Guild Wars 2

Is it time for horizontal progression now?? (If its not, I apologize for being early but I am going out of town and I might not be able to post this later).

My inspiration came from clearing underworld about a million times in GW1 in order to find rare weapon skins, and being so excited when they finally dropped. The point being that I ran the same instance for probably 1-2 years almost daily and always felt like it was worth it. I would love to see something similar in GW2, but purely with skins instead of stats and instead of in one instance, across the entire world.

So here’s the idea: I think it would be cool if there were skins that dropped in the game. By skins I mean items that are just looks which you apply to your actual armor (like we have now with the LW backpack skins). These skins should have different rarities, similar to armor rarities, and each zone or group of zones (eg. Ascalon, Orr, maguuma jungle…) would have their own skin theme. You would acquire the skins from doing all the major DE chains in the zone groups, from their puzzles, or randomly from drops/chests. So, if I had my eye on a certain set of skins I would have to go out into the world and do things in the different zones to find the armor. As a quick example, there could be like blue tier skins that anyone can get just by doing hearts, green skins from various jumping puzzles, then there’s gold skins from the DE chains, and exotic skins that drop randomly. This also works in WvW, blue from taking camps (or with tokens?), green from towers, gold from keeps, exotic from SM (or in weekly bonus chests). Maybe this can even be expanded to dungeons where dungeon themed skins can drop, but of course we still keep the tokens to get the armor with actual stats.

Also, if we’re worried about Arena Net revenue, you could also introduce these skins into the gem shop so people could just buy them if they wanted, but have some small difference (like a glow effect/color difference) that shows whether you bought it or got it with blood, sweat, and tears out in the wilderness of GW2. This way people who only care about the look, not the prestige of gaining the look, will have an option to obtain the skin, but the people who care about the prestige will be able to show off the fact that they got these items the hard way.

Thoughts/improvements are welcome!

I have always played healer as my main role, and I don’t want to go back. In GW1, Aion, and WoW I played healers because I do enjoy party healing and people always need a healer. But after playing GW2 I wouldn’t go back even for the insta party invites and being mass added to friends lists. Why? Because it was tough to go out on my own in pve. True people would ask me for help and would help me in turn, but if I wanted to go out to some corner of the world and farm? I was half as effective as dps classes. I could solo most content by healing myself through it, but it took aaages! It might have been the easiest in GW1 because of the heroes (and the fact that I decked them all out in good gear), but kitten did I feel weak out in the wild in WoW and Aion.

I have seen a lot of people talking about the release cadence of living story and I am a fan of the two week pace. After two weeks I’ve usually done everything with the current so I’m ready for the next installment. Also, I have really enjoyed the story arc, and I like how different npcs are calling for our help each section (like Lady Kasmeer, Rox, Brahm). I love the idea of being able to see a short cutscene that summarizes each previous living story section so I can go back and look on those events with new light.

I don’t feel like I’m rushed in the living story at all. I’m not a crazy hardcore player either, I don’t play every night, sometimes I only play for a couple hours a night, and I do things other than LS (like WvW). I’ve never felt the need to do all of the living story and I’ve always been able to experience it all if I wanted to. Having said that, I would love to see more permanent consequences for failure in certain events in the living story as well as the living world. Also, I’m not a fan of the more grindy achievements like “Close 50 doors” but I just don’t do the ones I find boring and that doesn’t bother me too much either. I think the UI could be improved a bit since the Mad King LS quest section (the one that’s on the right side of my screen under achieves) still tells me I should check out Nolani Academy but I have already recaptured the bloody prince.

I currently have 2 lvl 80s (elementalist and guardian), I’ve got a necro and ranger that are 30s-40s, and a new mesmer.
My alt leveling method: Its true that clearing a zone can be boring so sometimes I watch shows on my 2nd monitor, then when I’m in a more exploratory mood I might go back to those zones and actually take a good look around. I almost always find something that I haven’t seen before even in the areas I’ve already explored. I might try a dynamic event chain that I haven’t seen before or explore caves I stumble across. Also, leveling is also how I learn a class. I like to try new things a little at a time so every 5-10 levels I’ll switch up my utilities/traits and maybe even the weapon and try to increase my experience that way. Even if I could easily kill an enemy by auto attacking I try to kill them in different ways using different skill combos or triggering traits. I’m doing different crafting professions on all of my characters so I’ll do that every 10 levels or so using mostly the materials that I got while leveling.
Difficulty: As for leveling alts being easier, since I can run with alts in most of the game (WvW, zones, LS, dungeons to an extent) I just kinda do what I want on the character I feel like playing and when I log off sometimes I realize I leveled x times and I’m like “huh look at that”. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t exactly feel pressure to get to 80 on the alts, so I don’t care if leveling is easier or not.

1. Tougher small party content (dungeons)
2. More skins
3. New areas

I was trying out some different skill combos last night and was watching the combat log for my damage. I would love it if my combat log also showed my healing (to myself and others), condition damage, and which hits were critical. I would also love if I could output this to a file since I’m a fan of theory crafting and I like to save off tests and also calculate things like damage over time. Lastly, I would like to be able to filter damage only, conditions only, or healing only!

I think that I will have it eventually even though I’m only “passively” working on it. I don’t farm for it except maybe a couple champ runs around Frostgorge, but I do whatever catches my fancy that day. I accumulate gold and mats and every once in a while I check out the wiki page for the moot and make things like ingots and clovers. I think if I keep going this way, and not spend my mats on anything else, the only thing that could cause me to not get a legendary is major changes to the crafting process or if I quit the game.

+1 weapons
+1 armor

I would love to see more player like mobs (ones that have full player build abilities). In addition I would love to have templates for traits!

Haha I think that’s a great idea! I ALWAYS see posts where people argue about whether anet listens to their players, who is the majority/minority, and why doesn’t anet respond or listen when there are so many threads about it on the forums. I think it’d be great to know just how many people hate or like the content, it doesn’t even have to include comments just a scale of 1-5 of how much you like the update.

Great idea

4. Dulfy
I have never used Dulfy’s guide to any of the events. I go completely off of NPCs in game, the mail that gets sent out at the beginning of a new event, and reading the achievement descriptions. The only time I was tempted to look up a guide was for the Vexxa’s lab achievement when looking for the kite baskets, but in the end I just didn’t do it. I’m also super casual, I play about 2-4 nights a week. I generally get most of the achievements finished either way, and if I find I’m bored before I finish them all then I just don’t finish them all.

6. Achievements, Achievements, Achievements, Achievements
I think the point of some of the achievements are to track progress or provide guidance in the game. For example, when I feel like doing a new jumping puzzle I take a look at the achievements and use their fancy “show me the area I should look in” and I go on my merry jumping way. I’ve never felt pressured to do them, but when I’m not sure what I want to do then I go browse through and it usually gives me an idea. But, I honestly don’t care if I’m ever able to kill 1,000 giants (or whatever it is).

7. Time Gating
Since I don’t usually play every day, I haven’t been affected by this.

To summarize, I don’t feel any of the pressure to play every day and finish all of the achievements. Its funny too because I got God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals in guild wars 1 which was a ton of grind, but that was when I was in college and didn’t work 8-5. I get it that the living story achievements go away and you get something for completing X number of them per segment, but the rewards are all flare and cosmetic so I’m just as good as everyone else if I get the reward or not. I like the living story cycle since there’s always something new to explore and experience, but that’s just my personal preference.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Does this math take into account the extra critical chance from precision, and thus the average dps, or does it take only in account examples of non-critical and critical attacks?

I only included non critical attacks. I also think crit is an interesting scenario, but I wanted a simple starting point and power for direct damage was an easy thing to calculate. I don’t know the best ratio of power to crit to maximize dps. I could do an all precision main stat armor calc and see what the difference would be in how much more damage you crit over a regular hit. But I think I would have to do a bit more research into mechanics first.

Vanthian.9267:

I will be looking at a Thief with a backstab damage build.
20/30/0/0/20

Traits to consider in damage calculation:
Dagger Trainger: 5% damage
Executioner: 20% damage below 50% health
Flanking Strikes: 5% damage when attacking from back/sides

Constants:
Light Armor: 1836 (no added toughness what so ever)
Medium Armor: 1980 (no added toughness what so ever)
Heavy Armor: 2127 (no added toughness what so ever)
Skill Coefficient: 1.2 if hit from the front
2.4 if hit from the back/side

Exotics:
When using all berserker and all ruby orbs and a completely damage build for Thief:

Weapon Damage: 924-981
Power: 2089 without food buffs or bloodlust or might
3156 with food buffs and 25 might but without bloodlust
Critical Chance: 63.24 without fury or food buffs
66.57 with food buffs without fury
Critical Damage: 86%

Standard Damage of Backstab on target without Critical hit: (all will assume max Weapon damage/Skill Coefficient)

Light Armor: No Food Buffs/Might/Bloodlust
Damage: ( 981 × 2089 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 2,678.835
With Food Buffs/Might but NO BLOODLUST
Damage: ( 981 × 3156 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 4,047.105

What if we critical? Critical Damage is +86% on the normal 150% so we have 236% damage. Without buffs would be…
2,678.835 × 236% = 6,322.051
With Fodd buffs and such…
4,047.105 × 236% = 9,551.168

ASCENDED

Same set up only with ascended trinkets, back, ring, amulet and weapon.

Weapon Damage: 970-1030
Power: 2309 without food buffs or bloodlust or might
3376 with food buffs and 25 might but without bloodlust
Critical Chance: 69.24 without fury or food buffs
72.57 with food buffs without fury
Critical Damage: 112%

Standard Damage of Backstab on target without Critical hit: (all will assume max Weapon damage/Skill Coefficient)

Light Armor: No Food Buffs/Might/Bloodlust
Damage: ( 1,030 × 2,309 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 3,108.849
With Food Buffs/Might but NO BLOODLUST
Damage: ( 1,030 × 3,376 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 4,545.464

What if we critical? Critical Damage is +112% on the normal 150% so we have 262% damage. Without buffs would be…
3,108.849 × 262% = 8,145.184
With Fodd buffs and such…
4,545.464 × 262% = 11,909.115

Comparing the two:
Exotic with buffs & critical: 9,551.168
Ascended with buffs & Critical: 11,909.115

Percentage damage higher? 9,551.168/11,090.115 = 0.861
Then 1 – 0.861 = 0.139 which is…..

13.9% difference in damage when buffed and landing a critical hit on a light armor target with no extra defense when welding currently available Ascended items over Exotics.

Also, please note I did not take into account the trait damage multipliers since they are the same with or without Ascended gear.

You can follow the above to figure out any of the other armors types or whatever you choose. I also done this very quickly so my numbers might be a little off, but I do believe them to be accurate.

Have fun!

This is awesome. I also had the crit damage question, but didn’t include it in my calculations for simplicity. I also didn’t include ascended rings/accessories/amulet because I was going for just the difference in exotic and ascended weapons. Its cool to see you use a build in here too so we get a more real game example of ascended vs exotic differences.

So I was curious how much damage I’d be losing by not upgrading my weapons to ascended. There are a lot of variables involved, so I stuck to the following scenario:
Weapon: greatsword
Damage type: Direct
Power: max possible (weapon + exotic armor)
Against Armor types: light, medium, and heavy
Against Toughness: none
Weapon Coefficient: .5 (Don’t know what the most common coefficient is so its a guess.. I can recalculate using different coefficients on request)
Equation

So that means, what is the direct damage difference between an exotic and ascended greatsword while using exotic armor (main stat Power) and hitting various armor types with no toughness. I tried to make the conditions favorable for greatsword weilder to get a max difference in damage picture. I calculated using both max and min greatsword weapon damage to get the range of damage I would be potentially losing. Min difference is defined as: (min possible ascended damage – min possible exotic damage) and max difference is: (max possible ascended damage – max possible exotic damage)

Results: (min difference : max difference)
light: 28.3 : 31.1
medium: 24.4 : 26.9
heavy: 21.5 : 23.6

So per hit I’m missing out on 28 – 31 damage against light armored characters with no toughness. Feel free to question my math on this one, I just tried to stick to a basic scenario.

Opinion part:
It doesn’t seem like that much of a damage difference. I understand that the damage differences would add up with all ascended vs all exotic armor/weapons, but I do not really feel the need to go crazy getting an ascended weapon. I mean doing more damage is always good, but at this point I would only go for an ascended weapon for cosmetic reasons. What do you guys think? Feel free to question my calculation methods. I’d be curious to see what the #s others have calculated, and also #s for condition specs if anyone has those.

edit: to define the results a little better

I’m a lady and my main is a guardian, but I also have an elementalist and necro. I think my next character will be a ranger, and I do plan on trying out warrior at some point too. Guardian all the way though, easily my most played class.

I love 1h sword in pve! Perfect choice for my current build. It hits super fast and I have high crit so with that Honor trait that gives area might on crit I can keep up party might. Procs virtue of justice which blinds targets when it hits. Blind causes vulnerability. I also get vigor on crit and heal people on my dodge roll. Virtue of justice is recharged on a kill too, so I can use it situationally for the blind but I usually still have it up and burning every 5 hits.

Also, most people seem to forget that the sword allows for greater movement (something a Guardian lacks with most other weapons) and blind! Immobilized and need to gtfo? flashing blade. Blind is amazing!! Timing your blinds on big attacks is such great protection. Preventing 1 hit is better than taking 33% less damage for 1 hit. Of course, not all enemies have 1 big hit so its situational… but everything is situational. Also I seem to always be hitting multiple enemies with the #1 sword chain moves, and I’m always moving in a way that tries to group the melee enemies together. IMO, 1h Sword has a lot of potential. I have never done any calculations to see how it compares vs other weapons, but I don’t think it needs any work and I’ve always enjoyed using it. I think its impossible to truly compare one weapon vs another because there are a lot of factors involved (mostly traits and what you’re going for in a build), but I think it is especially wrong to compare 2h vs 1h because of the offhand possibilities.

P.S. I said “most people seem to forget..” but I didn’t read through all the posts so don’t take that line too seriously :P

Edge, I think you are right. I first fought the dragon bosses because it was epic and I couldn’t have cared less about loot. In fact, I still don’t really care about loot. I’m completely fine with it taking a ton of time to get my Legendary/named exotics (the only things that require farming). I still don’t like doing the dragon bosses, but I do them more now because that’s what everyone else wants to do. I would be more inclined to do them if it required more skill and teamwork. Now it just feels like I’m standing around smacking things and that’s about it. Really I want the fight to be harder.. hard enough so that sometimes you fail. The possibility of failure makes it exciting to actually conquer a boss and be able to say “look at our skill”. Introduce mechanics that require the zerg to actually think and coordinate. I don’t care if it drops an exotic or nothing! Challenge me.

Linchpin.8095:

My brain is telling me to ignore this but what the hell I’ll bite.
2. Nothing, I don’t like PvP or your implication that I be required to do something I don’t like doing
3. You’re not spending hours in WvW just to be nice and give people dungeon buffs, you’re doing it because you like it, so no the non WvW playerbase doesn’t owe you anything(which is what you’re clearly implying)
4. See answer to question 2 and again saying people are “scared” out of WvW is childish

I’m quoting Linchpin on #s 2-4 because my answer echoes his and I think he worded it well. To augment that response, I am a fellow GoM player and I am mostly PvE, and I rarely wvw or spvp. One reason is I don’t have that much fun in wvw. If wvw was fun for me I would be willing to run my finances into the ground to keep my armor repaired. Another reason is that my guardian is built specifically for pve, and the build doesn’t exactly match my pvp playstyle. If I had time to level and completely gear another character I might play more wvw, and also if I could save off templates for my guardian to switch easily between builds I would be more willing to wvw. I don’t mind the silver spent to switch, I’m just too lazy to manually switch 3 times a day. Finally, I don’t have a lot of time to play so I tend to do what I think furthers my ambitions the most in a short amount of time while still enjoying myself (this translates to pve). I suppose I’d be more willing to go in a smaller party instead of the Zerg, but I don’t know enough GoM players who would be interested in this.

I keep seeing suggestions about making dungeon tokens collectible, but what about the idea anet had for Laurels? You can see how many laurels you have at any time in your inventory, you don’t have to take up bank space with laurels, and I assume there isn’t a max amount of laurels you can have at one time. Why not make a spot in our hero panel that lists the # of each type of token we have, and eliminate the token item all together. You could see how many of each token you have at any time, no space is taken, no need to travel to the bank then back to the token vendor! I don’t see the point of tokens being a physical item when all they do is take up physical space that should be used for actual usable items! Thoughts?

She might like him, but I think she’s using him. And why not? She is Queen and her entire job is to keep her country and people safe, so I would expect her to analyze who and what her assets are and then use them for the greater good. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t like (maybe love?) him, but her duty is to be Queen. I believe she would make any personal sacrifice in the name of that duty.

TL;DR:
-Dungeons with 1 overall goal and x number of tasks to complete before you can finish the overall goal.
-Multiple ways to complete each task
-Tasks potentially build on the results from other paths (ex: each task completes part of a bridge to reach the boss)
-Find the armor in the dungeon instead of from loot or buying with tokens
-Waypoints are at the end/beginning of each task so you can complete one at a time if you so choose
-Ability to go back and replay a task for loot? ectos? crafting mats? karma? gold?

I offer this idea as a new dungeon that does not have a token system, or offers the suggested option as an alternative. I find that I prefer finding my armor and weapons in the dungeon instead of buying them from a guy far away from the actual dungeon with tokens. Tokens are something I could see being used for one or two dungeons. Like an asura wants you to collect parts of a golem stored in an old lab, and for every piece you bring back the asura trades you tokens. I would also prefer discovering them to having the armor come in as drops, because the armor my hero characters wear should not be something dropped of a mere dredge bomber!! I think it would be cool to have a dungeon with a lot of objectives where completing some results in a piece or all results in a set of armor. Instead of having 3 distinct paths with 3 distinct goals, you would have X number of objectives to complete in a dungeon and you can choose how you attempt it, and once you have them all done you “unlock” the final event which is something epic. Maybe a crazy team jumping puzzle that ends in the discovery of a room of long forgotten masterly crafted armor that has only been heard about in legends…. and you found it. Also, when you complete an objective you unlock a waypoint which allows you to leave and come back at a later time to move onto the next one. Of course, everyone in your party has to be at that point or farther. The point is you would have 1 goal in the dungeon, but several paths that you can kind of create yourself to finish the dungeon.

Some details:
The objectives would be things like opening a door, getting a bridge built to cross a cavern, gaining a talisman that is the only defense against a terrible monster that guards a door that no one has entered in 100 years, or gears that are used to work an ancient dwarven invention. You could have smaller tasks that are required to complete the objectives. The tasks can also be optional/interchangeable so two things get you to the same place.

An example:
The objective is to open a door.
You see a boss is guarding it but wait! you can see some platforms that seem to lead to a platform above the door with a tunnel leading to the same place.
You’ve made it through to the next room and there are some moveable platforms with some distant object on the other side. Complete the puzzle to figure out how to get to the other side. Or, you can go down into the chasm and fight your way through the creatures that have made this dark place their home. Maybe you have to survive some waves of them, or there’s a large enemy spewing out little ones and also covering the ramp to the mystery object, so you have to knock the platforms onto the monster to kill it.

I totally agree that its not fun skipping mobs or glitching bosses. A lot of times, people are using their little trick and standing in the spot that doesn’t get them attacked. I’m always the one charging in and dodging all the boss mechanics, but in fights with adds I get targeted by everything and get killed a lot. I’m always the one in the group going “f your exploit”, but I’m the “noob” who gets killed even when I stay alive 3x longer than others do in the real fight. Like the time in Arah where we tried to run through most of the mobs to a point where they would all lose interest. It ended in us wiping 4 times (I died probably about 6 times) and spending more time/money than it would take to just kill everything. Although, It was pretty funny when I saw someone run up to the “safe point” with the spider champion on them and 4/5 of my party died to the aoe without using a single skill or taking 1 step. But in the end, I’m getting 0 loot from mobs, 0 gold from mobs, and 60 tokens at the end of an hour of pain and being bored. woooooo. /endrant

I use it as my secondary weapon on my guardian (usually only in dungeons). My build has high crit chance as well as traits that give might to my party and vigor to me on crit. So, when I can’t be close to the boss for whatever reason, I can still keep the crits going while I’m far away. This way I’m still rolling out the might for the higher dps long ranged characters, keep doing some damage myself, more dodge roll heal, and also more dodge rolling to get out of the effects. Also, the 3rd skill on scepter applies vulnerability and crowd control, which I don’t think can be dismissed easily. Lastly, I’m especially good at taking out things like burning oil in the ascalon fractal with the 2 skill. It might not be the most powerful weapon a guardian has, but my goal is to stay melee most of the time anyway and use the scepter as a filler.

Ryuujin.8236:

Ash.2175:

You can clearly see that the number of people selling ecto started decreasing around the end of October and increased during the beginning of November. You can also see the prices increasing during the time of low supply and high demand. Nearer to the present you can see that supply has recently gone up while demand has decreased slightly along with an almost identically timed drop in prices. What has caused these trends is purely speculation since only Anet has the numbers….

sigh

For the third time… look on the BLTC forum, early November was the big bot crackdown when Arenanet mass-banned thousands of botters in a single swoop. Additionally, on November 15th was the patch where they nerfed Plinx farming, the two combined had a massive impact on supply of rares.

Which is a great guess and probably true. Until you show me data such as how much ecto bots were putting in the market or how much ecto people were getting from Plinx farming, I think its still a guess.

edit
Also, I was just saying the late october/early november for some background. I think the more interesting part is closer to the present (which is that prices are currently dropping and supply has gone up).

Sion.1653:

Ecto’s are being impacted by very straightforward economic principles.

Demand is up due to being required for crafting Ascended items.
Supply is down due to being required for crafting Ascended items.

However, Ecto’s are not required in order to obtain Exotic or Ascended gear. Because of this, I severely doubt the Dev’s will make them easier to get.

Someone else mentioned gw2 spidy earlier which has some really interesting data. http://www.gw2spidy.com/item/19721 is the link to the graph for globs of ectoplasm. You can clearly see that the number of people selling ecto started decreasing around the end of October and increased during the beginning of November. You can also see the prices increasing during the time of low supply and high demand. Nearer to the present you can see that supply has recently gone up while demand has decreased slightly along with an almost identically timed drop in prices. What has caused these trends is purely speculation since only Anet has the numbers for how much ecto there is in the game vs on the trading post and where the ecto is being used. With this graph you might be able to say that the supply has increased which could possibly be caused by the drop rate increasing, or more people salvaging their rares, or more people getting rares (Anet did say they increased the drop rate of rares and exotics, right?). However, with the data available, we can’t assert anything about the drop rate of ecto. The graph is pretty cool though.

I don’t mind the salvage achievement. Since I don’t farm salvage, its just a meter of how much I’ve played the game. Its kinda like I’m getting achievement points for just playing the game. It does skew the idea that the more achievement points you have the more you’ve experienced difficult content. I guess it’d be cool if we still had that salvage meter but it gave negligible points

Thanks for your response. I think I would prefer a NA based guild because my playtime is usually like 5pm-midnight CST (11pm-6am GMT I think) on weeknights. Also, I was hoping to not have to server transfer, although I would consider it if I thought the guild was a perfect fit.

Hi, I’m looking for a PvE guild that is active on the dungeon front (including fractals). I’m currently in a spvp guild, but I also enjoy pve so I’m looking to join a second guild. This means that I will be representing another guild when I pvp with them (couple nights a week). Gate of Madness guilds only please.

About me:
I play almost every night and consider myself to be pve savvy. I mostly split my time between elementalist(80) and guardian(60s), but I recently made a necromancer. I love doing dungeons and would enjoy inviting (or joining) guildies on the runs I do. However, I’m still a bit noob when it comes to dungeon delving because I haven’t completed all of the story modes. I plan on acquiring a few different dungeon armor sets and eventually an ascended set. I don’t claim to be the most amazing player ever when it comes to boss fights, but I’m pretty good at learning mechanics and I’m usually not the person who the group has to repeatedly revive (I’ve had my noob moments…). I’m usually the person telling my group “we can still do this!” after wipes or a leaver. Lastly, I see guild recruitment posts mention this, so I am 23 years old, American (CST), and I have a full time job.

PvE Goals:
Legendary weapon(s) – Currently working towards Sunrise
Max crafting (eventually all crafting disciplines)
Map completion (on at least 1 character)
Achievements (I had God Walking Amongst Mere Mortals in GW1)
CoF, Arah, Noble armor sets (this list will increase)
Increasing my Fractal Difficulty levels
Dungeon completion (SM and all EM paths in all dungeons)
WvW – Currently updating my computer so I can actually do WvW

Thanks for your time.

If you sent people trial invitations and they logged in during the trial weekend, then they were automatically added to your friends list.

I don’t think we’re supposed to acquire this gear in a day (or even a week). If you don’t have as much time to play per day that just means it’ll take you more days to get the gear. This in no way means you have to go buy gems. They said they’re not releasing new gear every 3 months, and either way do you think it will even take you a full 3 months to get the gear? Why is it such a bad thing that better gear takes time to get? I know some people enjoyed the ease of acquiring max level gear in guild wars 1, but I personally have been enjoying the time I spend working towards my gear.

Ath.2531:

None. Your player types are deeply biased and you make too many irrelevant assumptions.
Just because someone has time(or not) doesn’t mean they love or hate the fractal dungeons.

Totally agree with this player. I’m very casual and don’t get much time to play. The time I do play is split between spvp and pve. I do not feel left behind, I have been enjoying the fractals dungeon, and look forward to eventually acquiring some ascended armor.

Edit: grammar

Hah yup, had no idea that was even a thing.

As a casual gamer I’ve enjoyed this game a ton. Love the crafting system, love their dungeon system, and love love spvp. While its pretty easy to figure out most crafting profession’s discovery formulas, I’ve found the mystic forge to be a fun distraction. I’ve chosen to not google the recipes I can make in the mystic forge and enjoy finding a new recipe and seeing what I get. As for the dungeons, I’ve had a ton of fun with the different fight mechanics and getting rocked if I can’t figure out what to do. The fractals were super fun to figure out and will continue to be challenging especially as I play higher difficulties. Spvp is just super fun. Its the place I get to be competitive and improve/test my skill versus other players. Winning is addictive and losing just gives me incentive to tweak my build or improve my gameplay. I have long term goals of map completion, more lvl 80 characters and gearing them out (legendary weaps included), spvp ranks, and eventually dabbling in WvW (once I improve my computer). I feel like there’s just so much to do or accomplish. I feel like I progress whenever I play and don’t feel useless because I don’t have the absolute best gear. I still add to a party just because of my skill level and group centric builds. But the best part of this game? When life gets busy and I don’t have much play time for a week I don’t feel like I’m wasting money, and that week doesn’t render my characters obsolete. And what? my primary guild loves spvp too much to pve? no problem, I can join another guild and rep them to get my pve fix. What an amazing game. Thanks ArenaNet.

I am sometimes able to gather nodes more than once. This happens mostly with the plant nodes. I have been able to gather them from 1-4 times within seconds. By that I mean I gather the node and receive the item, but the node is not used and is still available to me. This happens every time I play in many areas, I am usually in a group, I have seen it with many types(copper/iron/steel…) of gathering equipment. With tree or ore nodes it seems that I get the 3 ores or logs, then the node is still available and I can mine/chop 1 additional resource. To be honest, I thought it was just a rng aspect of the game but people I have asked tell me they don’t get the multiple gathers. Sorry I can’t be more specific.

Edit: I just found this issue included in the Bugged World Bonuses thread, but I am not sure what world bonuses were active at the times I’ve been able to multiple gather. My server is Gate Of Madness. Friend who claims to not get multiple gather hits is on the same server.

Asmodean.5820:

Summary approach 2:
Do the following steps in no particular order
1. Do not defend a node (you could get outnumbered and killed and even if you down one player you cannot finish him and get zero points)

2. Take every empty node you can. Leave them afterwards because of no. 1 and also so that the enemy re-captures them and the circle begins from the start

3. Run with the herd and hope they catch the bullets for you.

4. Pick off every lone roamer you and your herd find while running from node to node

At the end you will have earned a lot of “glory” points. “Glory”… isn’t that ironic?

I can tell you’re talking about the random server joins just from the tactics you describe. I’ve been playing mostly free tournaments recently and I do not see those tactics nearly as much. Holding a point or keeping the enemy from taking it for as long as possible is a huge benefit. Especially if the rest of your team is zerging around taking an additional point.

I’ve been thinking about helpful suggestions for you guys, but everything I write seems obvious and I don’t want to lecture you. I’ll just quickly list them and you can ignore me if you wish:
-Try to include more skills that break stun (they say this in their descriptions) or cure conditions
-Try to always fight on the point (bonus would be knocking them off of it) if you stay alive for a while and stay on the point then you’re still gaining points for your team, or if you neutralize the point then you’re keeping them from getting points.
-Specialize your build! I think if you try to protect against every situation, you won’t deal with any situation well. So, specialize your build to deal with or do a few things well, and then avoid the stuff you can’t deal with. If you don’t have any condition removal and you see that necro with all his nasty conditions charging at you go “nopenopenope” and gtfo. But if you’ve got a lot of burst dmg and you see a tasty ele with (probably) low toughness then sound your war cry and stand victoriously over his/her dead body while you take the point.
-DONT STAND STILL!
-practice, all these issues will become less and less the more you practice and tweak your build. promise.

I don’t mind the diminishing returns. I like the idea that a dungeon is super hard and I have to improve my own play, think about what I’m doing, and work closely with my teammates. If I fail I expect to be penalized (repair costs) this is my incentive to get better and help my teammates get better. I would do dungeons even if they didn’t give any rewards. I would go into dungeons simply because they are a challenge and I enjoy conquering the challenging content. This is probably why I don’t really care about diminishing returns. Also, I’m probably one of the most casual players, I intend to get the gear I want to get (I don’t mind if it takes me months), and, as a casual, I don’t feel the game has been ruined at all. Great game Anet, keep up the good work.

OP, your post is the best post I’ve seen on the forums so far. Good job on explaining your opinion in a clear, well worded way. I hope to see more like this.

I like your rare spawn every so often idea as well as the rare dynamic event that rewards you with a rare crafting item. I think it’d be cool if like a rare elemental champion mob spawned and then everyone who participated could gather from it once it was down. I would prefer if these events popped up in random locations instead of the big monster battles that are on a 3 hour timer. Finding one would definitely spice up my game time. Great idea!