Guild Wars 2

One of the better Charr characters I’ve seen: “Pie Eater Baconbane.” Also, a buddy of mine made an Asuran with an afro and named him “The Discomancer.”

Essence Snow.3194:

Games shouldn’t be truly random though. That’s the point. They should strive to ensure that all players have the best chance of having equal experiences given equal input. Not “Sorry Johnny your game experience is a bad one, but that’s the nature of rng.” Imo that is the mark of broken reward mechanic.

Again “imo” game reward should be more consistent with flares of random thrown in to give the illusion of random instead of inconsistent with flares of clusters to give the illusion of pattern.

THIS

John,

This post very much echoes what I was saying with the Ambrite weapons. While it is great, and excellent, that the RNG may fit in to exactly how you would predict it as a economist, and statistician, and you correctly can say exactly how much a precursor would drop, at the end of the day, this is not fun for us. Granted, for those that are lucky, they have “fun.” However, for us from whom the RNG has not worked in favor of, it’s simply not.

I don’t mean to be overly negative. However, I do want to be honest when I say that I’m just not driven or motivated to do the following based on the RNG loot philosophy that current pervades the game:

*Buy gems to unlock Black Lion Chests – I cannot, CANNOT justify spending my hard earned money on a gamble for a video game.
*Play content over and over, grinding precious few hours I have to game in my life in something tedious or monotonous.
*Verbally recommend that others play this game.
*Answer well what the “end game” is, since it is a grind to try to get lucky for the cool skins. My answer would be, “Well, you can just keep playing to see if you can get lucky for a precursor. If you don’t want that, well….”

I do appreciate even the smaller response you were able to give to my post earlier. I appreciate the openness on the response about trying to find a good middle ground. I believe my frustration came out a bit more than I’d wanted in my post, but I do hope that you’d understand it’s only because I dearly love Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2. I just wish Guild Wars 2 could find its way soon, as I believe it has lost some of its appeal for me with all the RNG end game skin elements.

Cheers.

John, you said the following:

• Almost everything (I’m speaking generically) is done for some reason or purpose, that purpose isn’t always very clear at first.

While we are aware that such things are in the nature of game development—that you can’t speak of until it’s ready, I think we can all agree, especially with the creation of Gaile’s new position, that ANET has had room to improve regarding communicating with their players. My two cents on this is: Gaile wants us to be nice. It would be nice to not be condescended upon. Quoting theories of economic logic doesn’t play well with most people, we few Plebeians here.

I have a question, and I’m almost certain it’s too specific to warrant any kind of substantive answer from you, but I thought I would try. Can you comment on, or at least give a defense of, why it is healthy to have the Amberite weapon’s fossils be non-tradeable? I spent around 20 hours of game-time farming geodes, opening chests, and to no avail. That experience was neither fun, nor rewarding, and I have not been back to Dry Top since. This is an area where the economic choices in your game, for me specifically, caused the game to cease to be fun or enjoyable. I highly enjoyed the weapons’ look; however, with the limited time I have to play games, I will and have chosen to take my time elsewhere. I don’t want to play a game in hopes to get “X,” only to never know when that will happen. And so, from point “A” (me with no Ambrite weapon) to point “B” (my sweet precious) has no guarantees of length of grind; thus, I choose to play another game instead.

Thanks for any consideration.

I was very much hoping that the RNG aspect of the fossils would be addressed in the latest LS update. Unfortunately, it was not. This is disheartening, as I have no desire to invest more time into a chance at getting a weapon (especially when I’m generally very unlucky in such things).

ANET, here is my personal feedback with this: if it was your intention to gate the Ambrite weapons behind the RNG in order to populate the Dry Top map more continuously, this may work, as people will follow the ‘gear treadmill.’ I, however, have preciously little time to game with, and I will not be in Dry Top for this anymore.

I very much hope that you are able to cater to players like myself that want measurable timeframes with which to complete desired weapons and skins. If the weapon skins are 750 geodes, that’s fine. That gives me a timeframe that I can estimate. However, I have no desire to continue to hunt for an RNG shiney that may or may not come. My time spent gaming that way will and does feel worthless. I’m very sorry that you have created mechanics in this game that allow people (and admittedly, not all people) to feel that way.

Please reconsider.

It’s been two weeks since the introduction of the Ambrite weapons, and I would agree: the RNG aspect is frustrating with the fossils. I wish they would change this to a number of geodes needed.

Can we have some love on this ANET? I’ve opened 50ish chests (I think) and nothing of any note has dropped. I may have received a charged core out of one; but, nothing that would engender me playing more, and ultimately, maybe buying more gems, etc.

Just my two cents.

EgonVenkman.1907:

There are 2 flaws with the new ambrite weapons.

1. Fossils locked behind RNG.
2. Requires T4/T5 Dry Top. May not be a problem today, but what happens after Season 2 goes away or people loose interest?

es.

Can you confirm that they are tier locked? According to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Buried_Locked_Chest it doesn’t seem so.

I was sitting at work today and wondering about the new stuff just released, so I decided to pop on the wiki and see what new content came out.

I’m always a sucker for good weapon skins, and I just have to say, I really, REALLY stinkin’ love these weapons.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ambrite_weapons

If you haven’t seen the new ones, take a gander and see what you think. I love that greatsword.

My take on the last release in a nutshell:

• The Marionette design was very well done. It split the player base up to where the graphics lag was mitigated nicely on my machine. Also, I like the idea of fighting multiple stations of champions. It was a huge anxiety attack (read: FUN) when I realized my group of five people were responsible for the event succeeding. We mattered more than a typical zergfest.

-sidenote- The whirling invulnerability is on the champion is cheap. It’s not challenging, but feels cheap.

• The Wurm was the distillation of all that is bad with GW2 world bosses. The zerg does precisely that: runs together, spams everything, and reduces framerates to zilch. The game then lags harshly. The reduction in framerates, coupled with the need to run the barrels to the wurm, was highly frustrating, and not fun. I left in the middle of the fight since I knew it was pointless. When the game was zerg-lagging so badly in the midst of having to run the barrels over a mini water jumping puzzle (the part when the barrels show up on the ship), I immediately ceased caring. That mechanic wasn’t designed too well, in my opinion.

A fix on this would really, really benefit the players. I wish they would prioritize things like this, but – fixes like these don’t keep the gem store up

I ran, or rather, attempted to run, three dungeons last night. Sadly, in each instance, whoever the party leader was got tired and just left, kicking us out of the dungeon.

This is so frustrating. It was an hour and a half wasted – which is seeming to happen more and more often. More players, because of the LFG system, can readily find a new dungeon group, they’ll just serial abandon the dungeons until they find a group that goes at the speed of light and knows all the dungeon ‘exploits’ (places to skip content, little ledges to kitten onto, etc.).

I’d propose that each person is limited to one dungeon abandon per 24 hours. If they leave twice in 24 hours, they can’t get into any dungeon until the next daily reset. But, I see in other threads that this issue has been known, and griped about for 15 months.

The only thing I know to do is to just not buy gems and support the game until things like this, that the community deserves (yes, we deserve to not worry about wasting an hour of our time), are fixed.

shrugs

I’ll take an invite – guardian main with full exotics (cleric’s, I believe)

Moira Shalaar.5620:

From one gamer to others, please try and keep your posts at least civil. They also have to go home to their families, and those families do not deserve to have their husband/wife/father/mother to come home angry/frustrated/depressed simply because our favored form of entertainment is not 100% perfect. And heaping insults, cynicism and hate on them is no more right than it would be upon anybody.

Hi Moira,

Cool name by the way.

I do completely respect that you wanted to keep the tone civil, without resorting to insults, ad hominem attacks, etc. I couldn’t agree more. While admittedly a few of most posts have had smatterings of sarcasm, I think a little indignation is justified for this reason:

This is very, very far from the first time this has happened since launch.

At some point (and again, this is derailing a bit, but related to the overall philosophy that the Living World model is generating); ANET must either fix some fundamental design philosophy flaws (i.e. always relying on NPC’s to guide progress in dungeons) that get compounded with extreme NPC scripting flaws, or continue to put out releases that frustrate their fan base.

This is why the indignation is somewhat justified.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Replicable-AC-Explorable-Event-Bugs.

Please note the date on that bug report: 7 months ago.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/AC-Path-3-Still-Bugged/first#post2293314

Please note the date on the above bug report: 3 days ago.

For the same bug. It’s a repeatable, confirmed bug that utterly blocks dungeon progress because an NPC’s script is corrupted.

And they’ve let it be for seven months. And if they want leave such obvious things broken with their game, and continue to laud their own achievements in game releases, innovative design, etc., then they need to expect considerable backlash when the player base gets burned again and again with bugs.

RubiBayer.8134:

We’re aware that Kiel is still getting stuck and are working on it. In the meantime, you can work around the problem by making sure that at least one member of your party gets inside the area and engages the mob before Kiel does.

Hi Rubi,

I’m sorry, but this is just not accurate. Our entire team made it up the jumping puzzle and killed the mob before Kiel was there. She still bugged.

Here’s some constructive feedback for you: please, PLEASE stop making dungeons dependent on NPC’s unlocking parts. It’s not fun. It doesn’t work. It’s highly frustrating your player base.

Kiel is stuck if you engage the last group before the final boss door. I’m going to sound terse here, and it is because frustrations are high.

However, what happened to “it’ll be released when it’s ready?” Obviously this dungeon wasn’t ready. Obviously your NPC behavior programming hasn’t been ready since release. This is ALWAYS the case with dungeons: an NPC trigger causes a game-breaking bug.

After almost a year, one would imagine that you would either (1) Fix the NPC’s with a “reset” feature or (2) quit making dungeons in which progress is utterly dependent on triggers from NPC’s.

Please. We’re frustrated. My guild is frustrated. This week alone we’ve wasted 3-4 hours on dungeons when they’ve been bugged (read: Ascalonian Tzark bugged).

Indeed, though, I’m wondering, with what Colin said a few days ago concerning the changing of a few dungeon mechanics that would be introduced through the Living World system, if this would render this bug moot anyway. This would explain why they haven’t even acknowledged it at all. However, if that weren’t the case, it’s just sad.

Maybe the patch today will fix this (after a seven month wait).

Yep, I do. The post was meant to be constructive criticism. Sure, there was a tad of a whine in there. However, it has been 7 months, the bug is easily repeatable, and we get no word yet. I’ll assume like the forum directions state that the dungeon team has seen this.

It’s just rather disappointing that given that they have seen this (and the previous post from 7 months ago linked above), they have elected to not prioritize a dungeon-breaking bug.

Hi all,

My guild mates and I discovered last night that AC path 3 is still bugged, and it is a confirmed repeatable bug.

This post was made 7 months ago https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Replicable-AC-Explorable-Event-Bugs.

We were running the dungeon with a person that was new to dungeons and trying to show them the ropes. We’d done this many, many times before without issue, so this seemed the smartest and safest way to ensure that this new person would have a good time.

However, after getting to the Lover’s Crypt, the game bugged as described before. Tzark was killed while giving his dialogue, rendering the dungeon broken.

Our greatest disappointment was that the new person was severely turned off by the bug to any dungeons, and my roommate, who is also an avid player, was greatly frustrated when he read that this bug is both repeatable and has been known for over a half of a year.

I’m an avowed fanboy, and I love this game, but I’d like to give the feedback that game breaking bugs need to be given much higher priority than things that do not affect the game such as clothing skins, etc.

(ed. I noticed that someone posted concerning a skin purchased with gems that was bugged with a tiny bit of a nose showing. The devs got right on that. That’s fine. I understand they have a microtransaction system where gem purchases are the life-line of the game. However, in the sticky-post up top concerning bug posts, the post spells out that game-breaking bugs are given priority. I’m sorry, but this seems a bit disingenuous when a 7 month-old bug doesn’t receive any feedback, but a purchase does within a little while.)

I would like to know if those whose weapon was changed by the recent update will receive a refund for a used fine transmutation stone that was bought with RL money. I specifically paid for a stone in order to get the skin I enjoyed. I had no idea that it was a tier 3 cultural skin. I don’t mind saving the karma for it, but I do expect a refund. I’ll submit a support ticket if I need to.

This one was atrocious. Make something challenging, not cheap. When “magic” walls appear out of nowhere with no warning, coupled with the fact that your collision detection problems make it so that traps will spring when you’re at least 5-10 pixels off them, it. feels. cheap. Not fun at all.

Good morning guys,

It seems to me that the one bit of feedback that ANET needs here is this:

When you, in your philosophy regarding no monthly fees, explained that you want the game to be supported by meaningful content that people wanted to buy, the idea was that you would deliver on that promise.

What you are seeing in this thread is that people are highly dissatisfied with the product that you released. In the future, you need to have a very delineated description of what you are getting. You cannot expect a gambling mentality to go very far for content.

We never, as ANET fans, thought that the gem store would be a place where our money might get us content. Granted, you were up front that we were taking a chance; however, look at your product in the open marketplace and forum—it is one that people are very, very dissatisfied with now.

Dorn, very nicely worded man. You summed up better what I was trying to say. Also, your clarifications were really helpful. Developers, if you do read this thread, please take Dorn’s to heart as well. Thanks guys.

Hey guys,

After reading most of the posts within the dungeon section, it does seem that malcontent is being spread because of dissatisfaction with the inherent design in the dungeons.

I am not very experienced with any form of raiding in an MMORPG; however, I have played the genre since Star Wars: Galaxies. I bought Guild Wars 2 because I have played and loved Guild Wars for six years, and along the way have met some very awesome people whose relationships have transcended just playing the game.

Here is my two cents on the dungeons: we loved, loved, loved doing HM dungeon runs in GW1. We, as a guild, met the other night with the intention of doing Ascalonian Catacombs in Explorable mode. We got some builds together and started to go through the dungeon. To make a long story short, we failed. Also, everyone was really disappointed with it, because to everyone of us it felt cheap.

Fundamentally, it seems like “difficult” has been confused with “cheap” for the dungeon. The design makes it so. It isn’t the high HP of the trash mobs (which, granted, stalls the flow through the dungeon, and is bordering on tedium). Also, having traps that take off 50% of your health with one hit is disheartening, especially when they overlap and it is an instant death. Also, the lag in the game makes it such that one can appear to be outside of the red ring of death and the trap will still get you. The latency can be a killer, literally, here. In no game, at no time, has “insta-death” ever been fun. It just feels cheap.

Also, Lt. Scorpion-Style-“GetOverHere!”-Followed-By-Spinney-Death feels cheap for numerous reasons. First, there is no escape for squishie classes that get caught by him. Instant-death follows. The latency ruins the dodging here, so it is hit or miss for a correctly-timed dodge, even with practice. Secondly, his scorpion-wire skill will pass through the pillars in the area that is to the right after going down the stairs. How can you dodge something that will pass through walls to get you? To us, and granted, we’re not elite gamers, is just feels cheap. (And cheap feels like an artificially inflated method of increasing the difficulty on something that wasn’t designed well.)

For the bosses, the ignoring of battlefield control is something else that feels “tacked-on” for difficulty. In the game realm, it destroys a bit of the sense of immersion when a human boss can remain standing when a hammer hits them in the face. As a guardian, here is a list of the skills that are rendered moot by fighting any kind of boss:

Zealot’s Embrace
Banish
Ring of Warding
Blinding Blade’s Pull
Line of Warding
Chains of Light
Shield of Absorption
Sanctuary
Bane Signet’s Activation
Signet of Wrath’s Activation
Hammer of Wisdom’s Command
Tome of Wrath’s knockdown

That’s 12 skills that are really not functioning the way they were designed, all because of a difficulty system that doesn’t gel with the overall game design.

The “cheap” feeling, if the developer kittenads this gets nothing else out of this post, is the number one thing that is causing the dungeons to not be fun. I’m not asking for you to make the dungeons easier, I’m asking in future expansions for you guys to make darn sure that you have your best game designers working on the dungeons. I’m sorry, but the dungeons feel like a very poorly designed portion of the game. The Let whomever designed the world meta-events take a stab at it. If it was indeed the same person for both, bring in others to collaborate with them.

Thanks for reading the wall’o’text. Overall, my guild and I love the game. Seriously. We love it! This is my stab at constructive criticism. Thanks!