Guild Wars 2

Kam.4092:

Right now will be the hard version.

The normal version can be called story mode so everyone can do it and see the place.

Also the normal mode will just drop exotic stuff.

Keep the ascended stuff in the hard mode

You….don’t need ascended gear. Period. You’ll need to not suck, you’ll need to actually give a kitten , but you don’t need ascended gear.

Walhalla.5473:

Raid is now where it should be, it is a Raid and not something like Blizzards LFR Raiding, it is supposed to be Challenging.
Remember that the Raid was advertised as " Challenging Grouo Content". Having an easy Mode would just make the " Challenging Group Content" Void.

My advise is to get a good Group, stay with them and play the Content the Way it is intended.

In Blizzard’s case LFR was necessary because they needed a less-than-transparent excuse to make all content converge on raiding.

Raiding’s difficulty is perfectly acceptable in an environment where there’s plenty of other content to do in the game. From where I’m standing the question isn’t how to neuter raiding to make it more accessible to drooling idiots, but instead how to make depreciated content- dungeons especially- relevant again. It is both plausible and good for an MMORPG to have content that people just are not going to do, and not suffer any meaningful punishment for. The only thing the ghost town that is dungeons does to the game is give people a largely vacant list of achievements.

The biggest problem with HOT is that the content almost exclusively converges on a single point, and ironically the game itself isn’t equipped to deal with it: group content and map-wide meta objectives. Which you are obligated to find a group for so you don’t lose all of your progress when the game crashes on you for no discernible reason and get dumped in a completely unrelated shard. In fact, for most of the zones there’s legitimately no reason to even go there once you’ve completed story objectives until you DO have a group. Or at least a taxi.

If you want to level maguuma masteries, you must do map-wide meta objectives. There are only four maps you can even do this in, and all four of them are built around this to the point that there’s no solo oriented content.

Your most effective way of leveling old world masteries is, once again, map-wide meta object oriented maps like Silver Wastes.

If you wanted to know where you’re going, too bad. Most of the maps would require a 3D map like you see in Metroid Prime, but screw that, you’ll get a 2D map that tells you almost nothing useful. This is especially apparent in Tangled Depths, where the map will often give you blatantly incorrect information.

Wanted to do dungeons? Those got nerfed, affecting both players who’d grind them for the gold reward as well as people who absolutely were not.

Fractals? Well, you’re going to need to hit your third tier of masteries for Fractals before the new reward chests are anything but a currency sink.

Speaking of masteries, wanted to explore zones? Too bad! You’re looking at a huge number of masteries that need to be completed- ranging from ley line gliding and stealth gliding to stealth detection and poison lore. By the time you actually have all the masteries you’re all but guaranteed to be tired of those four zones and all the grinding necessary.

If I really had to pin down what HOT does wrong, it’s the lack of variety and the fact that the game actively took things away from the player. I don’t mind group content but it was never forced onto the player like it has been in HOT, and I have a limited tolerance for content that is effectively one giant map-wide meta. And all four new PVE maps do this!

Odin of Ark.4860:

Regular masteries can be lvled anywhere in central tyria. And its not hard to level maguuma masteries at all. Dragons stand is pretty great for XP.

Its great until the game crashes without warning.

For no discernible reason.

And on the off chance you had a group lined up so that you can cover for Anet, hopefully it doesn’t crash near the end. You only have so much time to get the chest, and then burn through your machetes, which will be eaten into if the shard decides it is now full.

And doing the same set of objectives over and over again kind of sounds like a grind. Especially if it’s just to unlock masteries so that you can do all of the content.

Smoosh.2718:

Quoting your own manifesto carried out in 2011, you stated (sorry Colin for dropping you in here) ‘We just dont want players to grind in Guild Wars 2’.
The old way of making legendary weapons was fine, so why was there a need to go completely over the top with the time gating of materials along with a stupidly high number of the same material you can only make one of per day, just for the new precursors. Surely with a system like this in place you should remove the daily craft restriction on all T7 materials.

Looking at the new list of what is needed for the new legendary weapons this is the most grindy thing I’ve seen in this game, which goes against the 2011 statement on what direction you guys wanted this game to go in.

https://youtu.be/FU1JUwPqzQY?t=1m22s

Heart of Thorns turns it’s back on that manifesto in so many ways it’s not actually funny.

Ironically, legendary weapons are not one of them. They were always intended as a long grind for invested players that would provide some tangible benefit but not completely drag the game down with it. If you have a set of ascended gear you do not actually need to go farm up a legendary. Hell, if you already have one of the old legendary weapons, what would the new ones even yield? New weapon skins?

maddoctor.2738:

Dejavu.2349:

maddoctor.2738:

And they “fixed” that with Heart of Thorns.

But aside from that, do you really “quit” because they took the guild banners away? Were they so important that it was the sole reason to enjoy the game? So you are leaving for a couple of nearly useless buffs?

It’s not the banners… Though I do like those. It’s the skins, mostly, but also buffs, etc…
They’re gating content behind a wall of friends. I’m not a user… I’m not going to join some guild just so I can use them, knowing full well I don’t give a crap. I’ve been able to do everything on my own and I want to be able to now. It’s why I play this game and give them money.

IT’s not like the guild weapon skins are the only gated skins in the game. You make it sound like everything else is available for everyone and only those are badly gated. They put things behind content, you don’t do that content, you don’t get those things, it’s a rather simple principle. If some skins are what made you quit the game then I don’t know, you obviously weren’t having any fun actually playing the game and having fun anyway.

There is no excuse for taking content away from players only to gate it behind new content that requires you spend money on it.

In fact the only valid excuse is if the content is simply broken.

Everything about HOT has been a betrayal of consumer expectations on some level.