Guild Wars 2

I enjoyed the Tassi instance and story too, nice voices and for one that follows the events around mad king since gw1, i am interested about the lore and plot thats evolving around his son.

Please more of this level of storytelling (even if its short – imho its the best plot in the LS so far). For me its the only part of this years halloween that meets the expectations i had from last year.
Playing the later parts of this story will be my main motivation to finish the metaachievement. (I will QQ/rage on other threads about my disappointments, just want to give credit where its deserved). Well done!

Well, even my lvl80 guardian with exotic PVT armor, got hit for 11k+ damage a lot and if thats not annoying enough, chainrooted and knocked all over the place, cant say it is a fun experiece – and i really liked it last year.

Because of my high expectations from halloween 2012 – i am really disappointed this year (so far i only enjoyed Tassi, but i miss a lot from last year (e.g. titles, backpacks, mad king lore))…

I got some trick or treat bags (5 total, after one win and one loss).

Edit: Did it before the hotfixes, maybe it got changed?

I am disappointed too, after i missed the master carver due to buggs last year, it was one of the things i planed to do this year (best title for my little thief imo).

And no back items? I have them on two characters, but its a bad move towards new players (or old ones that want them for their other chars).

(Off Topic: Playing since day 1 and 6k aps here)

Please make it happen anet!

It just takes too much time to go though a 20 pages thread to find the devs post (e.g. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Collaborative-Development)…

If you are serious about collaboration and communicating with the community we need this simple tool asap.

I had the “pleasure” running into more and more plexers every day in wvw, this rune is gamebreaking – plain and simple.

I really hope Anet fixes this in the patch today – its already a shame for their balance team letting it untouched for weeks.

Heya,
there is one method for getting excotic gear that is not mentioned yet:

Buy them in wvw, either for badges only (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Trader) or for gold and badges (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armor_Master). Those armor comes without runes, but you can choose from a lot of different statcombos (even some that are hard to get like PVT).

Imho its one of the cheaper methods (karmagain got nerfed badly and you might want to save it for other things (obsidan shards for example)). Badges are not hard to earn if you play a bit of wvw and the achievement chests give you some nice amounts too.

Heya,

giving this nice thread a bump, as it is still an issue.

Maybe with the “collaboration initative” there is a chance for someone from Anet to give us some inside thoughts about it? (Imho this thread is pretty much on point and constructive elaborating the issues that come along with the rally problem, it would be really appreciated to get some feedback ^^)

For those having trouble figuering out what hints they miss: Click the questionmark with the tooltip “hints” on the top of the screen (its the last one from left), it shows you a list of the hints with the percentage you finished each category (you can get more informations selecting them).

I agree that the option to hide certain achiements would be great.

As i wear my combat healer title with pride, i want to add something to the topic:

Zoldyck.6241:

I just realized that op is from EU. Maybe it is a community thing?

In the American servers, you’ll be having issues people ressing you even if you told them not to. >.>

It’s a community thing ofc (this thread shows some good examples), but not a matter of regions – i am on vabbi and i hardly see a downed/dead player not being rezzed.

Esplen.3940:

It’s a sketchy subject, but for the most part, just ask yourself this:

1. Is he safe?
2. Am I safe?
3. Is he down, not dead? If he’s dead, do we need him?
4. Am I getting credit?

If the answer is yes to all of the above, just res him.

I have to disagree on some parts here:

1. If he’s not save, it is even more important to get him up on his feet asap
2. For me more risk = more challenge (ofc i try not to be too suicidal)
3. Yes downed/dead is something i consider as well, as rezzing a dead one takes a lot more time (and takes away the rally option) – but you don’t need to rezz them in one go. “Do we need him?” For me this sounds pretty arrogant (no personal pun intended), in my book every player has the same right to participate – pros and newbs alike…
4. For me helping others is a reward in itself, but thats a personal trait i guess (Healer classes have allways been among my favorites, even though ingame rewards are often subpar and bad players are yelling at you a lot)

As long as my answer to 2 isn’t it is suicide, i have to agree with Vayne (seldom as i do):

Vayne.8563:

I rez people all the time. Admittedly not when I’m AFK, but when I see a downed player, even if it’s out of my way, I’ll go to help them.

I think it helps create a better game for everyone.

The only real issue i see with rezzing players is in wvw, because of how the rally mechanic works and that is a serious design flaw imo.

Last but not least:

eveleaf.4132:

That said, if you die, try not to have an entitled attitude about getting a rez. It’s still a favor…no one owes you anything.

I agree on changing your gear every 5-10 levels, but dont use karma for it (exept for breathers – as far as i know there is only lvl 20 heavy ones to be crafted and they don’t drop) before level 80. I would not care too much about the statcombination before level 80, as you happen to change them pretty fast – just take the cheaper ones, blues and greens are enough (but sometimes rares are cheap too).

- use the drops you get

- either craft them (can be rather expensive if you are unlucky with rare materials) or

- buy them on the trading post, low level gear is really cheap there – you can get a full set for a few silver.

- use basic transmutation stones (the under lvl80 ones), it allows you to keep your favorite skins and (more important) your runes/sigils. You can get easy ones finishing zones (the fastest are the starter towns) and they are of no use once you hit level 80 – use them at ease.

- you should have no gear-problems in dungeons as long as you keep your set within 5 levels to your own (you get a rare headpiece of the level of the dungeon – a level 30 one for ascalon catacombs – a little bonus for doing them at a low level) .

Have fun ;D

Reading your posts, i get the impression, its bugged for you.

You might try and send a bugreport ingame. I had a problem with my mailbox-full hint not counting, after i send a bugreport it was acknowledged the next day i logged in

Other than that you might be REALLY unlucky with hip Shot, but jump shot should be 100%…

My only advices besides the bugreport would be to use some of the 100% combofinishers engie has in utilities (i think for example hinden pistol or personal ram are some, not sure though) and throw out lots of fields. Another thing you might try is playing a bit in a group in wvw, i finished the achievement really fast there (lots of fields and players to trigger it).

Good luck

Heya,

Neural.1824:

The downed state (…) is there to provide the enemy player with the ability to stomp, which is nothing more than a power trip that most of the player-base gets off on. The act of murdering a helpless individual makes them giddy, and the downed state provides the closest thing they can get to non-consensual PvP. This is exacerbated by the fact that you can stomp anyone in a downed state, even if you did no damage to them at all, so even people who don’t PvP very well at all can “feel the power” and get the thrill of taking someones life without having to fire off a single shot.

That really made me giggle, i have never looked at it from that perspective – thanks for sharing

Chorazin.4107:

There should be incentives to have these low level players around, the format should be doing everything to encourage players to dive in, at any level. But really as it stands, i dont see it, a level 3 is just a liability, hes a rally bot waiting to give the enemy free rallies.

For me this is one of the biggest issues (besides balance) about the downed/rally issue at the moment. It is toxic for the teamspirit in wvw and can harm the community in many ways.

I agree with your pvp assumtion (as i stated above) and would like to hear more opinions as well (manybe this thread is in the wrong section).

Edit1+2: Neural’s name did not show up for the quote – fixed now thanks to Erebos!

I don’t want to quote a wall of text, that i’ve allready written (some of my points have aready been mentioned), so here is the thread for reference:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Introduce-counters-to-Stealth-mechanic-in-WvW/first

Heya,
to answer your quesitions:

Erebos.6741:

Bil.6354:

- it massively favors the bigger group (this is mainly a wvw concern)

While true, are you implying it’s not a prioritizing issue in SPvP?
Because I believe it also plays a forcible influence in this setting.

For me it’s less of a concern in tpvp (i rarely play spvp…) because:
- there are smaller fights and when i manage to down someone in a 1vs2 or 2vs3 i have more options to control the fight and fokus on killing the downed before going to the other target(s)
- if the enemies blob together with many players on one point, it gives my team the upper hand on the rest of the map, thus netting our team a nice advantage.
- in wvw though (having outmanned most of the time) it really furstrates me very often

i still would not mind to see it go in s/tpvp as well

Erebos.6741:

Bil.6354:

- being in downed state is outright boring for some classes, without the ability to show any skill

Just “some” classes [/lol]?
I get that you don’t literally mean “any skill”, but down-state capability is trifling in comparison to any professions before-state ;P

very true, but at least mesmer and thief can play some mindgames…

@Chorazin: you bring in another point that was not mentioned before:
The issue of (unintended) “griefing” due to an unexperienced/bad equiped or skilled player ruining the stategies and skills of a well coordinated group. Imo this is a really big point, because one of the things i love about gw2 is the fact that there are very few issues with players interfering with each other in harmful ways (ok there’s some others too, e.g. pushing enemies out of my aoes). Anet did a great job making this game really antigriefing in most parts and i am sure your example is something they don’t intend.
You really gave a good and well explained example how it is harmful, not only for combat, but for the wvw community as well.

It’s the rally mechanic thats the big issue here for me, if its too hard to fix apply some serious penalties after you rally(clearly thats do-able as you get a debuff from the revive orb), not hey im up with 100% of my DPS full movement capacity and all my kitten off cooldown …. some serious debuffs for 20 seconds to take them out of the combat(50% health, 75%dmg reduction, 25%snare, 75% rez reduction) or all their slot skills and weapon abilities are on cooldown for 20 seconds, so it gives the player a chance to retreat to safety and recuperate, or linger at the rear of the fight. They can return to the battle once the debuff drops.

Again i have to agree, imho this would be at least a hotfix to the downed problem, as at the moment the lack of punishment for being downed only covers bad play.

For all contributing: thumbs up for keeping this thread going (in a productive way)

About the level 80: anet has stated that they might raise the maximum level in the future, so it might become level 100 someday.

cc: crowd control, (used for single target as well) effects that impair your movement and skill usage (cripple, immobilize, daze…)

dr: diminishing returns, generally used in mmos to describe a mechanic that reduces the amount stacked (very high) numbers in stats (e.g. strengh, vitality) add less to your other stats or skilleffects (e.g. damage/health) after a certain threshold, in gw1+2 it’s used for a mechanic that reduces the amount of loot you get for repeating the same content over a prolonged period without breaks (or for dungeons several times a day)

FotM (class): Flavor of the month, used for a class that is very popular at the moment due to being stronger than others

sup(p)s: supplies in wvw

wp: waypoint

If you don’t understand a term, just ask – mmospeech is like a language with many different dialects ;D

Welcome to the game – have fun!

Some good points and examples have been added:

Calae: no punishment, i pretty much feel the same. I think something like a (at least) 15 second rally dizzieness would be appreciated by me. At the current state being downed with enough allies around simply has not enough impact on the battle.

Alissah: What you describe is a perfect example for:
- the hughe emphasis on burstdamage (without many good counter meassures), along with the disengagement potential some classes have
- and (Seras gives a good example for this as well) the imbalance of the downed skills between different classes

Imho the thread identifies some of the hughe balance problems gw2’s pvp has at the moment. I really would love to get some thoughts from anets pvpteam about the topics raised here (yeah wishful thinking…).

Edit: typo

And here we go again, welcome to the joys of vertical progression, mixed with our beloved RNG, ginding and some more time gateing :/

I really have a deja vu from november, i think it’s time to bump a suggestion i made back then: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Different-gamemodes-basic-pro-mode/first#post852363

@Mirta: I would miss you if i’ll continue to play gw2 after the implementation, i read a lot of great posts from you over the months…

Off Topic: Best laugh in the announcement for me: Going forward, we’ll continue to work with and support the rapidly growing competitive PvP community with our eyes towards an extremely exciting future as we work towards solidifying the base.

I was mislead by the title, because we allready have divergent server realities.
Play on a lowpopulated server and then on a highpop one – it’s two different server realities.

Back to the topic: I don’t think branching out the living story is a good idea, while it seems interesting from an rpg point of view, with the current state of the LS i doubt it would be more than some differing lines of npc text.

Continuing diverging personal stories would be cool though.

Making the home instances and npc reactions to ones character differing would be great too, anet had some promissing ideas about that before launch.

Great thread, imho this post pretty much sums up the current state of gw2 pvp:

Calae.1738:

We understood a long time ago that repawn time and map design are what dictates the flow of combat.

In GW2 you have invincibility frames (dodging), powerful attacks that are NOT telegraphed, out of combat health regeneration, out of combat movement speed buffs, downed state and rally mechanics all mixed together in a completely incoherent mess.

It’s basically a PVE ruleset applied to PVP is what it is.

My major concerns about downed are:

- downed and stomping skills are not balanced at all
- rally often feels pretty random (its doesn’t even account how low you got in downed state) and is pretty overpowered (you can go on bashing/using skills the moment you got up, there is no penalty for being downed at all)
- it massively favors the bigger group (this is mainly a wvw concern)
- being in downed state is outright boring for some classes, without the ability to show any skill

I find LHounds suggestion about rezzing with a combination of heal+elite interesting, but i can see some balance problems here (differing cooldowns are coming to my mind). I would prefeer one in combat resurrection skill for all (with a long cooldown or one time (per fight) like gw1s signet of resurrection), out of combat rezzing is fine, but could be speeded up a bit (i love to rezz my mates – i allways enjoyed healer classes).

I think some more defensive options are needed as well, imo gw2 puts way too much emphasis on (burst) damage, with downed giving the illusion of longer fights.

Nice vid Tribio (did skip a bit though), really like your explanations as well (do you have the wvw mastery against guards on a high lvl? I can only dream to do those damage numbers, maybe i need to switch out my mf gear :P).

@ dreadbeard: I run a 0-30-30-10-0 trapper build with axe/warhorn + a bow and solo roam a lot too (capping a camp is easy for me as well), if you go with a group a lot you might try spirits.

Bumping for some attention…

There have been many suggestions for this, i wonder why it is so hard to implement. Imo more subforums are badly needed in this forum (server subforums for example).

Agree, it’s one of many basic functions this forum is lacking…

Really fun fight at creek tower this morning, the best i had the last weeks.

Thanks to wsr for not simply treb’ing us out. Imho this gives an answer to skwas question, what to do to get fun fights vs vabbi: handicap yourself a bit in either going with smaller numbers or not roflsiegeing the few of us – its not like we don’t want to fight, we simply can’t bring that many people (even less when fights are no fun)

Sad to hear you guys from FoF were only guesting, it was a pleasure to fight with you – we could use more organized players like you (will badly miss your portals). Good luck, nice drops and have fun back home. Hope to meet you again someday.

Raine, goldenwing and Pixelpumpkin pretty much said what i have to say about this.
I am more the table/numbers processing guy, so the new ui makes it harder for me to get the informations at glance.

I only want to add: Please give a option to display the remaining time in weeks/days/hours/minutes/seconds, 494:20:45 (hours/minutes/seconds) simply looks odd to me. Btw it would be nice to have a timer for the temporary content too.

Vote for more options how to display and sort the achievement ui: old/new, big/small, finished/to do…

Bumping, because imo it would be a good addition, adding some tactical options.

@ Chewablesleeptablet: I dont have the gold for that and if i would prefeer to get my second lvl 80 a grandmaster trait tome and some exotic gear. Besides i like the people on vabbi and transfering will not solve the problem, only make it worse.

@Killsmith: I dont think more points per tick will help anyhow. Even when we are totaly roflstomped we “win” ranking. I dont care about those points in any way neither about the rankings, i simply play to have fun

Guys keep it civil its just a game

This whole alliance idea just dont works in openworld pvp with that many different people playing, there is allways someone who dont cares about it, due to various reasons (not knowing/agreeing about it, personal reasons, bloodlust…). Imo it can work on a personal/guild scale, but everything beyond is wishful thinking and not really desirable (because more often than not you’ll see the 2 big ones banding vs the small one). Wvw is chaotic pvp after all.

I’m from vabbi and i hold it pretty much like Dopamine (except i’m guilty for sometimes going beserk and engageing other roamers from fow, mostly because i’m starved out on having no good fights and bored about me doing only pve).

From a stategical view its only logical to fokus on the big servers camps/players no matter on what map, so thats what i’m doing most of the times.
On the other hand i had the best fights in the last weeks (i took a break from gw2 in november – allready feel like the next one is near :/) with people from fow. Close fights are what i enjoy the most, no matter if winning or loosing.

Sadly its hard the distinguish between players in gw2, apart from the guildtags – i really miss the option to develop “archenemies” in this game. Thats allways been one of my longtime motivations in openworld pvp, killing the guy that has killed me so often before is just much more fun and reward than killing 100 faceless enemies. Funny enough some of those became good gamerfriends to me, imo respect is the keyword.

I was thinking about something similiar too.

My suggestion is:

Only add a cap for the borderlands of the outmanned servers. Make it the number of the owning servers players + 5man/+10% of the homepopulation.

That way the bigger server can still get a firm hold on eb and their own borderland, but it would at least give the outmanned server (and the big server as well!) the chance to get some good fights in that map.

At the moment all i see (on vabbi) is the bigger servers running around with zergs that are many times bigger than what we can muster. There is no way to hold anything for more than a few minutes – until the zerg arrives. And then there is nothing i would call a fight, because the best we can do is delay their stomp for some moments. Upgradeing or trying to defend is fuitless, because you dont stand a chance vs a force that much bigger and only waste time/gold.

It just scares players away from wvw, dont gives any fun and thats not helping smaller servers to bring in new players and maybe grow in numbers.

Edit: “+” 5man was shown underlined

I dont think its a pve way of thinking, i play pvp mmos for some years now and when my healthbar reaches zero, i’m defeated…

If anet wants the downed state to be a new phase of the battle, then they should make it balanced for all classes and look into the rally mechanics as well (see the reasons given above).

One thing i would suggest if downed would be removed is to increase the overall revive speed to get dead allies back into the game (along with more health/defenses).

@Dual: You bring some good points:

1. I dont want stealth to be removed without compensation, that would just limit the number of viable builds which is not desirable for me. Imo some skills/traits that give more synergies with other players would be one option i would like (for me thief feels pretty much like a solo class atm), some sustain/defense as well. On a sidenote i think one or more different classes of debuffs apart from conditions could open a lot of options here too, not only for thiefs.

2. The problem of the role thief has in team fights is another one. Without the trinity and clear targets for an assasin class, what can it be? I dont know, but as i said: Some more synergies with other classes along with thiefs high mobility could still make it a fun to play class without stealth.

Imo thief would need a big rework to be fun for both: the thief and the opponent. At the moment the possibilities of disengagement are just not balanced and are responsible for too many frustration for one side of the fights.

About the downed/stomp problems: thats a topic for itself, downed skills/stomping are not balanced between the classes (there are some threads/suggestions about this topic), thiefs stealth is only one example.

I agree with your concerns about downed state in pvp, for pve i love it, but in pvp its odd.

Its another factor that largely favors bigger groups (in wvw), rally makes it nearly impossible to beat a big group and downed skills are pretty unbalanced between the different classes.

Because of this i’d love to see it being removed, maybe some spike damage would need to be adjusted, along with more defense options for classes that have none/few.

For your suggestion 1, i think that could be abused in wvw. 2 and 3 could alleviate the problem, but i would prefeer a clean cut.

I agree that stealth has to be revised. Its simply annoying, not challenging.

Stealth needs to have a counter (e.g. break on damage as suggested) or to be limited as an opener (which still is a big advantage, as you can choose your fights). Most of the times i meet thiefs in wvw i simply cant kill them, even if i outplay them – its simply frustrating not being able to kill an enemy you have beaten.

I would love if anet would redo thiefs in a fasion similiar to gw1 assasins, imho the best thief class design i found in any mmo so far. Give thiefs some form of defence (critical defences, evasion or something) or sustain (lifesteal) to compensate, i would love that for my little asuran stabber.

At the moment the skill/risk/reward gap for stealth is just too huge when compared to other classes.

I strongly support this suggestion.

1. It just makes few sense trying to measure an highly dynamic and unstable enviroment with a (more or less) static value, that was designed to measure the performance of an individual (that shows a more or less stable performance) in a 1vs1 game (chess). WvW has too many influencing variables to give this value/rateing a good reliability.

2. It would prevent a lot of complains about issues like nightcapping.

3. Hopefully it would bring the fokus on fun fights again, not some “leaderboards” to boost some egos.
I come from a game with 3 faction openworld pvp, pretty much similiar to wvw and when they introduced rankings and personal scores, it only boosted the most unfun ways of playing the game, like camping the outnumbered faction or weaker (lower lvl/worse equiped) players, tradeing of points and so on. Some people are just too much attracted by this virtual kitten representations and start to fall into the patterns of doing them the easy way (farming them), just to see them grow – even if they have less fun doing that than they have fighting close fights.

I might add that anet should remove the wvw server boni as well. Its just not fair to get punished in pve as well, just because i happen to be on a lowpopulation server (vabbi here).
At the moment anet gives too much incentives for people to stack on the big servers, only makeing the population problems worse.

Good suggestion, this forum could use a lot more structure and subforums (one for each server would be great too).

Just been skipping through more than 50 pages of suggestions to look for wvw ones…

I also agree that it would not be hard to implement.

Just found the dirt-covered objects on Gandara, thx to Daemon

Found them on the points 2, 5 and 6 on this guides map (http://dulfy.net/2013/02/26/gw2-lost-and-found-living-story-event-and-achievement-guide/).

For me the most annoying quest in gw2 so far, have been looking for my last one for some days now…

Well i’m going to get my gauntlets now, good luck finding yours

Heya my fellow vabbi players

On-topic: I think anet monitors the activity of all servers, so if they think that some of them are draining too much, they will adjust by mergeing servers.
One problem is judgeing when the servers are lowpopulated, as events might show a different population than every day. It might even vary a lot between daytimes/different days of the weeks/month… and that with different pattern for different servers. With free servertransfers still up each week (as we still dont have the guestfunction), i dont belive the serverpopulations are anywhere near stable. Communities evolve, that takes more than three month…

Off-topic: We really should have a forumsection for each server…

I have been on vabbi since day one and i like it here. 99% of the chat i read was mature and civil, most of the players i played with were laid-back and relaxed (no bad words after failing a dungeon for 40 minutes for example).

I use to take my time to watch other players before putting them on my fl, so there is only a handful of players i “know” yet (as well as some of our nightcrewe wvwvwers, i happened to play along more than once). But i like the overal attitude here, as i said most people i actualy talked with or read their talk were friendly and helpful.

I enjoy a more familiar and smaller server, without queues and the chance to run into the same players more often. But i can understand the desire to play with a more stable and higher population too.

If you want to earn yourself a name (as a clan or an individual) you have better chances doing so on a lowpopulated server (and imho its more rewarding).

I have not logged in since the “one time” event (did the demolition asura finally move his a**? or was vabbi one of the servers that never finished the event? Things like this do make a hughe group of players on these servers unhappy and when you hear others finished the “one-time” event several times, getting multipe rewards, that are in some cases worth a lot of grind/gems…).
Since then i spend my little sparetime reading the forums finding out whats going on. First to hear about the event issues, then realizing powercreep has come to gw2 (its MY definition of powercreep ofc).
And the more i read, the more puzzled i become about how badly i misinterpreted anet and the manifesto.

Well motivation to login is down for me atm, as much stuff i still wanted to do in gw2, all the glorious fights i wanted to fight – not now. I first need to find out why i have been that stupid…
I dont want to spoil the fun for anyone, this is my personal issue. So for all of you:

Good luck, nice drops and have fun.

Nice suggestions, good idea for a topic (even if i fear its kind of wishful thinking).

#1. After gw1 i expected a lot more and a more hunt like approach, than only the three eliteskills we have to unlock. A few more would neither hurt nor require too much balanceing imo.

#2. I like that idea. It would give more power (general speaking for one stat or a set of them), but with a drawback. Could create borderline builds (balancewise) but with a need to sacrifice. Lorewise those equip, while being very powerful is tainted too.

Some more:

#3. Emotes: give us something to (role-)play with

#4. Storys: Something like the bonuspack missions in gw1. Play some missions to unlock some nice weapon/armourskins. Sell them available for account or multiplayer and give those with multiplayer the opportunity to invite others without the story to play it too (with reward ofc). I think some would enjoy to “ferry” other to their skins, giving players a new profession.

#5. Pokemons: Some cute mini-pet-puppy you can care about, feed and play with, only for towns, with some fun emotes for the pet unlocking while it evolves (pure cosmetical ofc).

#6. Mini games: I expected a lot more of them. More minigames with own achievements like kegbrawl, costumebrawl is fun too, but please give the tonic players some love, five skills and some balance.

Great reads, good explanations, thanks Wintyre and those that contributed to the topic.

Maybe there is a solution to cater both sides of the table?

How about offering different gamemodes with and without vertical progression after exotics and level 80?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Different-gamemodes-basic-pro-mode (This is more about different gamemodes in general, but some more constructive input would be welcome).

/rant on
These kitten forum is so badly structured i miss this tread the whole day
/rant off

Nice i found this, i had the same idea. This is kind of a twinthread to mine:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Different-gamemodes-basic-pro-mode
Its more about the question of gamemodes in general. Economic and social considerations and more genereal feedback would be appreciated.

As long a our threads dont get merged, we can try to keep our topics fokused.

First off Alex: Thank you for makeing a suggestion and thinking about those with different needs too, not only claiming yours.

I think i know what you want for the itempart, as my first mmolove (we still date on ocasions :P) is just like this: our epic bossmobs spawn in an openworld-pvpzone (once a week), you need more than 20 people to take them down and only one gets a drop. Most of the drops are good, but some are really op on some classes. Getting a good item there can have a hole story behind it and this makes those stuff worth a lot more for the players.

One thing i would argue against is the friendly-fire, especially on combofields (imho they are desinged to be spamable increasing your teams output, while being damageskills, (de-)buffs, sometimes adding rather unique features too) without a general rework. But i admit as a player i wished for ff on numerous ocasions too. I think it could require a lot of work on the balance side as it would change the fighting dynamics pretty much. If done well, why not? I could even enjoy it.

Your ideas would make a good ground for a real hardcore mode and i do not doubt there would be players who enjoy a real challenge. In the frame i suggested it would be worth a third mode (after basic/pro).

For the elitism: If there is a large enough audience that enjoy this ruleset more than a casual one to make it pay off for anet, why not?

I strongly agree with this suggestion.

And as Weebitt said: A tool to see players in our region. Showing them on radar just like in wvwvw would be fine for me, being able to select them from there marvelous.

Sorry for the double post.

But there is another point worth talking about, that came to my mind when thinking about will it payoff, will one gamemode be deserted:

How about the aspect of voting with our wallets?

Im not sure if i would like the idea of anet allocating resources arcording to the money players spend in the different gamemodes.

One the one hand i am a conscious customer, i decide where to spend my money. And i am aware i have some power doing this, because the shop/producer i buy from will earn my money – the one i dont buy from dont. The option is already there in online games as you can decide to spend money or not.

But how about anet making it more explicit as to allocate it to the content you like?
That could gain them valuable marketdata, giving them a much more solid and acurate measure where to earn money, as current datascources like online activity do.
Thinking it to an end, they could even implement a system that lets you allocate the money you spend on gems on certain areas i.e. on wvwvw or dungeons.

On the other hand it could boost the split/competion between different factions of the playerbase (well i bet a moneyspending competion between the players would be appreciated by most companies).

More feedback on this and the topic of different gamemodes is appreciated.

Heya,

@Astralporing: Thanks for adding some perspective to the facts.
While i aggree with most of what you said, it might be fertile to stick to the topic of different gamemodes and just link to the threads focusing on those discussions.
Im guilty of derailing a lot too and understand the temptation…

@Wayfarer: Thank you for bringing in some valuable points about the gamemodes.

First the the question: Will the efford doing two gamemodes pay off?

I would argue yes, because at the very moment the differences would be really small, as 99% of the code would be the same.
It would require some work to make a login interface, seperate existing characters and servers, working off those that falsely took their character to the wrong gamemode and stuff like that in the begining and two lifeteams supporting the two gamemodes for maintence.

But as i said: there would be a lot of synergies too: artwork, servercode, gameengine would be the same. And i believe, if one of the lifeteams would fix a bug in one gamemode it would be much easier to fix it in the other too. Or if one of the teams finetunes a dungeon or an area the other gamemode would profit too.

And on the other hand the payoffs: Getting a share on two marketsegments instead of only one.
And again: a lot of synergies: Players that enjoy both modes for example. Or think of a hardmodegamer that has real life buddys that are more casulal and only play few time, but in gw2 they can easy play together and enjoy their time in easymode, while he has his challange when they are offline too.

I think the overal brand gw2 would attract a lot more players than only one gamemode not pleasing the taste of a part of the customersmarket.

Second the question: How would the community react?

Would the servers of one gamemode be desolated?
From my perception there is a lange enough audience of people that prefeer the manifesto-gamemode to the itemprogression-gamemode to make this work. They could start with 3 servers (just make wvwvw possible) and see if it works. I think most of the roleplaying communities out there would prefeer a gamemode where you can get your favorite outfit easier (=giving more time to roleplay) too for example.

Thx for the replies.

Ill try it with an analogy (as some in this forum seem to enjoy them too):

Lets say i enjoy eating icecream and there is a shop that sells vanilla icecream and i like the flavor.
One day there is a sign announcing: We open a new store with just the best vanilla icecream in town.
Ok i liked their icecream, so i go to that shop and really: the best vanilla icecream in town.
Some customers ask for stratiatella icecream, so the owner puts some chocolate in and makes nice stratiatella, but for some reasons i like vanilla better.
If now some customers ask the shopkeeper if they can have some more vanilla icecream, what do you think the shopkeeper would do?
Pretty sure he would offer both, making happy those that like vanilla as well those that like stratiatella.

I think its pretty much about taste and about that you cant argue. Its diffenent flavors from one brand, think about it like cherry coke and clasic coke if you dont like icecream.

One thing id like to add: Its not either or, it think most players would have characters in both gamemodes, casuals that like to take a challange, hardmoders that like some twinks for the screenies for example.
I think different gamemodes will enrich the game for a lot of people (but i could be wrong, thats why i want to talk about this suggestion).

Some people need to get out of that black-white us-them view. Its about how anet can provide the best experience for most customers. Thats what my suggestion is about.

@Tenshi: thank you for actually answering to my questions. When i look at this forum i fear you could be right with your assumption about the community.

So maybe i should ask a bit different:

Would you like/dislike different gamemodes? Why? What could be better with or without? What problems do you see?

Thx for the feedback, i fear you dont get my point.

Its not like i dont want content, i would like it to be presented in different forms for different needs.
Take unique items for example: On hardmode there would be only one item with that skin, with stats higher than any other, while the same skin in vanilla could be a rare chestdrop with exotic stats. At the moment most content would be the same only with diffenent rules.

Over time of course there could be content that is gamemode specific, mounts would spring to my mind as an example.

edit: tipo + MANIFESTO

The topics of item-progression, grinding, content-gateing and such, associated with the added content of lost shores, shows the community has different needs and wishes which seem to exclude each other.

Either way there will be unhappy customers.

Well maybe there is a way to please both parts of the community?

How about two different gamemodes of GW2?

Lets call one the basic mode (with exotic stats being the highest ones, no gated content, with fancy stuff easy to get, the manifesto written in obsidian stone and so on) and the other the promode (HARDmode, hard grind, truely unique items, itemprogession, maybe new max levels, you have to work hard and long for your stuff and so on).

Both would have different pve and wvwvw servers, but could meet at spvp.

For Anet it would require two different teams to manage those gamemodes, but there are a lot of synergies in terms of developing content and it could please much more customers.

Imho it would be a bold but profitable move.

I for my part would love to play vanilla mode, i had a lot of fun the last two month in gw2. But im tired of grinding, have tons of things to do outside of gw2 and if the current development direction continues, my interest will vanish sooner or later (first gated content usually).

What do you think? Would it split the community too much? Could it work?

Edit: changed the title from “Vanilla GW2 gamemode?”. Hopefully clarifing the topic better now. With my nerdy history of games like TOME (that game is hard and grindy), i supposed vanilla to be fitting.
Edit2: typo, changed the names i suggested for the gamemodes to cause less emontional issues (this suggestion is not about what approach “is better”, its about offering both. I might be seen guilty opting for one side when stateing my personal preferences. But i only wanted to add what i hope that suggestion could bring for players like me as an example for the profits).