that this game is different than the rest. It’s got grind, gear treadmill, Pay to Progress elements in it’s current state and in order to actually deliver on what they claimed they’d be doing in the beginning they’d have to do something completely different than they are now.

We’re waiting to see if they actually say something about what they are planning on doing about these situations but information has been far and few between.

Badwolf.9725:

1) Ok, so, assuming your right, I can expect them to abandon any future content they add instead of fixing it? AC, the first thing players can run, is still a joke. Dungeons are all exploited, bugged, tons of content skipped and the moment you suggest NOT exploiting broken mechanics, you can expect to be kicked out of the group or laughed at. When the expansion releases, I can expect 90% BS mechanics and the other 10% i have to pay extra for to be halfway decent?

2) ‘Use in niche" is great…if only anyone cared about those niches… As it stands, Necromancer has been fubar since release and there has been no real attempt to fix it. At best, with HoT I can expect to see every Necro running the one GS build. Also, considering how few kittens the devs gave in the last 2 years, assuming they still have an underpowered necro class, I can expect another 2 years of underpowered necros. The devs made it rather clear they give 0 kittens about an entire class, and I don’t see why they would start now.

3) Again, 90% of the content will be terrible, bland, and boring static fights and then I can choose to pay extra for good content? I don’t see the developer’s abandoning their old content as a good thing I guess, and I don’t see how that is a good model for the future of their game.

4) Stacking is an issue when it becomes, basically, every fight. WvW, stack here. Dungeons, stack here. World bosses….stack here…. Stack here? Stack here! Stack there? No, Stack THERE! There? THERE!!!!

1) Only widespread exploit i can think of is arah p3 and p4 skip. And people being kittenbags is not a game’s problem by the way.

2) “Underpowered necros” have a lot of power and are a lot of fun actually so don’t know what you are talking about. Only thing they lack is party support. But hey there is no support in gw2 anyway because you only press 1.

3)Maybe they will revisit old content after HoT or maybe not. Still we have a guarantee that there will be no more shatterer like bosses in the future.

4)I recommend you reading this https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boon .

For every one player that wants Dungeons to be lengthy and exciting I’ll give you one that wants it fast to maximize the reward. We even have the one poster above that says “Hopefully condition builds can finally take the forefront”, dear god if this guy/gal knew how that effects SPvP and WvW he/she might think twice about asking for this.

That’s not to say I don’t sympathize or even agree with much of what the OP posted, but, there is a fine line to walk when balancing between (I’ll say 2 because SPvP is setup differently) 2 game modes. It’s also harder than one would think to make a Dungeon in a game without a trinity exciting. The classes just are flat out not designed to hold agro, soak up damage, and heal a party all of which is required for the exciting dungeon mode many are looking for. Like it or not the Trinity was there for a reason.

Sure they could probably make dungeons more difficult, they could even prevent stacking by reseting the boss in such a case, but the average GW2 player seems to want quick and easy over long and difficult.

The point is, you can’t and won’t please everyone. What you may think is fixing a class could potentially completely break it in another aspect of the game. The PvE in GW2 is lacking at best and yet they seem to think its more of a PvE game than anything. The true hardcore PvE folks are off Raiding whatever the new WoW content is. To truly make an epic PvE battle/encounter you need the trinity or at the very least roles to play instead of just dog piling and smashing your face into the keyboard as fast as possible.

CutePicsHunter.7430:

Windsagio.1340:

I still don’t get these threads ><

What’s the goal exactly?

I’d say that one of the goals is to decrease efficiency of hype as a marketing strategy. It is very annoying and is a sign of untalanted manager(s) and/or devs irresponsibility – they didn’t even tell year of release.

That’s one hell of an armchair you got there.

I just love it when people call people with skills they almost certainly don’t have ‘incompetent’ at those skills.

This might not be a popular opinion but if you think the meta builds are the best in the game then you’re probably an average player… or at least an uninformed player who’s been led to believe they are the best and never bothered to experiment.

Couldn’t agree more.

Fade.1743:

The only way to remove stacking is to make boon-sharing and blast fields have a longer range and range damage being closer to melee damage. HOWEVER, this creates a problem that other MMOs have. It’s pointless to be melee then.

No.

Plenty of people still play melee in other games, even though they don’t do more overall damage by doing so.

They are given slightly more viable defences than ranged are to do so (while ranged are given more ways to stay at range) and/or more ways to evade incoming damage (while still damaging) and/or the incoming damage is more evenly spread between ranged and melee DPS to begin with.

In games like WoW, where this is the case, plenty of people still play melee and things like Warriors and DKs are still extremely overpowered in PVP, compared with ranged classes (whatever a few of them may try to claim to the contrary…).

Not that that is a good thing, at all, but it proves that all DPS classes/specs having equal damage in PVE (regardless of range) doesn’t have to mean ranged being overpowered in PVP.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

And people being kittenbags is not a game’s problem by the way.

Oh, trust me, it is.

It really, really, is.

Other games – good games – top games – view it as their responsibility to:

a) Try their best to foresee any potential exploitability, within their fundamental game design, mob design and boss design, before releasing it.

b) Tackle any exploitation that does occur, as soon as possible, if they fail to do a) properly.

Some of you really do need to put your hands in your pockets and at least try a game like WoW, before commenting.

They don’t catch absolutely everything, but they do make an effort to catch as many major, game-breaking, things as they can and they succeed at that.

WoW has a lot of flaws, at the moment (IMO – some other people still love it), but fundamental game, class and encounter design and exploitability is not one of them.

So, it really doesn’t have to be that way.

The thing with meta/stack is you can always choose not to. If somebody’s an kitten about it ignore them, and ‘meta’ players are pretty good about self-excluding, and are easy to avoid.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Gibson.4036:

Sooner or later, an inspired team is going to have the backing to make something different, and MMOs as we know it will shift.

And this mmo will die in 1-2 months. For mmo to exist you need grinding or constant flow of new content. Like a whole wowlike expansion every month.

People are always skeptical of innovation. It’s human nature to think, “this is the way it has been, this is how it will always be.”

But things evolve, and it’s just going to take some inspired creators coming together with inspired backers at the right time (which will partly be up to the state of tech and whether it can support the vision) to change things.

No, I don’t know what the MMORPG that is unlike what we have today will look like. If I did, I’d be making it.

I expect, though, that it will somehow crowd-source a lot of content creation while still maintaining a quality standard. Finding the way to do both of those things will allow a game to meet the needs of seemingly insatiable, full-time-job players without adding pointless repetition.

cesmode.4257:

MaXi.3642:

sadly, you’ve just summed up why I left GW2 long time ago and played only new living world as I was interested in the story direction… I’ve returned on the expansion announce, but as the hype slowly fades out and new information aren’t coming fast enough, I’m again realizing all the problems which made me leave…

The last sentence…kind of why I haven’t installed GW2 again. I keep thinking about the first 3 months of release and how unbelievably amazing it was, how soaked into the world I was, how new and fresh the entire concept was.

At least to me, little by little Arenanet chipped away at that vision, their own vision, with fractals, ascended gear, and finally Living Story.

So while I get giddy about the 3 days that I took off from work for launch, being a little noob in the world, I then fast forward 1-2 years and think about what the game is now:

Champ trains
Everyone has a legendary
Crummy Living Story releases (my opinion)
Ascended Gear
All my friends stopped playing or moved off server

Theres no “wonder” left in the game.

When was the last time you played? Sure many people have a legendary, but to say everyone days is far exaggerating. You are never really going to stop people from zerging down events, I honestly don’t know a way to prevent this unless you made every event completely random.

I took a long break after playing 3 months when it first released. I kind of feel like a new player all over again. Having Ascended gear doesn’t really bother me at all. It is a little extra something to work towards that is only a slight upgrade over exotic. Sure it is grindy, but is it really necessary to have?

The game may not be perfect, but for me…it is a much better alternative than what is out there. If I were to have one critisism, it is what others have mentioned. The current meta is a bit off putting and I do wish there were other alternatives out there.

So HOT is a living world update we have to pay for? Only reason not hipped is there is no living world in the mean time. Could be re running scarlet arch in the mean time. No reason to not have global events in game if you are going to make us wait months for an update.

Windsagio.1340:

The thing with meta/stack is you can always choose not to. If somebody’s an kitten about it ignore them, and ‘meta’ players are pretty good about self-excluding, and are easy to avoid.

I wish I could believe that. Unless I go out and hunt down 4 other RL friends that want to play GW2 over any other MMO (I have one that insists ESO is the second coming…I disagree very much…), which I don’t have, it’s almost impossible to find groups that DON’T run those exploits. Most dungeons/fractals (granted, I’m not a high level frac runner) consist of people running almost like bots with nothing beyond the occasional “hello” at the start of the group.

The issue I have with the meta is how obviously better it is in almost all cases. Most skills in most classes have no real use. Pet skills, for example, are a joke, a bad joke, a bad joke that hasn’t attempted to be fixed yet. I feel like 90% of the skills in the game could be patched out and no one would really care/notice. I look at armours on the TP and wonder, WHO buys “dire” sets? “carrion” sets? “Cleric’s” set? The meta is, overall, a giant dps race, if you don’t fit into that meta (go in with “Cleric’s” armour instead of the zerker meta), you’ll likely wipe your team for it as they can’t afford an extra dodge beyond the first 2. Honestly, the only reason I’ve ever had any interaction with those other sets at level 80 is when I have to craft them to level up my armoursmith/tailor/etc. Outside of that, why are they there? Those sets’ entire purpose is to give you crafting xp afaik. HoT doesn’t excite me because I’m afraid the only difference will be that I’ll go from one obviously “best” skill/trait setup to another >single< obviously “best” skill/trait setup. I want variety in HoT and I, sadly, don’t think the devs can deliver it based on their track record.

Badwolf.9725:

Windsagio.1340:

The thing with meta/stack is you can always choose not to. If somebody’s an kitten about it ignore them, and ‘meta’ players are pretty good about self-excluding, and are easy to avoid.

I wish I could believe that. Unless I go out and hunt down 4 other RL friends that want to play GW2 over any other MMO (I have one that insists ESO is the second coming…I disagree very much…), which I don’t have, it’s almost impossible to find groups that DON’T run those exploits. Most dungeons/fractals (granted, I’m not a high level frac runner) consist of people running almost like bots with nothing beyond the occasional “hello” at the start of the group.

The issue I have with the meta is how obviously better it is in almost all cases. Most skills in most classes have no real use. Pet skills, for example, are a joke, a bad joke, a bad joke that hasn’t attempted to be fixed yet. I feel like 90% of the skills in the game could be patched out and no one would really care/notice. I look at armours on the TP and wonder, WHO buys “dire” sets? “carrion” sets? “Cleric’s” set? The meta is, overall, a giant dps race, if you don’t fit into that meta (go in with “Cleric’s” armour instead of the zerker meta), you’ll likely wipe your team for it as they can’t afford an extra dodge beyond the first 2. Honestly, the only reason I’ve ever had any interaction with those other sets at level 80 is when I have to craft them to level up my armoursmith/tailor/etc. Outside of that, why are they there? Those sets’ entire purpose is to give you crafting xp afaik. HoT doesn’t excite me because I’m afraid the only difference will be that I’ll go from one obviously “best” skill/trait setup to another >single< obviously “best” skill/trait setup. I want variety in HoT and I, sadly, don’t think the devs can deliver it based on their track record.

Ehhh….

I have got a guild where we play the game for fun, we do dungeons wihtout using exploits and we rarely stack at the iusual places becouse it is so unessesary as dungeons are so easy anyway. Why make stuff boring when you can make the game fun by playing dungeons with 3 players or not stack not going Zerker and more? It is fun, atleast in my opinion.

My Engineer goes With Carrion gear and I find it to be one of the best builds I have ever used with my engi and then I have tried alot of Meta builds at that. I am not going to say that it is better than the meta build but people should try to evolve alittle more from the Zerker mentality. Ofc Condition is bad in a zerg but in a dungeon it can be realy usefull.

My guardian swaps between Cleric and Zerker depending on situation.

My mesmer is Zerker / Celestial.

I havent found any use for dire yet but I guess there are some who uses it.

I have been playing with a few PUGs lately and they have been very kind and they have been pretty impressed with my skills and never complained about me not going Zerker with my Engineer and we have never whiped. So in the end I think it depends on what PUGs you are looking for and what you expect PUGs to do. If you go with a “Exp speedrun” dungeon ofc you will be hated for using something else than Zerker but it is not the only way and alot of players are starting to understand this.

I have alot of stuff to look forward too for the expac, like the new Borderlands, Stronghold PvP, Specializations, Masteries, new maps, new story, new collections, Revenant, fix to Traits and more. But these are stuff I look forward too the most and sure they maby could have made this stuff for free updates every two weeks but I think that it would have taken longer time for us to get all the stuff that is introduced now. I am one of those who said ‘I wouldn’t mind an Expac but I am fine with the weekly content as it is’ and now when I see threads like this I can’t help to realize how different we all are.

Posts like this illustrate that the problem is OP, not GW2.

OP only tries the easiest dungeons and easiest worldbosses and then complains that it’s easy.

Enjoy triple trouble. Sure have to try dying there, right?
Enjoy Fractals, or paths like CoF3, SE2 or most of Arah. Stacking in corners is something newbies like OP do in really, really easy dungeons, it’s hardly required, and groups that do actual speedruns in harder places often don’t need or care for any of this.

And Kohler? I have a hard time believing that groups magically die to his first serious attack if they don’t stack, considering that this very attack usually hits the entire stack in bad PUGs, and yet barely ever downs anyone but the Elementalists.

Kohler does not, in fact, get a magic damage buff from nowhere when you don’t stack.

OP grinds the easiest content, is scared of the more interesting stuff, but then complains that Arenanet doesn’t design stuff that OP is ALREADY AVOIDING.

So, why should Arenanet design more content that people like OP are avoiding? Sure, OP CLAIMS he wants harder content, but the simple fact is: He doesn’t. Reality already proves this. It’s just posing.

Maunzi.3764:

Posts like this illustrate that the problem is OP, not GW2.

OP only tries the easiest dungeons and easiest worldbosses and then complains that it’s easy.

So, why should Arenanet design more content that people like OP are avoiding? Sure, OP CLAIMS he wants harder content, but the simple fact is: He doesn’t. Reality already proves this. It’s just posing.

Way to throw logical fallacy into the mix.

I’m no lover of the 1% in fact that community has ruined many of the newest games to come out by demanding such extreme difficulty that they’d personally not be satisfied unless they were fighting multiple bosses solo, yes that’s how extreme their demands are on the developers. So keep that in mind when I say what I’m saying below…

Trying to discredit what the OP is saying by only addressing certain points and making it seem like the others don’t exist isn’t going to validate your counterargument.

He makes great points about the lack of fixes to the inherent problems, the problems with trains and bugs, the overall design of the “meta” which btw has happened countless times before in loads of mmo’s both indie and AAA when those other developers tried to destroy the trinity or make it not needed at all.

I’m waiting to see what they post next, for some reason they think that PVP is all people want to see and some suspect that this is because they don’t really have anything to talk about in PVE yet for the expansion so I agree with him when it comes to the lack of information about what’s going on with the expansion. I don’t care about PVP because PVE is the core of the game, you do PVE to progress not the other way around and we absolutely need as much information as possible. Several others have mentioned the lack of information coming out of the studio as well after such a huge to do about the thing.

He’s got valid concerns that it just might be more of the same. So here’s to hoping but there’s only so long people can hold their breath.

Except, he’s complaining about the current product not HoT. We already know that there are changes to some of the things he’s complaining about in the expansion.

Although I’m hyped for HoT, I agree with you on almost every point of yours…

But two of them are worst:
1) Dungeon “hack” runs. I’ve posted another thread complaining about that and how anti-intuitive and anti-newplayer that system is, the one that consists of either aggroing the whole corridor and resetting mobs somewhere specific, or stacking for boss, or doing any funny business that is clearly an exploit. Basically I’ve got flamed by 99% of the people there. Dude, if you are a new player, how the hell you can run AC P1 without knowing that you need to skip a whole gauntlet of lizards and RESET them!? I know that people tag “experienced” but even on groups that are supposedly “good” for those people, the players expect everyone to know this kind of stuff, wich is ABSURD. I’ve seen new players being kicked for repeatedly failing on those hacky strategies… Before some funny person come here and say “do your own group”; god forbid a new player leading a run doing everything NORMALLY? Who in his own mind would join such party that does not do a fast run? /sarcasm

2) Zerk meta. Anet better have a workaround for this, because it’s still an issue. It’s simply boring! Some of the coolest builds of the professions are not suited for a zerker (and even a whole profession in the case of necros). This is not really player’s fault though, because IT IS the most efficient way to beat the dungeon enemies. They just need to improve dramatically how a condition or support player affects the whole group in PVE content.

I’m waiting for the section of the expansion announcements where they detail all the hand health, QoL, and bug fixes that players have been asking for since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. If there isn’t a bulk use/open option in the expansion, I won’t buy it. This one simple concept wouldn’t require uprooting all that is known about the game code, and yet it would improve achievements, loot, and let me PLAY the darn game longer.

Yet little changes like this have gone totally ignored for ages (a change that improves almost every part of the game!), and I see nothing to tell me that attitude has shifted. That is why I’m not hyped about HoT. The boss fights and dungeons are beaten to death, and I don’t expect any new fights introduced in the expansion to last long before they too are beaten to death, but that’s fine! Or rather, it would be fine if they also weren’t plagued by the same glitches, bugs, and generally frustrating issues present in this game today.

I would buy a QoL patch! If you sold me Heart of Fixes, I would pay retail price for this thing. It would let me PvP and WvW and get back to doing the things in the game that are ignored, but still modestly entertaining (compared to the 100000th run of Citadel). But I don’t see anything in this expansion that will fix my troubles! I see more Living Story stuff, which might pay the bills, but I have ignored most of it so far. My time in the game is spent doing the OTHER 50% of it, the part that isn’t cutscene driven and instanced.

There’s nothing announced in this expansion that addresses the ever-present problems of the other half. Moreover, I’m skeptical about the changes they HAVE announced, because they once announced that they had fixed the waypointing bug.